Geo Bellas: Forty-Years of Game-Changing Tech for Law Firms

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'm your co-host Ron Bockstahler,

Kirsten Mayfield: and I'm Kirsten Mayfield, and we have with us today Geo Bellas. He became a lawyer in 1973, and in the past 48 years of practicing law, he's been representing small business owners. He's also known by his fellow attorneys for his litigation skills, and he actually received one of the highest awards by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America for his work in rollover litigation, which actually helped advance the public's knowledge of the risks from the Firestone Tire and Ford Explorer recall, which is very cool. On top of that, he's been using tech his entire lawyer career. One of the few who picked up tech quickly back in the 70s and 80s, and we're really excited to have him on the show with us today. Thank you for joining us, Gio.

George Bellas: I'm happy to be here. Should be fun,

Ron Bockstahler: Geo. Let's talk. You're big into technology, and you have been for a long time. So, can you take us back to your early days of your career and what made you say, you know, I got to get into technology?

George Bellas: It's kind of interesting. I went off on my own in '82, and I decided that I needed something more sophisticated than the old Selectric typewriter to do things, so I bought my first computer word processor. It was a Sony that had the the main unit, and then a what they call the slave, and then had one of those big dot matrix printers that when it printed, the whole building shook. Bought that set for $11,000 back in 1983 and I thought I was really cool. And then fax machines came along, and I got involved in a big case, and I found out that I could beat up the other big firm by using three fax machines at the same time. So I had I had a lot of fun with technology. Then I went around in the in the early in the mid '80s, went around with another lawyer preaching to lawyers about how PCs were going to change our practice. We kind of we called the personal computer the six shooter of modern work because it was the great equalizer. It allowed solo practitioners to keep up with big firms, and from there it advanced. And then I got involved in another big case with my colleague Bob Clifford in Chicago, and we used technology to organize the documents in that case. Summation recognized me as a litigator, or us as a litigator of the month, one year. But we, at the end of the case, the senior partner from the big firm we were litigating against against asked to take me out for a beer, and he wanted to know how basically a solo practitioner kept four of their associates busy all the time on the case, and I said it's very simple. I used a computer, and that was kind of interesting. And then email came along, and at the end of the '90s, and that that's kind of how I got the name Geo. I was. trying to figure out a way how to script my signature on emails, and a lot of times when I sign things in the office, I just instead of writing everything else, I just put GEO, and so I never thought anything about it except that an old friend of mine said, you know, you do all this technology. You should have a modern type of name, and she said, you know, like the Matrix. The guy's name is Neo, and she says that's it. Your name is Neo, and it's stuck ever since there. Then in Clifford's office, where I did a lot of work, they put up a sign outside my door because I was doing a lot of traveling for litigation. They put a sign outside the door every day when I wasn't in. They said, "Where's Geo? Like, where in the world is Carmen said? But it's where's Geo? So they they would write out things where they thought I was that day. So it kind of grew from there. So I adopted the name Geo probably from my work in technology, and then got involved with other cases, and now lately we've been working on technology-assisted review to review documents in big cases and fighting the e-discovery battles with big firms. It's kind of fun.

Ron Bockstahler: You just expand, you know, four. Decades of change in technology-that's kind of amazing. Going from a typewriter, you know, all the way now we're actually talking about artificial intelligence is is kind of becoming pretty big and e-discovery. But what was unique about what you said each time you talked about a new technology gave you a competitive edge to be a smaller firm competing against you know the big law. Let's hit on that. Was is that was that intentional because you've done it quite often, or is it something that since you enjoyed the area of technology, it just kind of became natural and that actually helped you become successful and you know your clients become successful.

George Bellas: I I don't think I ever can say that I enjoyed the field of technology. I just recognized that there were tools that could help me practice law, and you know, I never thought about it spanning you know five decades. That that makes me feel old. And Kirsten's sitting there laughing at me right now. Listen to this old dude talk about technology, but yeah, now that I think back and on it in retrospect, the practice has changed and is continuing to change, just like every other industry. It's just that law has always been the last to adapt to the technology that's available, and I've always felt that lawyers must embrace technology and find new ways of helping their clients. And I try to adhere to that. So I don't I don't want to be a legal snowflake. Is is the bottom line. I'd like to give technology the the the chef's kiss about thank you for let you know just does the right thing for us.

Kirsten Mayfield: So when it comes to tech, a lot of firms where they fail is they think it's going to solve all of their problems, so they just buy into it, think it'll solve everything. It turns out to be too much. They can't utilize it the right way. How did you know that bunch of fax machines were the right solution? And did you have one of those car fax machines? Because I was just watching the player. Apparently, those are a thing. That seems like

George Bellas: that's old. That's old. You know, there there were times that we we had a fax machine in the pop out armrest in the back seat, but you know I remember when I bought my first car, my first Cadillac, and I had to get a car phone, and I thought because I thought that was the neatest thing in the world, I could talk to people on the phone, and and everything just evolves. I never, I don't think I ever sat there and said, "Yeah, I got to do this. I got to do this. I just wanted to get a toy, and you know the old adage, I'm sure Ron knows, is, "He who dies with the most toys wins, and that's that's try. That's what I tried to do.

Kirsten Mayfield: The Egyptians would agree with that. That's a good philosophy.

Ron Bockstahler: Point here is you used technology as a competitive edge. So, what do you see coming down the road? What's what's next year's competitive edge to put you ahead of your competitors, other firms?

George Bellas: Artificial intelligence. I guess that's that's the short answer, and analytics. Now you're going to make me think harder about this. Analytics is becoming the big thing. There's some new technology that's come in, helping us work with things. There's now software available that will take your brief or the other party's brief, and tell you if you missed and or if the other side missed key cases or miscited key cases, and helps review your brief before you file it. That's kind of cool, but our analytics. There are people working on analytics, which basically is the use of big data and the Internet of Things to predict outcome of things like cases. There's a professor at Kent Law School in Chicago, Dan Katz, who has been for the last couple of years modeling working. working on developing an AI that will predict the outcome of Supreme Court cases, and basically what they do is they, you know, they fed it case number one from the Supreme Court from 1790 or whatever it was, and said this is the case. What's the outcome? The computer would give its decision, and they would correct it, and they started moving on. So it gets to the point where, you know, the the machine is going to start predicting the outcome of a case. I don't think it's going to take the place of a decision by the judge, but it certainly will help us. Evaluate the merits of our case and our position before we get weighed hip deep into a case. But on the other hand, I know there's a province in Canada that is using that to decide small claims cases because we know that if the facts are this and this happened, and the the party suffered you know $2,000 in damages. The result ought to be this because and the judges know it. They hear certain, they see certain things. They know this should be the outcome. Well, a machine can do the same thing, and and come up with a result. So there, there is a movement to have a form of artificial intelligence decide small cases to eliminate the load on the courts. I think that's one analytics, artificial intelligence. The computers are getting bigger, smarter. They're processing. Computers are now processing information faster than the human mind processes information. The only thing is that the computers haven't learned to absorb all of the other factors in our environment around us that help us make a decision. But eventually, that's going to happen, and the computers are going to take a lot of the work off of lawyers, and lawyers are going to have to find a way to fit into that new paradigm.

Ron Bockstahler: How will that affect the billable hours, Geo?

George Bellas: Billable hours dead.

Kirsten Mayfield: I love that succinct.

George Bellas: It you know it it lawyers have to figure out how they're going to fit into the system, the new system. I know there's an author, Richard Susskind, Professor Richard Susskind from England, who talks about how what lawyers have to do to fit into how things are changing, and when we talk when we talk about that, we're talking about maybe for the next 10 years, but we don't know what's going to happen after 2030 because computers are changing and growing so fast. We don't know what's where the the next use of technology is going to be in the practice of law, but we have to figure out as lawyers where we're going to be. We're going to have somebody just once told me, and it's rung a bell. We're not going to have customer. We don't have clients anymore. We have customers because they're out shopping for the next, the cheapest rate, the the best lawyer around. You know, they're looking at recommendations. Lawyers are going to have to figure out that we're going to have to offer flat fees instead of the hour. Going back to Kirsten's question about the hourly rate, and even the legal rates are going to have to be dramatically lower because our overhead should be smaller. You know, look at what the pandemic has done to offices generally. We don't need as much space. I'm sorry to say, Ron, we're not going to need as much space because people are going to be working remotely or sharing spaces. The old way of litigating cases back in 90, way back in 99 you know, three lawyers sitting at a table with a half a dozen paralegals and more people at the office, now it's one or two lawyers at the most, one or two paralegals at the most, and all the technology you need is in the courtroom with you. So the cost of litigating is is less, and we're finding alternative ways to litigate, not litigate, resolve cases and disputes by mediating. So we're going to have to figure out how to budget a case and tell a client in advance because it makes sense for a business owner. Ron, you're you're a successful business owner. Does it make sense for you to invest $100,000 in a project to make $100,000 profit. In other words, get back $200,000 Are you going to spend $100,000 to make $100,000 over a period of five years?

Ron Bockstahler: Absolutely not, because you're also introducing risk, right? So,

George Bellas: well, that's right. Makes sense. But I haven't even gotten to risk you, and so it it it is is that a good business model? No. Well, let's drop down. Let's take those numbers down another zero. Let's say your claim is worth 220 $1,000 Are you going to spend as a business owner? Are you going to spend $10,000 to get back your $20,000 No. without even factoring into the risk. Well, lawyers have to sit back and slap themselves in the heads and said, "What are we doing here? You know, I've done that with looked at judges and cases and little cases like that, and I said, "I looked at the judge and I said, 'Why are we?'" Here and arguing about 3000 $5,000 when it's costing our clients, you know, just just for us to be here $1,000 it's stupid. So we have to find new ways to resolve issues. We have to learn how to run our practices like businesses. We have to know what the costs of litigation are. We have to figure out. Lawyers can't even figure out how to make how how to affect what a profit margin is and how it affects into it because they don't teach us business in law school. So we're going to have to figure out just how to fit into this. And going back to what Professor Suskind says about it, you know where where this is going to be, where we're going to be is hard to tell. But he he asks this question of lawyers, and it's a great question, and it's what and this goes back to what Kirsten was asking before about using technology, and it's what elements of a lawyer's current workload could be undertaken differently, more quickly, more cheaply, more efficiently, or to a higher quality using alternative methods of working? And that's really the question that we lawyers have to figure out: What is the alternative method of working? You know, we only have so many hours in the day. Although lately, with the pandemic and working remotely, it seems like I have 20-four hours a day of work and seven days a week. But that's just because my office is right downstairs, so interesting, and and I think the pandemic, to put things into context, is forcing us to more so than ever to reevaluate and rethink how we are going to use technology, and more importantly, how we are going to practice.

Ron Bockstahler: So, Geo, you brought up analytics. Can you talk a little bit about litigation finance and how that's going to how that's affecting the legal industry? I

George Bellas: don't think it's changed it that much. I think it's a way it's a way for lawyers to get instead of going to the bank and getting a line of credit, which most of us who've done litigation know about and use, is just another source of financing. I don't think it's I don't think it's changed anything. I think the broader question is the ethics of litigation financing and and the impact or the involvement of the finance company in the litigation and whether that should be a factor in how you resolve the case. I think it's more of an ethical issue than it is a business side of it.

Ron Bockstahler: So let's take that and talk about the alternative ownership proposals that are out there for ownership of a law firm.

George Bellas: Okay,

Ron Bockstahler: is it good? Is it bad? Where's it going to go?

George Bellas: Well, I think I think the accounting industry is a good example of that concept. You know, accounting firms. What what is it? The big four now or the big two? I'm not sure.

Ron Bockstahler: Big four.

George Bellas: Yeah, and before it was the big 12, the big 16, and now it's dwindled down. Accounting has changed. The Andersen's involvement in Enron kind of demonstrated that when you had consultants who were doing all the work and caused a lot of the problems. But the the point is, with accounting firms, they found out that after with technology, a lot of the routine things that they were doing were being taken over by machines. QuickBooks has changed small business accounting. 90 plus 90% plus of small businesses use QuickBook. QuickBooks. I remember back in the late '90s when I asked my accountants, I said, "What about this QuickBooks? And they said, "It's nothing. It's a check-writing program. The next year they came in. I handed my QuickBooks report and said, "Here's my, here are my journals. And they said, "Well, what do we do with them? Well, the next year after that, they came in training people how to use QuickBooks, but in order to keep making money, the accounting firms had to figure out new ways to generate revenue. So they started selling investments. They started doing other things. They started offering business consulting services, and so they; those other areas became profit centers. Well, the law firms are doing the same thing. I know of a law firm that developed a side business and hired a couple of techies, and they're now that side business is now offering security services. For their clients in technology, and that's still own their partners with this other firm. But why should they have to set up a separate business to do that? Why can't they do it in house? I don't know if I think that's where we're going to go. We're going to have lawyers are going to find alternative ways of generating revenue, going back 30 years now, when lawyers first started offering to sell life insurance to their estate planning clients, and there was a big to do: how can a lawyer sell life insurance and make a profit, a commission, selling insurance to their clients. Well, the fact of the matter is, they do, and they did. Does that make does that mean they shouldn't be a partner with an insurance agent who is licensed and experienced in doing that? I don't see why, but so what? It it it it will happen because it's a matter of survival,

Ron Bockstahler: so it'll it'll make the system better. Is I think where we're going.

George Bellas: I don't know if it's a system so much, Ron, as the it'll make it'll change the practice of law, and the practice of law will eventually adapt to the to the rest of the business world because the the legal world is always the last one to change anything. We're reluctant to change anything.

Kirsten Mayfield: It sounds all more client focused. You're trying to solve a client's full problem versus just solving a certain segment.

George Bellas: Yeah, but remember, Kirsten, they're customers. They're not clients anymore.

Kirsten Mayfield: Ah, yes.

George Bellas: All right, so yeah, what does the customer need, and what can a lawyer do to satisfy that customer? You know, maybe maybe we ought to start washing their cars when they show up at the office as a side business. You know, I I it's it's the imagination. The only thing that's going to limit the lawyer in the practice, from doing anything like that, is their own imagination. But there are lawyers that are being creative about doing it.

Ron Bockstahler: So let's kind of-I gotta-we're gonna jump a little bit. You got so many great successes in practicing law cases one, but you got two industries that you've you've made major changes in. So Kirsten mentioned the first one. Let's talk about the SUVs. You know, you go back to the Ford. You you had a case. We'll let you talk about it. The Ford Explorer. You had a huge settlement, but it also was groundbreaking as far as changing. I guess how they're manufacturing the SUVs. Talk about that for us. It give you an idea of what you did and and how it's changed the world.

George Bellas: Right place at the right time, my colleague Bob Clifford had a case that asked me to get involved with involved a Ford Explorer rollover, and we were at the right time in the case when the recall of all the Ford Explorers with Firestone tires took place in August of 2000, and because I was familiar with the documents that we had managed to get out of the manufacturer, I became a very popular lawyer across the United States. So the right person, the right time, the right events took place, but and I can't take credit for this. There were many, many lawyers involved with this, and we changed the lawyers changed how these vehicles are manufactured. There's there is not a, and I take no credit for this. There is not a safety feature in a car that was not adopted by the manufacturers without litigation. Seat belts, padded windshields, protective coating on windshields so that people didn't dive through the front windshield, side airbags, airbags in general, even the types of airbags that were used, all of that was a result of litigation that forced the manufacturers to change. And as a result of that, the lawyers really litigated themselves out of a practice area because as the vehicles became safer and people were not as dramatically injured as they were before died. There, there's less incentive for us to take on those kinds of cases. Now, lawyers are going to be dealing with another issue in cars as they become smarter and they rely more and more on computers. And what happens if the chip fails and the vehicle collapses, which is what happened to the airbags a couple years ago. So lawyers better learn about technology and vehicles, otherwise they're not going to be able to figure out what where the fault is.

Ron Bockstahler: Right to that point, my wife was talking to me this morning about her minivan, which is an electric minivan, and an issue with the side door, and she said, "Yeah, it's an upgrade. I got." Drop it off. They could do a computer or you know technology upgrade. Like wow, things have changed.

Kirsten Mayfield: I've crashed the computer systems on two vehicles. Actually,

George Bellas: congratulations,

Kirsten Mayfield: dealers. Yeah, thank you. All in one week.

Ron Bockstahler: Personally, for your benefit, when I was young and when George was young, there were no seat belts in a car. Ah,

George Bellas: that's right. I remember my dad's my sitting in my dad's 1955 Oldsmobile and crawling into the back window and and and waving at the cars or putting my face against the window, waving at cars. There were no seatbelts.

Kirsten Mayfield: Was that back in the time when you could be drinking a beer while you drove, like going camping.

George Bellas: Yes,

Kirsten Mayfield: the good old days.

George Bellas: Yeah, good old days. You know, I was a prosecutor, and in the good old days, we could prosecutors could not convict a person of DUI because the jurors sat there and said, "Well, there, but for the grace of God, go I. And so they let people go, and then Mothers Against Drunk Driving came along, and that that changed the whole dynamics of

Kirsten Mayfield: DUIs. It's so funny because there's always a proponent, right, that's forcing this like change. So it kind of wraps around to what's happening in the legal industry, the proponent that's causing change right now is pandemic, not necessarily individuals.

George Bellas: Yeah, I think yes, that's a good observation, Kirsten. There's going to be a lot of changes coming out of this, but it's not just in law; it's in everything we do.

Ron Bockstahler: Let's talk about office space. Do you see people coming back to the way it was? Do you see law firms going back to the same amount of space? I mean, where do you? What do you? No, no,

George Bellas: no. I think I think your business model, terms of shared space, is probably something work shared workplace is something that is is going to be taken advantage more and more, but I think law firms are going to be looking very carefully at how much space they actually need. I know a couple of firms downtown Chicago that are taking on more space because they're taking have to take on more lawyers because they're busy. But I also know a couple of others are looking at their space and saying we don't need to do this because we're we know that we could split an office between two. But that's not a new concept. You know that, Ron. That's what built your business. I mean, Arthur Andersen years ago used to have shared offices, you know, because their consultants would go from city to city, and they would they would walk into a blank office, they would plug in their computer, their name would pop up, and all of a sudden, the pictures on the wall matched what they they needed, so they'd made it comfortable for them. This is not a new concept. It's just that we're learning that we can take advantage of concepts like that in the practice of law.

Ron Bockstahler: I found it interesting that the ABA came out with formal opinion 498 on march 10 of this year that addresses virtual practice,

George Bellas: which kind of demonstrates the the utility of the ABA going forward. You know, it took them a year to come up with that, but the ABA has always had different dynamics involved. You know, the practice of law, just like politics and everything else, has become fractured. There's two different factions that are always competing with each other, and the ABA has been the battleground for those factions for many years. The ABA's utility is probably dying in terms of what they're going to do. It probably started dying. Was it Ronald Reagan or George George Bush the first said that in making decisions about who to appoint to the Supreme Court, they were no longer going to consider the opinions of the American Bar Association. So that you know they they radically the bar the American Bar Association used to evaluate candidates and give an opinion. Yeah, this is a good jurist, but because he is a jur you know good, not nothing to do with the politics of it. But this is a well. This is the person out of a million lawyers in the country. This is the guy we went on the Supreme Court. A lady we went on the Supreme Court.

Ron Bockstahler: Up to that point, it was guy. You know, you got another area of law. I think you had some major changes, and you had a. I want to say a class action against some hospitals that were overbilling people without insurance. Can we talk about that? Kind of tell us what you did there and and what that was about.

George Bellas: Yeah, we fell on our face, lost a lot of money.

Ron Bockstahler: Okay. You win some, you lose some.

George Bellas: Yeah, we the the concept was a good one in terms of being consumer friendly or helping the consumers, and that is they. Were charging the uninsured more than they were charging the insured, and frequently the uninsured had less money to pay anything. So, a couple of hospitals changed their policies. We helped change. I know for a fact we helped change the policies in one hospital, but the idea was to make this a national class action, and we failed. But it's still the whole concept of what is what hospitals charge. Even the uninsured still needs remedying. the the The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare was an attempt to do that, and politics got in the way. People are still paying too much for healthcare.

Kirsten Mayfield: Have you ever read the book "The Price We Pay" Ron actually bought that for our full company about the insurance and the healthcare payment system.

George Bellas: No, I've read another book called "Healthcare Fraud.

Ron Bockstahler: Why, along the same lines?

George Bellas: Yeah, probably.

Ron Bockstahler: Gio, talk us talks us through like a few things about your firm and what you guys are doing today.

George Bellas: My firm does business litigation. I have a partner who was my partner. He became my partner. We started out as my law clerk. He never left. So we have disparate practices. He does a lot of personal injury workers' comp cases. I do more business orientated stuff, and the kind of stuff we do is representing small businesses and helping them deal with everyday problems, everything from employees to protecting their trade secrets to dealing with employment issues, we try to help our small business owners as much as possible.

Ron Bockstahler: So there's something unique about you because I was reading about you, and I'm like, God, this is a guy that I would like to work with. You know, you just can't say that about a lot of attorneys when you go and read their website or you read about what they put out there, or if you just have a conversation with them. So, what is a you got to have a couple things there in your trick bag? You're not telling us that makes you unique.

George Bellas: I've always thought that putting the interests of the clients first above your own was a way to practice law. So that our goal is to help people, not necessarily to make. If we make money, it should be incidental to helping people. And I and I'm lucky. I I work with lawyers who are very good at doing exactly that. They're very smart. They're a lot smarter than I am. I just I like working with people and helping people, somehow or another, that's translated into some kind of a modicum of success.

Ron Bockstahler: So successful attorneys, I think, think the same way. We had a gentleman, Doug Church, on the show. He was celebrating his 50th year successful practice, and he had a saying, if I recall what it was, was if you're if you're practicing law because you love what you're doing, you'll make money. If you're out to make money, you'll always be miserable because you'll never make enough. And it just amazing stuck with me.

George Bellas: Well, I think lawyers are kind of unique in what we do. I talk to a lot of people my age who are who have talked about retirement and don't retire for the same reason that I can never retire, and that is I do not know what I could do that would take the place of something as consistently challenging and interesting as the practice of law, and working with different people every day and helping them deal with their individual problems. You know, we're not just lawyers. We're sometimes we're counselors, therapists, but it's challenging. Every day is a new challenge. So, what would I do if I didn't practice law that would give me the same intellectual challenge that I would have if I had to sit home and watch Andy Griffith reruns all day long? You know, put a gun to my head. If if even if I had to, if I had the ability to practice to golf every day. I'd still have a problem because after you know, I'd live on a golf course and I join the club and I'd be playing the same 18 holes every day. You know, that does not somehow present an intellectual challenge. The only thing you could look forward to every night is a new the new New York Times crossword puzzle. That's about it.

Ron Bockstahler: So let talk about mental health. The mental health issues that are well documented in the legal industry. How do we address those?

George Bellas: I don't think we could do anything more than society is doing in general to help with their with mental health issues. I don't. I don't think. I don't think there's anything different in terms of treating lawyers who have problems than society. I do know that the the stress of the practice results in a more substance abuse amongst practitioners, and that has to do with the stress. And I think we're becoming more attuned to it. You know, when I first started practicing, everybody went to lunch and had a Manhattan at lunch. We don't do that anymore. You know, I remember litigating against certain lawyers and always wanting to deal with them after lunch because I knew that they were drunk by 130 in the afternoon, and I also knew that certain judges were drunk at 130 in the afternoon. You know, the old stories were judges. I had I had a judge fall asleep on me once. You know, so I actually asked to make a noise and to to kind of get his get him to open up his eyes, and then it it just are you okay? Is are you just sleeping, or do I have to call an ambulance? All right. So just like every practice, every every industry, there there there are things that we have to deal with, and we'll figure it out.

Kirsten Mayfield: So I'm gonna point back to what you said earlier that your desk and your work is only just downstairs, and how does that affect if we're gonna go more towards that being the norm for lawyers and they have a stressful work environment already? How's that all gonna wrap together? What are your predictions?

George Bellas: I don't think it's going to change anything, Kirsten. So, so my so my my practice in my office is down the hall, downstairs, upstairs. But the point is that it's not in my bedroom, it's not in my kitchen, it's not in my living room, and so I could walk away from it. And I I try to do that just like I did at the office. I think the convenience of doing this is is really what what is going to drive a lot of things, you know. And it's not got to do more with the offices in my practice, has got to go going to court. I mean, I live out. I live 36 miles away from the courts in Chicago. For me to get downtown to go to court is an ordeal. You know, I get up, shower, shave, put on a fancy suit, sit in the car for an hour, hour and a half, and then walk into a court. Walk into a courtroom. Sit there for an hour, listening to 20 other cases heard before me, so I could stand up in front of a judge, say good morning, judge, continue the case for 30 days, and then drive another hour back home or to the office or whatever, we don't do that anymore. You know, roll out of bed, put on. My wife makes fun of me. I and I put on a shirt, a tie, and a sport coat, and wear sweatpants and no shoes, and and I get and I go to court by Zoom, and I do the same thing I used to do. It takes five minutes with the Zoom, email draft order to the judge, and half an hour later, I'm back doing whatever I want to do. This is going to change the practice of law, and it's not just so much in the big city; it's particularly going to be changing the law in rural communities where a lawyer maybe has to cover five different counties and has to drive an hour to to get to each county seat on a two-lane highway. They don't have to do that anymore. They can now cover all five courtrooms in five different counties in one morning and become and be more efficient. This is Zoom is is is creating the efficiency, and lawyers are still adapting to it. I mean, I see lawyers getting on. I do a weekly webinar for lawyers on the use of technology in the modern practice, and there are still lawyers who sit there and have to have either their grandchildren or somebody help them open up the Zoom window so they could participate in the webinar by Zoom. But that will change, you know. There was a time where lawyers didn't know how to use a fax machine, but they got somehow they figured that out.

Kirsten Mayfield: I mean, we have to harken back to the famous now cat filter. Then that was a brilliant moment that the whole world got to enjoy because of technology. So it's bringing joy too.

George Bellas: True, but you know people don't appreciate there are a lot of funny things that happen in a courtroom. There are a lot of. Things that have lawyers. Lawyers are, for the most part, are very intelligent, clever, and they have a great sense of humor. You just have to see. You have to see the humor sometimes. There was there was a lawyer who was very good at silent flatulence, and he would walk while he was addressing the jury. He would stop in front of opposing counsel's table and flatulate, and then walk away. That was hysterical, right? To see that, and he was doing it. He was doing it on purpose. It's fun. It's funny.

Kirsten Mayfield: What do you even do? Like you can't objection.

George Bellas: Yeah. Hello, Your Honor. Fred just farted in front of our console table.

Kirsten Mayfield: There's nothing never unfunny about a fart joke.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, George, this has been great. We really, really love having you on the show. We would like you to normally part asking people what there's one thing they would like to see change in the business of the law, but yeah, I want to make an exception here. And what we got a lot of 3040-year-old, listeners out there that want to have a career as as storied as yours. Can you give us some parting words of advice that they can take away with them.

George Bellas: That's a complicated. I have a complicated answer to it, which should be a simple question. All right, a

Ron Bockstahler: person. He is an attorney. It's confirmed.

George Bellas: The Kirsten, Kirsten's a young woman. Her life's life. lifespan is going to be different than you and our Ron, you and mine. She's going to live a lot longer than she even realizes because technology and medicine is is really solving a lot of problems. They're they're working on the aging gene, you know. She may look she may look this pretty for the rest of her life, which may be 150 years. So the the question for young people today entering the practice or anything else: What are you going? If you're 30 years old or 25 years old, just getting out of law school, what are you going to do for the next 100 years of your life, and think about 100 years. 100 in the year 1921 cars were still. You know, Henry did Henry Ford develop the Model T by that time. I'm not sure, but you know, we we still didn't have commercial airliners. Look at how things have changed in 100 years. What's going to be the and and change keeps accelerating. So what are going to be the changes that Kirsten's going to see in 100 years from now that she that's going to affect what she does with her life and as a career and as a profession, and and there's no way to determine that. So the only way you could be fair to somebody in that age group is to sit back and say, open your eyes, be aware of what's going on, and and realize that you're going to have a lot of other opportunities to do things that you don't even know you'll be able to do, so that that that there are jobs opening up for lawyers that we don't even know exist or don't even exist right now. I mean, is it is it unforeseeable? Is it foreseeable that a lawyer is going to be programming a computer to do certain things? It's it's not unrealistic. So you have to. I guess the best advice you could say is change is happening faster than we realize, and the only thing you can do is embrace the change and be prepared for more change.

Ron Bockstahler: Great, great words. We really appreciate you joining us on the show, Geo. Best way, okay, Geo Bellas & Wachowski, personal injury, business law. Best way for someone to reach your geo is

George Bellas: our website.

Ron Bockstahler: Website. That's go

George Bellas: figure, bellis-wachowski.com

Ron Bockstahler: Excellent. Reach out to any questions, and you and you're still working, so you're still available to take in new cases and talk to attorneys that are hearing you talk today.

George Bellas: I hope so. For a long time.

Ron Bockstahler: Thanks for listening to the show. You've been listening to 1958 Lawyer. We will talk to you next week.

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.