Law Firm Ownership and HOT Coffee with Maggy Randels

Join us for another episode of Bird's Eye View as Alex kicks things off by calling out Jason Aldean for stealing her tagline. Next, Maggy shares her frustrations with the women's clothing industry, specifically the lack of inside pockets in jackets.

Together, Alex and Maggy dive deep into the world of law firm ownership, discussing the challenges and rewards of running a business. They also explore the role of AI in the legal field, providing insights into how technology is shaping the industry.

The episode heats up with a discussion on hot coffee and burn cases, featuring the infamous McDonald's case. Alex and Maggy highlight the importance of always documenting everything, keeping evidence, taking photos, and reporting incidents quickly.

Gain a new perspective on medical malpractice. If you or a loved one has been a victim of medical malpractice, head to https://www.birdlawgroup.com/ for more information on how we can soar to justice.

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Transcript

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I'm Alex C. with Bird Law Group. Welcome back to Bird's Eye View. We're here for episode three. And with us for this episode, we are welcoming Maggy Randles from Randles Injury Law. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for being here with us. Glad to be here. So, you know, before we get into anything serious, if we do get into anything serious today, I want to ask, we talk a lot about giving, giving the bird. Who do you, is anybody in particular you want to give the bird to? Well, when I put on my jacket for this microphone, this one has an inside pocket. But most women's clothing, it doesn't. So let's give the bird to women's clothing manufacturers who won't put pockets on the inside of jackets. Every men's jacket gets a pocket on the inside, but not women's. And what do they really need to put in there? We have all kinds of stuff we can put in our little pockets. Lip gloss, our cell phones, tampons. They don't need any of that stuff. Right. We have to carry a purse or like have a man to come with us to a date, to an event so they can have their inside pocket and carry our stuff. That's ridiculous. We're independent. We can carry our own stuff. Just give us the pocket. Right. Yeah. It's not that hard. Not that much more material. So who makes this jacket? J. Crew. Who do I need to exclusively buy my suits from now on? As we say at, you know, at Randall's Injury Law, keep it real. J. Crew keeps it real. Well, fairly certain and client does not. This is not a paid sponsorship with J. Crew, but you know, it's just real women talking about real issues with clothing. But if J. Crew wants to come provide some clothing for us. Hey, we'll sport your jackets. We will. We'll put stuff in them too. We'll use them. And we'll even keep the lids on our pins so we don't end up with ink stains all down our jackets. Probably. Much more responsible than men, honestly. Who are you giving the bird to? I mean, everyone? Oh, yes. Anybody, anybody. No, we are equal opportunity bird givers. But no, specifically this month. And it was something I just heard. We were in the garage over the weekend. I had this bright idea to start gardening this year. And we built a raised garden bed. Anyway, we can talk about that on another episode. We tried gardening. The Atlanta heat, it killed the garden really fast. I don't have a bloom on anything. But we built a raised garden bed. So while we're doing that, we have the radio on in the garage. And I hear this advertisement. And I hear somebody saying, give them the bird. And I was like, well, hang on a second. I haven't done any radio acts. What is this? And it was a dude. So I was like, well, I also know this isn't me. So I'm giving the bird to Jason Aldean and stealing my tagline for his tea bird, hard iced tea that's available in two flavors, regular in half and half. Because I heard the entire ad and then heard it again because everything's on repeat on the radio. You can't half and half give him the bird. Exactly. That's my point. You either give him the bird or you don't. So look, that's who I'm giving the bird to this week. It's my tagline. I had it first. Jason, if you want to give me a call, talk about it. Maybe we can talk about how to tweak yours a little bit. But yeah, that's my- Collaboration. Collaboration, maybe. If he gets a different flavor than iced tea, possibly. I don't know if that'll be my jam. But yeah, that was just, I even went up to my husband. I was like, did you just hear that? And he's like, yeah, so what? I didn't even click with him. I was like, do you even watch my social media? Does your husband have social media? He does not have an Instagram. So, fair. My husband has two Instagrams. One I created for him for all his home projects and he's posted like three times. And then I got a notification and it said, you know, you might know Doug Schutte. You might know him. I'm married to him. I'm married to him, but like, what is this Instagram? I've never seen this one before. So I asked him, I'm like, how did you get this second Instagram? He's like, I did it on accident. And he doesn't know how. So it's just out there. Just an Instagram with no posts, no followers. No wonder Doug hasn't followed me back. I was taking offense, but it's an empty program. profile. Yeah, the home improvement one is his real one, but he doesn't post there either. Maybe that's how I can get Ryan on social media, bait him with some home improvement stuff. There are some pretty cool male influencers who do like construction projects and dad projects. Oh, he'll watch all those videos. He watches them on YouTube serially, like it doesn't stop. Like his last project, he had it in his head that, well, he's refinishing some furniture right now. But before that, he was going to go get epoxy. Have you seen those videos where they like pour the colored epoxy into wood to make things? Yes, they make it look really easy on the video screen. It's not. Well, apparently not, but he we did not follow through with it. I'll just say that, honey, if you're listening, which you probably aren't because it's on social media or maybe you are because it's also on YouTube, but I believe in you, you can do it. So owning a business. you know, we mentioned or you said something earlier about us being busy and my husband owning a business, me owning a business, but now you do too. I do. So tell us a little bit about what it's been like starting your own law firm and being a business owner because really it's, you know, two hurdles, right? I mean, they're big steps. It is drinking from a fire hose in the best way possible. You know, I spent a lot of time learning this business from fantastic mentors and cannot say enough good things about the guys who taught me this business. And I'm really excited now to be able to take what I've learned and put my own spin on it and figure out how to both manage the business while keep doing excellent work for our clients, which I think is the ultimate tightrope to walk because it's right now it's really just me and thankfully our wonderful paralegal who we share. But I'm, you know, trying to figure that out, trying to figure out how to do books thing classes I didn't take in law school, because I never thought I was going to own my own firm by myself. You know, we both went to Georgia and they have fantastic solo and small firm practice. Well, I thought I was going into big law, which I did. And that was a whole chapter of my life. But when you're going to a giant international law firm with 2500 lawyers, it's not really something you think about of, Hey, how do I do my accounting? How do I do my books? How do I manage a website? How do I manage my social media? And do I want to grow? Absolutely, I do. But right now I'm really enjoying figuring out how to put all those things together for myself. So one of the most kind of fun things I think is actually doing my books and like seeing where all the money goes. I know you have a fantastic I can't stand doing that. Yeah, but you've got somebody who manages that for you, but I love that I'm able to go in once a week and look and see, okay, here's where my money's going. Here's what clients I have put, what cases I have put this money into. And really seeing everything, and it also gives me a great amount of respect for my old bosses who maybe while I was working there, why are you so intense about this deposition and it costs$500 and why are we questioning every invoice? Well, we're questioning every invoice because we're business owners and it's not just, it is our money on the front end. We're investing in these cases, we're investing in our clients, but it's also the client's money. Because at the end of the day, what we're, you know, we're not in the business of making more money than our clients. And we're not in the business of just spending our clients' money for no reason. So I actually really enjoy looking at that, looking at those invoices, figuring out where the money's going, what we're spending money on, and what we shouldn't be spending money on. So I like having my hands in that for now. And I've, I just recently hired some folks to do some kind of clean up and make sure I'm not messing anything up. Smart, smart. Which I think is one of the best things to do in business is, you know, know how to do it yourself, but also know when there is an expert who can do it better, or at least make sure you're doing it correctly, and give you best practices. That's been the hardest thing for me is delegation. I mean, I may not like numbers, and I may not like math. I mean, let's be honest, I went to law school, right? Like, yeah, that's not my forte, but I've had to really check myself and make sure I'm delegating, and I'm staying in my own lane, and I'm doing what I'm good at, and not trying to spread myself too thin. Because then, at the end of the day, I think that really just trickles down and affects clients, right? And the way we can work up our cases. What has been the most helpful thing, or maybe helpful resource for you in navigating all of these new things in the setup of the firm? So, I think really just other business owners, and kind of sitting down and talking to people. I know we've talked a lot about what do I need? What systems do I really need in place? I know you've had Peyton Bell on here as a guest, and now in his old office talking to him about starting a law firm. Our great community of female lawyers who have been just really supportive, and helping send cases, and talk through cases, because I'm now just me, so I need somebody to bounce ideas off of when I can. I mean honestly shout out to the brain trust right the female the other female lawyers that I consider to be Kind of our close -knit group that I mean honestly if you send an email It's going to get responded to by someone almost always and for me It's been really helpful and I also can't even count on two hands the number of times either I pop into your office or you pop into mine, so The collaboration I think is really important to yeah I agree with that and it's really great to have you know my firm. That's small your firm. That's growing, but still small and then Matt's firm in the same space so we have even though we're all separate firms We can share ideas and not just about Cases, but also about business and you know what what things make sense That's always trying to get me to use more AI. I'm trying. I'm trying AI is is interesting to me. I enjoy it and I feel like sometimes it does a really good job and then other times it is really questionable. So I was using it on and my legal research software has it and I was kind of testing it out. I could do the search myself but I was trying to see if it can save me some time because time is money both in business and for our clients. You know, we're always trying to push our cases faster and if we can do something more quickly but still get the same result, why not? Obviously, why not? That's a no brainer. But I was, I have a case involving an injury to a pedestrian in a parking garage. And so I was trying to find what cases in Georgia there are about parking garages and pedestrians because it's a little bit unique. It's unclear if the traffic laws apply to parking garages because they're not public roads. Well, I put that in my AI search and it gave me a lot of cases about parking garages but they were a lot of slip and falls and trip and falls and nothing involving vehicles even though I asked about vehicles. So maybe you understood the assignment but not the details of the assignment per se. Or maybe it was user error. I know a lot of AI depends on what question you ask it. You have to have the prompt to be very detailed and it's definitely a skill. It's not like AI is going to replace people because you still have to have the people to be able to use the AI and train it. And, you know, I think we all have to learn that. Quality control too. Right. Like, yeah, I mean, I try to remember where this was but I feel like I saw something recently where a lawyer had just relied on AI for all the citations and they were made up. Yeah, I've seen a couple of those, so. You know, our friend Kyle, that's right. I think I saw him talking about it. He had a case up in Illinois and the other the lawyer on the other side had put a bunch of citations in a brief that were not real. I don't even I mean, look, I've seen a lot of people do a lot of things that I thought were questionable or the judge needed to address but fake cases. That's the first I've encountered that. Well, you know, in the AI world, my brother's in the tech field. So I've learned about some of these things. And I run tech by him and like, what is this good? What's what's the best? Like, what are people using for this? So we're talking about this AI, you know, making stuff up, they literally call it hallucinations. So AI hallucinations. That happens. That's just a known risk of AI that the AI makes stuff up. Okay, that makes it all too real and too much like a person for me to wrap my hat around right now. It already freaks me out like Watson's gonna get us or something. I hate to sound crazy But you know what I mean like that's terrifying that it's thinking on its own and it's thinking on its own to the extent Where it's making shit up like yeah, you know when I hear Watson all I think of is tennis, you know I'm a big tennis fan So they always do like Watson's insights into the match and it's Wimbledon time right now So that's a they have a nice little graphic on the screen ESPN does that so it's with the IBM Watson Yeah, so we are talking to the same Watson. We are talking about the same one. Okay. Okay. Interesting. I didn't know that I don't watch I Don't know if that's a bad thing. I need to watch more tennis. That's why I mean you do you Yeah, me is watching it shows. I'm not even going to admit that I watched just to check my brain out like I At least I have a kid now and I can have an excuse for watching scoopy day on Saturday mornings. I Guess it's less embarrassing now Honestly though we're like we've talked about being busy I think sometimes you have to just check your brain out and read, you know, I read Crappy romance novels, right and it's it checks my brain out, you know, you mean by that trashy romance. Oh, yeah Yeah, trashy romance novels. Absolutely. I Mean sometimes I sit at home and I read trial books But sometimes my brain needs to turn off and I write to watch So Emily in Paris on TV or that's one of the ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'll admit it Emily in Paris. There's a host of others. I'm sure I've watched Gilmore Girls more times than I care to admit new girl That's pretty funny girl, but it is funny. That one's funny. Yeah I'm also known for the legal dramas the medical dramas because I feel like I can just based on what I do every day I mean, it's a passive watch, right? and it's Some it's something else that's not real life, right? Yeah, I love crime procedurals. We're watching white collar right now I watched it already, but my husband had it and it's so funny. Have you watched that one? I have, I have. They're rebooting it. They are? With Matt Bomer still. Ooh, I was gonna say the favorite part about that one might've been the lead for me. So, okay, I'm interested. Yeah, yeah. I'm always very, like, I love him as an actor and he's fantastic, but the fact that he plays such a rakish straight man. Yeah. When he's married to a man and has children and- I had no idea. He is an excellent actor. His, he really is. Coffee cup is pretty hot, which makes me think about, you know, lots of, there aren't lots of cases out there about burns from hot liquids, hot. You have one, right? Yeah, we do, actually. Well, for the record, there's a sign on the coffee machine that says caution hot. So I don't want to be getting any letters just because you're drinking out of a bird law group cup. I'm just kidding. I'm not kidding at all. I just got a bunch of new certified mail envelopes, so we're ready to send you that letter. Although I'm not gonna lie, I've actually been sending most of my spoliation letters FedEx recently. We've been using FedEx more than certified mail because the mail is so unreliable. So slow. And very scary, the things that just don't show up where it gets delivered somewhere else or months later. I mean, look, I kind of feel bad about this, but I got pretty mad at a USA adjuster because she's like, the check is in the mail. And I'm like, lady, it has been a month. Okay, a month later, so we're talking 60 days. She ended up FedExing another check and canceled the first one, 60 days beyond the date she said she mailed it, it showed up. I'm just sitting here like, okay, people, do not send your checks in regular mail. Please put those things in FedEx. Like for everyone, sanity, yours included. We'll get back to the burns in a minute, but speaking of mail and checks, my banker was telling me about people pulling, realizing what law firm envelopes look like, pulling them out of the mail, and then taking checks and writing checks on law firm accounts, horrifying. Okay, well, your banker is my banker. So hopefully the fact that she's aware and in tune to this means it won't happen tomorrow. Banks are very tuned into it and they're doing a good job. But if you haven't checked with your banker recently, you should, just make sure. Freaking take a glance at your account, right? And pay attention, right, yeah. Another reason if you check it out, it's your bug. Even if you're like me and somebody else handles most of it for you, just take a look at it. But yeah, back to the coffee burns, which by the way, every time we talk about a burn case, the first thing that comes to my mind is the McDonald's hot coffee case. I feel like plaintiff's lawyers just got a bad rep from that case, man. So bad, and it's funny, so I, in college actually, I was taking a, I think I was taking like an argumentation class and I actually wrote a paper about that case and it's really kind of a masterful exercise in media from the defense bar because the facts of that case are horrible. So the coffee was multiple degrees hotter than it needed to be, multiple degrees hotter than it's safer to drink it at. And they handed the coffee to her, it spilled on her lap and I think she had third degree burns. I mean like surgical stuff, right? Like really, really nasty burns on her legs. So in a really, you know, private area, really sensitive area. Like in her lap, right? Right. And then the number that the jury awarded was actually really a rational basis. I don't remember what. increment of time, it was, but it was related to, I think, a day's worth of coffee sales for McDonald's. So it's not like the jury just up and pulled that number out of nowhere. They're actually using numbers that make sense to McDonald's and can help define those damages. But unfortunately, what we hope happens that companies learn from lawsuits like that hasn't happened. No, no. I mean, we just got a case in not too long ago. It wasn't coffee. It was soup, but it had spilled and the bag was wet. You know, oftentimes would be in the drive -thru, you get your drink and there's like tea all over the top of the cup. Right? Or it's not wiped off. It's dripping on the side. Well, similar thing had happened, but it was with soup and it had wet the bottom of the bag. So when it was handed into the car and passed to the passenger, the whole bottom of the bag gave way and it just spilled all over her lap. I mean, it's just permanent scarring from it. And I know you've had some recent cases. Yeah, I have one involving hot water and the lid pops off the cup, which causes the water to spill. And of course it's very hot. So its initial burns on the arms and then it spills all down her chest and causes burns there. So, yeah, you would not believe the danger that these hot liquids can cause. Even if you're, you know, a warning caution hot, sure, it's hot, but if something goes wrong, like the bag is wet or the lid is defective or the company is just brewing the water or coffee too hot, it can still cause a lot of injury, even if you're doing everything right. And, you know, something you said, my coffee maker is not calibrated to brew coffee at nuclear levels. Right. But, you know, I think even in the McDonald's case. And, you know, maybe what we'll bear out in the discovery in our cases is sometimes the water or the coffee or even the soup is kept at a higher temperature on purpose. Right. Because they're trying to make sure that it's warm so you can drink it after you take it through the drive -thru and back to your house or your office, which, you know, is maybe desirable. But not if it's going to spill if you're in the car, your life's going to pop off if it's not. Right. Right. And, you know, they just have to look at the cups and everything and see, you know, are these defective? Yeah. So if folks are listening who have been injured in that scenario, first of all, keep the materials if you can. I know. That's true. In your case, did they keep anything? They didn't keep it, but they took a lot of photographs and photographs of the inside of the car, photographs of the injury, photographs of the bag and the soup container. And most notably, a photograph of the bag of ice. So, in my case, somebody from inside heard the screams in the car and came out with a bag of ice that had the restaurant's logo on the front of it. So that's in the front seat of my photo. So there's not going to be any claiming, well, we didn't even know she got hurt. Oh, really? Oh, really? And I mean, even if they didn't know she got hurt, that doesn't mean she didn't get hurt. Right. No, it doesn't. It makes the case tougher, which is, you know, that's what I have in my case is it happened down the road at at her office. Maybe she was walking around or like walking in her office. She was getting out of the car to walk into the office is when it happened. So, yeah, that and I've heard about, you know, other cases with the transfer between the person in the drive through in the store where the coffee ends up getting kind of poured on somebody and these retailers have policies and procedures for how that should be done. And so there's a lot of evidence that you can get and you can find to to help prove these cases. Right. Are they all good cases? No. Are there certainly times that people do something silly and and get burned? Yes. Yeah. Like me, when you get out of the car with 87 things in your hand and you dump something on yourself. That's on me. Right. But if you're just walking around and the lid pops off or the bug falls through because someone on the inside got it wet. I mean, I think those are pretty good instances. I don't know what's going to happen in this case, but I feel pretty confident that there's some responsibility there. Yeah. Well, in what you were saying about we're talking about the pictures we have and text messages or just anything that was contemporaneous with what happened to the person. And, you know, I just say to any of our listeners, document things that happen. You know, if let's say it's a hot water, hot coffee, hot soup incident, take a photograph. Like Maggie said, take pictures, save the materials, save the cup, save the bag, and make sure you report it where it happened, because oftentimes these retailers and restaurants, they have incident reports that they'll fill out. Make sure you report it as quickly as possible because evidence goes away very quickly. One of the best examples is surveillance videos. Some retailers, it gets written over in 24 hours. If you don't report it immediately and there's video, that may be gone. Video is often going to be the best evidence of what happened. I am looking at a trip and fall case right now and there's video and I'm fighting with the defense lawyer about it. But it's there, it's preserved, whether he won't give it to me, even though it might help me make a decision about whether they should be sued. So absurd. I mean, not different lawyers. If you have video, just give it to us. It might stop you from getting sued if the video is helpful to you. Right? I mean, so that whole I'm going to put up a blockade and I know I'm going off script here because this was not on the list of what to talk about today, but I'm going to talk about it because it irks me. Or as another lawyer said to me, it really gets in my crawl. I hadn't heard that in forever. But anyway, you know, if we reach out pre -suit, don't lock down and not share anything with us. I mean, oftentimes I've had situations where I've had defense lawyers or in -house like risk management folks share video with me, share records with me, share information with me. And it's helped my investigation, right? And sometimes it's ended up in me saying, I'm not going to take this case. You know, this isn't a case that our firm is going to file. So it's just, yeah, don't be an asshole. Also, you're going to have to give us the video anyway, right? Why are you delaying? Because it's, if anything, keeping it to yourself and not sharing it is definitely going to get you sued when sharing it could inform our investigation and prevent a lawsuit. So you're really not doing the right thing by your client if you're being a jerk. I mean, that's how I see it. So I agree. Anyway, so anyway, document everything and keep notes, take a video, report it. And you know, most of all, if you have a question about an injury or a medical injury or harm, you know, give Maggie a call. She probably will let you tell them what kind of cases you typically take. So I take all kinds of personal injury cases, car wrecks, slip and falls, trip and falls, negligent security. So that's if you're injured by... crime on somebody else's property. If you're hurt at work, call me. I don't do workers' compensation but workers' compensation doesn't cover all your injuries usually and I love to look at cases and figure out if there's somebody other than your employer who we can sue in those work injury cases too. Make sure you document everything because that's really important in every type of case. As you know we're working together on a commercial vehicle case. Yes, yes we are. I got a couple cases together and actually I've got another one I need to run by you. A lady fell through a flight of stairs. Ooh, yes please. I don't know if we're in a complex. That's terrible. We like, I'd be like excited about bad injuries. That's awful. It's not excited about bad injuries. It's excited about the opportunity to help make up for the harm that was done to somebody else. That was someone else's fault. I think that's what we really get excited about. Because we're excited about actually having a case where we can maybe change something. And unfortunately, the bigger the injuries, the more likely a company is to listen. And effect change. Right. Because that's the type of case that can go to trial, can really help them see, hey, we screwed up here and we need to do something different. Because that's what this whole system is designed for. We have a whole rule of evidence that says, if you change something because somebody got hurt, you can't bring that up at trial. Because we want to encourage companies and people to do things differently after they make mistakes. Right. And. So I think that's what we get excited about. That's what we get excited about. Right. Yeah, because we want to help the people who have been hurt and we want to stop other people from getting hurt. I think the best day would be when we're out of business because companies. People aren't getting hurt. Do the right thing and people aren't getting hurt. I think people in the auto space are thinking about, well, self -driving, et cetera. But that's not there yet because we've all seen what's happened with some of these self -driving cars. Not in a million years am I getting on one of those. Waymo is in Atlanta now testing. That's the driverless caps. No, no, no, that's a hard no for me. But like anybody out there, if you have an injury that you have a question about, whether it's a negligent security, a car wreck, a slip and fall, a burn case, I encourage you to give Maggie a call. We work with her all the time and love having her here in the office with us. And you've got your medical malpractice, give Alex a call. And as always, anything medical, we're here for you. Here to talk about it with you. And we really appreciate you coming on with us today, Maggie. I could sit here and just shoot the shit with you all day, honestly. because that's what I enjoy doing and that's what we do around the office it's usually case -based or just really nerdy but yeah we've enjoyed having you on and thank you so much for being on bird's eye view. Thanks for having me it's been fun to to give them the bird yes keep it real and keep it real coffee cheers coffee cheers and then we have to put our coffee cups down because we have a little tradition here at the end of the podcast where we we do this because we gave him the bird and her owl hold on so you flip your hands upside down like this wait like this like this so put your fingers under your chin okay and then go up wait this cannot be but yes I'm serious okay like this all right all right and then fingers under your chin fingers under your fingers under okay and then go up wait what yeah go up with your hand put your your round holes like this yes but like no what because you're an owl that way no okay all right well Can we just give them the bird? Maggie's keeping it real. She's giving them the bird. I'll be the owl for this episode. Thank you guys for joining. Please like, subscribe, follow all of the things that I know they want me to say about the podcast and tune in for the next episode.