Michael Bradley: Building a law firm, copyright and billing practices

Michael Bradley reflects on building one of Australia’s most distinctive independent law firms and the commercial realities of modern legal practice.

The conversation explores legal billing practices, firm culture, independence, intellectual property disputes, and the broader tension between commercial pressures and professional ethics within the legal industry.

Michael Bradley is Managing Partner and Founder, Marque Lawyers.

Ruminants is a legal podcast series that goes beyond the headlines to unpack the ideas shaping law, policy, and public life. Hosted by Louis White and produced by BarNet/Open Law.

Produced by Angela Stretch and published by BarNet Open Law. The team behind the JADE legal research platform and other legal informatics.

Music by Out To The World, Bulletin World, courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:05

Welcome to Ruminants, a legal podcast exploring the ideas, decisions, and forces shaping the profession in Australia today. Hosted by Louis White and produced by Barnett, and Open Law, each episode brings together leading voices from across the legal community, from judges and barristers to academics and regulators for thoughtful in-depth conversations on everything from AI and regulatory reform to major court decisions and the evolving role of lawyers.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

I'm Louis Wyatt, a seasoned journalist who's covered major news stories in Australia and England for the past three decades. I've always been fascinated with the law, and in 2025 I completed my jurisdictor at the University of New South Wales, which has enabled me to further my practical understanding and knowledge of the law, and now I'm the host of the Ruminants Podcast series.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Thank you for joining the Ruminates Legal podcast. What was your inspiration for starting the firm back in 2008?

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Really was the sort of the sum total of the experiences we'd had as lawyers in traditional practice. The group of us who started Mark had um we'd been in a normal law firm for a I'd been there for a long time. And there was a lot about um the way law is traditionally practiced that really just wasn't working for us, it was making us more and more unhappy. So we created Mark um for the really for the purpose of being lawyers and happy at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

So what was being done that you didn't like?

SPEAKER_03 2:07

I was describe it in terms of the sort of three key different differentiators that I think are embedded in our model that were designed to address the sort of three fundamental problems as we saw it. One is time costing. I think the the hourly, our hours-based billing system, charging for time, timesheet culture, all of that is deeply dysfunctional and destructive in every respect. And it sort of permeates through every aspect of the way that law firm cultures operate, the kinds of behaviors that are tolerated and rewarded. Secondly, and sort of related to that, is the fact that in most law firms everyone's in competition with each other. You know, they they operate on internally competitive business models where whether you're a junior lawyer or a partner, you're really in direct competition with your own peers. Which again, at a human level, is really dysfunctional and it and it drives very bad behaviors and creates a sort of value set that is antithetical to being happy and being sort of fulfilled at a personal level. So we felt, yeah, that had to go, and that dictated a completely different internal business model in terms of our reward, remuneration, recognition structures, how we how to how we engage with each other and how we engage with the business as lawyers. And the third piece is what I describe as humanizing the law, but really it's about all the ways that lawyers traditionally and typically create and maintain barriers between themselves as lawyers and the normal world, this sort of rarefied air that there's something special about being a lawyer that makes you a different person. And it has a lot of damaging effects, one of which is that lawyers, as a lawyer, you you tend to take on a sort of bifurcated personality where you're a different person when you're being a lawyer from the one that you are when you're not, which is not good for the soul. So we just want to be the same people all the time. And so we put a lot of thought and work into stripping away all of that unnecessary stuff that that kind of dehumanizes legal practice.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

You often described as law done differently. How are you doing it differently?

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Well, I mean, by reference to exactly those three things that I described, you know, those are the fundamental differences, and they translate in a million different ways in terms of how we how we work, how we work with each other, how we work with our clients, how we communicate with the outside world, how we express our brand. You know, we we have a very quite clearly differentiated presence in the marketplace because of that. But there's a very clear, very clear line running through all of it. It all makes you know kind of a coherent sense. None of it's just marketing.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

You're a certified B Corp and public line with purpose-driven practice. In practical terms, how do you stop that becoming branding rather than something that actually constrains decision making?

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Well, I mean, it's a it's a philosophical question. You know, I mean the reason we're a B Corp, the reason we chose to be a B Corp is because we were actually a B Corp before B Corp existed. So when that sort of came along, it was a very natural choice for us to certify. The whole ethos of B Corp is that you're driven by a purpose other than profit. You know, it's for businesses, you know, for-profit businesses whose kind of ethical core is not just about making money, but is about something else. And like, that's not something you can fake. In a sense, it doesn't matter to us whether anyone else believes it. We choose to be a B Corp because it is an accurate reflection of what matters to us, of our purpose and values. It does reflect the way that we run our business and what we want to communicate to the world. Other B Corps get that immediately. A lot of other clients, most of our clients, you know, they get it instinctively, it makes sense to them, it resonates. And then there's a lot of other lawyers and people who you know would sort of hear me say something like that and think that I'm smoking something like that's that's fine. We're probably not the best fit for them. A big reason why law firms typically work so hard to look like each other is the fear of upsetting anyone, you know, like but you don't need to appeal to everyone as a service provider, and if you if you actually stand for something that you believe in, then you're gonna find the other people who believe in it too. And that's gonna be a very solid basis for a working relationship that isn't purely transactional, that is based on you know a a sort of an abstract trade of service for money.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

So we did you become B Corp almost uh registered almost immediately after when you first started the firm, or did you wait a few years?

SPEAKER_03 7:43

No, it was a while. Um I think it would have been about seven or eight years after we started, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, sorry. But I'd say B Corp had started in the US, I think around the time we started the firm, or maybe a bit earlier, and then it came to Australia, came onto our radar, probably when we'd been in business for maybe about three years. And then we sort of were a bit hesitant at first because it's actually a really onerous certification process, but well, we eventually decided to have a crack at it, and certainly haven't looked back from that. It's been a really successful thing for us.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

And is it true when you started the firm you had no HR consultant or you never had an HR department at all?

SPEAKER_03 8:31

We have never had an HR department um or any HR consulting, and we have committed to never having those things. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Why is that, my asking?

SPEAKER_03 8:43

I have some particularly jaundiced views on HR um from my previous life. I don't think that HR is, as it tends to be characterized, a strategic function. I think it's I think in most businesses it operates as a sort of block or filter or prevention department. Um I think a lot of the people a lot of the people who go into HR shouldn't be in HR. But you know, not not sort of denigrating anyone in particular. I I just I think we get we get a better outcome by treating the management of our staff and our relationship with them as one of the highest priorities that we have as owners of the business, the partners, and so dedicating our time and energy to that rather than sort of delegating it to a bureaucratic process, which creates an instant barrier between us and and the people we work with and rely on. You know, as long as we could commit the time and energy that that requires, then we do get a better outcome. Um, not everyone agrees with this sort of possible position.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

I certainly do. But I did read a very funny article in the Harvard Business Review a few years ago, where a leading, probably about a decade ago actually, where our leading CEO of America developed HR as a parasite on the business. And his point being was that they just take and prevent, you know, so many barriers around who you can employ, what you can pay them, etc. and so forth, rather than letting a business grow organically. Did you agree?

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Well, like I say, I I think that at some point, you know, it's I mean it used to just be personnel, and it was just a you know, it was a purely sort of functional thing, like, you know, just managing the logistics of having a large number of employees. And this, you know, of course, there's that element, there's payroll, leave, and so forth that someone has to manage. And then at some point it's sort of morphed into you know a kind of a strategic function in business. And I think that was sort of connected to the idea of people like staff, members, or employees as work units in the same way that machines are, and that's supported by methodologies like time costing and timesheets, which you know which reduce people to functional units, and so the you know, focus on productivity, utilization, all these kinds of things. And that all lends to then kind of dumbing human endeavour down into a process that you can manage in systematic and bureaucratic ways as a sort of yeah, strategic input. But to me, that's just a complete misunderstanding of human nature, you know, what it is that motivates people to work to you know to care about the place they work at and so forth, having to care about each other. So I think it all then in a really dysfunctional direction. That's not to say that, you know, I mean, like if I was going to spend money on an HR function, well before I hired an HR manager, I would hire someone as an in-house therapist. Because that would that would be money extremely well spent on supporting us as people. And I could see, you know, and maybe we'll get to a size where that makes sense to us economically or financially, you know, that because the value we would derive from that would be immense as a business, infinitely more than we would get from bringing in an HR manager.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Going back to the billable hour, if you're not billing by hour, how are you charging your clients and how do clients perceive or understand when you explain to them you have a different pricing model?

SPEAKER_03 12:28

We operate on a value pricing model and it translates into a number of different methodologies. So we have a lot of clients on retainer, that's our sort of preferred model for particularly for commercial clients where they just pay us a fixed monthly fee, and that includes that covers whatever scope of work we've agreed with them, and it's all you can eat. It's it's unrelated to time, so it's a fixed, fixed price. For transactional work, generally it's a fixed fee, quoted up front and scoped. And litigation, we tend to operate a hybrid model that has both retainer and fixed fee elements to it. But it's very much sort of you know, horses for courses, we're very flexible in terms of what we're prepared to work with. But the core to it is that the value proposition is a contextual one, and it's contextual from both sides because when you're putting a price on a piece of work or a workflow, you're not just valuing that work as a sort of technical thing, let alone how much time it's going to occupy. You're valuing the transaction or the workflow from the client's perspective. Like, you know, contextually, what is it worth to them? What are the stakes? What and how much does it matter? There's also a valuation or a value assessment of the relationship from both sides. We take an investment perspective to our relationships with our client because most of the value is downstream, not in what we're going to earn today, but what the relationship is going to be worth long term to both us and them. And so if you think about it that way, you know, it becomes a very sort of tailored thing to particular context. I can't tell you, you know, I don't have a price sheet. But you know, obviously there are other elements that come into play in that in terms of you know what is the market charge for these things? We know what what are a client's sort of commercial expectations going to be because they're going to be comparing us to other firms, they'll be often getting other quotes. We have to be mindful of market influences. But in some ways it's an art than a science, and uh and it takes a lot of, it has for us, it's certainly a lot of trial and error, experimenting with different ideas and experimenting with clients and collaboratively talking about okay, well, you know, what's going to work best for both of us here, and being prepared to try things out and then change them if they're not working particularly well. And the biggest surprise we got started the business was how much flexibility was available and how willing clients are to have really transparent collaborative conversations about how much they're going to pay for what we're doing for them and the basis on which they're going to do that because it's trust-based and and it gives them certainty. The vast majority of clients came as a massive surprise to me, just want to pay what's fair. They're not looking to rip us off any more than we're looking to rip them off. But it you know, in a time costing world, that's exactly what everyone's doing.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

But do you think now with the advent of AI, the time-costing model is going to change rapidly going forward?

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Really interesting question. Ultimately, AI completely undermines the time-costed business model, for sure, because it really turbocharges the exposure of how inefficient that pricing model is. So, particularly for firms that you know rely for their revenue model on charging by the hour for the relatively low value repetitive work at many multiple of the salary of the people that are paying to do it. Like that just keeps those out the window, ultimately, because AI is going to do it. You know, it's just going to destroy that. And I think what it's going to do is push legal practice in terms of human legal practice up to the higher level of concept and thought and you know technical skill to the more bespoke end of things. But how quickly that happens, I'm not predicting because the legal industry is the most resistant to change of all industries. The time-costing model, the business model is incredibly resilient. It's almost impossible to go to broke using it. And much will depend on. I mean, the the the profession won't change itself. It'll be resistant to this change and it will look for ways to use AI to make more money within its existing model. That's its instinct. And I know that's that's happening already. So at the moment, I think firms are making more money because of AI than they were before it came into existence. But that's just a transitional phase. Ultimately, much is going to depend on how much pressure clients, how quickly they realize that they're being ripped off and that there are massive savings, like exponentially massive savings available because of AI, and how quickly they start to put that pressure on the legal on law firms to do something about that. And I don't know, because logically the costing should have died 30, 40 years, but it hasn't, because clients haven't put that pressure on. So I think it'll take longer than it should, and maybe quite a long time, and it'll be very messy in the meantime. But in the end, I am sure legal practice will be completely transformed in many, many ways by this revolution.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

When you introduce and now the retainer model, do clients behave differently at all to build hours? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

Well, you know, the thing that changes immediately is that they stop being scared of picking up the phone and talking to us because you know they're not they're not worried that if we spend six minutes talking about our weekend, they're going to get a bill for it. So it immediately changes the relationship in that that sort of anxiety and resistance becomes absent. What we find is that once they get used to the idea of you know us being at the end of the phone or the end of the email available or whatever, whatever issues they've got, they just get more and more comfortable with it, and then more and more stuff comes out of the bottom drawer that they you know probably wouldn't have got their lawyers involved in. One of the consequences of that is that we tend to move more up the food chain in their business in terms of you know the point at which they think to bring us into a conversation goes higher and earlier because you know we begin to get the opportunity to demonstrate to them the value that we can give them in a non-reactive way, and they start to see that that is valuable, and then they want more of it, and so then the relationship gets closer, we get more embedded, and and we're able that sort of process of being able to demonstrate high value just becomes a sort of self-perpetuating thing, and and that works for everyone. Means we get you know we can then justify a higher retainer, so that's good for us. But there, you know, that's only going to happen if they think they're getting value for it, so everyone everyone's happy.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

You work a lot in competition and regulatory law. There are a lot of regulatory issues at the moment, especially with digital platforms. Do you see any major areas of reform that we need?

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think and obviously the law is really, really struggling now. It's been struggling ever since the internet was invented to keep up with technological innovation and change, but that's now become kind of existential. It's just not coping. So if you look at the way that commerce is functioning, like industries like media are operating, that how IP is changing, you know, all of these things, law is a million miles behind it and not coping. And the need for sort of fundamental reform and rethinking of legal constructs is becoming more and more urgent. The alternative is that the market just goes nuts in a completely unregulated, effectively unregulated way. And that's you know, that's not good.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

So and when you've got big tech, you know, Google, Meta, Facebook, you know, uh, Apple, etc., with head offices overseas, and then you're trying to make laws such as the under 16 social media ban, the government gets locked in a left, sorry, in a very awkward position, don't they?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Yeah, well, because they're you know they're they're trying to deal with transnational corporations that are bigger than most countries, but they operate in a borderless realm and they have immense coercive and social and cultural power, political power. Governments are often reduced to kind of begging them to do the right thing, and that's not a good look. And they're just always behind the eight ball, so which then, yeah, you know, one of the risks it creates is that they've they then feel compelled to do things that are fundamentally performative, which is what the social media ban is, because the alternative methods that might be allowing them to try to rein in the damage that social the social media companies are doing are unpalatable, or they've decided they don't have the conversive power to actually make that happen, so so they sort of pick the line fruit of a ban in that particular context. You know, it's not going to work. But you can understand politically why they've gone down that path. But they don't it's not good policy.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

And what about misleading conduct and greenwashing? Uh, would we have adequate laws in place or is it just too hard to enforce?

SPEAKER_03 21:56

Um I actually think the HRC is sort of not doing a bad job. With that, as opposed to ASICU is generally useless. Certainly there's a lot that could be done more to hold corporates to account. But green, I mean, greenwashing is just, you know, it's just another trend, another way that the market co-opts whatever's trendy to be able to just get continue on with business as usual and regulators are sort of playing catch up.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

I'm often astounded at how many cases ASIC lose. Is that a resourcing issue? No.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

ASIC is I I don't know. They're just historically hopeless. Um I mean, I I don't know. They've always been a terrible regulator. Like it's just they have this immensely bad track record in every respect. And the HLC is by comparison, you know, a model of perfection. Um I I don't know. I think I think it must be a culture problem inside the organization because they they are consistently useless and have always been.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Moving on to copyright, copyrights become a big issue now, or even more so because of AI and you know the small guy or the small person trying to fight. What do you see as the future in there and like local people? For example, someone might be in Brisbane trying to fight someone in China. What's the solution?

SPEAKER_03 23:25

I it's very personal to me. When um who was it? Was it The Atlantic or someone published, they got hold of the database of published books that had been consumed by Chat GPT. No, I went into the into the database, and sure enough, all three of my published books are in there and have been you know consumed by ChatGPT and fed into its learning model, and I haven't, you know, they've forgotten to send me a check for it, like every other author. There's this tension obviously going on, and it's playing out in every jurisdiction, this question of you know, when an AI model reads your book, is it infringing the copyright? And AI says, no, it's not, it's just reading it and it's learning it, and you know, like as if you read it and and memorized it, that's not an infringement of copyright. And if you, you know, if you were able to recite it from memory, there's no infringement there because you've just you've just consumed it, as opposed to copying it. And the reason courts keep coming up with different answers to this question is because copyright law doesn't answer that question because it because copyright law wasn't invented with this in mind. Copyright law is a very old legal construct that goes you know back into I think the 16th century. And it was invented in a world of hard copy print, and the idea of and copyright law was a commercial compromise. That's all it is. It's just it's just a legal mechanism to balance the interest of you know free in um interchange and exchange of created work with incentivizing people to create that work, the the author. So they get something, you know, they get a fair pay for the effort they put in to create something for the benefit of mankind. And it's been constantly sort of you know tinkered with to try to keep up with technological innovation as you know things like radio and television and film and then the um the internet and social media and so forth are invented, and now AI comes before and completely blows the construct out of the water and says, well, actually, what we've now created is a sort of human being who just reads and watches and then consumes and then can spit it back and then can give you something that's you know similar, or you know, take your prompts and create something new. And both arguments are right and wrong. So actually, what we need to do is throw copyright law out the window completely and reconceptualize the same question that was asked in the 16th century, which is how do we now, in this context, properly incentivize people to create in a fair, balanced way while not artificially standing in the way of the public human interest in everyone having you know maximum access to um to creative work, whatever it is. Um, and that may mean too we need set different regimes, you know, like the copyright account, everything from a work of art, a painting, to a computer program, which are completely different things. Now maybe we need completely different legal regimes for those things now, because they don't have anything in common. Maybe AI needs a totally different legal regime from the regime that governs books. I don't know. But that is the conversation we need to have because at the moment the you know there is this myth that nobody's gonna write a book again because why would they bother?

SPEAKER_02 27:13

AI companies often argue training on copywriting material is transformative use or fair use. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_03 27:21

No, but you know, but they've got an argument. You know, you you can you can definitely make that case because you can as I say you can you can construct AI as a sort of, you know, it's just a it's just a kind of humanoid thing that does what people do just better and faster and you know with infinitely greater capability, but it's that it's not doing what copyright infringement has traditionally understood, which is to you know, stick my book in the photocopy machine and make an unauthorised copy of it and then sell it at the market. Like that's you know the completely different thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Do you think it comes down to consent and compensation at a at its basis, or are we ignoring the heart of the matter of someone's created something through their personal skill, time, effort, energy?

SPEAKER_03 28:11

You know, that's that's the key question is you know, how much do we value as a society human creativity and original creativity, which you know, I would say remains an extremely high value and something AI cannot and will never be able to do. And it would be an awful shame if we devalued that to the extent that you know it becomes just an incredibly niche thing that only crazy people do, um, or the extremely rich. Human innovation, I would think, we should treat as an urgent priority, and we should think carefully about how do we support and encourage it. And part of that equation is how do we remunerate for it so that people can do it without starving to death. And that's just a balancing question. So you know, it's a balance of rights and interests. But like I say, you know, copyright law wasn't handed down by God, it was invented by people as a method of dealing with a problem, a conflict of interests and rights. We just have to do that again, but start from scratch.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

Okay, but even if Australia we wrote all its copyright laws, but no one else did around the world, would that solve the issue?

SPEAKER_03 29:29

No, obviously. Um we definitely need American reward. You know, we we run the risk that AI will solve the problem for us, but not in a way that suits us as humans.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

But they would need to be Commonwealth laws rather than state laws, obviously. Yeah, definitely Copyright Act. Yeah. With regards to your firm, you're very media vocal and present views. Does that sometimes get in the way of practicing the law?

SPEAKER_03 30:00

I think it's a you know it's a completely fair question. We accept that if we're going to be outspoken and have opinions and express them, then we're not going to make everyone happy. That that may that may cause some awkward moments or conversations. And we're comfortable with that. You know, um it's just the way we've chosen to to live. And the reason it's important to us is because we believe that we have an important social function as lawyers to stand for progress and to and that we think we and we know as lawyers we have particular social and cultural power to advocate and motivate for progressive change. So we see it as a responsibility and accept that not everyone's going to agree with us all the time, and maybe you know, there might be some business cost to that from time to time. But but there's also a lot of business benefits. Like we pick up a lot of clients through our advocacy, and we'd rather we'd rather everyone know what we stand for. I mean, if they stand for the opposite, then we're probably I mean it's not like we're going to enjoy working with each other. And I don't think our our opinions, I mean, they're obviously generally progressive, can't really see any of them as evil. So, but you know, that's a subjective view, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

I would say you have a social conscious advocacy that sort of leads you to more left-leaning politics, would be fair.

SPEAKER_03 31:44

I mean, we are apolitical, and we're certainly equally critical of both sides of politics, so far as that left-right thing is still relevant, which increasingly it's not. So we don't think about it in political terms, but we are, you know, we lean towards equality, equity, social progress in the sense of you know, we just have a humanist view, and the positions we adopt on issues, yeah, they tend to be the the ones that you'll see, you know, the left side of politics more attaching to, but you know, we're not interested in the politics of it.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Does it sort of affect your reputation management, or you just assume that everyone knows where you stand on issues? Because a lot of you guys have media platforms. You you wrote the ABC for years, didn't you?

SPEAKER_03 32:30

Yeah, I d I don't think anyone is in any doubt about where we stand. You know, in terms of like recruitment, I mean nobody applies to a job for a job here if they would be uncomfortable with you know our sort of opinions. We don't ram it down anyone's throat. Like, you know, we don't expect our staff to hold the same opinion on everything. Um and you know, sometimes sometimes that there are issues where we'll you know we'll have we'll engage an internal conversation to you know talk openly among ourselves about you know what do we all think about this. And um, you know, I'll give you a worked example. Some years back, the partners came to the view that we we would like the the date of Australia Day to change from the 26th of January. And we and we took it to the staff and said, you know, what do you think? And a strong majority, you know, a very strong majority, agreed with our position. And so we said, okay, well, as a firm, we're going to act on that. And so we, you know, we open for business on 26th of January every year. I don't think it's that difficult. Like if you if you proceed ethically and you know, from a position of principle rather than pragmatic, like sort of you know, economic pragmatics or you know, worrying about who you're going to upset, then you know, I think growing-ups can cope with differences of opinion.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

So often the legal professions are described as value-free, and you clearly your firm has stated values. Does that sort of put you in contrast, you think, to most other law firms?

SPEAKER_03 34:04

I think we stand in contrast in that we live our values. There is no compromise or contradiction in that. Uh, and I can give you a thousand examples of that. But you know, I think that I mean my reflection of my sort of previous life as a lawyer in a normal law firm was that I I took on a second set of values that I picked up every morning when I went into work, and I I lived by those values until I left the office and then picked up my normal human values when I went home. And I think that's pretty typical because actually in most law firms the common value is common values are money and status, which are very different from normal human values. Whereas in our business we feel very comfortable and unconflicted having the same values that we in at work as we do at home, um and in our sort of normal you know, relationships and and friendships and so forth. We don't, you know, it's completely doable and it comes across as a bit of radical, it's uncommon in our industry, probably in most industries, it's not that hard to do.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

So when you say you had a second set of values at work, are you talking about your everyday values?

SPEAKER_03 35:15

Yeah, just how you know the value. I mean values drive behaviour, values dictate how you deal with any situation. And when the common values are money and status, that drives behaviours and certain choices. You know, do you confront it with a situation? How do you respond to that situation? You're guided by the common values of the environment that you're in if you're in a if you're in a prison, you know, there is a common value set that operates in a prison, and that will drive the behaviours that you use. And it's the same in any you know, the same in any organization or business. There'll be a common value set that dictates how people navigate and the choices they make day to day, minute to minute.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

And sort of just looking forward to the future profession, what do you think is more disruptive to law firms? AI, client in housing, regular complexity, or the way they charge?

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Oh, I think the it's the business model. Um I think I mean I was I I think the most destructive thing is the competitive business model just because of what it does to the soul. You know, I think that's the thing that has done the most harm over the decades and continues to and will continue to.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Have many other firms adopted your pricing model?

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Not really. I mean, so there are firms that you know sort of do market retainer models, but they're really most of them are just selling blocks of time, which is a completely different thing. So you know, I I'm not aware of other firms that have really got kind of gone the distance of getting they may offer fixed prices or retainers, but they're but it's sitting on an internal time-costed model. That's quite different. And I'm yeah. I think that the the business the firms or legal service providers who have that I'm aware of who have sort of instituted more radical change are the other more technology-based ones, like Legal Vision, who are selling legal service in a quite different way. Um and they, you know, so they've sort of had a fair, fairly significant impact in the market over over time.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

And lastly, what would you like your firms and your legacy to be?

SPEAKER_03 37:21

I see us as a kind of proof point. We thought when we started the firm that there was a better way of there was a way of practicing commercial law and being profitable without all of that stuff that that would, you know, for us are drivers of unhappiness. And I'd you know feel pretty comfortable that we've proved that it's possible and sustainable, you know, but after 18 years, and that that's good enough legacy.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Michael Bradley, thank you for joining me on the Ruminants Legal podcast.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's uh pleasure.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

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