Ricardo Santiago: Profitable Practice, Purposeful Impact

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 hosts, Ron Bockstahler and Clinton ind 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all of that and more by exploring smarter, healthier, more flexible ways to run a law firm, no more burnout, no more outdated expectations, just real conversations with attorneys who are proving there’s a better way.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: Okay, welcome to the show. I’m your host and the founder of Amata, Ron Bockstahler, along with my co host and business partner, Clint Inn. Clint, how are we doing today?

Clinton Ind: I think we’re doing great, Ron. I’m very excited about today. As we know, Ricardo has a lot of great information to give and a lot of great insight into the practice of law and the business of law. So I’m really looking forward to this one.

Ron Bockstahler: So Ricardo, welcome to the show. Let’s start off a quick introduction about yourself, type of law you practice, and kind of your little background where you came from.

Ricardo Santiago: Hi. Ron Clint, thank you both for having me in the show. I’m very excited to come in here and have that conversation with the both of you. So yes, my name is Ricardo Santiago. I am a family law attorney, and I started my own firm. It’s been around for about nine months, and right now, the main focus of the firm is family law and working with traditionally underserved communities.

Ron Bockstahler: That’s good, because we want to talk about how you are able to serve the underserved communities but still make and you know, have a profitable law firm to support your family, that’s kind of a tricky slope. So let’s start right there. Like you kind of family law, you’re going after the clients that are generally being ignored by many of the other firms. How are you doing it? And you got is, are you working on a special pay structure, or you just a lot of clients? What’s the secret sauce here?

Ricardo Santiago: You know, I think the secret is the moment in time that we find ourselves in. It’s a paradigm shift, and you just have to be able to take advantage of the opportunities available right now. The traditional model for family law firms is the billable hour, which, you know, brings us back to the name of the show itself, which is, you know why that billable hour exists to begin with? But yes, right now, the main, the main model that friends use the billable hour, and you can have lawyers in Chicago that charge somewhere from around 300 upwards to like 600 or more per hour, and that’s about the range that you see. So if I were to get divorced, I probably would not be able to afford a lawyer myself. Is what you hear a lot of lawyers say. You know, I would not be able to afford my divorce lawyer. So you start to think, Okay, is there a better way to do this? And so either you have the money to go ahead and hire a law firm, or you don’t have the money, and you turn to Legal Aid. Now, one of the issues that you find is that if you turn to Legal Aid, it’s free, as long as you fall within certain guidelines. So in other words, if you make a certain amount of money, then you don’t qualify for legal aid.

Clinton Ind: I’m sure that’s a low threshold, right? That’s not a big threshold. Yeah, right, correct.

Ricardo Santiago: And so that makes it really difficult, because that leaves most of the population without access to a law firm because they cannot afford it, and outside of legal aid because they make too much, but they still have those legal needs. They still have the need for legal services. So then what is the solution? There are a few things coming into play here. So Illinois law provides for plaid fee as a method of payment. It allows for things such as unbundled services and limited scope representation. Those are great, and the state of Illinois is trying to get these methods of representation to be accessible for everyone. However, there are some issues, and there’s a reason you don’t see these very often, and that is because a lot of times they either tend to be not profitable or come with risks for lawyers. And so I know a lot of lawyers shy away from unbundled services and limited scope representation, because if you take a client and you say, I’m only going to help you with this one specific thing, the clients will say, Well, I don’t know how to do to do the rest. How am I going to do that? That seems like a waste of money for me to just come in you help me with this one thing. And I still have the bigger problem, if you’re doing a flat fee. Fees by themselves, it could also become a problem, because if, for example, you’re doing a divorce in Illinois, and the parties are very litigious, it’s a very contested case, and you charge the flat fee, and then all of a sudden you have all this work that you need to do. Well then it’s not profitable for the firm, because now you have to stick with the engagement agreement that you signed. And so you see a lot of firms who say, I’m not doing flat fees, I am not doing limited scope representation. This is the worst billable hour. And then back restart.

Ron Bockstahler: It’s funny, you know, you brought it up a minute ago. 1958 lawyer, where we got our name from, the billable hour has been around that long. Is it time for a change? Was that 60 mass not very good? It’s 60 years plus years that we’ve been doing it the same way. So essentially, we’re bringing it up now. You mentioned that state of Illinois allows flat fee and then limited representation. So all states don’t allow that.

Ricardo Santiago: So I am not sure about all the states. I’m sure most of the states have some similar method, and though the real driver behind all of this is that there’s a huge shortage of lawyers,

Clinton Ind: which you wouldn’t think of, I’ve never heard that. Yeah, I’ve never heard anybody say that. Words have never been uttered, that you’re the first person

Ricardo Santiago: you know. I remember taking the train when I was younger, before I even went to law school, before I even considered going to law school, I took the train. And the train was going in front of the Harold Washington library, which in Chicago, which, if you can, you know, picture that is right in front you can look down the street where John Marshall used to be. John Marshall Law School. It’s now part of UIC, and I remember two lawyers talking to one another on the train, saying, you see that school right there? They’re just pumping a lot of lawyers. There’s too many lawyers. The market is saturated with lawyers. But Ron Clint less than 0.4% of the population in the United States are lawyers,

Ron Bockstahler: and that includes judges. Point Zero 4% is that? What that is?

Ricardo Santiago: I mean, there’s different statistics right Wherever you look, but that’s around where the number is, and that includes uh, judges, that includes prosecutors, that includes law clerks, includes criminal law attorneys and civil practice lawyers. And so if you look at private practice, the number is smaller, of course, like something like 0.35 if you look at civil practice alone, that’s somewhere along the lines of 0.2 so it’s a very small number of lawyers.

Clinton Ind: I agree we do

Ricardo Santiago: for the civil practice that includes things like your family law, your personal injury, your intellectual property, your education, employment law, all these things. So if you really look at the actual practice area, the number becomes incredibly small, and then you find that a lot of lawyers tend to go to the cities, to the larger cities, Chicago in Illinois, for example, Rockford Springfield. But a lot of states have this problem where the rural areas are being left without lawyers. In Illinois, there is a program called the rural program initiative, I believe I’m getting the name right, where they’re trying to incentivize lawyers to go and practice in rural areas, because there is that huge shortage of lawyers. So when you ask me, Is this a problem that you see in other states? I think so. I think you have the same problem in Illinois. I mean, I know number of other states do have this problem. And so when you are when you’re trying to figure out who you’re going to serve, you look at some of the rural Illinois areas. And in Illinois, many of those counties, they have one or two private practice attorneys for the entire county. And those lawyers, they’re usually in their 50s, 60s, 70s, about to retire. I just heard a couple of months ago that harden County in Southern Illinois, they just lost their only Civil Practice attorney. That’s in private. They have a

Clinton Ind: county courthouse, obviously, right? They have a courthouse and no civil practice attorneys. That’s fascinating.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, we’re not even talking about the worst part is all those attorneys are generalists, right? So they’re not specific. We all live in the city, big city, where everyone’s a specialist. You know, Ricardo, your family law attorney, you’re not really dealing with probate work or just general rule. I think it becomes a bigger issue when you start talking to attorneys that are trying to be a generalist and know a little bit about everything, the quality of the practice goes down.

Ricardo Santiago: Yes, if you’re looking for. Very detailed work, but, and, but here’s the thing, where, where it becomes important to to see where the opportunities lie. Because if you are dealing with a high net worth client, for example, yes, you’re going to need that specialized knowledge, right? Because you have something very specific and you need to deal with it if you’re if you look a lot of the Legal Aid models they give clients, their clients just the tools they need to solve their legal problems. And if you’re looking at individuals without a lot of assets, without a lot of complex matters, then you find that, yes, you can still be a specialist in your area, the issues are not as as big, and a lot of the problem that we have is the lack of knowledge, the lack of education for the general public as to what a legal issue actually is. So most people don’t know. Most people’s most people’s problems are not within the substantive law, but within the procedural law, where they say, I have this problem. I don’t even know where to start.

Clinton Ind: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? We learned that. I remember learning that at the start of my practice, we had one older counsel it out at my firm, and there were two aspects to his whole practice. One was, if you can’t beat him on substance, then beat him on procedure, right? And vice versa. If you can’t beat him on procedure, beat him on substance, the procedure. And the Code of Civil Procedure, we’ve talked on this show a little bit with other attorneys about, you know, how you can use it to really formulate your own specialized practice and use it in a way that that makes your type of practice unique, but it is a very detailed code, and it is very difficult and daunting to anybody who doesn’t know it for sure.

Ron Bockstahler: Yeah. Nice. So Ricardo, let’s jump in your bilingual attorney, and I know, just from you know, the motto when we’re out hiring paralegals and admins and trying to find qualified, candidates that are bilingual, which is a big challenge. I gotta think it’s an even bigger challenge to find attorneys that are bilingual, that can support the need to be bilingual. So can you talk a little bit what you’re seeing out there, as far as competitors? I guess if you call competitors, other attorneys doing what you’re doing, and how are you working with how are you networking with other attorneys to share caseload?

Ricardo Santiago: Yes, so you’re correct. There’s not a lot of bilingual lawyers out there. And here’s the thing, it’s not just the bilingual part of it, it’s also the bicultural part of it. And so yes, you have a lot of lawyers who speak Spanish or different languages, but to be able to connect with the people that that you’re trying to serve who speak Spanish, it’s not just the language barrier, it’s the cultural barrier, right? And here’s a really good example. I heard that another lawyer, and, you know, English speaking lawyer, American lawyer, in in another state mentioned, I think, I think there was a LinkedIn post, I believe they said, for your divorce, you don’t want to hire a pit bull lawyer. You want to hire Fox, who’s going to be in there and calculating and be able to get you the result that you want without the fight. And I say, okay, so what if that lawyer is making the same pitch to a Hispanic community? Well, within the Hispanic community, you look at a fox, and you look at the fox as a deceitful animal, someone who you cannot trust.

Ron Bockstahler: Right now, we’re talking about the attorneys I know,

Clinton Ind: present company accepted, of course,

Ricardo Santiago: that is, you know, it’s not just a language. It really has to be the culture as well that you have to consider. So as far as my clients and my my colleagues, I do have these conversations every now and then. I do go out to to lunch with with other lawyers. I actually went to lunch with a friend of mine from from law school maybe three, four months ago, and we were having this same discussion where she’d tell me, how are you getting your clients? Because she’s Colombian, and she tells me, You know, I am reaching out to to people. And every now and then I get a client who will, you know, ask me for referrals, and, you know, I’ll give out their referrals. But I don’t, I don’t know if they’re actually going to call because they’re mistrustful of lawyers. And I tell her, Well, you know, you have to develop that credibility within the cultural through the cultural lens, because that’s what’s going to get you the credibility. It’s not just that you speak Spanish, because if you go to a large enough law firm, they will have law clerks, they will have. Have paralegals, legal assistants who speak Spanish, but not the actual lawyer. So how do you as a lawyer, get that that client to trust you? Well, you show that cultural competency. In my case, for example, I started posting on Instagram, and at first it was just a little experiment. I started posting things in Spanish to the Spanish audience, and I said, you know, I’m going to post my my schedule, link for consultations. I put it on Instagram, and I go to sleep. Next thing I know, my calendar is like, booked from people who need those services, because I’m explaining things right now. I’m not giving legal advice. I’m putting out substantive law in the sense that in a way that would get me in trouble with ARDC. I’m presenting legal information, which you can present legal information without giving legal advice, but once you make it simple. Once you explain it in a way that people can look at it, take it in, digest it and understand it, then they’ll look at you and they’ll say that person knows what they’re talking about, even though it’s like the simplest thing you can say in front of a screen. And so that’s what I was explaining to my client. Look, if you can just let the average person know in very simple terms, what the law is, or what the process is, or what it is they need to do, what is the next step that they need to take. You can begin to develop that sense of confidence in you.

Ron Bockstahler: So I want to roll this back, because you got a solid book of business, is what I’m hearing, and you’ve picked up that business by first building your credibility within the community that you’re focused on through social media.

Ricardo Santiago: So yes, so yes, and no, I am purposely trying to keep the book of business a little lean right now, because I’m trying to take the firm in a different direction. Right now, the firm is mostly virtual. Like I said. It’s only nine months old, so it just started. I don’t want to fill my my, my business, my book of business, with traditional cases, because, remember, that’s what we’re trying to get away from, traditional cases. And so, you know, I’ll say I’m expecting a baby in the coming months, so I’m

Clinton Ind: also, yeah, you don’t want to have too much of a book while you’re while you’re changing diamonds, right?

Ricardo Santiago: But, but, yes, the goal is going to be to take advantage of technology so that we’re able to take on more clients and help them the way that they need to be helped, without taking up all of my time, right? Because, again, if you look back at the billable hour model, how do you make money? You build a lot of hours. I spent 1015, hours at the office, and that’s not what we want to do. We do want to take up advantage of the flat fees. We do want to take opportunity of advantage of the limited scope of representation where possible. But at the same time, we want to give we want to educate people, give them the opportunity to handle things themselves to the extent possible, while still providing them service, legal services, legal advice, illegal products, even, and retaining time for for myself, in my case, once the firm scales, any attorney that comes In work. Work, for me, I want them to also be able to have that time with their family, not be tied to a double hour requirement.

Ron Bockstahler: Ricardo, you just, you just made this a really special show, because you just went into some business strategy for a solo practicing law firm, and we had Pat Cotter on the show, not just, not too far ago, a couple weeks ago, and Pat had just retired. And one of the things Clinton, you remember, we talked about technology, AI, because we’re out talking to our clients about Lexus sex, Lexus Nexus, AI, and, you know, we host and host office hours to have some of our young attorneys come in and understand what it is. And a lot of them are just afraid of it. And one thing that Pat really hit on was plaintiff attorneys are all over this technology, and for the one primary reason, they’re not billing by the hour. I mean, Clinton, what’s your thoughts on that?

Clinton Ind: That’s it’s the efficiency. I mean, I think everything you’re talking about Ricardo is is fascinating, because what I’m hearing is, you know, you’re still employing all the different potential revenue models for your firm, but your big difference is the use of technology to be massively efficient so that you can take a flat fee case and still be profitable, right? So you’re not stuck, you know, at a loss, like you said at the start of this. Episode, you can do a discrete task and and you know, through your ability to do that quickly, you can be profitable with that task. You know, and even if you’re billing hours at a much lower rate, I’m assuming, because of the different model that you’re using, you can still be profitable because you’re using technology to get those out is that, is that a fair assessment of where you’re at in your practice?

Ricardo Santiago: Yes, that is correct. In the coming months, I am looking to rely on technology even more so to hopefully vegetable hour altogether.

Ron Bockstahler: Ricardo, can you share with us some of the technology, like the tech stacks that you’re looking at, because I think I read somewhere that you mentioned maybe it’s on your website that you’ve got to start off with a complicated tech stack, but you can gradually build up to and it sounds like that’s what you’re doing.

Ricardo Santiago: Yes, that is correct. So you don’t need a whole lot, if you’re, you know, just going out on your own, starting solo law firm, you don’t need a lot of tech. You just need basic office 365 software to be able to, you know, do the work your computer. But then you can automate so many things. In my case, for example, I don’t even pick up the phone for clients. And it’s like we went the first thing you you see when you jump on LinkedIn and look at all these successful lawyers, your phone has to be ringing. Your phone has to be ringing. Yeah, it’s a way of saying you need to be getting clients in the door, right. But, but I don’t literally, my phone actually doesn’t ring that much because all of my leads are funneled through a scheduling link. And so in my case, I use Calendly, which is, you know, a lot of people use Clio, it’s, they have the same services, but if you’re doing using Clio, then you’re looking at a more robust tech stack. And if you’re just starting, Calendly is perfect, or any competitor for Calendly, but if you go to my website, you find my link. I don’t think you even see my phone number on my website, but you see my scheduling link, and if you go through the scheduling link, it has my intake as part of the link, and so I don’t need to pick up the phone spend an hour doing intake. I don’t need to have an assistant doing intake on the phone. And so that does several things for me. One, reduces overhead, but two, if the client is sophisticated enough to be able to answer a few questions on the computer, that tells me that they are also going to be able to receive things from me via email. I’m going to be able to communicate with them virtually, not have to put things in the mail, have them walk into the office, which is great. You know, it’s great to have people come into the office, talk to them, and meet them in person. And I do have an office space, you know, if I need to meet with clients. I use it sparingly, but a lot of the work is reduced by people having access to me via my schedule link. Well, it’s

Clinton Ind: a great idea too, because it like vets. In my mind, what I hear is it’s an automatic vet of the seriousness of the client as well, right? You don’t have to spend an hour just making sure that they actually want or need representation. You they filling out a form and you vetted them without even talking.

Ron Bockstahler: That is correct. Even before that, he’s decided on who his clientele is, and he can focus on this is who I’m going after. I’m not going to go after the broad swath of the market. I’m going to go after this specific group, and I’m doing really, really good with this group. And like I said, moving away from the billable hour, it sounds like a great, great idea, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

Ricardo Santiago: Yes, that that is, that is the goal. So far, it’s working. I started doing free consultations, but, you know, give them access to the link. It filled up really quickly. I started charging a little bit now to start to weed out a little bit more people. The reason, again, I have a new addition to the family coming, so I’m trying to stay a little bit under the radar for now so that I’m able to I’m a little bit of a life. But no once, once, baby, sleeping through the night. I’m definitely going to be pushing this a little bit more, being a little bit more aggressive on, Oh,

Clinton Ind: that’s easy. I think that’s two weeks in about two weeks in Ricardo, you’ll be fine. Yeah, yeah.

Ron Bockstahler: It took you that long, Clinton, I make all six of mine. I mean, the first couple days I’m back to sleeping just fine, right? Right? Yeah. Ricardo, I want to give you a couple kudos. I know there’s not enough teachers out there, and you’re one of them. So let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing there with the paralegal program that you are nice enough to have. Clinton, I come on and talk to some of your paralegals in class. Give us an idea how that started, and what you’re doing and and what’s the need right now in the market. For paralegals,

Ricardo Santiago: there’s a big need. I I have this pet thief that this idea, if you will, too, that support staff makes or breaks the business, whether it’s a firm, you know, some other legal business, support staff, and not even legal anywhere you know, go to doctor’s office, receptionist, whoever is going to be helping you. Support staff makes or breaks the business, not even thinking, not even thinking about the substance of the law or their training, but just making great persons. And so I worked as a paralegal myself. I worked as legal assistant before going to law school, so I have been in those shoes. And I when I graduated from high school, I went to a community college, I went to Wright College, and so I got to see a lot of students struggling to make it out, make it through the education system. Then I went to a public school. I went to private school for a little bit, but I didn’t graduate from there. I graduated from Northeastern Illinois University. Then I ended up at Chicago Kent College of Law, which is a private school, and then I ended up working at one of the largest family law firms in Chicago, really in the in the entire country. If you think about it, family law is not you don’t see really large law firms. But the point that I’m trying to make is that you can be, you could come out of a community college and end up in some of the largest law firms, in some of the more prestigious firms within your field. And so when I decided that I wanted to teach, I knew that I wanted to go back to a place where students would see a professor who looks like them, who went through the same process that they are going through, and know that they can come out on the other side, successful now, again, having my own practice the goal expand eventually it’ll it shows them that they can also do it, that there’s really nothing stopping them from being able to achieve their goals, whether that be stay as a paralegal, go to law school, become a judge, whatever they want to do.

Clinton Ind: That’s fascinating. It’s a noble exercise you’re doing, for sure, and it’s, you know, having been on a class with you, it’s really great to see how the students respond to you. And I mean, you’re clearly going above and beyond by bringing in, I mean, namely Ron and myself, you know, experts in amazing in fields to really help to educate them. So, yeah, it’s a really great thing, and it’s a testament to you and and I mean, you’re bringing the profession up generally, I think so that’s great.

Ron Bockstahler: As soon as we stop talking to your class, the first thing Clinton says, I got to be able to teach.

Ricardo Santiago: Yeah, it was fun. I mean, that’s the other thing. It’s so fun, and it was such a release. And, you know, especially your class, I don’t know if that was a unique class, but they seemed eager and they seemed responsive, and they seemed like they were just soaking it all in, and any information they could get was, was, was really they were grateful for up here, seemingly. So that was really fun.

Ron Bockstahler: Yeah, yeah, absolutely yes.

Ricardo Santiago: The legal profession, I think, for too long, has been seen as this unattainable profession. Has been seen as this unreachable, untouchable profession. I remember growing up and working at law firms. Even while I was working on the law firm, I still didn’t feel comfortable going out to some of the other attorneys, you know, some of the partners. It’s just an intimidating setting. But, you know, showing students like, hey, no, look, it’s okay. You can do all these things. They’re just another person like you. And here are the tools for you to be able to reach out to them, to be able to be one of them and stand at the same level as they can. I think students really appreciate that. I think students really respond well to that. And I thank you both for having come to my class and talk to them. I know many of them were so so impressed and so thankful for both of you. It was great.

Ron Bockstahler: We actually got a couple of them reached back out on follow up. So I was very impressed. Was very impressive. We’d like, you know, we like to see those things, yeah, you know, as we’re kind of winding down, we want to talk about a couple things that you would, you know, got a lot of young attorneys, or people getting ready to become attorneys, listening to the show, couple pieces of advice, or how to get started. What would you would you throw out there Kenya, as you’ve gone through it recently? What do you want to give them? Let’s leave them with something Yes.

Ricardo Santiago: First, figure out why you want to learn your own you know, I think that’s a question everyone has to ask themselves, do you want to be an employee? Do you want to be a business owner? Do you want the freedom? And whatever your answer is. Is there a way to get that without opening your own firm? And if there’s a way to get it without opening your firm, you know, consider that first, you know, if you are looking for work life balance, for example, well, can you get that without opening your firm? Because chances are, you’re going to be spending a lot of time working on the back end of things. Opening a firm is a business, right? It’s Yes, you are a practicing attorney. You will be doing work substantive legal practice, but at the same time, it is a business, and you’re going to have to treat it like one. And if that’s so how you want to proceed, then run all the numbers that you can think of, not just how much you’re going to charge, how much you’re going to make, but also how much things are going to cost. How long is it going to take? Where are you going to be getting your clients from? Everything that you can think of. Brian, work on that first and then make the decision, okay, after looking at all the numbers, after considering all these different factors, do I still want to open my own firm? And I’ve actually met people who went through that process and they said, No, you know what? I don’t want to do that. I remember when I was in law school, I had this conversation with with a lawyer who opened up a AX throwing business. And he said, Yeah, no, I decided I didn’t want to open my own firm, and I didn’t want to be at that firm where I was anymore, so I just opened a business where people go in and they throw axes.

Ron Bockstahler: Get rid of your aggressions. I’ve taken some of my kids acts, though, and it’s actually a lot of fun.

Clinton Ind: Yeah, it is a lot of fun. Yes, it’s that’s a big leap from, I don’t want to stop my own phone, but AX throwing absolutely

Ron Bockstahler: good, yeah, yeah. Like working nights and there’s not much drinking in those places. You talked a little bit misconceptions. You gave us a little bit before the show talking about misconceptions. What are a couple of misconceptions that you want to like? Let’s put them out there right now so people stop thinking

Ricardo Santiago: about it, misconceptions, refresh my memory. A little

Ron Bockstahler: bit too much money. Not I need a lot of money to start.

Ricardo Santiago: Ah, yes, yes, yes. So don’t need a lot of money to start. You, if you have a computer that’s with basic software, again, Word Excel, you’re probably just not fine to go on your own. Of course, it depends on the type of practice, right? If you’re doing something like personal injury and you’re going to be taking medical malpractice cases, then, yeah, you might need to have some money to decide for experts and what have you. So that’s like a special situation, right? But if you’re doing some other type of practice, like family law, in my case, you don’t really need much. You don’t even need an entity name, right? Because you can just go and practice under your your own name. Question, this was a decision that I had to make when I started myself, like, Do I even want the entity name? Because if you’re applying off as a solo and you start with an LLC, for example, yes, technically, it’s an entity of its own. And this is not legal advice. I’ll preface this that way, but the corporate veil is probably not going to protect you if you are the only member of your company, because you’re still this whole decision maker, and it’s going to be really easy to pierce the corporate veil. So you just spent money and effort and time to create that entity that’s not going to protect you.

Ron Bockstahler: We got to get you on with Gary savine Our next guest next week. You know, I’ll push back on that. I’m this is not legal advice, and I’m not even an attorney, just the CEO of organizations that’s worked with 1000s of law firms. You know, I have a client. Well, she just passed away two weeks ago and had not incorporated, and it’s a nightmare in probate. If you’re not incorporated, it leaves the contracts you had sitting out there prior to the estate now owes on those contracts. There’s no getting out of them because it wasn’t a separate LLC. So I’d kind of push back on that, looking at a little further on, making sure you do incorporate, I highly recommend anyone does. That’s the, probably my first thing, I want to find that job that start where I don’t got to have a lot of money. And I agree with you, you know, you’re already an attorney, so you’ve already spent an ungodly amount of money just becoming an attorney, you can actually start. I think the biggest thing for attorneys starting off is getting clients. That’s kind of like, how do I build that client base? You know, at Amata, we sponsor a program. You went to Chicago, Kent, they have an incubator program there. It’s last year. When you get out, you join the incubator program. For last 1214, years, I’ve been involved with that incubator program at Amata, offering them free services. There’s whatever they need. It’s office space, virtual it’s a phone number we give. That to them for free, so they can get that first year under the belt without having the cost of doing any of those things. And it’s been amazing to me, some of the attorneys we’ve seen come out of that, as I look back been with this 10 years and how they’ve progressed and developed and grew their firm in a very smart, economical way, and now they’re living a great life, like a full, balanced life, and enjoying the practice law without getting burnout. So that’s kind of the A couple things I would add there, that there’s a lot of ways to do it, so I totally agree with that portion

Ricardo Santiago: of it. Yeah, that’s the goal. That’s the goal.

Ron Bockstahler: Yes, awesome. Last Word. I’ll leave Clinton. You got anything you want to finalize? I’ll call that my last word. I’ll shut up. What else you want to finish up with? No, I

Clinton Ind: think it’s great. I mean, it’s really, it’s really an amazing thing. When you know attorneys graduate, they realize they don’t want to be at a big firm, and they’ve got this entrepreneurial spirit, this desire to help people who are especially like you, Santi Ricardo, who have identified a market of people who have otherwise not been served, and really want to go out and serve them. So I I just love talking to people like you. I love the entrepreneurial spirit, and especially that that method you found of being able to live a full life and a happy life and and a happy practice of law. So congratulations to you. It’s really fantastic. I’d love to have you on in nine months after you, after your baby is sleeping, and after you’ve built out this tech stack in this new AI to see how things are going. It’d be great.

Ron Bockstahler: Oh, I’d agree that was right. On my list is like, we’d want to get you back on the show, see where you’re at, 912, 10 months or 10 months from now. And let’s, yeah, let’s see what you’re saying then. Because I think it’s going to be, you’re going to see some great success. Is how I feel, where you’re going. So, Santiago, you got the last word? Santiago. Ricardo, God Clinton, what’d you do?

Ricardo Santiago: I did that. I did that. Oh, thank you both for having me. This was great again. I’m super excited to see where this goes. You know, 912, months, I’m pretty sure we’ll be we’ll be doing. Well, yeah, if everything’s going the same direction that it’s going now, will will definitely be fine. And would love to talk to you guys again here on the show, and definitely looking forward to staying in touch with both of you outside of the show. And yeah, no, you know, thank you again for for having me. This was great.

Ron Bockstahler: Ricardo, you’re a special person. Thanks for being on the show. We really appreciate it. You got a friend in Life for life with Clint and myself and Amata. So love to see you. Thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you next week. Our special guest, Gary savine, who I’m going to add to been with Amata just over 10 years as a client, and we’re going to be talking about how to hold on to your success when employees turn on you. So Gary does employment labor practice specializes in working with law firms. So join us next week. We appreciate everyone.

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