Trial Lawyer View Podcast | PI Practice, Operations & Growth
Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world.
New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.
Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact
Trial Lawyer View Podcast | PI Practice, Operations & Growth
The AI Disruption in Personal Injury Law: Strategy, Automation, and the Future of Law Firms | Trial Lawyer View Ep. 89
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What happens when AI stops being a legal trend and starts becoming the new operating reality for personal injury law firms? In this episode of Trial Lawyer View, Jason Lazarus sits down with Dustin Ruge, CEO of Law Leaders®, to unpack how AI, automation, legal infrastructure, and changing business models are reshaping the future of personal injury law. From rising client acquisition costs to agent-based intake, legal workflows, technology debt, and law firm valuation, this conversation looks at what law firm leaders need to understand now if they want to stay competitive.
Dustin explains why buying AI tools without a clear strategy creates more complexity, not better outcomes. He breaks down the difference between AI chatbots and AI agents, why intake is one of the biggest operational pain points in personal injury law, and how firms can begin using AI to create more consistent, intentional systems across the business. He also shares why the firms that win over the next few years may not be the best attorneys, but the best operators and architects of scalable law firm systems.
The conversation also goes deeper into ABS and MSO structures, legal tech infrastructure, and the growing importance of building firms with real enterprise value. Dustin lays out why scalable systems, not reputation alone, are increasingly driving valuation, and why law firm owners need to think beyond practice income toward long-term asset value.
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Trial Lawyer View features long-form conversations with experienced plaintiff trial lawyers, firm leaders, and industry experts. The show is built for legal professionals who want to lead stronger, more efficient personal injury firms by learning from peers who have built, managed, and evolved successful practices in the real world.
New episodes of Trial Lawyer View are released every 2nd and 4th Monday at 5am EST.
Learn more here: https://sholink.to/synergycontact
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Coming up...
SPEAKER_02Ever since COVID, the average client acquisition costs for personal injury cases have almost doubled. And for many attorneys, especially personal injury attorneys, it's an unsustainable path. The economics just don't work.
SPEAKER_00That is Dustin Ruyi, CEO of Law Leaders.
SPEAKER_01He believes the next wave of winners will not be the firms spending the most, but the firms that adapt fast enough to survive the new economics of personal injury.
SPEAKER_02Buying AI without strategy is kind of like hiring staff without a job description. If AI doesn't positively impact these three areas of your business, it's simply not adding value. He explains how the right AI strategy can unlock real growth and improve people in ways that help your firm grow. AI chatbots basically answer questions and AI agents make decisions. The analogy I use is like a self-driving car. You give them a destination or a goal, and then they find a way to get there.
SPEAKER_01Today he shares where AI implementation truly begins and how law firm leaders can use agents to make faster, more consistent decisions at scale. By the end of this conversation, you'll learn how to think about AI strategy, where firms are bleeding value without realizing it, and what to prioritize first to stay competitive. I'm Jason Lazarus, and this is Trial Law Review.
Meet Dustin Ruge
SPEAKER_01Dustin, welcome to Trial Law Review, and thank you for taking the time to be with me today on the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Great, Jason. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it. So you and I connected due to our common interest around technology deployment in the personal injury law firm space. Seeing all of the investment now that's pouring into the different solutions that help each facet of a law firm's workflow improve. Where do you think this is all headed right now?
SPEAKER_02Well, that's a great question. Um are we talking about the context of the technology or or from the law firm side?
SPEAKER_01I I think both. It would be interesting to hear your take, you know, because we're we're just seeing all these different aspects of a personal injury firm's workflow being impacted in a positive way with all these different solutions. And given your expertise and what you guys have developed, which we'll get to later, uh, I just thought it would be a good place to start broadly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So there this is probably, I've been in the legal industry now for over 17 years. This is probably the biggest disruption all ever see in our lifetime. Uh, I haven't seen anything close to this. And and largely because, you know, about 80% of what goes into all legal work is repetitive. And if it's repetitive, it can be automated. And and I think a lot of attorneys struggle with that because they've been kind of operating on an island, you know, and and largely insulated by rules and regulations that are now quickly unraveling uh within the space. And there's new technologies and innovations that are coming in that are changing everything about the legal space, especially on the personal injury side. Um, and you know, there's some positive trends with this, and there's some, you know, somewhat ominous trends depending upon where you are in the space. So, for example, some some of the big guys in the industry are are getting bigger, and some of the smaller guys and medium size are struggling. And and largely it has to do with how quickly are they gonna move into this new landscape. Um, because what worked before in the past is not gonna really work anymore in the legal community, especially in personal injury. Um, and let me give you an example. Ever since COVID, the average client acquisition costs for personal injury cases have almost doubled. Um, and for many attorneys, especially personal injury attorneys, it's it's an unsustainable path. Uh, the economics just don't work. And a lot of them are starting to ask themselves questions, which is how can I compete in an environment like this uh and be able to compete and win similar to what I've done in the past where I want to do. And they're finding it harder to do that. And and there's a lot of unknowns and a lot of innovation that are coming their way very rapidly that many of them are having a hard time uh keeping up with. And uh, and the one thing I would say on top of all that is their their greatest uh savior of potentially their practice it lies within technology. And uh, and I know we'll probably touch on that a lot today in our conversation, but really that that is going to be the biggest determinant between the winners and losers uh in the next three to five years in the personal injury space is how how certain uh firms are adopting and and evolving with technology and how others are not.
SPEAKER_01That point about repetitive administrative work to me is the key because the more efficient you can be and lower your overhead by automating things, you know, ultimately gives you more dollars to invest on the client acquisition side and other you know areas where you can make investments in terms of the practice. So it seems like there's you know this this circle of you know, well, if you don't start to do this, can you be competitive at all? Right. Exactly. Because that that's the thing to me is you know, ultimately this this is maybe the bare minimum line, which is you've got to start leveraging technology, like AI isn't gonna replace lawyers, but the lawyers using AI are gonna replace the lawyers and firms that are not in from what I see so far with as quickly as things have changed. But that begs a question that and I I think in doing some research, I I kind of get to this point of
Why buying AI without strategy can make a firm worse
SPEAKER_01that buying AI tools isn't necessarily a strategy for a law firm. So the question is when a personal energy firm wants to implement AI and technologies today, what are the first steps you recommend so that the technology actually improves the outcome for the operations of a law firm instead of just adding additional complexity? Yep.
SPEAKER_02And that's a great question because ultimately it's where some firms are are will succeed and many are failing right now. And it largely comes down to uh buying AI without strategy. And it, you know, buying AI without strategy is kind of like you know, hiring staff without a job description. Why would you do it? You know, what are you doing that for? And I I always go back to the fundamentals of business when I talk to attorneys about this. You know, every business has three areas you need to focus in on when you operate, and that's people, time, and money. And those are the three big things that you you manage as any business, including a law firm. And if AI doesn't positively impact these three areas of your business, it's simply not adding value. And as you just allude to a moment ago, and we were talking about that, you know, technology really is the key to turning time and people into money. Um, and that there's no other way to really do that. So, what the best way to do it, and I always when I talk to firms about this, is you need to start with strategies and goals. You know, what are you trying to accomplish and when do you want to do that? And then you can start focusing on where are your biggest problems and inefficiencies. And you measure that in time, revenue, you know, profits, productivity, and growth. And let me give you an example of that. When we developed our initial AI system called Legal Navigator, we we were trying to solve a major problem within our business, which was uh was poor client intake. You know, it was plaguing the entire industry at high cost. So we developed a system that we could measure in people, time, and money that had the biggest impact on our operations that we could possibly have. And then ironically, when we rolled it out, we determined at that point, you know, there's 430,000 law firms in the United States that have the same problem. They're trying to solve these problems, and it's probably the first place for them to start, like we did. Um, and you know, the final thing I would leave on this is when you understand AI, and this is a really important point that I bring up a lot is AI can basically do three things for your business, no matter what you buy and where you buy it. It can either add, it can replace, or it can augment what you're doing within your law firm operations. And then the final thing is augmentation. And this is where we can come into an environment and say, okay, if your phone rings more than three or more times, you know, it's gonna roll into our agent, or it's gonna handle off hours on weekends. Or if you're like a worker's comp firm when and you're doing 17 intake questions, you know, 50 to 100 times a day, is it better off to have the technology augment that as opposed to a human doing that over and over again? So the main things you want to think about is especially when you're deploying AI around a strategy, is is it going to add, replace, or augment what you're doing? And when you can put them in those three buckets, attorneys get a lot more clarity as to not only what they're bringing in, but why they're bringing in and how is it going to help them.
SPEAKER_01Let me transition because I wanted to ask you to again look a little bit out, maybe a year or two. And how do you see AI reshaping case flow and case generation for PI firms? Because you've got some expertise in this area.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we've actually we spent a lot of time on this. Um, and you know, it's a great question because we did a survey last April. And let's just talk about the case generation side. Uh, there's a uh perception in the personal injury space that the the biggest challenge is generating enough cases uh and generating them at the right cost. What the reality is there's bigger breakdowns beyond that that a lot of firms have just been ignoring for a long time. So last April, we actually did a survey where we called uh uh, you know, 1,200 small to medium-sized law firms nationwide during regular business hours. And we found that, for example, 35% of them didn't even answer their phones during regular business hours. So it so that alone
Where are law firms losing billions in missed calls and weak intake?
SPEAKER_02was $109 billion worth of case values that just went out the door because of inefficiencies, no matter how much money you spend on your advertising and your case generation. And then we had the intake problem. And I the reason why I bifurcate the two is because they're even though they're related, they're actually unique problems. So we also looked in depth into, for example, like intake. So let's say somebody gets through a phone call into a personal injury law firm, and then that that communication starts, the conversion rate typically of that contact to that case is around 7% nationwide, which is literally one-third of almost any other industry in the United States. So that's another $200 billion of inefficiencies that are out in the marketplace today. So what we did is that we focus in on problems. Uh, where are the biggest problems and how can we solve them in the most effective way? And when it comes to case generation, that was the easiest way to actually address a very, very large problem there. And the reason why we're doing that is because the the market is now moving, in my opinion, from lead generation to case generation. The focus isn't so much on give me leads anymore, whatever they are, and blah, blah, blah. It's more of, you know, the real value in those leads is the cases that come out of them. And as a result of that, you know, intake is being now fundamentally addressed by AI agents. So in ultimately, it will become continuous and agent-driven through the entire process. AI will now pre-qualify and enrich and route all of your cases before a human will ever even see them or touch them. And uh, some people might say, well, that sounds fanciful. Actually, we're doing that right now with Legal Navigator. And it's fundamentally changing how law firms operate because now we can look at things from a systematic basis as opposed to a subjective basis. And it also applies to case flows, like you were talking about earlier. Case flows now are going to become fully automated processes, they're gonna be decision-based, and they're not gonna be based upon staff and intuition. It's gonna be based upon a system that is intentional, that requires logic to be able to operate effectively. So when you look at both of these things and way they're moving right now, looking a couple of years out, right, is basically what's happening is the first fundamental difference of law firms are going to be that the front end front-end, front office of a law firm is now gonna be completely automated from the call to the case. Uh, everything now is gonna have a workflow around it. We already have technology that's doing this now. We have law firms that are fundamentally changing everything that they used to do based upon that side. And then on the case flow side, again, we're starting to see the evolution of that right now in multiple tools and multiple workflows, which are gonna evolve to the point where, again, that's gonna be fully automated to the point where human interaction and subjectivity are literally gonna give way to real results within a law firm and how they're operating.
SPEAKER_01Good segue, because I wanted to ask you about uh legal math, legal navigators, AI agents,
Can AI intake agents protect your brand and qualify better cases?
SPEAKER_01because that's at the very front end of a case lifecycle. So, how does that agent-based intake change the way firms think about lead qualification referrals and protecting the firm's brand and you know what the ethics are around all of this?
SPEAKER_02So it's funny, we didn't intend to go down this path, but we we saw that there was the biggest problem that we were dealing with. There's also a similar problem everybody else was dealing with. Intake typically is the biggest headache and line item of a law firm. Um, almost every law firm that we talk to, whether they be small or large, throughout all the years I've been doing this, when I get down to the brass tacks with them, this is the one area that makes them sweat. And they they just hate it, they hate dealing with it. And and one of the greatest things about AI automation, especially when it comes to intake, is it forces your law firm to be intentional now. You have to run it as a system, it can't be just arbitrary. So uh if you have an intentional AI system developed around your operations, it will only give you the cases you want. It will refer out the cases you don't and will have standards that are consistent all the time for the cases and clients that you take in and removes the subjectivity out of that entire process. And that's why we developed Legal Navigator, um, you know, for our own law firm was we we hired one of the top AI guys in the industry. And this was interesting. I brought him in, I said, hey, we've got this major problem we need to fix. So we we developed a system that all these systems sit on LLMs, by the way. And uh, but we developed the system, and then in February of last year, 2025, uh we started testing it. Then all of a sudden we changed the LLMs and discovered that it was massively outperforming our call centers. And we were like, okay, wait a second, what is this? You know, and then at that point, we were we had that epiphany, which is what else can we do with this, right? How can we vertically integrate it downstream? And then once we started rolling it out, we had other law firms that we know and work with and operate with all saying, What is that? you know, and then we were like, well, we have the system we developed. So we decided to productize it and start selling it in April.
SPEAKER_01Since we're we're talking about agents, and uh I was just looking at some things that you've put out there, and there was something that you wrote which will probably date the podcast a little bit because things are moving so damn fast. Um, but it was about anthropics releases of agentic legal workflows and co-work environment being a major signal that legal software is entering an agent native era where AI executes, plans, executes, and completes multi-step tasks. And I you know, I I I think that a lot of law firms maybe don't understand the full
What is the real difference between a chatbot and an AI agent?
SPEAKER_01impact of what that might look like. But you know, it how would you explain how that's gonna differ from traditional automation or chatbots? And where do you see other than things we've already talked about, these potential um agents creating the most leverage for law firms in the near future, say in the next you know, one to three years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's a great question. So the first thing is uh oftentimes I have to level set with people on what the difference is between, for example, a chatbot and an agent, right? So that that's usually where I start because there seems to still be confusion around that. And one of the easiest ways to explain it is, you know, AI chatbots basically answer questions and AI agents make decisions. And let me give you an example of the contrast. We we're all used to using, for example, or many of us now are Chat GPT and Claude for various different functions where we're asking questions, right? But the AI agents are the analogy I use it's like a self-driving car. If you've ever been to Arizona, for example, um, Arizona, it if you've seen we have a fleet of about 1200 Waymo cars, they're driverless cars whipping around streets all over Phoenix and Scottsdale. And all we're doing is these are AI-driven cars. And you give them a destination or a goal, and then they find a way to get there. And that's really what AI agents do. They understand context, they can follow up and ask follow-ups, they can trigger actions, adapt to outcomes, and learn based upon experiences. And that's why they become so powerful in what they're doing. And, you know, the bottom line is, and I know I alluded to this earlier, but it's really important to everybody understand this is that, you know, the bottom line with AI agents are where anywhere where decisions can repeat at scale, AI agents can perform better than humans. It's not because that they're smarter necessarily, or it's more because they're more consistent and always on. And when you think about that for a minute, back to that 80% number I was talking about earlier, that's where these technology companies like ours and others look for all these repetitions that we can ultimately manage better through automation and remove out of that work stream of personal, you know, type of interpretations, instead, running a business more effectively as a system. So, and you know, basically the bottom, you know, the bottom line for firms when it comes to the AI, when you're looking for it is, you know, if if if AI can beat your current processes at scale, it wins. And and one of the biggest mindset changes that I often have to deal with when I'm dealing with law firms is not explaining what the system is or how it does. I have to start them out with understanding how you measure AI because they they have this misconception. And let me explain it real quick. Uh, and a lot of attorneys will think this way too, is too many attorneys compare AI to perfect. They want it to be perfect. It's either perfect or it's not. But the funny thing is, humans are not perfect. Uh, yet we still expect AI to be perfect. And and I see this throughout the entire legal ecosystem is people are looking for problems, you know, where and and they're not going to go away. AI still has flaws. It will still potentially sollutionate, you'll still have a bad agent call, things of that nature. Um, but when you think about if AI can, you know, beat your current process at scale, it will always win. And this is why we created, for example, Legal Navigator. It wasn't because every call was perfect. It was because, in aggregate, all of the interactions, calls, and an ROI that we were able to measure in those three fundamental areas outperformed every other alternative that we had almost two to one without being perfect. So the one advice I would give to attorneys, especially when it comes to AI, is don't fixate on everything being done for you automatically. It's never going to get to that state. Um, it's improving all the time. And the good thing with AI is this is the worst AI you'll ever see. It's today's, because it's always getting better and better and better. It's doubling in capabilities every seven, seven months. So this is the worst it'll ever be. So if you're expecting it to get any worse, no, it won't. It's gonna always get better. It's going to, in many cases, outperform everything you can do as a human or through humanary processes. And that's why you need to think about what is it doing for you in the bigger picture, as opposed to, okay, maybe what's going to happen if this hallucinates or whatever. Well, you're still an attorney. You still need to review your documents. You know, you're there's still gonna be errors in conversations and things like that. But what AI is doing so much better is it's getting better and better. The hallucinations are becoming less and less, and it's becoming easier and easier now to be current processes at scale with that technology.
SPEAKER_01So it appears that we are moving towards a new definition of the tech stack for personal injury law firms and law firms in general. There's an ecosystem. Obviously, there are some solutions now that to talk about the end-to-end, but there's also a lot of miscellaneous different um pieces and parts that likely will become part of the tech stack for law firms that are really looking to leverage this. And I know you guys have created LawLink, which is positioned as an API-driven ecosystem for these types of platforms. Why is collaboration between these AI solutions and case management software essential for the future of the tech stack? Yeah. Because I I imagine things will not go as smoothly if there are siloed platforms that are being utilized by a law firm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. This is a problem we identified a while ago. And it, you know, the easiest way to explain this to attorneys are if you look at the legal tech technology community, it's it's largely, I I like to say it's like a big jigsaw puzzle spread out on a table with a bunch of different pieces. And some of them talk to each other, most of them don't. And the challenge is the pace of innovation right now is so great within the industry that no one single vendor will ever own the entire workflow. So if you think you're going to rely on one vendor to do all these things for you, it's your first mistake. Because the reality is it will never really be that way. Siloed systems are. were were basically the premise of the old software world. And
Did legal software just lose its moat?
SPEAKER_02and when you think about it, it was trying to build a moat around your business and build everything around it. Well the reality is some of these old systems, these core uh systems, are built on the silo system model. And the re the reality is we just saw last week, now I know this will come out way after the the news, but um you know it is what um February 9th right now. Last week, Anthropic, which you alluded to earlier, the news dropped on last Wednesday about Anthropic. And basically what they did is they created a new legal plugin for Cowork. And basically the software market lost almost $300 billion in market share in one day. So let that settle in for a minute because that's almost the same value as Anthropic is valued. And that was the impact they had of that system. And the funny thing about it was what Anthropic put out in co-work wasn't necessarily revolutionary. I mean a lot of those functionalities already exist on apps and ChatGBT. But what it did is it basically told the legal tech community and the investors more importantly that are investing in them is if Anthropic can do this out the foundational layer, what's it going to do to the software layer? Because basically what they're doing now is they're saying well if if Anthropic or anybody else that has the core foundational layer can develop these apps very rapidly, software is going to be repriced, right? And it's going to be commoditized and it's going to be rapidly losing that moat of invincibility that's been around it for so long. And you know, as I alluded to earlier we saw this coming last year. We we decided that um the industry doesn't
Why legal AI needs infrastructure, not just more tools
SPEAKER_02need another legal AI tech tool. What it needs in is infrastructure. It needs the ability to address the biggest problem that all these legal tech companies have, which is their ability to inter interconnect and to uh and to interoperate within the legal tech community. And so what we did is we quickly deployed a system to do this to improve the efficiency gains that are out there. And let me explain what this means for for a law firm um and why LawLink is so important to them not only for the legal tech companies but for the law firms is let's say for example you're using a case management system now and a great new you know legal MedCron system comes out, right? Something revolutionary I'm just picking one in many different areas the technology might be just compelling and revolutionary. The challenge is these companies that are out there developing these tools like this maybe this new Medcron technology will then now have to integrate into the legal community. So what would otherwise they would be ready to deploy can literally take months to over a half a year for them to even get synced into the community where they can interoperate with these case management systems. So these law firms are going to have to wait for all this new innovative technology that's out there. And that's why we developed LawLink because LawLink now significantly condenses the time to market for for many of these firms that these technologies that otherwise would have to take months. We can literally have them linked into the legal tech community and operating within a matter of days. So they might come out with something really good. So it's the 9th of February right now they might have a new technology they call us up and we can literally have them in the legal ecosystem by the middle of this month. They've never seen anything like that before. And then what it also does is it reduces all the redundancy of the engineering time and the cost that would take for them to build the APIs, build the integrations, build the relationships where we've already done that through one single connection into the legal ecosystem. So that's why we ultimately created LawLink. It's it's the solution that now integrates the entire legal ecosystem into one fully integrated and homogeneous system. And ultimately the benefit not only is for the legal tech providers but especially for the law firms that want to stay ahead because if the latest and greatest technology is coming out we can get it out to market faster and cheaper than anybody else can through our technology.
SPEAKER_01With what's going on in the universe of personal injury law firms
Why law firm leaders must become architects, not just operators
SPEAKER_01what mindset shift to the leadership whether it's owners or the operators of law firms need to take on to stay competitive as AI and you know all of these things take hold and begin to redefine how legal services are delivered.
SPEAKER_02My suggestion is based upon what I'm seeing is that personal injury lawyers if they want to be successful moving forward, they need to stop operating as or I need they need to start working as operators less as operators and more as architects. Sorry I'm saying that a little backwards but basically attorneys have been trained to practice law, right? Very little is learned in law school about how to run a business and and you know and it's an important thing to to orchestrate and understand that because right now the winners are going to be the best orchestrators of these law firms moving forward. And you had mentioned earlier uh Fireproof, right? Uh Mike Morris, his his team that's what they do. They teach people how to become really good architects of running their business and how to be able to manage the people time and money within a process is largely through technology, talent management and trust, right?
SPEAKER_01Well one of the things in uh that we had talked about when you and I connected before the podcast was the ABS and MSO models which are you know evolving
How will ABS and MSO models change the business of law?
SPEAKER_01in the US legal market, particularly MSO ABS has been around for a while but I'm curious about your thoughts about how these structures are going to intersect with AI and technology ecosystems in my mind there's a deep connection there because foundationally ADS and MSO models are going to look into that how to make practices more efficient and profitable as part of that bigger entity organization um structure.
SPEAKER_02Is that do you think that that's accurate? It seems that way and you know for those that aren't I I'm still shocked at how many attorneys don't know what an ABS or an MSO is so just the groundwork on this ABS is alternative business structures and basically it's it's a new model that's being adopted it was largely first adopted in Arizona as the full implementation now it's moving to Washington and Washington DC has a certain amount of it Puerto Rico things like that but uh ABS is basically allow for a regulatory and financial unlocking of the legal industry. And it's important to understand both because the first thing it does is it allows non-attorney owners to own parts of a law firm. And as a result of that, you know financial money is now flowing into what was otherwise a closed financial system. And you guys would understand that as better than anybody, right? So so the challenge with that has been I I did a video with Linda Sheeley who was one of the first and foremost people that that adopted this in Arizona five years ago when the ABS first came out, we did a three year rerun to catch up on it explaining what it is and how it operates and how it can change everything that goes on within the legal industry. And then you you're now seeing a lot of talk around MSO or management service outsourcing. And MSOs are basically a way to allow you to separate the business of law which is the MSO from the practice of law which is however you practice law. And they're already doing this in other industries. For example uh medical dental dental's done this quite a bit they have what are called DSOs and the dental industry is doing this where now they they the business will run the actual physical business while the practice operates within the business. And the thinking is that the legal community will do the same thing because it has a lot of the same regulatory hurdles that that you know we see in medical and and as a result of that the the thinking is that the MSO models are going to come out where high efficiencies of how to operate a law firm will come in place so much so that instead of you having to you know hang your shingle out and run every aspect of your business, you can actually practice the law within a business foundation that will operate separate from yours as a legal entity even though yet you're working together. And here's the reason why these two things are really important to understand from from a context of just what attorneys want to do. There's two ways that attorneys can make law make income in the practice of law. And I often remind them
Is your law firm building income, or real asset value?
SPEAKER_02of this you have practice income which attorneys have always been familiar with right which is you bill for certain hours, you have contingency rates and you get paid for your services. But you also have asset income which is what do you do with your law firm at the time you retire or want to get rid get rid of your practice or get out of it. And one of the challenges I've seen for many law firms over the years is if you want to exit at a high multiple of your law firm, you want to sell it, right? You say you want to retire and you know this is part of my 401k, I want to sell my practice, you can't just sell a book a business anymore. And the reason why is investors, especially ABS and MSO structures, these are business people coming into the space or now saying, hey, you know what? We only want to buy scalable and repeatable systems. We don't want to buy something that was predicated on something that can't grow beyond what it is. And that's why you see so many law firms today that sell at such low multiples of value where a lot of times I have attorneys they're like I can't believe I'm only going to get this for my practice. I'm like, well, there's a reason for that is because you didn't set up a system that was scalable and repeatable for what you're doing. And in the in the technology world and in the investment world they now call this technology debt. And basically what this means is your valuation is now tied to your technology debt. So if you ever get to a point where you're talking to somebody about buying your practice or setting up an MSO, they're going to be looking at your technology debt and they're going to be saying, okay, the less you have the more you're worth right in other words values are no longer your work in progress cases or your past reputation. We want to see something that if we can buy it for X, we can build it into Y and Z, right? And it has to be able to scale beyond that and do that. And this is fundamentally different for law firms because a lot of attorneys when they start out their practice they were like you know in my name and on my shingle and and I'm going to run my systems and largely in my head and I'm going to produce a fairly good income for myself and my family but then I have no asset value at the end because somebody might buy my book in business for nothing. Maybe I'll get some tailings for referrals out. But the reality is you you had an opportunity to sell a practice that could have been sold for millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, that created a huge amount of asset value. And now you can do that largely through technology assistance systems, more so than you ever could before. And that's where AI is becoming so powerful is not only are you adopting technology to help you operate better now on your income side, but it significantly can increase your asset side. And you know the one question I always ask law firms when they when they understand they say hey how do I know if I have technology down I say it's very simple. Ask yourself one simple question uh can your firm run without you and if you can answer that question and say yes my firm can run without me then you don't have a technology debt problem. And it's technology by the way applies to both processes and and you know physical technology but that's the one question I always ask them. And when they can't answer that question I said now you got a technology debt problem. Now you need to start thinking strategically about what do you need as far as technology that's going to get you to that point where you don't have that debt.
SPEAKER_01So if a lawyer who owns a practice is thinking about exiting or long-term valuation as their goal, what should they be concentrating on? Is it just simply what you just said which is make that firm run perfectly without you to make sure that ultimately it is scalable or are there other things that you think are as as important.
SPEAKER_02Well it's a lot of things I I'm putting on the hat of an you know an investor MSO when we first announced the ABS model here in Arizona and Linda and I did the video she and I both received a lot of calls from private equity people in New York and they were like hey guys we want to invest in the legal community what do we need to do and I I first thing I had many conversations with them where I explained well you first off you have to understand what's been holding this industry back as far as what you're looking for and how you what you should be looking for in the context of how they're operating. Because the challenge is most of these firms are not thinking this way. And that's why it's it's early it's important to get this conversation going early on as opposed to if you're going to call me a week from retiring I'm gonna be like no, there's not a lot you can do at this point. But you know if you would have if we were to talk five, 10 years in advance of that, you you would have made a significantly bigger improvement with what you're doing. So so the the challenge with it is really just kind of getting in front of it now and having those systems and understanding in place because the this smart some of these young kids coming out of law school and and going into some of these early practices, I'm seeing what they're doing and how they're doing it. And it's absolutely phenomenal. It's completely different than for example I, you know, I've had phone calls I I probably have one every month or so from a kind of a mid-major law firm in a whatever market. And you know it's always somebody saying hey I'm I'm thinking about retiring or or something like that. And he goes I need to hire more attorneys and I the first question I have for them is okay well how much how much attribution are your cases to you physically personally? Is it a lot? And usually they're the rainmaker, right? So they're like, yeah, that's why I need to hire more attorneys I'm like no you got a bigger problem than just you stepping out. Um and you can't answer that question which is can this firm run without because right now you're telling me it can't. So you've got a bigger issue and and that's where you need to go into all the other aspects to your point. It's not just one thing it could be many things. How strong is their brand and market and you know how well are they systematically running? Where do they get their cases from and who's what are the referral networks look like it all those really kind of weigh in on the strength of the practice and the sustainability and scalability of the practice moving forward.
SPEAKER_01Well you've been very generous with your time today one last question I always ask it
What is Dustin Ruge’s view on who wins next?
SPEAKER_01to wrap up the podcast and it's open-ended so you can answer it however you see fit as a legal technologist and an expert in these issues that we've talked about today what is your view my view is if you are not ready for change change is ready for you.
SPEAKER_02It's right now the way that we have been practicing law for a long time uh in this industry is radically changing right now. This is the biggest disruption this is not hyperbole. This is what I've seen I I went through the dot-com revolution and and the legal space I went through you know when everything started moving to digital and I saw it at that point seem to be a fast pace the pace at which this is coming is astronomical and it's not overwhelming but you just need to be organized and think of your business as a business right and and you know a lot of people are like who are the people that are going to be standing and unfortunately it's not always the best attorneys. In fact in many cases it might not be the best attorneys at all it's the best business people that know how to work around this environment and make money with it. When you look at every market when you go in there's usually about three to and personal injury right there's about three to five people that command a dominant share of the market. They have a playbook they know how to run it. Even the biggest guys the Morgan's red they have a playbook they know how to run it. And the reality is you're putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don't know how they how they play the game and how to play the game better than they can. And the the greatest equalizer right now in that field is your ability to be local and your ability to utilize technology because the bigger the organization gets the slower they tend to be in adoption of technologies. And if you can use that as a competitive advantage you can compete and actually win against these bigger firms that are coming into your marketplace. If you you if you move as slow as they do on the glacial shift of adopting new things and and and innovating, uh then you're gonna have a really hard time surviving in this marketplace. And the reality is are you are the systems going to be working for you or are you going to be working for the systems? Because in the end, there's going to be a lot of new legal technology emerging outside of the traditional law firmels where people are going to be able to do a lot more pro se work and a lot more litigation work without an attorney and they're going to be hiring you to supplement the systems that are doing that for them as opposed to you doing that with a system. So that's why you need to get ahead of this now because it's going to fundamentally change everything we know about law within the next three to five years and and how you're gonna be able to operate and survive with this within this environment.
SPEAKER_01Great stuff today. I wanted to give you an opportunity if you can tell listeners a little bit about what you guys do. I I know you've alluded to some of it and then um if anybody's got a question about anything you've talked about today just give them your contact information. Sure.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely so um we are my company that we originally founded was Law Leaders. We have we've I co-founded the company with some of the biggest leaders in the industry no pun intended and uh our whole mission statement was very simple which was to create the largest legal ecosystem in the United States uh to combine all these fragmented uh tools processes technologies people all throughout the legal ecosystem into one cohesive model. And uh we're doing that in various different pieces. We started with some of the biggest problems like legal intake which is legal navigator which is the most advanced legal AI automation tool and then LawLink as we talked about a moment ago which is the ability now for legal technology community to become one as an operating community. So we're going to continue to add to that we got a lot of new exciting technologies most around AI that are coming out but our ultimate goal is to take a highly fragmented legal community and make it much more efficient, much more effective, increase the access to law uh for for consumers, uh improve the the practice of law for attorneys and then ultimately create better outcomes for for both parties involved. And if they need to get a hold of me you can go to any one of our websites lawleaders legalnavigator.ai lawlink.ai um you can email me personally at dustin at lawleaders.com and uh that's usually the best way to reach me or connect on LinkedIn. I've got a pretty active LinkedIn community so just look for me on my name in the LinkedIn community.
SPEAKER_01Dustin thank you again for joining me today on the podcast and we'll see everybody on the next episode of Tri Law Review.
SPEAKER_00Thanks Chase. If today's episode gave you a new perspective on how your firm operates or sparked a useful idea consider sharing it with a colleague and be sure to follow the show so you don't miss future conversations with leaders across the personal injury space. Tri Law Review is brought to you by Synergy, a strategic operations partner helping personal injury law firms resolve healthcare liens more efficiently if you're looking to accelerate case flow and allow your team to focus on high level legal work that moves cases faster, consider partnering with Synergy. I'm Jason Lazarus and I'll see you in the next episode.
