Attorney Ben Glass navigates the intriguing realm of estate planning with guests from Estate Guru. Join this episode for a thought-provoking discussion with Blake Johnston and Jonathan Warenne on redefining attorney-client relationships in estate planning.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
Attorney Ben Glass navigates the intriguing realm of estate planning with guests from Estate Guru. Join this episode for a thought-provoking discussion with Blake Johnston and Jonathan Warenne on redefining attorney-client relationships in estate planning.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.
Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
We've always been proud of the tools we give lawyers to create the law firms of their dreams. We know exactly what modules you should, software you should utilize, and the strategies you need to employ to build a law-firm that is a cash-generating machine. When someone initially becomes a GLM member, you can bet that they're joining for the tactics and tools that we offer.
So it's not a machine learning. It simply Lawyers providing their experience and input into code and then being able to share that code with peers. So in our world I mean to answer your other question we didn't actually discover this. We didn't out of whole cloth working with Blake and some of our other attorneys Seeing, when we began adding attorneys to our attorney network and they wanted to, they would just get out of state referrals that they couldn't service. I don't know anybody in Colorado, but I'm in Arizona. I have somebody, and then it turned into a. Well, can we help each other? Like is this is it worth me getting a license in another state, like making sure that I can, or can I have a pretty solid referral relationship with another attorney over there that I'm sending business with, and can I make this worth both of our time?
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation. ["the Renegade?
Speaker 3:Lawyer Podcast"]. Hey everyone, this is Ben Glass. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where each episode, I get to speak to people inside and outside the legal profession who are making a ding in the world. And today it's gonna be really interesting because we're gonna talk about estate planning, adding potentially an estate planning part to your practice, talking to some really smart guys Blake Johnson and Jonathan Warren who have, as I understand it, made it easier for lawyers and consumers of estate planning services to get together to do things and to really add value to a practice. So, guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having us, Ben.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, thanks, ben. So, jonathan, I think this is, and the company is EstateGuru and estategurucom. Jonathan, I think this is your innovation, your idea, is that right?
Speaker 1:I wish it was. It's a combination of attorneys like Blake Johnson, ed Pernell and some of the other technologists and people that work on our team Carla Munson, our COO, one of the original founders. So I came on a little bit later and just kind of threw gas in the fire and then began adapting it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, companies need that, but you know the story, so give us a little bit of the backstory, like what's the problem in the universe, in the legal world that you all are trying to solve for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the estate plan. I mean Blake is the perfect one to speak to estate planning because he's a practicing estate planning attorney, but I can give a little history on the company as the CEO. But we built a platform to scale estate planning as an offering to end consumers. In the era of online legal documents so in the era where clients can go to legal zoom and rocket lawyer and what have you and get these documents that may not exactly fit their needs, there's no way to really figure out for the end consumer who's getting their own plan if it really fits their needs. They're just getting guided through this questionnaire and then getting these documents.
Speaker 1:We thought to ourselves there has to be a better way. So one of our original founders, carla Munson the work that's another co-founder, tyler Cluvier and Ed Pernell and estate planning attorney in California and said we need to scale attorney advice Like we need to give tools to attorneys and to financial advisors and to others in this space the ability to risk triage to determine what's going on here, as opposed to just giving them a word document and a browser. Right, let's find a way to do that.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of how a state guru was born.
Speaker 3:And then Blake, talk to us a little bit about your role, because you are an attorney, an estate planning attorney. So how did you get involved? What's your path been? And before we went live, you showed me. You have a copy of ready. Get it while you're marketing. We should book a route a while back. So you and I have somehow been connected for a number of years. But what is your role and how did you find your way to a state guru?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I've been in this a practicing estate planning attorney for almost 10 years now. I'm a second generation estate planning attorney. My dad still practices, so I kind of grew up around the space and, after not working out with being partners with my dad, he wanted to stay single, solo and not grow, and I had a little bit different view, so we part ways. I started looking for technology implementations.
Speaker 4:There wasn't a lot out there as far as stuff guru does, but I was looking at how to automate parts of the practice and do that and still look for different solutions. And one of the I came across a state guru actually it was one of my friends introduced me to it because they were looking for a new managing attorney to help with the oversight of the estate planning documents themselves and working with our legal network. And so that's when John and I got introduced, not long after he became CEO, and we just hit it off and thought we worked well together and kind of had some same ideas and visions and then we were able to start working together and help build this company.
Speaker 3:So is a state guru itself a consumer facing? Is it mainly consumers who are the customer, potential client, or is it is your space really, this connection of financial professionals, attorney professionals? Because until you sent me a note really on LinkedIn, I don't think I'd ever heard of a state guru and we'll talk about like that note and that pitch here in a second, but who's the real, who's the customer that you're serving ultimately?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we're not directly to consumer. So we work through the normal channels that attorneys work with. Right they create relationships with financial advisors, tax professionals, insurance agents and others to get their source of business and to provide state planning documents and services beyond the scope of the financial advisors financial plan that they're creating right. So they work together as a team.
Speaker 1:So we thought, well, let's do that, let's not have a direct consumer application, let's really empower attorneys to have a collaborative environment where they can scale their practice with our financial advisors and other advisors tax advisors, et cetera. And let's do that, let's build that. And then pretty soon the lawyers in our attorney network that kind of span the country began seeing the value of what we were offering and saying I wanna run my practice on your software because it has an end consumer user interface where clients can interact with the documents. They can interact with the attorney's questionnaire and with the attorney's what we call trigger sets and they can go through that attorney's logic in our platform. So the attorney still controls the brand environment that we white label. They still control the experience. They control that experience end to end for the consumer. So we don't face B2C but we power a B2C application for attorneys to be able to extend their practice. So.
Speaker 3:And so are there financial planners on the network, or is your then customer really the attorney who wants to either automate a current estate planning practice and make sort of the backend better for the lawyer and or add an estate planning part to a practice?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's kind of so you guys are working with lawyers.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's kind of twofold. We began, and still are, focused on an advisory channel, the advisory channels. What we did is we essentially took our product and said, hey, we're going to have financial advisors be able to refer clients seamlessly to, you know, our attorneys and our platform, and then our platform will help that attorney automate as much of the intake process and the document production process and the back office, so printing and shipping and any of the ancillary you know funding, guide, instructions, et cetera to that consumer. And then the attorney still gets to have, you know, control over the experience in terms of then setting up the questions, setting up the logic that gets put into how the questions formulate the documents, and then being able to talk to those clients if they need to, and then also pull out the complex clients from the you know you're kind of run at the mill you know mass affluent client and pull those directly into their practice, use their own documents, that's charged their own fees, et cetera. So that's still the majority of our business.
Speaker 1:What we began doing in creating a product for and a platform for attorneys is this was kind of forced on us by our own lawyers that we worked with.
Speaker 1:They said I want to private label this and use this with my clients, because if you're able to power and my end consumers to use my logic and these questions and put these documents out and then I can focus on the ones that are more complex and receive referrals from you know, financial advisor, on the complex cases, I should be able to do this with my own practice. We tested it, we debated the beta. It was pretty successful and now we began reaching out to other attorneys who wanted to add a state planning to their practice and then if it gets to a case where a client is too complex for that, you know, for that attorney that's wanting to add a state planning, they have an attorney of network. You know attorneys that they can refer to Say, hey, I don't really know, they can talk to Blake, they can talk to a number of attorneys across the country that do have the expertise in the high end planning as well.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's interesting because the message that you all reached out to me at LinkedIn was you know, do you want to add a state planning to your practice? And I said I'm not really interested, but it sounds interesting. So let's talk about the business model, which is what I like to do on this podcast. So is your then ideal attorney, member or customer someone who is already in the space? Or are you really taking people like me, a personal injury attorney, and saying, hey, there's a certain level of a state planning that we and our software can help you be competent, you know, legally, ethically competent at doing it? Because, as I said before, I'm going to lie like that would scare the hell out of me, right? Because I know zero about the language.
Speaker 3:I have a complex estate plan, I paid a bunch of money to a guy who I trust and that whole field just squints me because I've never 40 years I've never done it. So who is your ideal? Someone who's listening to this, you know? Is it the guy or gal who's already in the space, or really the guy or gal who's like? I'd like to add this yeah, they're two full, I'll speak to that.
Speaker 4:So yeah, as I say, so it's kind of both so one. We always still need estate planning attorneys who know what they're doing in each state. We ideally want two to three or more, especially in our busy states to make sure that we can adequately serve our clients. So we're happy to add those people to our existing networks, help feed them cases. But I think what John was talking about more is okay. The people who are estate planning adjacent somebody who has a tax practice, somebody who's got, who's in family law or even personal injury, where they have the opportunity to do these estate planning. They just don't know how and they don't want to get into the weeds. Why should you go learn a whole new practice? Let our software do the work for you, and then, if it is becomes complex, then if you have a referral source you already use, great, do that, get your referral fee that way, or use our network attorneys and you can do referral through them as well. So either way works. But yeah, we do need both yeah.
Speaker 3:Generally speaking, then what's the pricing model? Do attorneys become monthly members or is it a per case, per file pricing?
Speaker 1:For sure. So the way that we run it is it's a monthly SaaS model. So they'll pay $2.49 a month per attorney user. So if they only need one for their office, that's great. In an office of six attorneys they'll need one seat, that's fine. And then they'll pay $99 a plan. So whether that's a revocable living trust with Port River Wills and powers of attorney, that's one plan that we'll do.
Speaker 1:But they're charging their normal pricing, whether they're charging rates of $1,500 or $3,000 or $45,000 or whatever kind of meets their billable hour or their fixed rate plan. That they're doing. But yeah, it's a simple basis. And then if they want us to do the deed, we're quick claim deeds and they want our attorneys and they want our legal staff to do those. And if they want us to print and ship the documents in a nice leather binder with heavy set paper and tabs and very professional with their letterhead on the cover letter, we do that all ala car on a client by client basis. So it's $199 for that print and ship and $199 for that deed. But they don't have to do that. We can automate their back office. In some cases attorneys really want to turn this on.
Speaker 1:Some of our attorneys want to turn this on in other states, right, they've got licenses in Tennessee, but they're licensed in Kentucky and they're also licensed in Ohio and so they're in that area and they want to say well, I would like to pick up a state planning clients, I'm getting referrals anyways, I'm sending them to Rick or to Janet down the hallway.
Speaker 1:I would like to keep the basic ones in place. I can refer to the estate guru network if I need to, if I need any help, and I can also refer them out. But I can still monetize on all the leads because you're generating different types of legal needs across your practice and you typically will refer those that will estate planning that was a universal need and the family lawyers, the tax lawyers, the estate planning adjacent spaces. They really want to be able to capture and keep that revenue where they can. So we empower them to do that. So pricing is simple I know that's a long way of saying it's $2.49 a month, $100 a plan, $9.00 a plan and then the rest is a la carte. You choose on a per-client basis and yeah, which interesting.
Speaker 3:So the planning for me under multiple businesses was, I think, complex and paid a fair amount of money for it. But I was impressed by the number of people who were live in the office working back end and I was impressed by the number of documents they actually had to touch, especially when we talk about funding and to the layperson transferring legal title or ownership or names on literally almost hundreds of documents that was a ton of work.
Speaker 3:So walk me through the lawyer who is like a PIL or he's a estate planning adjacent space, as you describe it, who says, all right, well, this sounds interesting and maybe it's a young lawyer who's still trying to find his or her way in the profession and figure out what it is that they like doing. But they really they had estate planning and law school teaches you nothing. Now they're in a state my state so they're in Virginia, and Virginia is probably different from Utah where you guys are and they're placed else. What does that look like from their eyes? If I sign up with you all, give me some sense of training of how do you impart even basic, rudimentary estate planning 101, black letter law to that lawyer from Virginia who's still trying to figure out what he or she wants to do with their life.
Speaker 1:If I can, I'll turn it over to Blake to answer the second half, because he's the practicing attorney. Yeah, so we're already active in 49 states, not Louisiana French civil law. It'd be different if we just wanted to buy template documents.
Speaker 3:I've heard it's kind of weird there.
Speaker 1:But that's not what we do. But, in a nutshell, they're able to lean on the experience of our existing attorneys in Virginia, because our attorneys in Virginia have already queued up very detailed questionnaires and very detailed logic and very detailed trigger sets and very detailed documents. They're able to say, okay, well, these are what the attorneys in Virginia that are estate planning attorneys have been doing on the estate guru platform. I can rely on what they've built and I can check it. Essentially, when a client goes through our platform, the experience that they're getting is they're creating a username and password for their client first name, last name, address, the state that you're in email, et cetera. When their client will go through a link, they can either sit down with their client directly and help them walk through the questionnaire or the client can do it at home on their computer and they can offload the intake process completely.
Speaker 1:But behind each of the questions, our experienced attorneys have set triggers. So we're going to ask them if they had a prenup. We're going to ask them if they have special needs, benny's, if their spouse is not a US citizen, if the person getting a plan is in a skilled nursing facility. There's a bunch of net worth questions. There's a bunch of these triggers which Blake has helped us build and our internal attorneys across the country have built so that when a client answers one of those questions in a way in which the attorney wants to say, hey, I need to see this, I want to talk to you more about this, it'll flag it and push it to that attorney and so in that case, the newest estate planning attorney, or the one that's adding to their practice, is able to rely on all of the resources we have already put all the guidance, all the training, and then, when they do have those complex cases, they can rely again on our attorney network and call up Dan in Virginia.
Speaker 1:They can call up Janet in Virginia. See, I've got this client case, let's work on this, or here it is. I don't do the complex stuff, I just want to refer out the complex stuff. Well, janet will take that because that's what she does all day. She's been doing it for 15 years or 10 years, like Blake, et cetera. And so when they get out of state referrals, they're able to set a referral fee with the other attorney in the network and they're off to the races.
Speaker 3:And Blake, I want to hear from you in just a second. But if Janet is a experienced estate planning attorney in Virginia, what's her incentive if I'm the new guy on the block and I go? I got this question. Does Janet know that she's like part of this we would call a tribe, and she's willing to help Ben, who knows nothing about this and is asking stupid questions, maybe about state planning? How does that work? How does that work? How does that work?
Speaker 1:There is an incentive there for Janet and of course of council agreements and stuff when they are onboarded onto the platform, making sure that everything is, you know, the last tease or crossed and the eyes are dotted. But there's an incentive for her, you know, as a network attorney not a paying client attorney, but as a network attorney to say, hey, I get referrals and yeah, I get referrals from these guys and I get paid when I'm you know.
Speaker 3:There's a tier. There's a second tier then, really to membership, not just to have the paying member and then a network attorney. They get paid by a state.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:And you also said, jonathan, something like hey, as these experienced lawyers build out documents and build out questionnaires that it sounded to me like that is then shared, almost like how we're teaching machines to learn by AI, and so is it worked that way too. Like this is, if you're a network level attorney, like the stuff you're building is being shared back into the Virginia Attorney Network.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd love to say that. So we do true machine learning. Go ahead.
Speaker 4:Sorry, blake, but yeah yeah, as I said, so we do have follow ups with our attorneys. You know we require them to update us on changes in law for their state. You know things that we need to have updated in the forms so that way it can stay current. They can. You know, if it's stuff they want specific to their firm and they're a paying client, then we can make that, so it's just theirs. But yeah, if they're a network attorney and it's a requirement for their state, then yes, it's uploaded and it becomes shared knowledge within.
Speaker 4:You know the state guru platform itself and you know, from being on the side of one of those network attorneys, you know the referrals we get are more than you know motivation enough to share that information. But you know the way I see it is. You get an attorney who doesn't practice in this area they're trying to learn it Okay, great, you got somebody coming in, let's co-counsel on that so I can help walk you through it. And right there, I'm already getting compensated for that, on top of being compensated from guru and other stuff. So there's plenty of motivation to help out there. I don't think that's not been our primary thought process with that, but it is kind of built in there without us meaning to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it is. Look, it is interesting. It's a good idea because a lot of what the legal industry writ large lacks is a tribe right of lawyers who are working together, sharing information. So much of legal you know, particularly, I think, in the PI space in particular, is competitive. Like my secret is my secret, I'm not going to give it to you.
Speaker 3:One of the things we're trying to do at Great Legal Marketing is build a tribe of lawyers who see the world as very expansive, the opportunity is as unlimited and you know me sharing, even in Northern Virginia, where I am, how we market and run PI cases with other Northern Virginia lawyers, like that doesn't bother us, like where our stuff is an open book. So I think that's it. I don't know if you originally thought about that idea or if you discovered that as you built out this network, but I think it's, in the legal profession sadly lacks and that, you know, I don't know much about. I've heard about wealth council and organizations like that. I don't know, like, where you stand vis-a-vis, if they're a competitor or if they're just adjacent to or not, but it sounds like a neat idea, maybe one that could even be transferable, even outside of estate planning, I think, although it's probably like 17 ideas yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean done.
Speaker 1:There's a lot there. I mean to go back to your question before. I want to make sure I don't get recorded in this podcast by saying it's true machine learning. I said we'd love to say that, but in reality it's lawyers helping lawyers. Like this is lawyers helping lawyers and lawyers giving the input. So it's not a machine learning, it's simply lawyers providing their experience and input into code and then being able to share that code with employers. So in our world I mean we didn't to answer your other question we didn't actually discover this. You know we didn't add a whole cloth. Working with Blake and some of our other attorneys.
Speaker 1:It became a thing when we began adding attorneys to our attorney network and they wanted to. You know they would just get out of state referrals that they couldn't service. I don't know anybody in Colorado, but I'm in Arizona. Do you guys have somebody? And then it turned into a. Well, can we help each other? Like is this is it worth me getting a license in another state? Like making sure that I can do that, or can I have a pretty solid referral relationship with another attorney over there that I'm sending business with, and can I make this worth both of our time? And it just expanded from there.
Speaker 1:And then the attorneys that we brought on initially were very forward thinking or there was the other side of the coin. They're just very experienced. So they're looking back on a career and they want to give back and be financially incentivized to give back, and so this is something you know. We have attorneys with north of 30 years experience in some states and we have attorneys that to be a network attorney, you have to have a minimum of five years of a state planning specific experience. We can't have you like you. You just can't be on our platform to help other people who don't know what they're doing If you don't have the experience to know what you're doing. But right, we just we uncovered it.
Speaker 3:So, blake, a few minutes ago Jonathan through to you a little bit more to answer the question about that new lawyer who really doesn't know anything about state planning, wants to investigate it. Right, can go to local CLEs, learn a little bit, but from your point of view, blake, give me some sense of the comfort level. As you have seen these Young lawyers who don't have the experience come through your system and become part of a state guru. Like they stick around. They.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that the fact that we started with financial advisors and and use having them use it for their platform, you know, non-practicing attorneys feeling comfortable with walking their client through it and having that, you know, actually produce documents for them, as long as they know the questionnaires were met the right way and we didn't have any triggers I think that speaks to it right. There is, the system works because it worked for non-attorneys. So then you get an attorney in there, it's going to work for them, and now they you know one of the things we do with attorneys as opposed to financial advisors we let them, you know, contact directly the attorney who's going to help them with that and give that access because you know they're not going to abuse their time and do that. So there really is a sense of community there that we found and, like I said, because it worked with non-attorneys, it makes it that much easier to work with other attorneys using it Also right John.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will also just add. Blake said there's a sense of community, but you're, some of our attorneys never really got involved in the community. There was just in terms of being the network attorney, the non, where we paid like right, where they're getting paid to do this work. They simply just wanted to, you know, add a referral source to their already you know, their already busy practice of estate planning and so we really allow you to be as involved as you want to be, right, when you're a network attorney. We're far more selective about who we pick to be a network attorney. Because you're getting paid, yeah, you have to have those pieces together so we don't take young bucks from college Like we don't do that.
Speaker 1:On the network attorney side there are, you know, a bunch of you know stringent, you know guidelines and rules that we place for joining the network attorneys and some of them haven't been super involved from you know, because our attorney offering is relatively new. They haven't been super involved. They've been involved with clients, but other times, you know, they really do want to be involved. We've got great ones across the country. I wish I could name them by name. I'd have to probably get their permission, but who are just. You know. They're ecstatic that this is a lawyer based community in the face of online template documents. They've watched their practices get eroded or, in some cases, helped, because people are doing their stuff online when they shouldn't be and they need to be going and seeing an attorney when it turns into you know, fix a patch up work, but they love the idea of okay, well, let's scale this right, let's help this.
Speaker 1:There's going to be an endless supply of complicated cases because humans are born every year, Right, so there's going to be. There's going to be supply of these clients that have they may not be your high net worth in north of you know, 50 million or north of 5 million, but that doesn't mean that they don't have special needs bennies. It doesn't mean they don't have pre-nups. It doesn't mean that they don't have spouses that aren't US citizens, or that they don't hold property or time shares and in other jurisdictions. It doesn't mean a host of other things that these other platforms won't check for. But that's still inbound referral work where they get to charge their own fee and to boot, not only they get referrals, but they're now getting that community of lawyers that are hey asking them questions about how do you do this Right, how do you get this done? And let's both make some money here and serve this client very well.
Speaker 3:So that's so interesting and you alluded to. You know, I think what I heard was sort of triggers in the system when it alerts. You know, let's just talk about that new, that inexperienced lawyer, the one who's not like a network level lawyer that triggers that lawyer to go up. You need to go get some advice on this because this is really outside. Somebody has to think about this, like if somebody with experience has to think about it. So how does that describe how that works?
Speaker 1:Like yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a lawyer, knowing she's over her head, I guess.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, the experienced attorneys have set the triggers that said, ok, in our state let's say it's Oregon, for example they have their own state-to-state tax, and so they have to set a trigger that says if it's over this amount, it's going to kick it out, because that's different than a state like Nevada or Utah, where I practice, where there is no state-to-state tax. And so it's going to kick it out at that point and say, ok, has this been addressed? Do we know what we're doing here? And so that's kind of the first red alert to that inexperienced attorney. Hey, this kicked it out because other attorneys said this needs to be thought about.
Speaker 4:And if they know what they're doing, then they can say, ok, yeah, I'm good at this, move on and put it back in the system if they feel comfortable with it. Or OK, I have my own kind of a state-funding attorney I can work with on this. Or, hey, here's our network attorneys in Oregon. Do you want to reach out to them and co-counsel on this? Or refer it out to them? And so that's kind of the way it works. It won't let the documents continue on, the client continue on, they'll continue gathering all the information, but it won't go to the next step until that issue has been resolved.
Speaker 5:Gotcha. Hey guys, this is Ben. If you like what you've been hearing on this podcast not just the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, brian, and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time practicing attorneys. Check us out at greatlabelarketingcom.
Speaker 3:All right, so now tell me a little bit about how you all are building the network. So you reached out to me on LinkedIn, so I assume that's maybe a media for you. What other things are you doing to let both the experienced and the inexperienced lawyer even know about the state group? Because you're describing something that's very interesting, frankly and robust, and I applaud you for it. How are you getting that word out to everybody else besides my podcast?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this is a new product for us. We, like I said, we came out of beta by just using it with attorneys that were already in our network and wanted to power their private practice. And even then we're not a competitor to wealth counsel. They give them all the templates and other automations to do for complex cases and basic cases. I think the accurate thing that I've heard from some of our attorneys at USE wealth counsel is they're very robust in terms of the language they can provide. They're an excellent product. So they give you a grenade launcher where a Nerf gun would do, so you can have tiers of the type of documents that you can get there.
Speaker 1:But we just began reaching out on LinkedIn. Blake has reached out to several people on LinkedIn and said, hey, let's test the waters now that we're out of our closed beta with our own users and let's test and see if there's some appetite and there is. And the way that we built our attorney network and network attorneys is. Initially we reached out and got referrals from our lawyers, from Blake lawyers like Ed. We worked with a couple local law firms here in Utah that are now managing that network for us, and there are law firms like Pearson, butler and a few others, and it's been really cool to innovate.
Speaker 1:But we also did reach out by some states. You had to cold call and then you cold called the lawyer, you get on their schedule, you walk them through the platform and then you learn about them and their practice and we're having to filter what we know about their practice based on their website. Ok, these guys are estate planning guys Like we have to know that first step and then we reach out. We've reached out. We've got referrals from financial advisors that, hey, I know Ben, he's awesome, he's been my guy for the past 15 years. And then we go talk to Ben and Ben is awesome in terms of his professional capability and he wants to work with us and so we just help Ben scale his practice and it's been really cool. If you're one of the early ones in the states where we do a lot of business, you're doing OK.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you mentioned that a couple of times. States where we're doing a bunch of these Are there states where this is more rolled out and you've got more activity than others.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and most of that is driven for our network attorneys. It's driven by the finance advisory side of the business and we're going to continue to serving financial advisors at the end of our days.
Speaker 1:We won't have BDC applications. We think you do need an attorney. You should have some attorney in code if it works that you don't have to have them in person. So we're big proponents of attorneys and strengthening attorney practices. But yeah, those states California, florida, texas, georgia, illinois the usual suspects. And then we're growing in other markets. But if you're one of our network attorneys in South Dakota, it's going to be you know what? The whole state. That's pretty bad. Yeah, the whole state. It's pretty sparse.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, Do you all have plans, because I'm always curious about marketing and stuff. Do you have plans to do event marketing, where you're showing up at booths at either a state bar association event or some of these other business of law events?
Speaker 1:We'd love to. We'd love to put more resources into it now that our closed beta has been OK. Now we're just going to test with our open beta, which is Blake reaching out on LinkedIn to attorneys across the country. Sometimes, you know, we'll hit the Instagram or, sorry, the LinkedIn pages of estate planning attorneys actually, and we have to apologize and say, oh, I'm sorry that you view your whole practice. We get it, but we would love to do those types of marketing events after our open beta is closed. We do go to conferences for financial advisors. So we've gone to FPA Financial Planner Association, we've gone to NAFHA, we've gone to these other conferences and been able to boost our presence there as well. But the whole thing is about empowering attorneys to play in the digital space that online documents are eating right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, exactly, and I'm curious are you all like bootstrapped? Do you have outside funding? How do you do it? Because I have to live in that. Yeah, so we're bootstrapped.
Speaker 1:We're well-capitalized. Based on our unit economics and our revenue, I would say that we're bootstrapped, but in reality our founders use their own money. That's bootstrapped. They've been in a group over years of work but, yeah, we run a multi-million dollar P&L and it's been a lot of fun and Blake has been a huge part of that for us and having an eye towards innovation in a space that you feel kind of. I feel like some of the attorneys that we work with or that we talk to, even if they don't use our services, feel somewhat handcuffed to processes, old processes that keep them from being able to scale the practice of law. In the age of technology. Lawyers need tools. They need tools to be able to be in compliance with the rules of professional conduct and ethics, but they also need tools that make it easier to compete against legal Zoom rock lawyer and the like.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So have you had any either regulatory or old-timer pushback from you young Turks trying to take money out of the pockets of older estate planning lawyers with law books behind them?
Speaker 1:What do you think, Blake?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we get a letter from the bar every once in a while asking what we're doing. Yeah, we're able to show, hey, we're compliant, here's what we're doing. Here's the attorneys behind it. We're not practicing law and usually after an explanation letter, that goes away and we haven't had any actual filed suits or anything. I can't remember who it was, but it's one of those things where if you're not getting pushback or you're somebody asking questions, then you're not really pushing hard enough. We've hit that threshold. One of the really cool things about being in Utah is Utah has the legal sandbox, which Arizona is doing a similar thing as well, where non-attorneys can own parts of law firm or practice in legal fields. It's not applicable to necessarily all other states, but it allows us a little more freedom and flexibility there to help us with that growth and some innovation. It's nice to see some states like Utah and Arizona pushing that to allow more innovation in a field that, frankly, really needs a lot more innovation.
Speaker 3:No kidding, I agree. Yeah, well, if you're not getting one of those letters a month, you probably aren't working hard enough.
Speaker 4:I don't know that I need one a month. That would probably stress me out a little too much.
Speaker 3:I know, john, they said, oh, it's all fun. Yeah, I know, it's not all fun.
Speaker 1:It's very fun. He doesn't have to reply to those we sent him our tarot counsel.
Speaker 1:But Blake's right, we give those explanations and then we'll talk to attorneys and say, hey, you're profanating the practice of law and we're like, how are we doing that? Any more than these online documents are doing. I know there's the South Carolina case with LegalZoom and others, but we're helping lawyers scale their practice. We want you to be forward-minded about putting your advice into code and also making sure that when they do need the specialized advice beyond what code can do currently or what people are comfortable with code doing, which are two very different things why can't you just hop on the phone and hop on a Zoom and then resolve that we're not changing your fee structure, we're not changing your take-home pay, we're not doing any of that. The clients that we're getting as well are eager to work with an attorney. They come to guru because there's an attorney in the loop and they want the additional assurity of knowing that, okay, if I go through and I haven't hit the attorney's triggers, I should be good with this document set. Even then, they can still reach out and talk to the attorney and the attorney vice versa.
Speaker 1:One thing that we've been building in our platform which isn't quite live for the attorney functionality, since we're now in the beta is the ability to use estate planning as lead gen for the other parts of your practice. We have these things called soft triggers and we'll allow them to basically probe and ask for these estate planning clients do you have a family lot need? Is there a pending divorce? That, if you're a divorce lawyer, is there a real estate? You have homes besides your personal residence? That you need real estate advice.
Speaker 1:For the attorneys that have begun to use that, which are a very small group that we've been playing with, they love that because it's hey. I can serve a universal need for my clients. I have a network of attorneys that can help me. If it's complex, I prefer this out too. I can focus on my core practice and monetize the leads, because heaven knows that attorneys are having a really tough time. Attorneys are having a tough time. After coming out of law school and practicing for five, 10, 15 years, it becomes tough to gather clients and to maintain clients and to constantly serve clients in the age of technology.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you this as we come near the end it's mid-November 2023 as we're recording this what's the one big thing that could change everything for you in a great way if you could get it done on 2024? You must be thinking about hey, what do we want to get accomplished in the next 12, 13, 14, 15 months? I'm always curious. Feel free to answer however you're comfortable. What's the thing that could really help you accelerate the growth of the company?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say without a doubt. It's empowering lawyers with our legal product not with the attorney side of our product, not the financial advisers who have the product, but it's empowering lawyers to market their additional services within the estate planning environment. It's essentially saying hey, this is going to be a really positive lead gen source for you. This is going to be a really positive experience where we can funnel those family law needs, we can funnel those tax needs, we can funnel those real estate needs. Those are the types of courtier practice.
Speaker 1:Suddenly people are coming onto our platform and saying, not only am I able to monetize on the estate side of the business and have that support there, but I can also see that for every 20 plans that I do in a year, I'm generating seven real estate transactions. I'm generating five family lives. I'm generating this business where this is turning into what you'd call traditionally like the loss leader, except you're making money off of it in the first pass to help lawyers really scale. That. That's the coolest thing that we have going. We have some stuff in settlement in the works. We have some stuff in funding in the works as well on the estate planning side to help lawyers do that. That's more for our network, Our network attorneys who are excited to be able to build and monetize that and extend the scope of their services.
Speaker 3:When we stop the record button here in a couple of minutes. I want to have a conversation with you because I have an idea that's generated by this conversation. I think that your next step, if you haven't already done this, is creating really good marketing pieces to show the lawyer the problem that you could solve, even before they realize that it's a problem that could be solved Again. A different lead gen than buying another pay-per-click ad for their main practice area or all the other different ways that we market. If folks who are listening to this podcast wants to find out more, connect with you all, and I assume they can go to estate gurucom, and what will they find when they go there? What's the next step in the process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll find an attorney's tap and they'll fill out a general like hey, I'm interested, drop their email and then we'll reach out and we'll call. We'll request that phone number and email from them and reach out. They can also reach out to Blake or I at B Johnson at estate gurucom and then John JLN at estate gurucom. We don't have an automated sign up as an automated currently because we want to make sure that we're able to help you get set up correctly in terms of getting plugged into our network to do that?
Speaker 1:Sure, but it'll be automated in the future. A quarter or two quarters out will make that automated when we smooth that over. For now, come talk to us, blow our emails up. We're here to help you implement this into your practice and scale it. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Blake anything you want to add Just yeah, it's good it's fun right.
Speaker 4:It's fun. It is, it is fun, and the reason I joined guru is because I saw that technology really does need to be implemented into our practice, and so this is a great way to do it, especially on the state planning side. And so, just yeah, we're always looking to connect with more like-minded people. Like you said, create that tribe, that community. Whether you are an estate planning attorney or not, we want to connect and see what we can do to help down the road, and John and I haven't talked about this, but it's like, okay, how could we expand into other practice areas once we have a state guru really dialed in with the estate planning side? That would be a really cool thing to do. So having a list of other people that we could talk to about, that's a great thing for us too. So always happy to chat and get to know attorneys who are like-minded.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know I appreciate that. And the problem with entrepreneurs and visionaries is that we are onto the fourth idea down the line, often before we've got the first idea. Like working really well, yeah, yeah, so all right. Well, look guys, look, it's been great to have you on the program. Again. Anyone who's listening to this is interested in go to estate gurucom. At least have a conversation with Blake or Jonathan, because these guys are smart guys. It may or may not be right for your practice, but you're right.
Speaker 3:Like technology is changing the legal space and at the end of the day, I think the lawyers who build firms where the lawyer is doing work here she likes, they're doing it with people that they like, for people they like and they're able to deliver a great client experience. Like that's the thing that really is lacking in laws. Like we're all smart, we can do the legal right, but from the other side of the coin, like how is that consumer client? What is their experience as they go through, whether it's you know you're handling your DUI case, estate planning, fang law, whatever it is. The more that we members of the GLM tribe and folks like you can raise that customer experience level, then the better off lawyers as a whole are going to be. So really appreciate your time today. As I said, hang on. I've got one idea to share with you. All right, sure Thanks guys. Thanks for having us. Thank you.
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