Clint Ind: Smarter Lawyering in the Age of AI

Voiceover: Welcome to the 1958 Lawyer, the show for attorneys who know the old model isn’t working anymore. The billable hour, the 12-hour day, the expensive office no one visits. Your host, Ron Bockstahler, and Clinton End are here to question all of that and more by exploring smarter, healthier, more flexible ways to run a law firm. No more burnout. No more outdated expectations. Just real conversations with attorneys who are proving there’s a better way. If you’re ready to build a law firm that’s profitable and livable, you’re in the right place. Now here are your hosts, Ron and Clinton.

Ron Bockstahler: All right, welcome to the 1958 Lawyer, where we talk to business experts and attorneys with firsthand knowledge and the perils and challenges of running a law firm. I’m your co-host and founder of Amata, Ron Bockstahler, along with my co-host and business partner, Clint End. Clint, how are you doing today?

Clint Ind: Doing great, Ron. Very excited about today’s show. Lots of interesting topics to discuss. Weather’s nice. No one yelled at me this morning. Kids got off to school well, so I think it’s it’s a good start to the day.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, let’s start. You’re just getting back from Australia. Spent 10 days out in Australia. Your is your sleep back to normal at this point in time. It’s been a couple days.

Clint Ind: I was a bit smug on Sunday. We go back Saturday afternoon. I was smug on Sunday. I thought I got this kicked. It’s no big deal, and then then I didn’t sleep Sunday night. So I’m not sure. I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re past it, but we’ll see. We’ll see how we go.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, welcome back to the states. It’s good to have you.

Clint Ind: Yeah, good to be back

Ron Bockstahler: today. We want to focus. Clint and I are going to talk a little bit about AI. Clinton’s been running the Amata support services now for the past year, year and a half now, and we’ve rolled out some AI tools to some of our clients. We’ve been working with Lexus Nexus AI, and Clint, you’ve done a ton of work. You’ve been practicing law for 20 years, so you come with a lot of experience. Let’s kind of roll it over to what you’re seeing, and how do you think people or attorneys should start to embrace or not embrace some of the technologies that are out there today.

Clint Ind: Yeah, I think there’s there’s so many new technologies. It’s such a fascinating thing right now. And I was telling you yesterday, Ron. I mean, I go to my LinkedIn feed, and every two out of every three posts that I see, and that’s obviously a function of the algorithm because that’s what I’m interested in right now. But two out of three posts that are up on my LinkedIn feed are some new AI product or some person talking about the new AI product. This morning, I just got on on the train, and I don’t know. I went through about 20 posts. 10 to 15 were related to AI in the law industry, in the legal industry. A solid amount of those were that new Anthropic’s new plugin that has been so prevalent. Yeah, while

Ron Bockstahler: you know the 10 days you were in Australia, the world changed, right? Anthropic comes out with cowork, they come out with a legal plugin, yeah, then they come out with a financial plugin, and the markets erase you know, 300 billion of stock market value.

Clint Ind: It’s fascinating, absolutely fascinating,

Ron Bockstahler: crazy what effect it’s having and how fact it’s having. But now let’s talk about the applications now, and I’ll tell you when y’all, you know, we’ll talk about this. But I jumped into Anthropic because I use Claude AI, and so I have been using that plugin to test it out, and just curious what it can do. So we’ll get to that in a moment, but we’ll put a pin in that. Let’s talk about what you’re seeing.

Clint Ind: There’s so much out there. It’s how I mean you can’t ignore it, right? And so, what I’m seeing is a lot of startups. If I had to deduce it to one thing, I have inquired with a lot of the the feed. You know, a lot of the advertisements I get on my feed. So I, I’m one of those guys that books a demo, which is probably why my feed is so, so full of AI stuff. But I’m the guy who books the demo, and it’s fascinating to see the response, right? Because behind every flashy AI product is still people, right? It’s still a salesperson. It’s still a startup, and you know, for every one of those startups that has a solid quality product, everyone there’s there’s probably at least one or two that has taken that that oracle approach, which is let’s just put a product out there and let’s get the get the sales, and then we’ll deliver after we’ve gotten enough sales to figure

Ron Bockstahler: out how to make it work

Clint Ind: exactly, exactly. So that’s what you see when you book a demo, right? You get sometimes you get a really great product and it looks really good, but when you really try to apply it to to you know a case or the practice or your you know some greater larger practice, you really start to see some of the deficiencies, and it’s not to say that the product isn’t good. I think, and it’s not to say that you should be ignoring AI at all. I mean, you can’t ignore AI in this in this world, but I think you really have to be careful these days about what exactly. You’re getting and what you’re looking into, and and who you’re going to be partnering with if you start subscribing to some kind of a you know an API or just a use of some some tool that you’re going to be uploading documents to.

Ron Bockstahler: So, Clinton, the biggest thing I’m hearing when I’m talking to a lot of the solo small firms is privacy. They don’t want to get sanctioned. You know, I know you’ve got a strong opinion on these things, so let’s first let’s talk about the sanction issue. And the I don’t want to put something out there and go to a judge, and there’s a citation that’s not real, yeah hallucination. So let’s talk about that.

Clint Ind: Yeah, I mean when it comes down to it, and you know we just had a conversation, and I asked you know you said you uploaded a spreadsheet, and I and my first instinct was to ask you, don’t you want to go and check every fricking element of that spreadsheet that came back, right? Because what’s drilled into us, obviously, and everybody who’s listening knows this, is that it all comes down to our licenses, right? And it doesn’t matter what tool you use or who you use, if you’re going to submit it to the court or you’re going to upload it to a vendor, it comes down. It’s on us, right? It’s it’s our licenses and it’s our malpractice that that comes into play. So the reliance on some of these tools, I think, is while it’s necessary, it’s also a difficult thing to overcome when you’re talking about lawyers, you know, using some of these tools to to streamline their practices, and obviously the biggest thing we see and the most prevalent issue of the last couple of years has been what you said those hallucinations. You know, it’s one thing. It looks great. I mean, you use AI and you plug it into either it’s ChatGPT or whatever it is, a Gemini, and it’s going to spit you out a brief that looks good with bad hallucinate with hallucinated cases likely right, and the the thing about it is, is as we’ve always discussed, is you have to cite check, you have to take the extra step, and you have to go back and make sure that the case exists in the first place, and even if the case exists, that the the the law that it’s citing and the promise, the preposition that it’s citing two in your brief actually exists, right? There’s there’s so many different layers, so I don’t know how to get to the point, and I’m not sure if we’ll ever get to the point. I mean, we will at some point in time, but right now, I see the biggest obstacle is being that issue, right? Needing to make sure that everything is is perfect, right? Everything is actually exists and is good, and that is, I think that’s kind of a a thing that’s difficult for lawyers to overcome because you want to use it and you want to streamline, you want to make it faster. But if you got to go back and sight check it all anyway and read the cases anyway, then why wouldn’t you just go with the the old thing that we know, which is find the cases SLs and plug them in ourselves? Now I do think, but but yeah, go ahead. I mean,

Ron Bockstahler: I’m just like okay, well, let’s stop right there because we’ve talked about that, and you brought up diligence. And so if I got a five hours of work, and I’m going to use AI to, it’s like getting finding the needle in the haystack. I’m going to get the basic work. Give me some basic cases, and yeah, I got to do diligence. I got to go do some research to make sure those are valid and they work.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: but isn’t that quicker? Doesn’t that save you time versus having to go look up the cases or find the cases in in LexisNexis or Westlaw?

Clint Ind: Yeah, whatever

Ron Bockstahler: tool.

Clint Ind: I think it is. I think it’s so much quicker. You know, and the thing that I see that people can’t ignore, that that really is faster, is that that first draft. You cannot ignore the fact that I can put in a two to three paragraph statement of of you know the jurisdiction I’m in, a little quick statement of the facts, and a you know the the some of the maybe maybe some of the claims that we want to bring, and I can plug that in to Lexis AI, which I’ve done many times for our clients, and I can get six to eight page complaint, perfectly done. Right, I say I’m in Cook County. I got the caption pretty much drafted. Everyone uses their own cut and paste caption, so that’s not a big deal. But the jurisdictional jurisdictional statement is properly cited and properly stated. The venue statement is properly stated with the correct citation, and you go from what typically would be, at least for me, anyway. I mean, some more efficient lawyers out there probably, but if I’m looking at a blank page and I got to put together a four or five count complaint for whatever issue, you know. It’s it’s it’s an easy five hours probably if you really want to, you know, make sure it’s good and get a good first draft. Now I can type in three paragraphs of, you know, of of facts, and it’ll give me six to eight pages in about three minutes, and that is crucial for me. And I think for a lot of attorneys, at least a lot of the people I speak with, it’s it’s starting from six to eight pages of a solid draft just takes away four of the five hours of initial work that you would otherwise be be putting into a. Into a into a case,

Ron Bockstahler: and so we’re not using AI to practice law. We’re using AI to make it more efficient to do some of the grunt work.

Clint Ind: Yeah, what is it exactly? You could

Ron Bockstahler: have had a paraleg a paralegal could have been doing. You don’t need to be an attorney to do that.

Clint Ind: Right, right. You don’t really. Yeah, that’s right. And you should probably think that’s actually a great analogy I hadn’t thought of before. I mean, you should think of the AI, whether it’s coming from Lexus or Westlaw or Harvey or any one of these these other startups that are out there. It it’s work that’s given to you by an assistant, right? A paralegal, a legal admin, and you would never take that as a lawyer. You would never take that and just say, “Okay, looks good. Submit it to the court. And just like with with the hallucinations, there’s a plenty of you know sanctions reports out there from ARDCs all over the country about. Well, I just relied on my first year associate, or I just relied on my paralegal. Right? It’s the same thing. You got to check it, and you got to do your diligence. To your point,

Ron Bockstahler: so so great. So we’re practicing law. We’re looking at to save time. It is effective in doing that to some level, but you still got to do diligence. You still got to check it. So

Clint Ind: yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: it’s replacing maybe some of that staff function. Well, we could talk a little about that because we we have paralegals and admins on our team that we support over 800 law firms. So let’s. I mean, it’s. I haven’t noticed a drop in our work. So are we? I know we’re you and your team are using less success AI, and are you are we seeing a drop in hours built? Are we seeing an increase?

Clint Ind: No. If anything, we’re seeing an increase because there’s so much question out there. I mean, obviously, we’re advertising that we’re using the AI and we’re we’re good at it and we know how to do it, but and it’s the same thing except we’re just now more efficient, right? And now because our our paralegals can use a quality tool like the Alexis AI Protege product to to produce something for our clients, it’s it’s more in demand at this point in time. But it always, like you said, it always just comes back to that caveat of diligence, and and I don’t think it’s an interesting thing because you know I think most attorneys because there’s been such a history of people getting sanctioned for relying on paralegal or first year associate work, right? So they know when they get anything from anyone that’s not themselves, they have to they have to check it. So it’s an easy thing to like. Oh, I’m getting this from the paralegal. I’m going to I’m going to quality check it. For some reason, there’s this reliance on the AI, and I don’t I don’t really understand that. And it’s just something that we can’t afford to to give up at this point in time.

Ron Bockstahler: Let’s talk. I mean, this show is all about the business of law, things that we focus on, and I could talk to you know we’ve been using it for marketing for a little over a year, just really laying into Ella, which is a a marketing product that’s really specific to that, and I it’s been amazing that the time it saved us, quite frankly, the money it saved us, you know, from five to $600 for an article, a blog that we’re having written, to we’re paying L of $500 a month and unlimited. You know, we feed in what we want to say, and it makes it even better. And it’s stuff we can publish, and we putting more things out there quicker. So the fact that you could practice and run a business more effectively by using the tools that are available to you today, and those tools are just getting better.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: I think it’s that’s one of the things I really want to start meeting with some of our clients about, and just talking to you could be using this and and and and get rid of that up and down the curve or the what’s that the wave when you’re you got clients coming in, you’re busy, and then it drops down, you got no work, you know, level that out by doing consistent marketing by using AI to enhance your marketing and saving yourself a lot of money.

Clint Ind: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I really think that that is you really hit it on the head there because the the difficult part when you’re practicing is okay. I’ve got these, I’ve got this this flow of cases and billable hours, and it’s going crazy. And then while you’ve got that flow, you’re not doing the marketing right. So I really do feel like, you know, the one of the biggest advantages that that a lot of the AI products that I’m seeing that are directed towards attorneys are not really focusing on, and that really is that marketing piece that can be happening in the background while you’re flowing with cases and billable hours. It has to be. It has to be that you have to. You have to use it for that for that program.

Ron Bockstahler: Got a great example for you. I just used this last week. I were interviewing for a mid-level marketing person, and there’s it’s a three three interview process. So I went into Ella Ella AI and I said, “Look, here’s the job description. I want to make sure that we’re asking different questions. I want to have a better structured interview process. Lay out how we do that, and Ella, you know, breaks down three different levels of interview questions for each group, from HR interview to the CMO’s interview and to the myself doing an interview, and then a scorecard to score it. So now you got more consistency amongst three interviews. Interviews and you’re all asking different questions.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: I thought I knocked that. I took maybe 15 minutes. I was able to put that together, and then I could just duplicate it for several other jobs that we’re interviewing for.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: and then share it with the rest of the team and say, “Here, let’s go through this. Let’s use this as our process to ask questions.

Clint Ind: Yeah, and but it’s the same thing we’re talking about, like you, you get that start, and then you share it with the team, and then you do the diligence, right? The team comes together, and we work through it, and we figure it out. Everyone should be doing that process still. Hey, Ron, do you do you feel guilty about yelling at your AIs when no, not at all? Crap, I do. I still, I feel guilty about like what that. What is this? That’s ridiculous. But then I feel like I’m talking to a real person, and it’s yeah. I got to get over that. Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: you know, my wife keeps asking, “Why do you say she? How do you know it’s not a he? I’m like quite sure it’s a she. I think yeah, you can talk. You can get a little too close maybe because you think you’re just having you have a long conversation with your chat bot, especially you know like we did we spun up our Amata chat bot so you it just it writes like I want to write. Yeah. So the training took us a few months to get it right, but to get it on spot. But now it’s great.

Clint Ind: I suppose that feels like I suppose that feels like if you train your chatbot right to do it the way you want to do it personally, then you’re just yelling at yourself when they screw it up, right? Exactly. Like, what are you thinking

Ron Bockstahler: about? It took me. By the way, we got to get Keith, the founder of Atomic Elevator, the company that spun up Ella AI. We need to get him on the show. That’d be great. Yeah, he’s willing to come on the show. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s done really, really well. So I’ll be reaching out to him this week to get him on the show. But let’s just talk about his product a little bit more. I mean, yeah, he’s using. I think he’s probably using a ChatGPT as his backbone, but it’s also an enclosed environment, which that’s the other thing we need to talk about is security. How do I know that I don’t want my clients’ documents to get out there. I don’t want all of our stuff necessarily to get out there. But what they broke spun up was a secure sandbox for me to play in,

Clint Ind: right? Yeah, which is crazy. It just kind of goes back to what we were talking about before when we started this, which is you know how how do you know these are startups, right? And you might put that there might be a LinkedIn post that says, you know, put your medical records in here, PI attorneys, and we’ll summarize and evaluate, and it’s all HIPAA compliant. But that’s all they say. It’s all HIPAA compliant. How do you know? How do you exactly? Yeah.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, it’s like you, you know, it’s like you tell your kids, you know, anything you’re putting out there is always going to be out there. Yeah. So you know, what is the secure? So I guess there’s got we got to make sure it is secure if we’re going to put some client document in there because you get you know you got to protect those client documents. We get that. Got to keep security. I do believe I’m confident that they are able to do that at this point in time. Any more than if I’m putting a document on SharePoint or Box or whatever repository I’m using.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: I mean I’m believing that they’re telling me it’s secure. So what’s the difference if no? This is telling me it’s secure, also,

Clint Ind: right? I mean,

Ron Bockstahler: they’re using the same technologies.

Clint Ind: Yeah, you would think so, right? And and you would hope not. But you know, just going back to what we originally talked about, which is it all coming back to you know the individual attorney’s license, and there’s there’s a solid level of paranoia. And you know, I remember when Dropbox first came out, and everyone was like, “Well, can we use it? Right, and then I-I don’t know, right? It’s all this digital, this thing that’s out in the ether. Can we use it? And it was, you know, and then you see the, you know, 20-eight point encryption key and all of the bits and pieces, and and it gives a mind of security. But it’ll take a little bit, I think, for people to really get comfortable, for attorneys to really get comfortable with knowing that everything they put out is secure.

Ron Bockstahler: So you’re you’re getting I don’t know 15 emails a day about some kind of offshore paralegals, some kind of offshore service, some kind of AI service. How do you get comfortable with they have the securities in place that you’re not going to jeopardize your client’s information, or you know, do something with it that you know shouldn’t be done.

Clint Ind: Yeah, you know what I’ve been doing. It really just going back to that diligence factor in sourcing. You know who we’re going to be using. You know, in everything you do, there has to be a diligence factor, and that really is what it comes down to. Is I’m I’m talking to the people who are running the company, I’m asking them about their security protocols. I’m asking them to explain it to me. As soon as you talk to somebody about the need to keep something secure and the explanation of and asking for the explanation of how they do that and they can’t answer you, well, there’s your answer, right? So,

Ron Bockstahler: but

Clint Ind: you have to ask the questions. You have to ask the questions.

Ron Bockstahler: It’s so funny. So I actually I use Claude quite a bit, Anthropics Claude, which I think has made huge strides. We just kind of talked about it the last two weeks of some of their introductions, and I was questioning some of our insurance because I was talking to a new attorney getting ready to join. He’s spinning up his own law firm after being at a CPA firm for 12 years. And I said, or he asked some questions about insurance. You know, I’m going to go take. I took all of our insurance documents for 2026, and I threw them into Claude and said, “Claude, give me a summary. What do we have here? Right, and really focused on. I think E and O was the big thing because we’re you know insuring our paralegals. We’re insuring everyone that does work for our clients. Yeah. How do you? How are you? Are you seeing that with some of these offshore companies, I mean, we’re all getting all the lucky. I can get a paralegal for $5

Clint Ind: Yeah. Are they? Yeah. I mean, the way. Yeah. The way it comes down to, I think, especially when you get somebody who’s in the illegal industry, whether they’re offshore or they’re not, there is a. I mean, everyone’s looking for indemnification, right? And everyone’s looking for it. Right, and ultimately, you know, when we give our paralegal to, or not give, when we have our paralegals work with one of our attorneys, I mean, very explicitly say this is ultimately on you. Right, you’re you’re using our paralegals, but it’s your license, it’s your product, it’s going to be submitted to the court. You have to do your diligence. You have to check it up, and so I think what I’m seeing right now is that’s pretty much the same with with anyone we’re using, like offshore or anything like that, and which is fine, which is probably the way it should be, you know, except when you come to the notion of, like we said, putting client documents or sending them offshore somewhere-you obviously have to go that extra step and make sure that that things there are being done. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, it’s on the attorney, and you have to do your diligence, and you have to make sure that that you’re comfortable. Okay.

Ron Bockstahler: What other what other kind of values is you’ve had? You’ve been a you’ve been in house. You’ve been at a bigger organ, a law firm. You’ve had your own practice, so you’ve been a solo. What other uses are you seeing that AI is going to help you as you’re running your solo practice?

Clint Ind: I’m really interested. I I think I’m really interested in how the APIs are going and the plugins into the various programs we use are going to help streamline the backend running of the phone. You know, I think the focus for most attorneys to this point in time, and really the big way I’ve been using it is, you know, like going to Lexus and and getting, you know, saving myself four hours by pulling up a you know putting up a an eight page complaint in three minutes with a three paragraph fact pattern, but there’s going to be I think a real value in using the plugins to pull dates from emails from clerks, court clerks, and automatically calendar them, right? There’s going to be real value in you know giving setting automatic reminders for discovery deadlines, right? Just kind of like keeping track of those daily reminders, those weekly reminders that exist throughout the course of a case, that allow you to not have to spend mental bandwidth on that thing. That’s what I’m really most interested in. I think is figuring out, you know, how that is going to to plug into the existing framework. And the other thing is that you know, as we were discussing the marketing piece of it, you know, having being able to have a fully functioning AI related marketing team on the back end, so that you don’t have to worry about your pipeline. Is I think that’s going to be huge, absolutely huge.

Ron Bockstahler: And I also see in having like someone like you that you’re always doing the research, always seeing what’s out there, having that resource. If I’m out there practicing my own or a small firm, I don’t have time to keep up with the technology. It’s changing so quick.

Clint Ind: So quick.

Ron Bockstahler: How do I keep up with what’s going on? I know that you’re spending a few hours a day just studying. Hey, where are we at? What’s going on? What can I tell our clients? That to me is just a huge value that we got to maybe push a little bit more because it’s really hard to keep up with everything that’s happening.

Clint Ind: Yeah, and implement it into your

Ron Bockstahler: practice.

Clint Ind: Oh, for sure. No, and in two to three hours a day, like you said, is not even enough. You know, there’s always a new product. I mean, you can spin people can spin up a website. You know, in in minutes, you can spin up all of these. You spin up a marketing machine in no time at all. And I think there’s a lot of that happening right now. And you got to filter through it. It takes a long time.

Ron Bockstahler: We seen while you were in Australia, Westlaw, LegalZoom, a few others. Their stock prices tanked like 30, 40% when Anthropic came out with their legal plugin.

Clint Ind: Yeah, is

Ron Bockstahler: there still going to be a home for some of these softwares, or are they going to be obsolete?

Clint Ind: No, I think there will. I mean, there’ll be a couple of things. One of the things that I’ve always leaned on with like Westlaw and Lexus is, I mean, they have the repository of cases, you know, and that is why they can confidently say that they’re probably not good. It’s likely, very highly likely, not going to hallucinate. You because they’re actually looking through and they’ve they’ve tailored their searches to make sure they’re leaning on and pulling from the repository of cases. It’s been a while since I was on the Harvey website, but maybe six months ago there was still you know the 50 states statutes and case law was still still coming. Okay, six months ago, but Lexus and Westlaw and those those ones who’ve been relied on, you know, they they have that. Everyone knows they’ve had that for for decades, right? So that that exists. The thing about it is, though, that’s that’s one piece. So that’s easy to rely on right now, and it’s easy to easy to you know to to feel confident in what you’re doing and use of, but you know, cases and statutes are all public knowledge, right? I mean, it won’t take startups a lot of time to make a repository and put it in a rag and and get them get them available, just like everybody else has. So, what’s really going to come down to is, you know, their ability to innovate within the AI and make sure that there’s constant improvement. Because the the notion of being able to just it won’t be enough. Like it’s it’s a huge value right now, obviously, to go in and give you give you three paragraphs and get a complaint, or or give your you know your fact pattern, or you upload your complaint and get discovery posted. That’s all well and good, but everyone’s going to be able to do that soon, right? Yeah.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, I went to Claude and I said, Claude, you know, what are some of the tools? Like, if I’m running a small law firm, that you know, how’s it going to help me? And Claude came back with some basic look, you still got to practice law, so it’s not going to help you practice law, but it is going to help you with speed and efficiency and tasks like contract review, legal research. You know, contract review. We brought up a couple of our insurance policies I threw in and got a summary that I could understand. You know, we just before the show we were talking about Excel spreadsheets, we were talking about budgeting and throwing in a budget and saying, “Look at it and see if there’s any problems. Tell me the mistakes, and boom, it kicks it out and improves the spreadsheets so they’re more usable. Those things we never had before. We kind of relied on, and you know, we made mistakes. It is amazing to me how fast and how easy it is that they can do these things. Document organization. legal education, preliminary analysis of documents, identifying legal issues and contracts and documents before they go to a lawyer. That’s the last point I think we should probably hit on: is the consumer. How’s the consumer using AI? Because it’s not like this is something that’s only business corporations are getting everyone in the world has access to AI,

Clint Ind: right?

Ron Bockstahler: And I’m going to go get a divorce. I’m going to be using AI before I even talk to someone.

Clint Ind: Yeah. So well, the the example I think of, I was on a CLE a little while ago, and it was an old CLE, but it was talking about AI. So it was maybe a year old, but it was talking about AI, and one of the examples they gave was, you know, it’s no longer the point where a client’s going to send you a contract and say review this, and you know if it’s a five-page contract, maybe you would spend five hours on it, right? And you get cop lunch and reviewing, and it’s on you to review it. These days, what’s happening is your client is sending you the contract with the red lines that have been generated by the AI, and said just review the red lines, right? So your five billable hours turns into a half, a point five, or maybe a 1.0 billable hour, which I think is fantastic as long as you know, as long as you can rely on the red lines, and

Ron Bockstahler: well, as long as you got enough work, I mean, you still, we’re all here to make some money.

Clint Ind: Yeah, yeah, but I don’t think I, I think efficiency has always been the goal for everybody, right? I mean, no one likes to be that law firm, whether you’re a large law firm or a small law firm, no one wants to be that that one that’s known for inefficiency or billing for inefficiency, right? It doesn’t work. It’s a it’s a rapid way to losing losing business.

Ron Bockstahler: That’s a great point. So I think we come into the conclusion is we’re going to have to use it, embrace it at some level. We still need to practice law, so that don’t change. And I haven’t noticed any changing in law firm billable hours are still growing. Your revenues are still growing, but I just think there’s more opportunities.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: but you’re going to have to adjust your practice. So if you’re if you’re the attorney, which Len, I got to go back to Len, probate attorney who cut and paste. He literally would cut, paste, and send it to Cindy and say, Cindy, type this up. That practice, I think, that practice has gone gone away with the you know secretary pool. They’re all gone. Those things change, and we’re seeing the change happen faster and faster in law. And you got to be able to keep up with it. Which a plug to Omada. This is why you want to partner with Omada because we’re helping you keep. Up with the practice of law, the business as it’s changing. Let’s be in the forefront, the forefront ahead of it all, so that you can have a successful practice without the stress.

Clint Ind: Yeah, 100% You you need people ultimately. What you what you’ve always needed is help sifting through the crap, right? You just need help sifting through the crap, and that’s what we do?

Ron Bockstahler: I was. We’ll cut this off. As I was talking, like when I was telling, I talked to attorney last week. I said, “Look, we’re your COO.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: we’re going to be your chief operating officer for a solo practitioner. You tell us what you’re looking at, what you’re thinking, or we’re just going to come to you with ideas to help you improve your practice, and it’s it’s part of the program.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: you know. So this is this is why you want to be partnering with the Nemada. Last words, Clinton. Anything you want to add? Leave them with

Clint Ind: diligence, everyone. It’s the theme of the day, probably. I wasn’t expecting it to be, but you know the thing about it all is it’s all great. Make sure you’re covering your bases, but use it. You have to use it, and you know, you get to the point we’re covering your bases. I mean, we we will always cover our bases. Just don’t forget to. That’s all.

Ron Bockstahler: Absolutely. Yeah. All right, Ron Bockstahler, my partner Clint. In we’re at Amata, providing the back office support for small law firms. We have fractional support services. We have flexible office space options. Practice smart. You know, spend money when you make money, and when when revenues drop, drop your expenses. You need flexibility, and in today’s world, you really need flexibility in running a law firm. So, thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you next week. Our guest is actually going to be an employment lawyer coming up next week. So we’ll we’ll got an exciting show coming up next week, so be sure to tune in. Thanks, everyone.

Clint Ind: Thanks.

Voiceover: Thanks for listening to the 1958 Lawyer. If you like the show, tell a friend, and please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like to hear more about Ron, Clinton, or Amata, go to AmataOffices.com. That’s amataoffices.com. All the links are also in the show notes.