In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Mathew Kerbis discuss:
- AI’s impact on billable work
- Recognizing the limits of hourly and flat fees
- Using subscriptions to create stability and scale
- Positioning lawyers for long-term resilience
Key Takeaways:
- AI is set to automate most billable legal tasks, collapsing the hours firms rely on for revenue. Continuing to bill time while effort shrinks creates ethical and financial strain. The profession must rethink pricing before the model breaks entirely.
- Hourly billing punishes efficiency and leaves clients unable to budget. Flat fees help, but often trigger resistance when AI makes work appear “too easy.” Both models strain under faster, AI-driven workflows.
- Subscription pricing offers predictable costs for clients and recurring value for firms. Changing needs are handled through tier shifts instead of constant renegotiation. This approach opens access to the vast unmet legal market.
- Solo and small firms can thrive by pairing subscriptions with purpose-built AI tools. Clear value mapping enables strong good-better-best service tiers. Sustainable growth requires leverage, focus, and letting go of doing everything alone.
“The flat fee or fixed fee model… hasn’t supplanted the billable hour… because of exactly this problem I call the under‑scoping and over‑scoping problem. You don’t know if you’re going to overscope or underscope the work when it’s on a fixed‑fee model.” — Mathew Kerbis
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About Mathew Kerbis: Mathew Kerbis is the founder of Subscription Attorney LLC and co-founder of prakti.ai, where he helps lawyers move beyond the billable hour and build sustainable, client-friendly practices. A longtime advocate for subscription-based legal services, Mathew pioneered one of the earliest low-cost legal subscription models and has since expanded into fractional general counsel work for small businesses. He also hosts the Law Subscribed podcast, where he explores alternative fee models, legal innovation, and the future of law in an AI-driven world.
Connect with Mathew Kerbis:
Website: https://subscriptionattorney.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerbisverse/
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
Mathew Kerbis [00:00]
Automating billable hours means revenue disappears if you bill by the hour,
Narrator [00:08]
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 [00:31]
Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin, here and welcome back to be that lawyer. Wow. We are really excited to have you as our listener, as our audience member. We are continuing to put out shows for you to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled Rainmaker. Listen, there are some people that I get on the show, and then I have them on again, and then I have them on again. And I just can’t help myself. I’m like a kid in a candy store. And so kerbis And I had lunch the other day. I’m like, you just come back. Come back on this show. Man, I need you back. And so what’s up? Curtis, how you doing?
Mathew Kerbis [01:00]
Man, hey, it’s, it’s great to be back and and, you know, it’s been over two years, so a lot has happened. I’ve got gray in my beard now, not as much
Steve Fretzin [01:07]
you got to get to this level of grayness and being an elderly man like myself. So don’t rush it. Don’t rush it, buddy. All right, enjoy, enjoy that your five year old. And enjoy all those youthful things you can still bend over, touch your feet
Mathew Kerbis [01:21]
or No, I mean, uh, almost, but we stretch as a family in the mornings. But you know, you do two episodes a week, so you’re doing, like, if the average podcast host is only doing one a week, you’re basically you’ve done four years in two years worth of, like, typical episodes. So like, in podcast land, it’s like, been four years since I’ve been on the pod, so it’s been a really long time, but I’m happy to be back. Thanks for back. Thanks for having me back.
Steve Fretzin [01:44]
Well, yeah, and you were so kind to share with me some data that I just didn’t know. And maybe our audience would be interested in this. Maybe not, but I think it’s important, because I think the people listening are the ones that helped me achieve this. So why don’t you share what you identified that I had no idea about, by the way,
Mathew Kerbis [01:58]
yeah, yeah. And so it helps that, like, look, look. And we’ll get into this with, like, legal services soon. But you outsource your podcast production, which is a smart thing to do you, because you’re, you’re the nature of be that lawyer is that it could apply to every single lawyer, right? And my podcast, law subscribed, is a much more niche podcast, right? Like, lawyers have to be looking for, how do I do subscription legal services, or how do I ditch the billable hour? And, like, I think the whole profession will come there eventually, but it’s still very niche, right? And so I do my own production because, like, Yes, I have sponsors, but not like you, and it’s a smaller scale. So I’m familiar with all the ins and outs of like, being a podcast host and producer, so I know about this site called listen notes, where it ranks globally, where podcasts rank compared to all the 3 million plus podcasts that are out there and on the globe. And I know I’m in the top 10% but frets, and at our lunch, we looked you up. You’re the top 2.5% podcast. So be that lawyer all your listeners, right? I mean, like they’re helping you get to that high, high level of top threshold. Now look Joe Rogan’s point on 1% but still, I mean, like, you’re closer to Joe Rogan by multitudes than I am.
Steve Fretzin [03:03]
Well, and Joe Rogan, I mean, he’s really kind of talking to the world, and I’m you kind of put me like, I’m not a niche. I’m definitely a niche. I think the people listening right now are highly motivated, ambitious attorneys. I don’t think they’re in house. I don’t think there are people who just want to grind out the work every day. So I think if you take that as, like, maybe 10% of the legal population, I’m making that sort of up. But the point is, like, that’s kind of how I see it. But regardless, everybody, I do appreciate you listening, and I know that you’re going to get a lot out of today’s show. So a show that I kind of, I don’t want to say, grew up on, but I enjoyed it honestly, in like, my 20s or 30s, was called, Whose Line is it? Anyway? Is it Drew Carey Show, and your quote of the show starts off with it, everything is, everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter. And so that very unique quote. And obviously you have a reason why you wanted that quote for the show.
Mathew Kerbis [03:54]
You know, people, especially lawyers, are very, very serious, right? And look, we have good reason to be, right. And I know we don’t get into geopolitics on the show frets and but, you know, like, there’s some very serious stuff happening in the world. Let’s just leave it at that. So there are good reasons think of anything this is recorded in advance. You know, we’ll see when this actually airs. But you know, we don’t want to be too serious all the time. And so whenever somebody like comes to me, whether it’s a client or a friend or someone in the family, right? Or even, like, a potential lawyer who wants to ditch the billable hour or whatever. And, you know, like, just like, don’t take things too seriously. Like, everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter, right? And when you think about large language models, I do a lot of AI training, and I use AI a lot in my practice and in building this new company that we’ll talk about. And, you know, like, language is all made up. Like, literally, like, we made it up. That’s why these large language based AI tools are probabilistic, not deterministic. You can’t rely on them, like you can a calculator now. You could ground these probabilistic tools and ground truth, right? Like retrieval, log manager, generation, right, just like somebody who’s taking an open book test can maybe have the resources available when answering the questions on the test, right? Like we could take these probabilistic models and we can. Make them fine tuned and have higher, more accurate answers. But they’re not a calculator, right? So language is all made up. I say that all the time in these cles I give, most recently on law line, I gave a CLE on the AI an ethics of billing, which is highly recommended. Folks need ethics CLE to go check that one out. But the point is, everything that our, you know, operating system of society, law is based on, is language, and it’s all made up, right? I mean, the points don’t matter. I mean, you know, like, we score the points too. Like, those are made up. And, like, what are the points? Well, it’s whatever. Is it how much time you worked? Like, is that really what matters?
Steve Fretzin [05:32]
Is that what clients care about? The points are money, the points, right? How much revenue can you bring in, and how does that benefit your life and your family? That’s the point. But yes, matter in some ways, but in other respects, right? We have to pay our bills and take care of ourselves. And maybe those are the points. Maybe they’re not that, but I’m just, I’m adding my two cents in that. For me, the points might be how many lawyers I help in a given year, right? Or how my past and existing clients are doing with their businesses, and how that makes me feel, and how I feel like I’ve accomplished things so but yeah, there’s no like, I don’t have a set point system that I’m following to your point. And even then, right? If you’re a million dollar firm, or you have a million dollar book of business, how much money are you actually putting in your pocket at the end of the day? Right? We could skew the points. We could redefine certain things. And like, do you want to hit revenue goals, or do you want to hit profit goals? Those are very different things. So when I say that points don’t matter, it’s a little bit tongue in cheek, of course. Fred, cheek. Of course, frets and right, like obviously, points matter. I had a lawyer. I had a lawyer who does 2 million a year. He makes amazing money, and he couldn’t have even we talked about working together. He can’t afford me. I said, How is that even possible? Well, he’s, of course, he’s living beyond his means. I mean, right? It’s debits and credits. And there are a lot of people out there, doctors, lawyers, everybody that are you know, that just have big eyes, and they spend a ton of dough. And then when it comes to something practical or something important or something life changing, they need to do, they can’t pull the trigger.
Mathew Kerbis [06:52]
So and when you your work is synchronous with your revenue. When you’re billing by the hour, there are only, there’s only so much revenue you could earn in a day that clients are willing to pay, that you’re actually able to collect on?
Steve Fretzin [07:03]
Yeah, well, and I think we’re going to take a pretty heavy, heavy dive into that today, but everybody just so you guys are familiar. This is Curtis’s, I think third time on the show is that we’re saying yes, I think so yeah. And founder of subscription attorney, and also the co founder, now of practice. And so give us a little background on yourself. And obviously you guys can all look back at his shows, but and then this new announcement of practice, which I think is super cool, we’ll get into that maybe later in the show, but at least give us an update on how you came to be. Yeah.
Mathew Kerbis [07:33]
And so you know what, we’ll be doing a media push soon, but frets, and you get the first exclusive. Be that lawyer. You’ve heard it here first. Yes, yes. I love the news, man. Voice, that’s good. Voice, yeah. So back in like 2018 I was getting disillusioned, disillusions with the billable hour, right? And so really, in 2020 I became an advocate during the pandemic, through the American Bar Association and other speaking engagements of like, how we should, we should end the billable hour as a profession. And I think this thing called the subscription model is really interesting. And so I was talking to lawyers who had done that. I was like, gosh, these are really interesting conversations. I should start a podcast, actually, law subscribe. The podcast came first. And then after talking to lawyers about it, and in 2021 I was doing the interviews, watch the podcast. Then I was like, gosh, like, I can’t I have to practice what I preach. So then in March of 2022 I launched my firm, subscription attorney LLC, where I serve latent legal market clients, starting at only $20 a month and $50 a page. And my prices have changed over the years. Right now, my business pricing tiers are 500 1002 1000 a month, depending on how many legal projects I’m working on for those small business clients for a month. So think fractional GC work, right? These are small businesses that will never be large enough to have full time in house attorney. That’s my target market, and business was going well. The podcast was booming for a niche of a niche, I agree that you’re still a niche with any legal podcast is a niche frets and right 1.3 million US lawyers, you know, small percentage. So then did that, you know, for almost four years, and along that time, you know, like you, some lawyers have been trying to pull me, kicking and screaming, to be a lawyer coach, like what you do, but not biz dev, but like how to use AI, it became how to use AI and how to ditch the billable hour. And it’s hard to do one to one coaching and change the profession at scale like I was trying to do with the podcast. So really watching a software company in practice became the most obvious solution. So partnered with a Google software developer, got it our first investor in launch, if you know, Jason Calacanis investment firm from This Week in Startups, and we went through their accelerator program. And yeah. So 2026 is the year we’re coming out of stealth mode, and we’re going to try to help lawyers at scale really super affordably and simply launch subscription packages for to offer to their clients. Yeah, and the concern about the billable hour in the age of AI and competition and just everything. I mean, law, law has been a slow moving train. I mean, when legal tech came out, and everybody’s, you know, freaking out about that, and that’s got to change the world and change the changeable hour. Then, of course, it did, and it didn’t. And then there’s this new thing, AI, and now. Ethically, I think it’s going to be very challenging for lawyers who take 100 hours to do something now and now realize, hey, it can be done in an hour or two hours, you know, with one person instead of, you know, three or five, that they’re going to find it very challenging to unethically unable to charge up for 100 hours. Yeah, and you know, at ABA tech show in 2025 I was on a panel with Joshua land, and it was two of us, two person panel, and he showed Clios data that showed at the time. Now, this is the this is 2024 is Clio trends reports data applied to 20 some 2025, ONET data that AI can automate, frankly, will automate, 75% of law firm billable hours, and that’s an average. But should that still should be astonishing, because automating billable hours means revenue disappears if you bill by the hour. So that should be a major, major wake up call for the profession if they haven’t seen that data and that Clio data, you know, that’s private data that they have, that they anonymize and share publicly. And so that should worry everybody. And then at the ISBA they just put on for their joint the Illinois State Bar Association, their joint Mid Year Conference. I was on a panel with an ethics lawyer, you know, obviously no ethics advice given, and two ARDC like cyber security and technical people for the attorney registration and disciplinary committee for Illinois Supreme Court. And we talked about on that panel, which was an ethics CLE panel, how if AI can make 10 hours of billable work take one hour, we have an ethical obligation to use those tools. Now. We have to use them correctly. We can’t use chat GPT to do legal research. But when, if it can do it, like you said, Fred, right again, educational purpose is only for the pod. We have to do it as an obligation. So there’s, there’s so much resources being dedicated to let’s build out these AI tools for lawyers. But I didn’t see any opportunity from a software solution standpoint, to just help lawyers have a viable, profitable business model in this AI powered world, and that’s why I
Steve Fretzin [11:51]
started practicing. Yeah, so let’s take a dive into it. I mean, it’s where I’m getting better every day at how I’m using chat GBT. I’m just jumping into Gemini now. I’m really looking to automate and learn it at a level where I can teach it, because I think I could be very useful to my clients to automate email responses and to do some basic, you know, market. Obviously, we’re already using it for LinkedIn posting and, you know, crafting, you know, instead of one post, you could do 10, because you could take something and break it up. There’s all that, but ultimately, there’s the business side of AI and how it’s going to benefit us, and I think, you know, also flood us with a lot more content. Then there’s the back end, you know, billable hour and stuff like that. So, I mean, what’s your take on the ethics of it, and what’s going to how’s it going to impact, you know, the 90% of lawyers that are currently doing the billable hour? Yeah, I made that number up at 90% it can be 60%
Mathew Kerbis [12:43]
but yeah, and let’s just also say it’s not that the billable hour isn’t profitable, of course, it’s profitable, of course. And become millionaires, you know, you know, billing by the hour, it’s just,
Steve Fretzin [12:52]
but it’s so profitable that that’s how big law and that’s how a lot of firms are making their numbers. And you know, every business, whether it’s AT and T or whatever. Like, they can’t put the two back in the toothpaste, if you will. Like, they have to make more money for their shareholders. They have to make more money every year. That’s how they’re valued, right? And that’s how they produce value. So if you take away that profit center, I mean, and figure out another way, how can it be as profitable? That’s a big question mark, right?
Mathew Kerbis [13:20]
And going back to the AI of it all, I actually think the in house legal teams, who are the sophisticated legal parties, who are hiring big firm outside counsel, they are going to be using these legal specific purpose built tools, which I’ll get into to answer your question about how to best use AI in a second here. But they’re going to be using these tools, and they’re going to know, why did you bill us 100 hours on this deal when we’ve done it in another similar deal where we were able to do all the same work in 10 hours, right, as an in house team, and we benchmarked it right, because they’re sophisticated, like, it’s another story. If, like, you’re me, and you’re helping small business owners or everyday people, Jane and Joe schmoes, or Jane and Joe small business owner, and they use AI, and they don’t understand the diff, the nuance of, hey, I use chat GPT to do this in a minute, and you build me 10 hours. Why did you do that? Like they don’t know that it’s not the same high quality work, but in house teams do. So I think big law has a big problem, and I think we’re going to see a lot of early users of practice associates leaving big law to start their own thing. But I have to credit desert Greenwood with this, and if folks are not following his sub stacker on LinkedIn, highly recommend you check him out. So he was on my pod last year. Pod last year, and he explained how these large language models, these foundational models, chat, GPT, Gemini, Claude, right? They are like elemental, like fire. So I imagine in my own head, it’s like a big, giant bonfire, incredibly powerful. You can do a lot with fire, especially a big, giant fire. But can you weld with a bonfire? What about a blowtorch? You could take that fire, you could harness it into a blowtorch, and now you could weld with that fire. But it’s different. So that’s purpose built, AI tools, right? That’s like agentic AI that’s like legal research AI tools, or for drafting. Like you mentioned Gemini inside your email. I listened to the podcast, fret said, and so I know you were just talking about that in your episode that published today about using Gemini. More in your email, and that’s great you could do that. But there’s also tools out there, like superhuman and Grammarly, that are actually designed to work inside your email, that are going to be better at that than Gemini. Now, you’re gonna have to pay a little bit more, you will, but as long as it’s reasonably priced and priced, right? I think that makes sense. Same thing with legal research tools and legal drafting
Steve Fretzin [15:16]
tools, yeah, well, and that’s something like I initially, I think I was looking into an email AI that, like software that was out 10 or 20 bucks a month. And then I was like, Well, wait a second, can I do this through Gemini? And then now, like trying to, like, learn Gemini to do that. It’s, I’m it’s pending. It’s turning out to be kind of a much bigger project than I planned, where I could probably just get this $20 software and sort of be done with it. And that, you know, then, but, you know, that’s sort of my question, my big question. But I like what you’re saying that. Yeah, you’ve got to look at that. You know, the other thing that law firms are going to turn to, and this is also a big question mark, is, all right, so we can’t bill by the hour because of this or that, either. But can we do it for a flat fee? And I think that’s a question mark too, because, you know, you could say, All right, well, we’re not going to charge you $100,000 but, you know, an hourly fee, but we’ll charge you $100,000 in a flat fee, and that’s our work around. But that doesn’t work, right? Because, to your point, they’re able to figure out all right, so you took two hours. You’re charging us $100,000 like, that’s not going to play either.
Mathew Kerbis [16:15]
Well, you know, we don’t actually do much prep. I just want to let the audience know before that, but frets, and, I mean, I take that as a softball question, because you’re absolutely right. The flat fee or fixed fee model has been available to lawyers, even predates the billable hour, right? And so why hasn’t that supplanted the billable hour? Well, because of exactly this problem you mentioned, and I call it the under scoping and over scoping problem. You know, you don’t know if you’re going to overscope or under scope the work when it’s on a fixed fee while. So this is one of the reasons at practice, we require subscription based pricing, at least for now. You know, you never know, but we highly, highly encourage, and are trying to incentivize that lawyers create a subscription relationship, membership relationship with their clients. Because even just having a de minimis, like, I have a $20 a month subscription for my firm that establishes an attorney client relationship, and there is some money being made regardless of if the transaction closes, let’s say right where you only might make money if the transaction closes. You could still do fixed fees with subscription, but we at least now, the way the system is built, you have to charge a minimum $1 a month subscription, and then you could offer a suite of fixed fee services like think, like Shopify, but an E commerce experience for a law firm. All clients self serve, right? Because, like, we don’t. We were trying to automate everything. We’re trying to use AI so we could just focus on the legal work, automate the business stuff, right? And so that’s what we’re focused on there. So I think the subscription model does solve that problem. And then they get asked, Oh, well, what if this takes longer than I anticipated? Well, with subscriptions, you have opportunity for lifetime value, so your client may be subscribed, instead of just doing this one transaction and going away. Even if there’s a de minimis subscription, there doesn’t have to be you could just have a higher monthly premium subscription that includes in all you could eat now you have to charge you have to price it right, and that’s something that we’re going to offer a lot of educational material practically about. But I think that that saw the subscription model solves the problem, and law firms have just not been looking at that as a solution, as a business offering that they knew, that they could do now, now, hopefully they do,
Steve Fretzin [18:04]
but it’s so ingrained in everyone’s lives at this stage, outside of legal, I mean, even to the point where people have doctors in what are they called? They’re called direct primary care, yeah, direct primary care. But, like, concierge, yeah, concierge medicine has become a big thing. And so, like, you know, yeah, I can get the basic medical, but I want someone I can call anytime. I want someone I can visit anytime. I want that higher level of service, and I’m willing to pay, you know, 500 a month more, right? Or 1000 more a month to get it. And I, and I’ve got, you know, how many subscriptions. I mean, I just my credit card got hacked, and I had to go through and I update all my credit cards, right? And like that. That took me. I just that’s when you realize how many subscriptions you actually have. And so I think law, like we’ve talked about, is a slow moving train. They’re late to the game on a lot of things. So why should the billable hour and this flat fee be replaced by subscription? What’s your case for that? I mean, you’ve already made some of it, but I want to hear kind of the fuller picture.
Mathew Kerbis [19:03]
Yeah, well, if you’re a business, especially, or frankly, an individual, right, hiring a lawyer, it helps to be able to budget for it. And when I love teaching lawyers, I did 52 speaking engagements in 2025 Fredson right, cles, paid speaking, free trainings, you know, ran the gamut, in person, online, and I like to ask a lawyer audience, if I have one, can you afford your own billable rate if you had, if it was an emergency and unexpected and you had to hire yourself? And maybe two lawyers out of 1000s I’ve spoken to, can afford their own billable rate unexpectedly, right? So it comes down to, can I budget for it? Yeah, and a subscription is not a payment plan, and it’s not a deferred fee, and it’s not a certain amount of hours every single month. That’s just fixed fee or billable hours wrapped up in a different package, right? It’s you get subscriber benefits, and those benefits could be access to below market fixed fee pricing, or just access to fixed fee pricing at all, right? And so you could still offer, I think, fixed fees in addition to subscription so. But my favorite clients, my preferred clients, are, they’re just paying a monthly rate, and they get particularly scope legal services. And then one of the other questions I have, like, with fixed fee problems and scope changes, oh my gosh, what happens if the scope changes? Well, even in a fixed fee you have to have in your agreement, scope change conversation provision and how to do it. But with subscription, it’s like, let’s bump you up on the next subscription level or down, you know, depending on the scope change, you just go up and down your subscription tiers. And with practice, we let it so the clients and the lawyers can go in and change the subscription level.
Steve Fretzin [20:29]
So it’s super, super easy. And what I love about practice too, and by the way, this isn’t like, you know, like a commercial for you, but by just being honest that what I when you told me about it, I love about is, and I’m this way, like, and I just admitted it with, like, learning email responses with Gemini versus using a made for software, is that I know lawyers are challenged by change, and I know that moving from the billable hour or from a flat fee or anything to a subscription model is scary, and it’s change and it’s uncomfortable. So anytime someone has a service that allows that them to like directly help you with that change. It makes your life easier, and yes, there’s a fee associated. So what, ultimately, if it allows you to change your practice in a way that’s going to make it more predictable? And maybe, maybe, you know, maybe have a lot more clients, a lot more branding opportunity, whatever it might be, but you’re not figuring it out yourself, and that’s why lawyers hire me for business development branding, because they’re just tired of just winging it every day. And so I think, you know, how does practice work to take someone from where they’ve always been to where they could be?
Mathew Kerbis [21:30]
Yeah, and you’re right. And look, I hacked together a bunch of tools to be able to offer subscriptions the way I wanted to, and still couldn’t really find a good, affordable client self serve way to do it, right? So that’s part of the reasons why I built practice. So the way that it works right now, because we’re also trying to drive systemic change and make it stupid simple for lawyers to do it. Frets and like you said, so and I get pitched and sold legal tech all the time. So I know, I know how it is, so that’s why we’re making it free for lawyers to go to practice.ai. Sign up, make an account, set up subscription packages, connect to stripe, and even sign up their first subscriber client for free. And while we’re in Early Access early days, we’re only charging $20 a month when they sign up that second client. Because, again, we’re trying to drive systemic change here and and that price will go up in the future, and we have on our website what we think it’s worth for real in the future, but we’re trying to make it really affordable, really simple, and really help lawyers make this change, and we’re trying to be like, like the Calendly of scheduling, but for business models for law firms, right? So we’re not trying to replace your practice management platform. We’re not replacing your legal AI tools. We’re just coming in to help you offer subscriptions, and we’re just going to focus on that. That’s all we’re doing. So we, we hope that we could be like, the Grammarly or superhuman of your email, but just for your business model, for
Steve Fretzin [22:41]
your firm, yeah, 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 hire 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 fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you, and let’s make this your breakout year. All right, so somebody decides that, look, the future of the billable hour is questionable. I need to make some changes. What should they be thinking about? I mean, even beyond practice and beyond subscription, I mean, what should I be thinking about right now, in making changes in there, in the way that 2026 works for them and keeps them maybe in a safer place? Yeah.
Mathew Kerbis [23:50]
So here’s what I’d recommend. I recommend open a voice or video recorder and just unstructured, just talk to it. Or if you prefer typing, type into a Google Doc or Word doc. Everything that you do, all the value you provide to your clients, to things that you do at your firm, everything, everything of value that you could possibly think, that you could offer, and just mind dump, you know, right into a recording or a doc. And then you take your favorite AI tool of choice, I actually suggest you use perplexity.ai, for this, because it leverages retrieval, augmented generation against the whole internet when giving you answers and stuff. So I prefer that tool easiest. $200 a year I spend as a pro subscription to perplexity.ai. Not a sponsor. People ask me sometimes I talk about it so much, yeah, okay, that’s my preferred AI tool of choice. And then what you could do is you could vibe with perplexity about, here’s all the stuff I do and do. Help me come up and structure subscription package offerings using good, better, best pricing to deliver to clients. And you have to say Who’s your ideal client, right? Not you could serve anybody and you can’t. Maybe you can, but Who’s your ideal client? And talk. About that. And maybe you could have two or three ideal clients. I have two right for my firm and for practice, our ideal customer is a solo, small firm practitioner, or somebody leaving big law in or in house to go start their own firm. Right? So we have a niche. We have a focus. So it’s important to have a focus and the AI tool of choice, again, I suggest perplexity, use whichever AI tool will take all of your unstructured, you know, mind dump of what you do and the value you provide and the clients you want to serve. And help you structure those packages, and we allow full customization on practice to bring it back to the new offering, so that you could go in and whatever you came up with inside of your AI tool of choice. Our hope is that we could help you deliver that to your end clients. Okay, okay,
Steve Fretzin [25:40]
got it. And, you know, I’m also, you know, thinking about the future of law, and how many lawyers that are impacted by AI and impacted similar to 2008 you know, with the recession, that they’re going to need a place to go when the firm cuts back on hours, when the firm starts letting people go. I mean, I don’t know that lawyers in law school right now are thinking about where this is all headed. And I’m very concerned about lawyers, especially in their first three or four years. Because I think when we talk about lawyers strategy and experience and litigation and the things that you need a human to interact with, someone to conduct a personal injury, you know, or a divorce, like you’re not going to go through a computer divorce, I think you’re humans are still going to have a lot of value, but it’s going to be at the higher level, and the research and the back end stuff and all the work that gets done, the E discovery, that’s all going to be automated, but that’s a lot of the hours. So what are we thinking about? How lawyers should be looking at their careers is just as a question, I’d love to get your take on.
Mathew Kerbis [26:44]
Yeah. So the last thing I’ll mention, and I talk about this in my CLE is, is there’s actually huge market opportunity. So we, I haven’t seen, we haven’t seen 2025 data yet, because we’re recording this in early January 26 but in 2024 according to Grand View research, $400 billion with a B was spent on US legal services in 2024 so some lawyers look at that as the pie. That’s the pie. And I want to get my slice of the 400 billion. But we know, according to the World Justice Project and other places, that there are 77% of more legal needs that are going unmet by lawyers. So that represents market opportunity. And if you do a little bit of like inverse math there, right, like, you back into like, Okay, so 23% is $400 billion that means there’s a $1.3 trillion or greater market opportunity. So there’s huge, huge market opportunity, but those are potential clients who are not going to pay you by an unknown billable hour and see how long it takes. They need pricing certainty, and so it behooves you, as a practitioner, if you’re listening to this, to think about, how can I serve that market?
Steve Fretzin [27:50]
All right, so let’s keep going one more minute on this. Is it going out on their own? Is it going to be, you know, finding a way to leverage in lot of lawyers have done this to leverage their legal experience and business experience to get into their own gig or startup or like, what are you seeing as far as those opportunities and how lawyers are going to access them?
Mathew Kerbis [28:10]
I think the future of legal services, especially because AI is coming to majorly disrupt the bigger law firms that the future is in the solo and small firm attorneys, and it’s easier than it’s ever been. When I started my firm four years ago, my first my first year of operating expenses, was under $5,000 for starting a virtual law firm. So it’s cheaper, and I got to imagine, it’s only gotten even cheaper if you really learn how to leverage these things. So it’s easier than ever. I did a special with Lauren Lester in 25 in 2025 called how to run a law firm. So if you go to how to run a law firm.com It redirects to those 1830 minute episodes to try to make it super easy, give away a lot of free content on here’s how to run a solo practice. And I think it’s even though it’s for 2025 I think it’s also very relevant if you’re listening to this around the time of publication. So it’s all out there. I mean, frankly, we’re but you can’t just do it on your own. Sure, you can vibe with AI, but sign up for purpose built software tools like practice, hire subject matter experts like you frets, and if they can’t hire you yet, buy your books and read your books and like, get out there so they could start making money, start doing biz dev, until they could hire you. But outsource where it makes where you don’t have the expertise, outsource and then maybe even hire in and bring in that expertise in the future.
Steve Fretzin [29:20]
Well, yeah. And just, you know, I guess I’m following suit a little bit. But I mean, in 2026 and I’m working on this for q1 is to build out a be that lawyer community where there will be a subscription element to give more direct legal business development help and marketing to more of the masses, right? So right now, I have a limit. I can only really work with about 20 lawyers a year, and the ones that I work with are the most motivated, high energy, amazing lawyers in the world. But I’m limited because I’m a one man show, and so similar to the subscription model, right? Like now, this can open up my, you know, for me to be able to help a lot more people, similar to how this show does. So very excited about that. All right? Curvis, what’s Kirby’s big mistake? I just want to point out software and
Mathew Kerbis [30:03]
subscriptions are helping you scale frets and and I love that, and you’re probably making it more affordable for lawyers who can’t hire you full time one on one. I’m 100% going to be doing that. Yeah, I look forward to being a part of that community, too. So my big mistake is that I think, and I’m still, I’m still learning from this. I’m learning from this, as I’m launching this new company, is I was trying to just do everything myself. I did the podcast all by myself. I did my law firm all by myself, right? And especially now that I’m launching this new company, I’m not doing it all by myself. I have a co founder, and now that this is taking off, and my business is actually going up, because I’ve been signing up my own clients, now through practice, I’m gonna have to hire a lawyer or an associate or work with another solo attorney. So I think my biggest mistake is something that I’m still learning and working through Fredson, and that is, stop doing everything by yourself, and I’ve outsourced here and there, but like, it’s been one off short term projects. But I do like the ability. I do like working for myself and by myself, and have working with a lot of great clients. But I think not having a co founder and having somebody who also owns this company and is really showing me that, oh, this is a lot of fun, and I’m good at this, and I should have not just kept it a solo operation for as long as I
Steve Fretzin [31:12]
did well, I’m a huge fan of and work and teach regularly, delegation, automation, right? So that people can do that. And you know, when you got to hire, you got to hire. I know for me, I’m not interested in having employees now. I may have to have one, but maybe it’s another VA, maybe it’s somebody that’s on 1099 and part time, or whatever. Like, I’m fine with those. I just don’t want to have a bunch of W twos under me like I used to, because it’s just that’s just not, not the way I want to function. But awesome stuff, great takeaways, everybody. I want to just take a moment thank our amazing sponsors. Law her podcast, check out Sonia, motivating women to do the things that we’re talking about and more, of course, rankings. Io, my buddy Chris dryer rocking that business on a daily basis. And I also want to just mention that I appreciate you all listening, and I’d like to ask a favor again, if you’re a regular listener of the show and you haven’t already, please leave a review on Apple Spotify, wherever you listen to the podcast. I know it’s a small little thing, but it really does make a difference on things like listen notes and getting rankings. But also, to be you know, honest, this show is all about giving and helping, and I think you would be helping and giving to a lot of attorneys who maybe haven’t found this show yet, and are hungry for this kind of information, and they’re just sitting on an island by themselves. So I think, you know, pay it forward a little bit everybody. And I know that I will appreciate it. And the lawyers that you turn on to the show will also curvis, what are your digits? Man, people want to learn about practice. They want to learn about the subscription. Attorney, how do they reach you? How do they where do they go?
Mathew Kerbis [32:40]
Yeah, yeah. So obviously, prakti.ai if they want to, for free, create an account and try to offer, you know, start offering subscription packages to their clients. Make it super simple to do that. Procty.ai and it’s at practice. Ai on most social media platforms. We’ll be posting a lot of content there soon. Also the AI billpocalypse is a new newsletter coming out. We’re covering all the news in how AI is ending the billable hour, because a lot of people outside the legal profession, like Mark Cuban are talking about it. So you know, we’re going to be covering that. And then for the law firm, if you want to see how it’s done, how I actually do it, and I have all my pricing and even my engagement agreement on my website, subscription attorney.com and then if you’re interested in having conversations like this, but with lawyers using subscription lawsubscribe.com Yeah, awesome.
Steve Fretzin [33:22]
Well, always, always, always a pleasure having you. And you’re a good buddy of mine, and I appreciate you coming sharing your wisdom. I mean, this is a topic that’s, it’s going to be hard for some lawyers to sort of swallow and take in and ingest, but it’s, I mean, we either talk about or we hide from it. And I think having these kinds of open conversations, and again, nothing is certain. And if the global hour goes on for 10 more years and we’re wrong, then, then we’re wrong. But, you know, I think we have to have our eyes wide open these days, because we just don’t want to have another, you know, blind spot situation like we did in 2008 where people just were just didn’t even realize that, you know, hours were going to get cut and people were going to be at risk. And so that’s, you know, that’s definitely looking more like the future. But who knows that’s, you know, always uncertain. So thanks, man, appreciate you coming back. Yep. Thanks for having me again. Thanks everybody always appreciate you being a listener. If you are looking for more information, check out future rainmakers books on Amazon. Just type in. Steve Fretzin, of course, my YouTube channel, same thing. We are here for your pleasure to help you be that lawyer, confident, organized, skill rate maker, take care, everybody.
Narrator [34:32]
Thanks for listening to be that loyal, 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.