Jamie Rubin: Running a ‘Lean & Mean’ Boutique Law Firm

Strickland Bonner: So you're a lawyer, and your clients are squeezing you for lower fees. How do you put more cash in your pocket? We want to expose you to new ways of practicing law. Endless hours with no home life and a lease on an expensive office are so 1999. It's time to make a change for the better. Here to help you with that are your hosts Ron Bockstahler and Kirsten Mayfield. Welcome to the 1958 Lawyer Podcast.

Ron Bockstahler: Welcome to the 1958 Lawyer. I am Ron Bockstahler, your co-host,

Kirsten Mayfield: and I'm Kirsten Mayfield, and we have with us today Jamie Rubin. He has been a lawyer for over two decades, the last of which was spent at Info Law Group, which is a very unique and interesting firm. Very excited to talk to you today. It's a boutique law firm, but it's also national. It's in Salt Lake City, L.A. Washington D.C. Chicago. The three areas that they focus on is privacy, advertising, and technology. And Jamie's actually also a failed jazz pianist and BBQ competition member for this team called Silence of the Hams, which is brilliant. But Jamie, I want to jump into this practice areas first and foremost because one, you're a boutique law firm, and then you specifically say your sweet spot is between the intersection of those three practice areas: advertising, privacy, and technology. And I don't know what that means. So, how does that work?

Jamie Rubin: Sure, Kirsten. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I love what you guys are doing with this podcast. The disruption in the legal industry is an important thing, and we're all looking at it from disruption everywhere, but in the legal industry as well. So, your question about the intersection of these these three things. So, everyone at our firm can do advertising law, can do privacy law, and can do technology law as siloed practices. Some some of us have a little bit more focus in in one area than the other. So, my focus, I start coming at it from the advertising law side. One of my partners, Justine, comes at it from the privacy side, and a lot of our clients need us to meet in the middle. And so, for the sweet spot, everything that we do today for our clients combines all three of those elements, and so we find ourselves in a unique position to be able to provide that. It's still a niche practice, a boutique practice, but to be able to provide that advice all three of those areas at the same time is a real benefit to our clients who are launching new online platforms, new online products? We focus on helping our clients build privacy into their products that they're launching online, but they obviously want to advertise those products as well and help their customers use those products. And so, what they communicate to their clients and customers is what we help with. We help them build privacy into their online products, no matter what type of platform it is, and we help them navigate the underlying technology. And so, that is everything from the contracts with vendors to navigating the platform policies on which you might launch your product. So, one of the things that we assist with that I don't think a lot of people think of when they're thinking of like lawyers per se is navigating. It's not law, but it's what the platforms say you can and can't do on their properties. So Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and all these places where brands exist have their own set of rules. The Apple iOS platform is another great example. They've been in the news recently about changing what you need to do in connection with disclosing your privacy practices-it's not law; it's just another overlay, and so all those things meld together for our clients, and so it melds together for us nicely. So that's kind of that where that sweet spot comes in.

Kirsten Mayfield: So basically, if you don't read, which none of us do, those little things we all check box and agree to that people should come to you because you you guys have read all of them.

Jamie Rubin: Well, so that's the if I'm a user using those things, we've read them because we write a lot of them. So the user is not really our client per se, it's unless it's a in a B 2b function. You know, our one of our businesses is using another platform's services, and they may have to go through one of those agreements. And so, a lot of times, our clients will ask us to look at those if it's a B 2b transaction. But mostly, our clients are asking us to help. Write those and develop and develop those policies for their e-commerce platform, the products they're offering to the end user.

Ron Bockstahler: So, when you describe your firm, I'm almost thinking like an intellectual property firm. That's really not what you are, correct?

Jamie Rubin: So, we do a lot of soft IP work, so trademarks and copyrights and rights of publicity and trade secret work. We do not do patent work. It's one of the baseline levels of law, substantive law that that we know and need to have that knowledge to practice in the area we practice, so we have that as part of our practice. But we also have a number of other layers on top of that. Privacy is an extension because if you think about it, you know, intellectual property is this kind of intangible idea. I own the expression of an idea that I own the underlying work, but it's not something I can hold in my hand, right? Same thing with privacy; it's an extension of that. The underlying code that we help our clients own and develop for creating a technology-that's all stuff we need to understand very well. But we are not-we're not just an IP boutique, but that's certainly an area of practice that we have to have a real command for to practice in the technology and the privacy in the advertising space.

Ron Bockstahler: So, your partners do they come out of the advertising field? Kind of thinking about a an IP attorney, usually as an engineer, they have you know multiple degrees prior to their law degree does that kind of reflect back into your partners and your background?

Jamie Rubin: Not really.

Ron Bockstahler: Okay,

Jamie Rubin: we do have a few attorneys at our firm that were at one time or another, and maybe still programmers. They understand how to program in a number of different languages for understanding development of source code and object code, but by and large, where we come from, pretty diverse background of education. You know, I was an econ major, but I also wanted to pursue music. And once I figured out that I wasn't going to be that jazz pianist, I decided I wanted to be a music lawyer, so I went to law school to learn entertainment law. Ultimately, and when I graduated from law school, I started as a entertainment attorney, and that has morphed over the years into doing a lot of work for entertainment companies and social media and technology companies, but not doing the hardcore entertainment law, like doing deals with talent and things of that nature. Not doing the deal to have an actor or an actress in a film anymore. But I'm doing a lot of work for motion picture studios to help them advertise their content, to monetize their content, and to deliver their content. So it's kind of morphed over the years, but that's that's certainly not an engineering background, and and so a number of us have different stories on how we got into this area. It's definitely not your patent lawyer, you know, who's always been into engineering or or some sort of biomechanical background.

Ron Bockstahler: Yeah, I was doing a little reading on advertising law prior to you know having you on the show, and it seems like there's more acronyms than there were when I was in the Marine Corps. You know, everything seems to be an acronym in the advertising world.

Jamie Rubin: Yes,

Ron Bockstahler: what's changing with? I mean, advertising. I guess social media is making major changes in the way that clients or businesses are reaching their clients. So the laws got to be changing, or all the laws kind of that will they reach? Will they will they work the same with different platforms?

Jamie Rubin: Well, there are many laws that we're applying that were created well before the advent of the internet, and well before the advent of the banner ad, and things are really tiny. And so, how do we fit? How do we comply with this law that says you have to disclose these 20 lines of text, and that is normally what you would see in a print ad. How do you do it in a banner ad? That's kind of some now some age old stuff. Kirsten, you aged me very well by saying that I've been doing this for two decades.

Ron Bockstahler: Ouch. So that

Jamie Rubin: that issue of size, you know, size limitations and space limitations have now been something we've been dealing with for a long time, but that's just an example of how some of those old laws that we're trying to apply now, you know, it's not really fully kept up. So we've we've had to become creative. You know, we that that's one of the reasons why I think a number of us at this firm like what we do is because we get. To be creative with the approaches to compliance, because we don't have, we don't have a law that tells us exactly what to do, because those laws weren't around when we were thinking about small screens, small ads, influencers talking about products online when you don't know whether they're an influence or not, et cetera. So there are, however, laws that have been passed in the wake of the of the internet, and you've probably seen a lot of this in connection with social media generally. With social media being accused of censoring, we saw it a lot with the with the with the election and a lot of political weight behind trying to change what is known as the Communications Decency Act, which is Section 230 of the U.S. Code that gives platforms the ability to allow third parties to post on that platform, and for them, generally-I'm overstating this-generally to be immune from what the third parties say on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. That law was passed in the wake of the internet, and there's been 22-ish. years of lawsuits associated with how that law should or should not be applied, and now we have a number of congressional hearings that are talking about how it should be amended to add or take away culpability and liability for the actions taken by the platforms.

Ron Bockstahler: So, if I'm kind of interpreting, there's not a lot of case law when it comes to a lot of the social media and the the ways we're advertising today. And let's kind of keep going on that regulation. Do you where you see it going? What are you advising your clients today? As because it's got to be crazy. Is it going to change? Is Facebook become a monopoly? Is you know we're going to see a lot more regulatory rules guidance as to what you can say and do and how you can advertise.

Jamie Rubin: Well, I think you will. So you you you asked a lot of different questions in that question. The monopoly question I'm going to set aside. I'm not an antitrust lawyer, but that is a multi-state investigation right now into a number of companies associated with their alleged monopolistic practices. So I'm going to set that one aside. But you you asked about where I see things going with respect to maybe some of this content moderation and and platform liability with the content that's going to be on their platform and what what I would say is I think there are market forces outside of the law that are equally as important that is going to shape how these platforms react to the responsibility. There is a big push again outside of the law for ethical content moderation, and that I think is really where we're going to see a focus. A number of the of the social media platforms do have committees now established for that exact reason, and there are a lot of, I guess, educators and and scholarly writing about how that should work, and it goes down to not just what the policy should be for moderating content, but it's how you moderate that content, and maybe you've seen articles written about the employees at these social media platforms who are actually the ones in charge of sitting at their desk and reviewing this this content to see whether it is in line or not in line with that platform's policies. And you might imagine that they see things that are some of the most horrific things that you could possibly see, and they have a number of needs from a support and psychological perspective. And so, these platforms are looking at ethical moderation, content moderation from the perspective of what do we do with the end user? But how do we treat our employees that are having to spend 810, hours a day looking at this content and making those decisions?

Ron Bockstahler: So let's bring some of this back to your firm. Your firm acts as a CPO. Can you explain what that is and yeah, what you do?

Jamie Rubin: Sure. So, Chief Privacy Officer-that's the acronym. That's one of the acronyms. I guess you found. We can go through a number of other acronyms as well. But CPO is Chief Privacy Officer in this instance, and so a number of laws that are applicable to our clients. Require you as a company to designate a chief privacy officer or a data protection officer, depending on what jurisdiction you're in. And very often, while a company is taking their time to find who that person is going to be internally, we can act as that as that person for a company to get on the phone when we are negotiating a when a client's negotiating a contract and there is a particular exhibit addendum or section to the contract that is specific to all the privacy compliance requirements for that underlying deal. We will will often. often we're often asked to do the whole contract, but sometimes we are brought in just for the privacy side, and will be that person for the company. We will learn their data flows, when how they take in data, what do they do when the data is in the company, and when it how it leaves and it's shared with third parties, and we will be that representative for the company in connection with all their privacy practices, and so we came up with CPO on demand, Chief Privacy Officer on demand, and that is a a service we offer for companies that don't yet have their own internal CPO.

Ron Bockstahler: So, what size of a company are we talking about, and and also how does the all the data breaches we seem to read about on a monthly basis? How is that affecting the role of the CPO? And does every firm need a CPO officer?

Jamie Rubin: Your first question was what size company, and you would think that my answer would be, you know, startups or you know, not well, you know, people that are companies that aren't well funded yet or whatever. But I will tell you, it goes up and down the chain from the smallest company to the largest company. It's a it's it's a long time for companies to get their ducks in a row on privacy and data flows, and so there's no I can't pinpoint a particular size of company. It's it's when the board of a company starts paying attention to privacy issues, which is more and more, it's becoming it's becoming a board worthy topic more and more. I think some companies that may listen say, "Oh, this was a board worthy topic years ago, and that's great. But I don't. We don't find that to be the case all over the place. So I don't think size is a is an indicator of who needs that service or who already has it covered internally. Your second question in that question was,

Ron Bockstahler: I got to settle down. Too many questions in a question. Very excited. I kind of want to talk a little bit about the breaches, the data breaches that we've seen, and how that's having an effect, I guess, on your business at at the end of the day. Let's

Jamie Rubin: so we we we'll get we get involved in all three phases of a a data breach. I guess is the way to to put it. The first phase is we're we're trying to avoid a data breach, and we help our clients establish what the law requires as you know reasonable security, reasonable data security. There are other standards if you're in a in a highly regulated area like education or financial or healthcare, and we work on those as well. But generally speaking, we're trying to have our clients establish reasonable data security. So that's phase one: no data breach, and we help get them and analyze their practices. And we'll work with data security vendors as well to help. You know, it's not just legal, right? There's actual security that needs to be in place-the physical and the logical security that you have in your system. So, we work with clients to get them to establish a reasonable level of security. When there's a breach, we help them with discovering everything. Again, working with a forensics data security company, discovering where the breach happened, how to remediate the breach, and then what do we need to do vis-a-vis all the records? If there's personally identifiable information, it very often will trigger laws that require you to notify the people that are part of the data breach, subjects of the data breach, and maybe you've those are ubiquitous notices now. Maybe you've received like four in the last week. I get them from banks that I've dealt with years ago, credit card companies that I dealt with years ago. They'll let you know that you got a data breach. Those are actually state required notices. Sometimes they're not, and the company is just doing in a. Using air quotes, even though you can't see me doing the right thing by notifying maybe that maybe the law doesn't actually require, but they're going to notify you anyways, and then you have to do what some people call as the kicking yourself, which is you have to notify the attorney general in some states that you had a data breach as well, so you let the attorney general know that you had a data breach, and that's that's not a fun thing to have to do because you're just basically alerting them to a problem. And then the third phase, we're often brought in, even if we didn't weren't brought in on helping navigate the actual breach, and we weren't brought in on helping them establish reasonable security in the first place, we often get referred to to help establish that compliance afterwards, because they had a data breach and that's that sucked, and now they need they know they need to get into compliance. So we'll help from that perspective, which is you would think like phase one, but a lot more emergency feeling than phase one, so we'll help from that perspective. So yeah, that's that's the and so has data breaches. Data breaches certainly part of our business, and we've helped in all three three of those phases.

Kirsten Mayfield: Can we talk about the structure of your firm? Because as you speak, I'm thinking of a guest we had recently, who John Rizvold. He talked about how his firm is, they they mostly do personal injury, and they have teams. So he's part of the catastrophic injury team, and they kind of handle you know those set of cases, and there's not really overlap with the other PI cases, but yours is all your your teams. It sounds like because you have people who are very like inside of a specific area, but you all bleed into each other's areas. So how does that all work and function, and how do you pass and work on cases together internally?

Jamie Rubin: So we certainly, just like any firm, will staff something with the person who has the most appropriate expertise. But to your point, Kirsten, we we like everyone to know at least a little bit about the other areas, and it's usually a lot about the other areas. We're 14 lawyers. We're a lean and mean shop, and so we do like everyone to have that level of knowledge. Because of the types of stuff we work on, it's inevitable. We're very often working on, like I said, helping our client get a product to market, and so let's just-it's-it's a new new way of advertising online. Well, there's 1000 things that go into that that we do, even though we're just a boutique firm. And while we're going to have a quarterback on the team who helps with that matter, everyone is is involved in understanding all aspects of it because if you don't have that understanding, you're not going to be able to give the right give the the kind of the big picture advice. So I even I have one of my partners, Mark Paulding, who is our go-to guy, especially if there's a data breach, and really understanding how a hacker could have gotten in through our client's firewall, etc. He will really understand it because he he's one of our guys that I mentioned that is a programmer and and understands the technology can speak the engineering language really well, but we also have Mark help on advertising issues because our clients, a lot of our clients, like to advertise how secure their platform is, and they like to say on their website how secure their platform is. Well, that is actually an advertising law issue because you're making a kind of a system service product quality claim about doing business with them, and because Mark has the underlying background in figuring out whether a client has established reasonable security, or in a way that complies with a particular law, whether it's HIPAA or GLB, we will get down and dirty as to whether or not they can actually say that. Now, if you look at the firm, like I'm more on the advertising side, so I do a lot of push and pull with Mark. Can we really say that? Do we have the substantiation to make that claim about this product being secure or privacy forward, or whatever it is, and so he has to have an understanding of the advertising side of it too. So that that's how that that bleed happens.

Ron Bockstahler: So you know, Info Law Group was ahead of the curve. I've heard you say you were a 21st century law firm. What do you mean by that?

Jamie Rubin: Well, we spent a lot of time and energy making the decision to use cloud-based services for our systems, and that was the first thing we had to do to help eliminate some overhead when it came to physical office space, and fostering the ability to generally be on the road and still work seamlessly. Because we travel a lot. I mean, this is not so much about working from home as it is being able to work seamlessly everywhere. There were days when I was at prior firms, and this is no knock on prior firms; it just was the way of the world. And you know this, where I I had to download everything into my onto my desktop, so that if I was on a plane or somewhere where I couldn't get connectivity, that I had everything I needed. Hopefully, that I had everything I needed, so that I could work on everything I needed to work on when I was away from the office. So we spent a significant amount of resources figuring out our the the most secure solutions so that we could talk the talk that we talk to our own clients about data security and privacy. Right, we couldn't be in a position where we were. So that was our first step, but we were doing that 12 years ago, 11 years ago,

Kirsten Mayfield: wow! What what kind of cloud server technology was was there 12 years ago?

Jamie Rubin: Well, we started with a managed hosting service in Denver, and slowly, slowly, slowly from there, moved to a company that we we had and we investigated three different companies, all of them specialized in law firms going into the cloud. And after took about a year of investigation and negotiation and getting the right contract in place and understanding their systems, and using my partner Mark, who had mentioned to really dig down, we made a decision on on on a on a service provider to, and it was Herculean to move all that stuff, move all those that virtual those virtual files, and so that was start one. That was point one,

Kirsten Mayfield: and you guys have been around for about 10 years. So when this firm, like, how did that develop? Then you guys were like, we're going to start this firm and we're going to start it off this way and build it this way, or like, what was the discussion there?

Jamie Rubin: So the Info Law Group is in kind of phase two of its life. Justine, my partner Justine and my partner Heather and I joined Info Law Group two years after its inception, and majority of the founding partners that started that Info Law Group two years before we started are now at different firms. Scott Blackmer is a founding partner of Info Law Group, and he is he's still practices with us, still our partner. The rest of that that team went on to do different things. Some couple one wanted to do some more litigation, and so we moved the firm from LA, where it was started, to an Illinois entity, and so for the past 10 years, it's been that kind of phase two of the firm, and it was a forward-thinking firm when we joined, so that that started before us, and then we've continued it, and we made the move to the to the cloud computing version, if you will. But really, what our firm did is we kind of took a big firm practice and turned it into a boutique? Our firm is primarily comprised of former big law attorneys, plus a number of executive level associate general counsels at companies, some retailers, and so we bring a perspective at Info Law Group that's both big law trained plus in-house lawyer to provide. I think what most of our clients like about us is. Is kind of down and dirty practical advice.

Ron Bockstahler: Your firm was way ahead of the curve coming into the pandemic, and I'd admired you guys for several years the way you were set up. Now it's like, hey, everyone wants to be like what you guys are, or they maybe have to be like you are. What changes do you foresee in the way your firm operates coming out of the pandemic is there going to be like I don't know a phase three for Info Law Group?

Jamie Rubin: Well, I mean, I we still like seeing each other in person, so there's no there's there's I don't want to insinuate there's any replacement for that. I mentioned we traveled a lot before the pandemic, seeing clients, and so I think that'll be we'll re we'll reengage from that perspective. I don't, you know, I think I think it's it's phase two continued, and I and I think I mean I I think we've got a lot of that that figured out. I've been I've been reading a lot of articles about what the come back to the off the physical office concept is going to be, and I think maybe Ron, you and I were talking about this a few weeks ago about the the innovation teams, right? And that those are those are going to be the teams that that come back to the office the fastest. And the C suite is very keen on that because they are having the hardest time not being in the physical room together with a real whiteboard, and that the the Zoom is just not is not the way that innovation is going to work on a going forward basis. So, I I look forward to getting back together with everyone in our firm to to talk about the future and figure out the best ways to do that and innovate together in a room. So, I I think it's phase two plus. That's all. I don't I don't I don't think we're going to change something drastically coming out of this.

Kirsten Mayfield: You guys were already there. You're setting the setting the road. Unknown: Yeah. So

Ron Bockstahler: Jamie, what's in a name? Your firm isn't named after a partner. So what does that signify, if anything?

Jamie Rubin: Hmm. It's a very interesting question because we we looked at at the name for a long time. Should we be last name? Should we not be? Our approach here is that information is content, information is data, and we we are just constantly helping our clients figure out what to do with their content and their data. Their content is entertainment content. It's movies, it's TV shows. The info portion of it is the is the personal data we help our clients protect and figure out what to do if there's a problem. So we think the the the name works from a ubiquitous perspective. We we definitely looked into whether info really explained advertisement, advertising technology, and privacy altogether. And ultimately, we felt like we we built up some some brand equity in the name over the past 10 plus years, and that all of our clients really do know us as those three things, but now if you take a look at our website, we put those those three things right up top. And if you look at our business cards, which yes, we actually do have physical business cards. We we make it we we kind of make it a little sub tagline so everyone knows.

Kirsten Mayfield: Yeah, your website is fantastic. If anybody is looking into renovating their website, I love what you guys did with it. I think it's so clear and concise, and it's such a like a kind of an abstract concept. I mean, information is abstract; it is not concrete. And you guys really like siphon it down in a way that's easily digestible and colorful, but that's hard to do. So,

Ron Bockstahler: yeah, I will say as a business owner, I admire your website. I admire what you guys have done. But I actually look at Info Law Group, and I think these guys get it. They understand a company, so a business. So you're not saying, "Hey, we're this law firm. I mean, you're Info Law Group LLP, so we know you're a law firm. But to me, it's it's it's like you're trying. You're telling your clients that we're just like you. We understand what you're going through, and and that's what I read into it. So I think it's brilliant. So kudos to you guys.

Jamie Rubin: Thank you. That website was a labor of love. Two years, two plus years of a lot of effort, and what it was was really everyone at the firm participated in making that happen, and our our COO Eva is amazing, and she shepherded that thing through from from soup to nuts, and we used a great ad agency led by Aaron Bezos. So it was really really.

Ron Bockstahler: So for our listeners, infolawgroup.com, easy to remember. You know exactly what they're doing when you go there. Check it out. It's definitely a website that I think everyone should be considering. Maybe some kind of a replication of what they're doing. Let's let's talk a little personally. You are a barbecue connoisseur. Tell us about you. Actually, have set up a festival that you donate a lot of money to charities. Can we talk a little bit about that?

Jamie Rubin: Sure. Yeah. Me and three of my good friends and neighbors in Park Ridge compete in barbecue competitions under the name Silence of the Hams, and I was actually reminded of that name a little bit yesterday when I was watching Super Bowl commercials and the new TV show Clarice.

Kirsten Mayfield: Yeah,

Jamie Rubin: it was. It just reminded me of the name. In any event, so we we started competing. We started competing in the Glen Ellyn Backyard BBQ, which is, for those of you listening outside of the Chicagoland area, Glen Ellyn is just about 40 minutes south of O'Hare, and we loved what they were doing. The Glen Ellyn Backyard Barbecue; those folks were raising money for charity. We had an amazing time. It was our first time competing in a in a bar in a in a kind of sanctioned barbecue competition. The whole thing was amazing. It was a fun day. Got to meet some of the other competitors. Got to participate in something that was raising funds, and they tied a festival to their barbecue competition. So they had bands playing, and we just we just thought to ourselves, well, heck, well, we're not winning this thing, so we might as well, you know, create our own. That's a a bit tongue in cheek, but we don't. We there wasn't much, even though Park Ridge is only 45 minutes away, 40 minutes away now with no traffic, 20 minutes away from Glen Ellyn, we felt like in our area we didn't have anything like that, and so we decided to form our own nonprofit, and we got 501c3 status pretty quickly. Me being the lawyer on the team, I was in charge of all that, and others were in charge of vendors and interfacing with the sanctioning body for barbecue competitions in this area, and so we all kind of equally put in a bunch of effort to launch our first year, and it's called the Vine Street Barbecue Competition. And our first year, we had 20 teams competing, and when I mentioned the sanctioning body, another acronym for you, Ron, is KCBS. It's the Kansas City Barbecue Kansas City Barbecue Society, and so they sanctioned our our event. And what that means is that you use their scoring system for when people turn in when teams turn in their their dishes. You use their scoring system to determine who wins, and you use their judges. So they sent judges from around the Midwest. We had judges from Michigan. We had judges from Iowa. We had judges from Indiana. We had judges from Illinois. Come on down, and they were the ones to receive all the food and judge it and rate it and determine the winners. And we had three categories that first year. It was best ribs, best chicken, and and then you do best overall. And it was a fantastic event. We had bands, and I would say there was probably I don't know 750 people that showed up in addition to the teams. And it was a great event. Vendors, we had food trucks, and it just took off from there that year. I think we ended up donating maybe $13,000 to our select charity. That year, our select charity was a pediatric cancer foundation and the main township food pantry. So we selected two charities that year. And the next year, we moved our location just down the street, a little bit in Uptown Park Ridge, and we had 40 teams compete. It got it got really popular. We we we we got lucky, and we kind of ran it really well the first year. And so word got out to other teams throughout. You know, our first year was basically teams from Park Ridge,

Kirsten Mayfield: yeah, you

Jamie Rubin: know, backyard enthusiasts that wanted to, you know, just kind of get and do something fun, and that continued into year two, but it got word out beyond Park Ridge, and so we had teams that were competing in other competitions, teams that were competing in the Glen Ellyn one, and. Teams from other states coming to compete in our our one day competition, and so we got 40, and then we had a waiting list, and some folks angry that they couldn't get in, and that one we ended up having upwards about 5000 people, so we jumped really big from year one to year two. We ended up having a bunch more food trucks, more bands, more vendors serving great craft beer and wine, and more teams. And if you think about what kind of what it looks like, it's like it looks like a big tailgate.

Kirsten Mayfield: Yeah,

Jamie Rubin: you know it looks like if you're on like the Waldron deck at Soldier Field at a Bears game, it kind of looks like that. People prepping food, and again, this time we had 50 judges come down from wherever they were coming from. So it ends up being a lot of people just just the competition itself, but then when you have food vendors selling food and bands playing, and a kids zone turns into a whole fest. And so yeah, that year we had 5000 people, and we ended up raising $25,000 that year, you know, after expenses, and that donation went to a number of local charities, and then year three was the same, and year four was canceled.

Kirsten Mayfield: Yeah.

Jamie Rubin: So year five is scheduled for Saturday, August 22 of this year of 2021 and we are very hopeful we'll be able to pull something off and raise a bunch of funds for some good from good causes and have fun. We all are looking to have fun, and we're already full on teams. So, because all of our teams from last year rolled over into this year, so that was a really long-winded answer. You got the feel.

Kirsten Mayfield: Does Silence of the Hams participate in this?

Jamie Rubin: So, just just to clarify, it's Silence of the Hams.

Kirsten Mayfield: Hams, hams. So sorry, sorry.

Jamie Rubin: No, we don't participate in our own competition. It's not that it's prohibited from a you know fairness perspective, although it kind of would look bad if we did win anything. We just we simply as the organizers we don't have the time for that on that day. I mean we are we are toast at the end, just so drained after an amazing day. But we are running around from setup starts at about 430 in the morning that day, and we close the whole thing at 10 p.m. and then then there's cleanup, so we clean up until about one in the morning. So, yeah,

Kirsten Mayfield: it's almost 24 hours.

Jamie Rubin: Right, it's a full day, and if I was gonna add smoking ribs and chicken and best dish and make a sauce and all that type of stuff, that would be impossible.

Kirsten Mayfield: So, what's your go-to BBQ dish? I am a pulled pork person myself. What is yours?

Jamie Rubin: Brisket.

Kirsten Mayfield: Brisket. That's my husband's. Yeah.

Strickland Bonner: Yeah.

Kirsten Mayfield: Ron.

Ron Bockstahler: I gotta agree with the brisket.

Jamie Rubin: I like it all, but brisket's kind of the the gold.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, I think it's awesome. You've taken a passion or something you really enjoy with a few friends, and you created something that's great that's helping the community. So you got a Facebook page, Vine St Barbecue. Check it out. Follow them. And what was the date again, Jamie, for 2021?

Jamie Rubin: Saturday, august 22

Ron Bockstahler: Saturday, august 22 So let's make sure we all get out there and support them. Final question. It's been a great time to talk to you, but the final question we want to ask you is: What is the one thing in the legal profession that you would like to see changed?

Jamie Rubin: So, I thought about this a lot, and it. I thought about it without regard to the name of your podcast, but it actually ties in nicely. We spend a lot of time with our clients talking about alternate fee arrangements, and I think it it sounds like a nice thing when we're talking about it with our clients, I would say that the majority of our clients don't utilize them to the fullest benefit they could, and so I would like to see. While we offer all sorts of alternative fee arrangements, I would like to see more clients actually executing on them and using them. To us, it's a budgeting tool. To our to our clients, it's a budgeting tool. It can be very effective budgeting tool. There are a lot of projects that we work on, and lawyers outside of our areas of expertise work on that can. Thatself nicely, it sounds scary to go away from the billable hour per se with with with clients. I'm I'm often asked by clients, oh, do you also entertain alternate fee arrangements? And we say yes, and we've been doing it for years. And here's a few different concepts to think about. But by and large, most of our clients don't don't actually. take us up on those arrangements. So, I would like to see a little bit more use of them, actual use of them, rather than talking about them. So that's that's my two cents on that. On that, what what could change?

Ron Bockstahler: We appreciate it. I'll give you the last word. Is there anything you want to end with?

Jamie Rubin: I appreciate what you guys are doing. How I started out. How I started out. I love listening to people talking about how how things can be disrupted in the law, and we love to be part of that, so I just just thank you.

Ron Bockstahler: I appreciate it. We've been talking to Jamie Rubin. You can reach Jamie at J Rubin. That's J R U B I N at info law dot info lawgroup.com So J Rubin at infolawgroup.com We appreciate you listening. You've been listening to the 1958 lawyer, and until next week, thank you.

Strickland Bonner: Thanks for listening to the 1958 Lawyer Podcast. If you like the show, tell a friend, and please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to hear more about Ron, Kirsten, or Amata, go to amataoffices.com All the links are also available in show notes.