Richie Marrero: Rethinking Benefits for Law Firms

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 No more outdated expectations.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: Welcome to the 1958 Lawyer, the podcast about the business of law. I’m your co-host Ron Bockstahler, along with my partner Clinton End. In 1958, the ABA published an article that sparked the birth of the billable hour, and the legal profession hasn’t looked back since. This show is about what comes next? Each episode, we sit down with attorneys, business leaders, and the people who support them to talk honestly about what it takes to build a law practice that’s not just successful but sustainable. So let’s get into it. Our host or our guest today, Clinton. I should ask, how you doing today?

Clint Ind: Yeah, I’m doing well. I wish it was a little bit warmer, a little bit gloomy today, but this this topic is particularly interesting, so I’m looking forward to getting into

Ron Bockstahler: it. We have a special guest, my good friend Richie Rampus Richie Marrero, Chicago with Puerto Rican roots, a first generation college student who attended University of Wisconsin Madison, which we won’t hold that against him, and he did that on a Posse Foundation scholarship, where he earned a bachelor of social work, he pursued a graduate graduate work in social work at Loyola University, and he’s got a social work background. A little unusual and even remarkable for someone who landed in the insurance and benefits world, and it explains the care first class first class care approach that comes through in every testimonial I’ve heard about them. Richie, welcome to the show.

Richie Marrero: Thank you so much for having me. The one thing that you guys gave me was guidance in saying don’t have any background noise, but sometimes that’s outside of your control, and you got four little Welgrads running around. So only four right here. Yeah, only four. Yeah, we went from we went from one to four in a matter of 12 months. My mother, my wife has a a warm heart, and two daughters kind of sealed the the deal there. I didn’t have any say is what I’m getting at. Wow,

Ron Bockstahler: I think Clinton actually had the opposite effect. I think he had to put the brakes on,

Clint Ind: yeah. Generally, so he

Ron Bockstahler: stopped at four two,

Clint Ind: yeah, yeah. It’s a good place to stop, Richie. Yeah,

Richie Marrero: they’re all very small, Clint. So it’s not as as crazy or as time consuming as one might think. But there’s still four of them. Your time is coming.

Clint Ind: Your time for crazy and time consuming, man. It’s there. It’s coming. So, Richie,

Ron Bockstahler: let’s just jump into this. You got a degree in social work. Most people with the background end up in counseling or community services, not designing healthcare plans for companies. Walk us through the left turn. How does social worker end up becoming one of the country’s rising stars in the employee benefits?

Richie Marrero: Yeah, well, I appreciate that the the rising star part. I think I’m just doing my part. When we look at a social worker, at the core of who I am is just a helper, a problem solver, someone that wants to make the world a better place. And and when I started down the path of social work, it was really because I wanted to help kids that grew up like me, you know, I grew up in the inner city of Chicago. I grew up in a single family, a single parent household. It wasn’t always lollipops and rainbows, right? So I built a little bit of grit, and I knew that I wasn’t just an outlier. I think more kids in our community had the ability to to excel if they just had outlets, or if if they could see what was possible, and I’m grateful for my journey because you know it has molded me into the person that I am today. But a lot of that was because of mentors and people in my community, which is why I gravitated towards the field of social work because I I did think that I could have an impact in the lives of youth, and then fast forward. I, you know, I went. I worked in CPS for a few years, and I’m I’m a type of person that doesn’t really sit still. If I see a problem, I want to solve it, and you know, not to talk bad about CPS, but there’s a lot of challenges. There’s a lot of red tape. There’s a lot of political impact in our education system, and I was just getting frustrated with that process and my inability to impact the students in a way that I thought was meaningful. Not to mention, I was working really long hours. I was bringing a little bit of the work home and trying to be a Superman, and occasionally. Put on a cape, and it was very difficult to do that in a city like Chicago and the financial burdens that it is the cost of living, if you will, right? Yeah. So I was I was looking at it holistically at the time. My girlfriend, now my wife was like, “Hey, you know, I know that you care and want to do a lot, but you know something’s got to give. You know you you can’t you can’t be Superman to everybody. And I took it to heart. And at that time, I was doing some after school programming for some of the families that I was serving during the day, and I was doing literacy stuff. So hey, do you have a basic bank bank account? Do you have a checking account? Do you have you know these basic financial affairs in order. How are you budgeting? Because you know, as challenging as it is when you’re you know at or close to the the low income median line, if you budget and you live within your means and don’t always want the wants or the shiny objects, you can still piece it together, right? Right. Absolutely. So I was just trying to help families do that, and through that, I actually grew a passion for the world of insurance. I think Ron, you know this, but my dad was a drug abuser and contracted AIDS when I was a three-year-old. So when he passed away at 10, we didn’t have anything like basic life insurance or anything to protect our our family’s household income. So that was always something that I prioritized in helping educate folks on, so that led to me transitioning over to Mass Mutual. I chose Mass Mutual out of a bunch of different financial services firms, basically helping people buy. And I say that because life and disability insurance is not it’s not purchased; it’s sold. Someone has to help you buy it, right? So, so I was selling life, disability, long-term care insurance. I had a very small AUM practice, which is asset center management, and I did that for six and a half years successfully. And I only say that I did it successfully because I was willing to grind, and I was taking you know 789, 10 meetings a week, just having very, very direct conversations with folks and saying, “Hey, this is my experience. I’m going to help you get your your house in order by buying the two or three things that are necessary for you to make sure you can live a healthy life. And if you have a family, even that much more. And that led to kind of where I’m at today. I’m at the founder of 360 Benefits, a great guy, Bill Pragel’s founder. Before you

Ron Bockstahler: jump into that, let’s let’s talk about 360 Benefits. You’re a partner at 360 Benefits. Let me kind of kind of back up what we were talking about. You guys, your company mantra is rethink benefits. If you’re sitting across from a law firm managing partner who’s been renewing the same health plan for the last decade because it’s a path of least resistance. What does rethinking actually look like in plain English?

Richie Marrero: Yeah, I think what we are good at is is taking a step back. Right, the healthcare industry can feel daunting. It’s confusing. It’s there’s a lot of moving parts. I think we take a step back and we help them rethink by asking appropriate questions. You know, what is the intent of you having the benefit program? What does it mean to you as an organization? What does it mean to your employees to have access to healthcare? And then taking their answers and helping them realize that you know just going through the motions is not a good exercise, but actually break. breaking apart the the different components that are part of a a benefit program, whether it’s the plan design, the funding arrangement, the carrier that you’re using, the offering as a collective, like all of those things are really different parts of this overall puzzle, and then we just help them uncomplicate it and help them have dialogs that are really intent-driven, as opposed to reactionary or this is the only choice we have kind of kind of approach, which is the statement that you just made, where it’s like least path of resistance, and and if they’re feeling that way, it’s because they haven’t had good questions asked to them, or they’re exploring the the options that are out there. So

Clint Ind: it seems as though that was probably the default, right? You’ve got these attorney law firm partners, managing partners, and they’ve probably just never had the questions asked of them previously. And it’s you’re you’re probably a breath of fresh air when you come in and you ask like meaningful questions to figure out what they actually need and how it might actually facilitate a better firm environment.

Richie Marrero: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right, Clint. One thing that’s that is really important to us as entrepreneurs as we look at this is most entrepreneurs want to get back to revenue generating activities, right? But when you look at the cost of healthcare as an attorney, they know fiduciary responsibility better than most. Most organizations are co-sharing that with their employees, right? So they have this responsibility to their employees to make sure that they’re getting the best that’s available to them, the best price, maximizing the financials that they’re spending on these things, and how can they? Achieve both of those things and do it responsibly. So I think that’s where a lot of the questions come into play. And you know, a good attorney, my wife and my father-in-law, they ask. They always say, “Don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to. I think that that very that bodes very very well in a process of trying to help somebody pick the right broker, us, the right plans, their current program is is really guiding them and making it their idea, even though it’s us guiding them to the idea, right? Like helping them realize what’s what’s out there. Well, that’s the part that I love. That’s the part that social work, the sociology, the human side of business helps me with.

Ron Bockstahler: Tell us what are the law firms getting wrong about employee benefits? What are they doing different than a manufacturing company or what another startup might do?

Richie Marrero: They like making money, and most of the time, they make enough money where they feel like ah, it’s just the cost of doing business, and they don’t realize that that they could be running more efficiently, have a better plan design based off their census or their demographic, explore what their utilization has looked like historically. Those are some of the things that they just don’t keep their eye on the prize. And you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna crap on our industry a little bit. The way that we as brokers get compensated is a little counterintuitive. You know, if your costs go up as an employer, we get a raise. That doesn’t seem, you know, that great in my eyes. And you know, as a social worker, the highest of integrity and my moral values are to make sure I’m doing right by the people that have entrusted me with helping them through that process.

Clint Ind: Okay, these are real. What I really like about everything you’re saying is, I mean, there’s parallels to the legal industry in that you know, there’s in the billable owl, which is the impetus for the name of this podcast, right? There’s there’s benefits for being less efficient, which because you build more time essentially, and you and you make more money. But that is ultimately is really not the goal that that any attorney walks into wanting to practice to to be right. They want to be helpful and they want to do things for their clients in an efficient and practical way, so that’s really commend you for that. And I do just want to say, you know, you’ve had so many left turns here from being a social worker, and it does seem to me that, you know, as a badger myself, I can say it’s it’s incomprehensible to somebody like like for who’s from Indiana. You know, they just don’t get that mental shift that that happens. Here’s my IU hat.

Richie Marrero: Hey, Clint, we got to have a little respect for the national champs. I guess, yeah, yeah, they’ve earned

Clint Ind: something this year, right? Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: you know, it’s there’s a talent war out there. It’s really, really hard to get really good people. So, you know, at least where I come, thinking my mentality comes from is you got to have really good benefits program to even talk to the best people. Is that is that what’s happening out there? Is it is that what you’re seeing?

Richie Marrero: Yeah, I think I I think you can and and Ron, you you know this. It’s expensive. Healthcare is expensive. Oh yeah, it’s built that way on purpose. It’s um, but you have to you have to have a mentality, a mental shift that you, if your people are the most important asset, which I can argue people are the most important asset to any business, I don’t care what business you’re in, you have a responsibility to do what you can to make sure that you’re taking care of those folks, and I think you all, you know, specifically Amata does a good job of being communicating that the the realities that we exist in, most organizations don’t have that effective communication with their population. It’s probably a little bit easier for you, Ron, because your group is a small market group, right? You’re less than 50 employees, but I still think that effective communication and helping your employees understand the importance of the math problem that exists when you’re trying to make decisions around healthcare that impacts their family can be done, and I think it’s it’s my responsibility, and I always share that with our clients. Is hey, let us help you tell that story. Let us help you tell that story during during open enrollment. Let us help you tell that story when you have a new a new class of new hires, right? Let us help you communicate the realities that exist within your business that you’re managing. I don’t care what your employer size is. If you’re an employer and you’re offering you know healthcare programs, it’s probably your second largest line item on your P and L. So it’s real money that is impacting your ability to hire, recruit, retain talent, grow a business. So those are you know really really important conversations that leaders and and you know executives within companies need to be sharing, and their population needs to know it because then everybody can move in concert to one consume healthcare better because there’s a trickle down effect. When we consume healthcare better, we should get better utilization, better outcomes. And if you have a good broker, he or she should be sharing that story with the carriers when they’re marketing your group every year for renewal. So there’s a little bit of a trickle down effect there. And if we get good utilization, if our employee population is consuming healthcare appropriately. Then we can start looking at alternative funding arrangements, and that’s where you get more transparency. That’s where you get greater access to controlling that narrative with the carriers that are giving you a renewal. That’s the game that’s being played, and it’s harder down market under 50. But you know, there’s there’s new funding arrangements, level funded being one of them, where you can you can really manipulate and have a better say in in what your outcomes are, but it has to be important to you, and that’s a trickle down effect. It has to start at the leadership level. If your managing director, I’m just using law firms for example. If your managing director is worried about you billing 2000 you know 2000 hours a year and making sure that the firm is extremely profitable and is losing losing sight of this thing that’s you know 40% of their overall expense, then then then we lose sight of the the big prize at the end of the day. And I always argue with folks that are leading companies if if revenues are important, if we strip back and we say hey we can cut our fixed cost by 10 15% that’s like doubling or tripling our revenue, right? Like, yeah, it’s a real game changer when they really start to look at it. And then, if you take an out a longward look, which we like to do, is let’s look at that in perpetuity over three to five years. How much cash flow did we create for your organization by just cutting our costs by eight to 12, 15% I think it’s really meaningful and significant money. And we’re not saying strip your benefits down. We’re not saying make your benefits less. We’re saying maximize the dollars you’re spending on it because they’re significant. How do we maximize that?

Clint Ind: Yeah, you think about the flexibility that that affords you know decisions in a law firm like how much of a rate increase year over year we need to we need to do or you know we need to put that to our clients. You know, if you’re actively saving money through programs like this, then there’s flexibility in in rate structures. There’s there’s a host of flexibility in running a little fund.

Richie Marrero: I was ready for this. I made a fresh press voice. That’s

Clint Ind: impressive. That’s

Ron Bockstahler: nice. Well, we’re getting a little too serious. Let’s do a little rapid fire here. You’re a White Sox fan in a Cubs town, you’re you’re on charity golf courses all summer, and you work with personal trainer. If you had to give up two, or up to two of these three for a year, which survives?

Clint Ind: White Sox. Oh, was that for me? No, White

Richie Marrero: Sox. If I had to give up two of the three, yeah. I’m with I’m with you, Clint. I keep the White Sox. I wouldn’t give them up. Or you gave them up.

Clint Ind: I give them up. Yeah, I live on the north. I wouldn’t give

Richie Marrero: them up. I think I think there’s there’s promise ahead. I think the the Ishby family is is very interested in winning, and I think over time, if that becomes as real as I think it has the potential to be, I think that we will turn around winners, and the White Sox are at a really good place. We got a lot of young talent. I think the ownership and the alignment there with the talent should be right at a really good point where we could, you know, go after some good free agents and build a good roster. Because let me tell you, there’s nothing better than playoff baseball. Don’t ask

Ron Bockstahler: for something you’re not ready for, because I just booked a couple games out of spring training in Mesa, and I couldn’t believe I fell off my chair at how much they were charging for a spring training ticket. And they’re so those games

Clint Ind: are fun. Those games are so much fun. Yeah, great fun business.

Richie Marrero: Ron, have you been to a spring training game?

Ron Bockstahler: Oh yeah, we were out there a few years ago.

Richie Marrero: I think I think it’s a better ticket than the regular season. You get better access to the players, and you’re right there. It’s pretty cool for kids to see. So to get back to the question, I don’t want to lose sight of answering the question. So I keep the White Sox, and I’d keep my golf because I oh you get rid of training out on golf course. I would get rid of training. I’d still train on my own. I just wouldn’t pay somebody to help me sweat. Right. right.

Ron Bockstahler: All right, let’s get back into the work. There’s a belief, especially among solo and small firms, that great benefits are something that only big law can afford. Is that true, or is that kind of the thinking that keeps small firms from becoming, or you know, attracting the best talent?

Richie Marrero: Yeah, I think that there’s there’s a a real sentiment there again. Getting back to small market, there’s limited options from a plan design standpoint. But you can get you can get big law firm benefits. You just need to have a a resource that can help you. So all the carriers provide you a menu of plans, and you could pick through those menu of plans. And you know it might be a little expensive, but the reason why big firms have lower cost to the employee is because the firm’s picking up majority of the cost. If you’re owning your own firm or you’re running your own firm and you care enough to offer those benefits, you you can you’re just going to come a little bit more out of pocket at the ownership level because you are that cost share right with the employee.

Ron Bockstahler: Right. So, but that’s what it takes to get the talent in. So if you’re going to compete and grow your firm, you’re going to need the right people.

Richie Marrero: And and I’m a I’m an optimist, and I’m a person who genuinely feels that we should be taking care of our people. If you give your people what what you would do for yourself, they work harder, man. They. More, they they they believe that you believe in them, and and they’re able to show up. And if it’s healthcare, they’re able to take care of their families and the people that they love the most. And they know that that is partly being facilitated by by their employer, the people that you know believe in them to do the work. So wholeheartedly believe in that. There’s a there’s a saying that I saw not too long ago. It was a CFO and a CEO having a conversation, and it was about upper management and executives paying for upward mobility and training and educational like development for their senior leader executives. And the CFO says to the CEO, “I don’t know if we have the money in the budget to to pay for that because what if we pay for it and they leave? He says, “Well, what’s the problem? We don’t pay for it and they stay. And now you got middle level management that’s not talented. So I do believe that if you invest in your people and you treat them with dignity, respect, and give them the opportunity to grow, they’ll trust you. They’ll be with you. They’ll they’ll work their tails off to make sure that they’re doing everything in their power to make sure that your company is serving your clients and being successful. So I firmly believe that.

Clint Ind: I love that. And at our firm, we put our

Richie Marrero: money where our mouth is. Yeah, we’re we’re at our firm. We pay 100% of all of our employees’ health care. It’s a big number, but we do it, and we do it because we are advocates for them, and we want them to be healthy. You know, the biggest catastrophic healthcare costs out there. Most of them are because of people not doing preventive care. They don’t want to pay for their healthcare on the front end, and then you deal with you know stage four cancer instead of catching it at stage one, and maybe something you could do about it. So

Ron Bockstahler: you just said something big that your firm’s doing differently, which is paying 100% of healthcare, which is huge. Let’s talk about you real quick. You’ve been named a rising star in advising and a 2025 Men of Excellence honoree. You’re clearly doing something different. If every law firm manager partner, managing partner listening right now, could change just one thing about how they handle benefits tomorrow? What is it?

Richie Marrero: Do not sit on your hands. Question it. Want better outcomes. Question your broker. Make sure that they’re bringing you better, better strategies, better outcomes. the The world of benefits is evolving, and there’s a lot of strategies out there. And maybe this is not the year that you implement a new strategy. But if you don’t start learning about it when it’s time and you’re you’re handcuffed, it’s going to be a lot harder. You’re going to be drinking through a vet, you know, fire hose a lot quicker. And and those thoughts and ideologies need to be in the forefront before you can implement them over time. So, question your current strategy and ask: Are we doing enough to control our costs and make sure we’re maximizing the spend?

Ron Bockstahler: Who’s the question? Let’s. I know in the smaller firms is going to be the managing partner, and the larger firms is the managing partner, is the executive committee. Who’s questioning? Who’s making these questions? Who’s bringing it up?

Richie Marrero: Yeah, Ron, that’s a great question. I think every firm is slightly different, and I work with a lot of law firms here in Chicago, some you know do empower their their their executive committee, if if you will, like the CHRO or CFO. Some of the law firms these days are going to a CFO to manage finance, and they’ll handle that decision. But it always gets trickled up back to the EC. We’re talking about lawyers here. I married. married my daughter. I’m in a family of lawyers. I’ve never met smarter people in my life. They all have an opinion, all right, and we love them for that. But I always tell people, I was like, you’ve empowered, you’ve hired smart people to run certain aspects of your business. You’re a good attorney, but you may not be the best number cruncher. You may not be the best person to pick a plan design. So if you’ve hired professionals, which is why you get hired as a lawyer to litigate matters on behalf of your clients, let those people that are doing that on a daily basis. I have a funny line, and I’ve used this in the past. I’ll come into a law firm or or like a professional service firm where these people are much smarter than I am, you know. And I’ll come into the room and I’ll say to them, I’m like, hey, this. Thank you for your time. I’m excited to be here. I’m going to get one thing out of the way right away. Know that every single person in this room is smarter than me, and that’s okay. But when it comes to this benefits shit, I know it better than you. So please trust that we’re going to provide you sound guidance. We’re going to give you the strategic direction that’s in alignment with your goals. It’s going to make you a better organization overall. Can we agree on that, and just get it out of the way, right? Like I’m not going to tell you how to practice law, but I am going to tell you what’s in your best interest from a benefit standpoint because we do it every single day. So it’s always nice to you know, it’s a it’s a moment of like very disarming. It’s very yeah yeah 100% I’m not going to sit here and go back and forth with you because you’re smarter than me, and and they appreciate it. It’s a good way.

Ron Bockstahler: It’s a good way to start the conversation. I might have to steal that from you.

Richie Marrero: It’s not that’s not mine. I stole it from somewhere else. Everything that I that I that I apply is is regurgitated excellence that I’ve either read or heard someone else say.

Ron Bockstahler: Reuse the good stuff. Hey, look, you’re on the board of Health Care Alternatives. You’re a founding member of the Executive Latino Council, and you run dinner series connecting alumni with board members. How does showing up for your community make you better at what you do professionally? And is there a business case for giving back, or is that? Am I thinking about it the wrong way?

Richie Marrero: Yeah, it’s funny because I always say generous people are generous because they’re selfish, and I firmly believe that all that work makes me feel good, man. It fills my cup. It makes me know that I’m doing what I was put on this earth to do, which is give back and make it a little bit better than when I got here. So you know, and most of the organizations and the charities that I belong to have some some form of personal meaning to me. You know, getting back to healthcare alternative systems, one of the greatest organizations in the Chicagoland area, providing rehabilitative services, wraparound services, and giving folks that have struggled with either mental health or addiction a second chance at life. We all deserve it, right? But it hits close to home because of the story I shared with my dad. So most of the stuff is really meaningful to me: education, feeding folks, and housing folks is where my my heart is. So those are the organizations I tend to support. And then when you look at the ELC, you know I’m a Latino man in Chicago who has benefited from people that have come before me reaching back. So what we do there is we try to create a connective tissue of service providers and professionals in the professional market to support Latino-led and Latino-owned businesses, not make missteps as they go through their journey. Right, whether it’s benefits or picking the right business attorney or you know having the right CRM, we can help them navigate that so that they can focus on their their business, and we just provide those resources through the ELC, and that’s been really, really fun. And when you can, you have somebody across from you. They’re like, “Man, I was, I’ve been jumping through hoops to figure out who the right person is for my property and casualty insurance. Oh, we’ve got a resource for you. You should talk to this person, and it dovetails into business to get to the back end of your question. When you are doing right by people, people want to work with people they know, like and trust. If they can trust you, they’re going to work with you. And your price-you know-they don’t even price gouge you anymore. Now they know that you have their best interests in hand. If you’re providing an electrical service, they don’t even care what your price is. They know that they can trust you. You’re going to get the job done, and you come highly recommended. You’re always going to do the right thing, and that’s where the the inflection point from business and service comes into play. Yeah, and it’s just fun. I I love when out of nowhere an opportunity comes from doing the right thing, right? And I tell my kids that all the time. I was like, you do the right thing when no one’s watching, and you’re going to be fine in life. Just always do the right thing.

Ron Bockstahler: We got to wrap the show up pretty quick here. The show’s built on the idea that the billable hour was the last big change to the business of law back in 1958. You challenge the status quo and employ benefits for a living. When you look at how law firms run today, what’s the next 1958 moment you think is coming?

Richie Marrero: Man, I have to think it has something to do with AI.

Clint Ind: It’s an easy that was an easy answer. I mean,

Richie Marrero: when when I look at AI and I look at what it’s doing, and it’s it’s scary, but I’ve embraced it somewhat. I’ve tried to toy around with some of the different tools that are out there. It is legit smart people building robots that are as smart and quicker than them, right? So it’s it’s really neat. I think it’ll have an impact on all of business. I think there are tasks that AI can help with that will drive efficiencies within organizations. And then I’ll take a step back and I’ll tell you how we’re leveraging AI. You know, there’s a lot of compliance. There’s a lot of aggregation of data. There’s a lot of ways that we support our clients that we are dabbling in leveraging AI tools to help us with whether it’s stripping out or looking at a utilization report and saying, “Okay, this utilization report. What are the key performance indicators that we want to aggregate, so that we can then share that with our clients, so that they can better use healthcare. Right. So I think you know, Clint hit it on the head. It’s the simple answer. But if you embrace AI and you use it for good, I think that there’s a lot of ways to drive efficiencies with any with any business, and and that can you know increase EBITDA if you want to talk about valuation of a business, but it could increase efficiencies and make you smarter. You can get to more strategic tasks a lot more efficiently. Yeah, that would be my my my number one there, and I already see it impacting some of my law firm clients. You know, talk about e discovery, talk about some of the stuff that used to take a law firm 48 hours, you know, few days to extract data. Now I can put a 400 page document in in a in an AI tool and say, hey, this is what I’m looking for. Extract it from this document. Now I use my intelligence to proofread it to make sure that what they’re giving me is accurate. Now I’ve I’ve I’ve shaved some time.

Ron Bockstahler: Richie, did you talk to. Before they show, because now you’re speaking his love language. So

Clint Ind: glad you said that. Yeah, yeah. Use your intelligence to verify. That’s fantastic.

Richie Marrero: Oh yeah, yeah. You’ve seen the lawsuits out there with bullets. And then I tell my wife, I was like, you know, I’m going to swear, but I’m like, are they fucking idiots? Excuse my words. What are they? What are they doing? There was an

Clint Ind: opinion recently. Just not to tangent to get too on too much of a tangent here, but someone was like, “Well, yeah, the AI is is exposing all this stuff, but this has been around for decades. You know, there’s been plenty of people who have given an important brief to you know some first year associate and then just filed it without verifying. I mean, you know, it’s it’s a the same stuff, different tool essentially.

Ron Bockstahler: Yeah,

Richie Marrero: I tell you what, AI is going to force us to do. AI is going to force us to get better. AI is going to force us to focus in, have greater attention to detail, and and I think that that is a plus in the world of business. And people are going to make mistakes. AI will make mistakes as well, and the bots that are being created. But it will give us a sense of hey, we need to have greater attention to detail. We need to care a little bit more to make sure that our level of integrity and our moral compass is always in alignment with what the greatest outcome is for whoever we’re supporting dealing with so yeah. I think it’s a good thing.

Clint Ind: Yeah,

Ron Bockstahler: Richie, it’s been great talking to you. It’s been a great conversation. Really appreciate you coming to the show. Real quick, what’s that shirt you got on? Is that where’d that come from? Yeah,

Richie Marrero: it’s a so all that time on the golf course. I was tired of spending $120 on golf polos and expensive golf clothing be shown in our culture. Puerto Rican culture is a term of endearment. So, in June of 2024, I launched a little golf clothing company, really targeting corporate swag. We we we can put your logo on any of our garments. We have hoodies, hats, polos, Q-zips, things of that nature, and then we do focus in on golf outings and cherry outings, and then we have a small foundation, always trying to find a way to give back. Where I’ll buy golf clubs and put them in the hands of young kids and send them off to their first golf clinic as a fun little gesture, because golf has been tremendous in my professional career. I play a lot. I love it. It’s my therapy, and I want more kids to experience it at a younger age. And my big B hag-I don’t know if you guys have ever read that book, B-Hag, but how how cool would it be, Ron? If you know we put a set of golf clubs in a kid’s hand, we send him off to a clinic. He’s 11 years old, she’s 11 years old. They fall in love with the game and they end up on the LPGA or the PGA Tour. That’d be so awesome.

Clint Ind: That’d be awesome. Absolutely.

Richie Marrero: That that’s a dream that you know maybe at some point will be achieved, but only time will tell. So on the road to that journey, we’ll keep doing the right thing. In the

Clint Ind: meantime, they can bend bend clubs over their knee and like curse and swear at not being able to do anything well on the go. Absolutely, they can shake. Thank you. It’s a humbling game. Thank

Ron Bockstahler: you so much, Richie. All right, that’s all for today. You good? Yeah, we’re good. Yeah, thank

Richie Marrero: you guys. That was awesome.

Ron Bockstahler: That’s all for today. A big thanks to Richie for coming on the show. We loved having hearing your insights. If today’s conversation got you thinking about your own practice, I hope you’ll take one idea and put it to work this week. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a colleague who could use it. The 1958 lawyer is brought to you by Amata. For more than 30 years, Amata has helped law firms of all sizes do more with less, build on four pillars: fractional support staff, virtual office options, office space, and legal community. Whether you’re a solo practitioner just starting out or an established firm looking to right size your overhead. Give Amata. Amata gives you the infrastructure of a big firm without the big firm price tag. Learn more at AmataOffices.com. Until next time, keep building.

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