The $2.5 Million Referral Mistake Law Firms Keep Making with Chris Rose | Episode 87

0:00Justin Chopin: We always have this problem here, you know, and there's different types of referrals. There's the ones you want to monetize, right? So it's like every now and then you get a call and they're like, oh, it was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler in Idaho. And you're like, oh, okay. Anyone here licensed in Idaho?

0:12Justin Chopin: Welcome to Above the Legal Limit. I'm your host, Justin Chopin, business owner, lawyer, dad, world's best husband, traveler, and adventure seeker. On this podcast, we mix business with pleasure. We'll dive into growth strategies, entrepreneurial adventures, the business of law, and prove that business isn't boring. So let's get ready because we are going Above the Legal Limit.

0:40Justin Chopin: All right. Chris F.N. Rose. Welcome to Above the Legal Limit.

0:47Chris Rose: Hey, thanks for having me, Justin. I really appreciate you.

0:50Justin Chopin: Yeah. So we're excited. Chris Rose. My understanding is you prefer Chris F.N. Rose, which is cool. I'm down with that.

0:58Chris Rose: That's just like you said. It's what the people demand.

1:01Justin Chopin: Yeah. Give them what they want. Owner and CEO of LegalFlare. So let's dive right into it. Talk to us. What is LegalFlare?

1:10Chris Rose: What I do is I help law firms manage their referral relationships. A lot of referral relationships are based on vibes, handshakes, and that's a real good way to end up in case law. And so what I've essentially done is just taken the referral department of a sophisticated law firm and essentially outsourced it. And I offer my services to other firms that want more cases or need to refer out cases and don't know cross-jurisdictional regulations or don't have the contracts or don't have the vetted network to know who's actually worth a damn. So that's what I offer.

1:53Justin Chopin: Hey, so I love that. Let's talk about that. We always have this problem here, you know, and there's different types of referrals. What I always talk about, there's the ones you want to monetize, right? So it's like every now and then you get a call and they're like, oh, it was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler in Idaho. And you're like, whoa, okay. Anyone here licensed in Idaho? No?

2:17Chris Rose: Hop on the nearest listserv and says, hey, does anybody know someone in Idaho yet?

2:22Justin Chopin: Yeah, right. And you can do that. And every now and then you'll usually get somebody, I suppose. But you really don't know that person very well. You know, sometimes I've had, I've walked by intake and I've heard them be like, well, I Googled this and this person comes up for a practice area we don't handle. And I'm like, what are you doing? Don't do that. She's like, why not? I was like, because they could be a complete asshole. I mean, this person could be horrible. And you just recommended, the Chopin Law Firm just recommended you hire Hannibal Lecter to babysit your kids. I was like, well, let's not do that. If you don't know, just so you don't know, you don't need to go researching it for them.

2:58Justin Chopin: So, you know, but anyways, getting back to, you have the monetized and then you have the ones that we really can't monetize. That maybe for us, we're PI, right? So I'm not looking for referral fees or anything on like criminal work, domestic work, trust, estates, wills, maybe employment, depending on what kind it is, things like that. And so this is where we struggle.

3:28Justin Chopin: Right now, our referral department is like a spreadsheet where we are like, these are our list of lawyers that we know that do this kind of work. And our intake sometimes won't even, they'll just send an email being like contact Bill Smith. And so if they go call Bill Smith, it could be an amazing case. Bill Smith has no idea how they got there. We don't get any goodwill from it. I was going to say credit. It's not credit, but maybe over time, you can create goodwill. So maybe Bill Smith next time gets like a major trucking case. And that's not what he does because he does the states. Maybe he would think of us, right? So that's the extent of our referral network. And it's been really sort of a thorn in my side for a while now. And I've wanted for a long time to kind of build it out and to have something more sophisticated and not for a lack of trying. It seems like we're still living on the spreadsheet and cold, cold emails, essentially.

4:29Chris Rose: Yeah. Yeah. And you are so much further ahead than a lot of other law firms. You know, a lot of them are just making phone calls. They don't know anybody. Listservs or even worse, you know, turning down leads. That's the worst.

4:42Chris Rose: But what a lot of firms don't know is the rules, you know, the regulations, everything that's required in order to split a fee. Now, I only work in the contingent fee space because I offer the additional administration and with a handoff, you know, and just flat fee cases, it's just A to B. There's no real maintenance. But in contingent fee cases, in almost, I think it's something like 36 states, it requires, the rules require assumption of joint responsibility. So your malpractice insurance has to attach. You're in Louisiana, right? And in Louisiana, it's actually proportional. And so the fee split in the event of, you know, a disagreement, if you just refer someone over and then the person that you referred it to, even if you have a contract, but you did nothing else, they don't have to pay you. The courts in Louisiana will look at, you know, how much, you know, meaningful work you did. Whereas in a state like, you know, California, just send them over. You don't have to attach your malpractice insurance or even, you know, do anything other than make a phone call and you can take like 50%. So knowing what your rights are, you know, is a big, right?

6:04Justin Chopin: Well, in every state is different. So in Louisiana, you're required to have a consent to associate. Texas, our referral partners in Texas call it a fee disclosure. I don't know. Agreement. I feel like there's another letter in there somewhere. It's okay. But essentially it's their fee disclosure agreement. We call it a consent to associate. And the rules of professional conduct require that you do so. Right.

6:27Justin Chopin: And so in Louisiana, the plaintiff, the client rather must know that I hired you and you think it's in my interest to associate with him and you're going to split the work up, you know, by this percentage perhaps. And that I won't pay any more in fees and this will be the agreed fee split. And this will be the agreed cost. And then I have to sign it as the client.

6:53Justin Chopin: And so when we do this, I usually tell clients, a lot of lawyers think I don't have to do that because it's in my retention agreement that I might do it, but I, that's not it. You can't do that in the retention. Our retention agreement also says we might do that. And when I would go through retention agreements with clients, I would say, but you would know if we were ever doing this because I'd be hauling you down here and we'd be having another meeting. I'd be introducing you to another lawyer and I'd be explaining to you why I think it's a good idea for us to associate with him or her on your case. And we would explain the process, but it's shocking. You know, when we get referrals to, you know, not every lawyer follows that rule and it, but it is our rule. It's the Chopin Law Firm rule. You're getting a consent to associate sign.

7:43Justin Chopin: So, but you bring up another interesting point as to, well, what if they mess up or as people like to use the word malpractice lately as a verb, that's a new one for me. What if they malpractice it? I had never heard someone say that. I didn't know it was a verb, so we'll use it as a verb. So what if they do? Well, huh, that's no good. Right.

8:03Justin Chopin: And so one of the things we're also working on internally is, you know, cause we have referral partners and we have to report to them every, you know, 30 to 90 days. And they, you know, and they have the statute of limitations, what we would call prescription, but the prescriptive deadline on our calendar. And they would be asking us like, what's going on? What's going on? Have you filed suit? Have you filed suit? Did you get them served? And I always say, why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we hounding our referral partners for this? This is crazy. You know, we're just sending it out and we're hoping for the best. You know, we're going to trust them to do it, but we're not going to verify.

8:36Justin Chopin: And so the other piece of that equation is okay, great. You've built out a referral network. But do you even know if they're doing it right? You know, if they're following the rules or are you about to get sued? And so I, this is also something that I think we struggle with too. We're in the process of building out another spreadsheet for this. I'd love to have a sophisticated software. We looked into a company that software and they never called us back ever. And so we're stuck with the spreadsheet, I guess.

9:11Chris Rose: I would never force one more spreadsheet on anyone. I work in a lot of spreadsheets, and, you know, I get it. And when I first started doing this, I was working out of my inbox and, you know, Google Sheets. That's just what it was. That's how I tracked everything. Right. But after doing it for so long and, you know, learning the mistakes, building efficiencies. Now we have automatic update requirements that go out at the beginning of every month, go out, hey, update all of these cases, what's going on, where's everything? Because again, we don't want to send it to someone and then they go and malpractice it up. And, you know, I mean, I like it. I'm gonna start using that. And the other part is if they are likely to do that, they're more than likely, or more likely than most to have lapsed on their malpractice insurance or depending on the size of the case, you know? And so do they even have malpractice insurance?

10:19Justin Chopin: You know, Louisiana, it's not required. I think it should be, but it's not required here.

10:25Chris Rose: You're right. In a lot of states it's not. And so let me ask you this of your referral partners. How many of them do you have their malpractice insurance in your records?

10:38Justin Chopin: Zero.

10:38Chris Rose: I know, right? Like it's not something we think to ask or, hey, you know, have you ever been, you know, disciplined for anything? You know, you meet someone at a conference, they sound great. Like you get along with them. You have a beer or, you know, a hurricane as one does. And then, you know, you send them a case and, you know, suddenly you find out, oh, they've been disciplined twice for, you know, taking money or, you know, not filing in time or not, you know, the biggest complaint is, you know, not calling the clients. And it is this vetting. It is the research figuring out who are we sending it to. And that's just, you know, protecting yourself.

11:15Chris Rose: And really those are edge cases that they don't happen that often where the real problem is when you send them a lead, how quickly are they calling this person? How many times are they calling them back? How aggressively are they trying to sign this person? And that's what a lot of firms miss out on is because every moment that that client is not signed increases the likelihood that you won't sign them. And that's just how it is. So monitoring, how quickly are they calling these people? How many times are they calling these people? You know, are they, you know, retaining to investigate or only retaining to represent? And, you know, these things matter. These are metrics that most firms just don't consider because it's not, you know, lawyers want a lawyer.

12:04Justin Chopin: Yeah. They don't want to mess with that. They just want to move on to the next problem. The problem is, well, I often say this here, you generally speaking, not never, but generally speaking, you're never going to have a liability issue on your big case. The big case is going to get all your attention. Now that's not always universal, you know, there's firms out there that mess up, but typically that's not what happens. It's never the big case where you're going to get yourself into trouble. It's always the little one. It's always the one you probably shouldn't have messed with anyways. It's always the, you know, it's the one that you sent off to that guy.

12:42Justin Chopin: I referred a case to a guy not that long ago. One of my partners, Phil was laughing at me. I thought he was somebody else. And so what I'm not very good with names and he didn't have a catchy name. His name wasn't Chris Fucking Rose. And so, I, he was like, Phil was like, Justin, you think it's that mediator, don't you? I was like, yeah, it's not. He goes, no. I was like, well, who is this guy? I have no idea. I was like, well, shoot. I don't want to be rude and take it back, but I don't even know this guy. Are you sure? He's like, I'm very sure you just referred a case to someone you've never met in your life. I'm like, great. It's fine. That case resolved. And so probably be fine when that happens.

13:23Justin Chopin: Probably a little embarrassing, kind of funny, really highlights a bigger issue. And so really highlights a bigger issue. It's difficult to establish the referral partners to, you know, to make sure you have all the information to make sure your intake department's actually engaging them, the PNC, the potential new client with the referral department. And then, you know, who's supposed to monitor that, right? And so as the owner, I guess I'm supposed to monitor it. It's a little hard for me to do that.

14:00Justin Chopin: The individual lawyer who refers it out. Well, if you just straight refer out a case, and you manage the client that you may not internally, you may not get much of a fear of anything on that. Right. And if you work up a case for a while and then you're like, hey, Justin, I want to refer this to so-and-so, I think that they would do a great job. That's one thing. But if it's just like, hey, Justin, this kind of case came in, we didn't really do that work. I think you just ship it out to somebody else. I'll make sure that I, you know, keep in touch with the client and maintain the client. We don't really pay a whole lot on that internally. You may not get paid on maintaining the client. So then who's going to maintain it? Who's going to send the spreadsheet and be like, where are you? Did you serve it? Now you'd look to the statute of limitations or, you know, have you isolated the date? Do you know all defendants? Right.

14:52Justin Chopin: Cause I've seen the pitfalls on both sides of the V here, you know, where you wait until the last minute, you're a, you know, 364 day filer, but you don't know who the defendants are. You thought you did. And then when you sat down to finally draft it, you realize you didn't, and now you're in a pickle because you're about to commit malpractice on a case. And, but you know, even lawyers with great reputations, you know, sometimes act that way and I wouldn't know it. I'm not in their business like that. So I do think that this highlights a frequent problem for us. And I'm sure if it's a problem for us, it's a problem for everybody. We seem to have everybody's problems.

15:31Justin Chopin: But, so how does LegalFlare, you know, how does it work? How do the, what are the nuts and bolts of it? Yeah. How do you solve the problem?

15:45Chris Rose: So truly it's relationship management. We bring, you know, we vet these firms, we have introduction meetings. We explain the process and then we little by little send them leads that we've received or signed cases that need to be referred out for litigation. And we basically monitor them. You know, we're, we have KPIs, how quickly are they responding really from the moment that they contact us and we send them an email saying, hey, great. Fill out this information. Let's set up a meeting. If it takes them a week to respond to that. I mean, already that's like two strikes from the very moment we are monitoring everything. And then it's, you know, when we send a lead, are they asking questions, like looking for reasons to say no, or they're like super aggressive, I want this. Are they calling clients? How quickly are they, you know, because we have metrics where we send out the leads and they're required to respond to let us know that they received it, whether they're accepting it for review or declining it right away and how quickly they respond to all of that. We track all of that. And then we, you know, set benchmarks and measure it against other firms.

17:02Chris Rose: And a large part of what we do is taking declined leads from other firms. Somebody calls the, your firm and for whatever reason, either it's out of your jurisdiction or out of your practice area, or even someone in your firm just says, oh yeah, that doesn't, you know, doesn't sound like a case and they turn it down. We take those, move them out to our network and then basically have a second layer of review. And right now we're converting 11% of those of declined leads. We are converting 11% of PI cases. So that just tells you how much is slipping through the cracks.

17:43Chris Rose: And it's crazy. I had a case settle for six figures three months ago that was declined because the, someone on intake said, oh, you know, the, they, you know, the TCR said that this person rear-ended the other one. So we can't help you. The firm that I got, found the video, looked it up and the cop had, you know, written it down wrong. And so six figures. We play this all the time.

18:07Justin Chopin: We see this all the time where, you know, I had a lawyer here, got a million dollars on a case that the big box firm across the street rejected twice. Actually, it was a million dollar case that they passed on. Why? I guess someone in the intake department just, they didn't say the right thing. I don't know why.

18:31Justin Chopin: But you know, but we, what we keep hammering on internally is look, the best example of a case we don't want is I was one of 15 people on a bus and the bus got hit by a car with a minimum policy, right? So that's a case we don't want to handle. Why? Well, Louisiana's got $15,000 state minimums, which means that's what he's in play. And you have to spread that across 15 people. And there's almost no way for anyone to make any money. I can't get the client, you know, to go treat with a doctor because there's no money to pay the doctor. You know, if maybe they can do it on their own insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, half the time they can't. And so, and then the insurance company, they don't want to settle that case. They want to wait until the deadline and then see who files suit and then they'll settle that case. So they know the universe of how many claimants they have.

19:28Justin Chopin: And so in the end it's like, ah, that's not a case we want, but I tell you what, in 2016, I would have taken that case. Right? So when I was just starting out the law firm, yeah, we absolutely would have handled that case and we would have done whatever we needed to do because I had to keep the lights on. So just because it's something that we don't want to work on now doesn't mean it's not a case. It is a case. She was on the bus. She was right where the bus hit her, but the bus doesn't have UM and you're only talking about $15,000 and there are a whole bunch of other people on the bus that are all going to be claiming injuries. She's absolutely got a case. It's just not one for us. Why are we ignoring this person? Why would we just, you know, have her go out and, you know, sunset, we should be trying to refer her to somebody, but it's not always easy. It's not always easy to have a network of young or thirsty, hungry lawyers who are like, yeah, that's not the best case.

20:21Justin Chopin: My big policy when we're on the receiving end of referrals is we generally want to say yes, unless it's absolutely no. It's yes, unless it's hell no. And the reason is sometimes you're going to have to just handle some ugly ones before they're going to trust you with their good ones. And so that's just the nature of the beast. I mean, no one's going to walk in here and say, hey, Justin, I have a seven figure case and I don't really know you all that well. And we've never worked together, but why don't you take it? Right. So you're going to have to, you may have to do some laundry for them first before they'll let you, you know, do the real work. So that's always our policy, but not everybody kind of follows that.

21:04Chris Rose: Justin, I hear it. I hear all the time when I bring on new firms and, you know, okay, you know, what kind of cases are you willing to accept? Oh, we only want, you know, commercial policy cases, preferably something where the person, you know, the client was, you know, medevaced out of there. It's like, okay, great. You're never going to hear from me. Like when we first bring on a firm, a lot of times it's like, look, I'm going to be honest, I'm going to send you some turds right away. That's just what you're going to get, but how you perform, how you treat those turds, are you calling them right away? Are you actually investigating? Are you figuring out, is there actually not something here? Well, that means something. Those are metrics that we can act on and show the quality of the relationship. But someone who immediately only won six figure cases, like you have to earn that trust. And that's exactly what you're saying.

22:04Chris Rose: You know, and then, you know, the other part is like, let me ask you this, like how, what percentage of cases do you turn down that you turn down actually end up, you know, being worth something, do you know?

22:21Justin Chopin: I have no idea. Cause when we turn them down, they're just, you know, they're floating out their little bottles, you know, in the water.

22:26Chris Rose: That's exactly right. Like what is your layer of redundancy? Like how do you truly know? And you can't, unless you have a layer of redundancy, someone to, you know, go through and actually say, yeah, you know, all the cases that you turned down last year, we actually converted zero. So your intake is great. Or. Yeah. Right. We turned, you know, 11% of your declined leads into signed cases. So one, you know, that your intake, you know, has holes and two, you're still making money on those because you're referring out the decline leads. Like you're saving money that you're otherwise just flushing away. And most people don't ever think of it like that. They only see like, I sign 100% converting infernally.

23:12Justin Chopin: Right. Right. Well, that's what we care. Like, what am I converting at internally? Am I 90%? Am I 92%? Am I slipping into the eighties? You know, but, you're, I never thought of it that way. I mean, if you come back and you say, hey, 0% of your leads converted, then we know we've got this locked tight. If you come, 11% of leads converted is a lot of money to be left on the table. You know, that could be depending on the size for us, that could be a hundred cases, you know, for some firms that could be a thousand cases. I mean, that's, I think, you know, if you do, here we go, quick math, quick math, let's see. That could be, hold on now. Don't go anywhere y'all.

23:59Chris Rose: Yeah. And I'll say a standard referral fee is 30%. That's $2.5 million in fees.

24:07Justin Chopin: Exactly. 11, you know, I think 11% could be close to two and a half million dollars that you just pissed away.

24:15Chris Rose: It's meaningful. And you know what else it is. It's more than zero.

24:22Justin Chopin: It's more than zero. How does it work? So you guys act as the conduit between the two law firms and manage the relationship. I assume you have the platform that enables communication. That's more than just a spreadsheet.

24:34Chris Rose: Oh yeah, no, I'm way past spreadsheets. I'll be honest, I've been nerding out lately. I've built my entire platform. I've got a routing workflows, database of leads. We've got automated emails, everything that goes out. It's quite sophisticated.

24:54Chris Rose: And so firm sends us a lead, you know, either through email or we're working on the integrations now. So you can just send it right over from your CMS or, you know, lead management software, comes into our system. If it's a unsigned lead, we usually don't even look at it. It just goes right in. It gets routed by jurisdiction and practice, case type. And it goes right to one of our referral partners. They look at it. This is something that they want. They call, they investigate, or if they can tell right away, no, this one's a dud, then they just decline it. And instantly it gets routed to another firm. And so we have each case looked at by a maximum of three firms, typically a minimum of three firms as well. And so that way we have layers of redundancy for layers of redundancy. So we know that when we mark a case as rejected, like that's a turd, like that's bonafide turd. But it's all automated. And so that way it's just, it's constantly moving.

26:02Chris Rose: And the other part is we're tracking all of these firms so that we know what the metrics are, so that we're maximizing the potential of these conversion rates. And so then when they sign the case, you get a notification, you know, here are all the cases that have been converted here, the ones that weren't, and then you receive updates halfway through the month of all the cases where they are. So you see what's going on. And then once they resolve, we track to see what the, you know, the itemization, the breakdown is based on the fee splits. We also have our own fee split agreements. I built this super cool software where depending on the jurisdictions, it pulls in the different blocks. And so it assigns fee splits and then the regulations required for every jurisdiction. And so we all know exactly how much everybody has agreed to pay. The client has signed. It's not just wrapped up in a CTA. And so at the end, when it settles here, the amounts that everybody agreed on, we send out the notifications. This is, you know, what you should expect. And then everybody confirms. And once everybody has the amount that they expect to get, then that case is closed.

27:05Chris Rose: And so for personal injury, for unsigned leads, we pay 30%, you know, in most jurisdictions, some jurisdictions, you know, I'm looking at you, Florida, and Louisiana, as a matter of fact. But 30% for unsigned leads, we take 10% and the firms that we send them to, they take 60%. And I mean, really 30% for a case that you were just going to throw away. Like it literally costs nothing to take those decline leads and just run them over to us and, you know, have someone else review them. And it's as easy as that.

27:42Chris Rose: We also help with referring out cases that need to go from pre-lit to litigation. It also often happens where, you know, someone, hey, you know, I was, you know, my brother was injured in whatever state sign him. And then the insurance company won't settle because you're out of state and they know you have to PHVN or refer it out to litigation. And so we give a full third for those and, you know, and those go right into our litigation firms.

28:13Justin Chopin: Fascinating. So, are you in all 50 states? Well, you can't be in all 50 states. Are you operating in Louisiana? Oh, so. Or do you guys have a different setup for that?

28:27Chris Rose: That's exactly right. It, the requirements are based on each and every state we can operate in all 50 states. That's not a problem. I'm licensed. LegalFlare is a law firm. We take, okay. Yeah. And wholly owned. We're not an ABS, alternative business structure in Arizona. Like this, I 100% own LegalFlare. I adhere to all of the rules of professional conduct in all 50 states. I know exactly what's required depending on where it is, the case type. I've done a massive amount of research and what that really does is it protects us.

29:03Chris Rose: So in a state like Louisiana, I'll be honest, I don't have any cases in Louisiana. I've had a few opportunities, but I mean, I would work there. And the real part of it is the rules, the amounts that you can, you know, basically the protections are there when shit goes sideways. Like, you know, the cases that you've heard, you know, the one where the in-house counsel referred another case, someone was hurt on like an offshore oil rig and he showed up to depositions as a spectator and to trial as a spectator, but they agreed on 50, 50. And then the referral partner, the one who actually worked the case was, it was like almost a million dollars in fees and said, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not giving you, you know, 500,000, I'll give you like 5%. It went to court and, you know, the court said, in Louisiana, you get 15%. So the protections are there.

30:10Justin Chopin: The work performed is usually what we would say. I mean, there's exactly in Louisiana, but of course it's different. There's actually a new Supreme Court decision that came out this month on this issue.

30:22Chris Rose: Oh, really? I, my research on Louisiana, well, I got it. I think.

30:27Justin Chopin: Yeah. Big, big new case, Bill Hall. I remember the other attorney at the top of my head, but it's just fresh out still on my, still on my desk. I need to read it.

30:39Chris Rose: I got it. I got it. I got it. But you know, really it's—

30:41Justin Chopin: Which still follows the same guidance.

30:44Chris Rose: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. There, I mean, Louisiana, the rule says what it says is, you know, the, that's, you know, it's the, what's written, but it really only matters most when she goes sideways, when these relationships deteriorate. And then that's when you need to have the, you know, the record, you know, the paper trail, what have you done? You know, and, you know, did your malpractice insurance attach? How much were you really monitoring? You know, were you getting the updates? Were you asking questions or in a case, you know, in like California where it's just like, yeah, whatever, you know, call this person and you get 30% and you never have to do anything again. So it's really a matter of, you know, one, having the relationship so that, you know, when the case settles, even for, you know, you know, $2 million that the other party's still going to pay your full amount. And that is most likely to happen when you are not a repeat player. So I have that protection of, I send these cases to my referral partners. Any one of them, you know, decides to go sideways, they know they're never going to get any cases from us again, you know, so that's the protection that we have.

31:54Justin Chopin: So what CRMs are you currently integrating with, have you, are you still building that piece out or you guys, you are integrated with the case management software or client relation management software?

32:05Chris Rose: Yeah. So we were integrated with Lead Docket. And we briefly had an integration with Lexamica, but I've since pulled all that back and designed all of my own software. And so now actually April 1st is my project date when I start working on integrations with the other CMS. And so I've got to take a look at what all of those look like, but it's, I honestly, I spend more, I've more of my time writing software these days than, you know, actually doing like bonafide lawyer.

32:39Justin Chopin: Like the actual work. Yeah. Well, we use Lead Docket. And so I think, you know, I think it's, say it's a very light CRM, but not difficult to use either. And so, I mean, the cell is, well, it publishes into Filevine. My response is usually it's not that hard to create a project in Filevine. I don't know that publishing in Filevine is really a huge add on, but okay. But yeah, so that's interesting. I was just curious, you know, if they're really, or if they're just automatically sending out to LegalFlare or, you know, or if they're having to send them manually, but that's an interesting concept. I think it's super cool. I've never heard of this. And so, you know, I think it's fascinating. I didn't realize you were a law firm. And so—

33:34Chris Rose: A lot of people are surprised to find out that I'm a lawyer. It happens.

33:34Justin Chopin: Well, I'm not surprised that you're a lawyer, but like the law firm, or cause I, that's what I was going to say. I was like, oh, well we, you wouldn't be able to do that here. Because you couldn't split a fee, you know, in Louisiana with a non-lawyer, that would be like cardinal sin number one on the list. Right. I know other states, well, I guess we'll see. I mean, that's going to be the big shift. And I can even see how that, you know, the new systems out of Arizona could really make things, I don't know, I guess easier for you or actually maybe wouldn't even matter.

34:14Chris Rose: No, so actually, I mean, it's a good point for me. It's better. Let's be honest. What, I mean, it's better for the clients that, you know, you have attorneys working on your cases, you know, who do have those ethical standards. You know, I don't want to get this barred, but let's be honest. What is the bar association? Really? It's protecting a monopoly. Lawyers have a monopoly on legal services.

34:44Justin Chopin: And so we wrote the laws and so we get to decide how we want to use them.

34:51Chris Rose: That's exactly right. And so I'll poo poo the bar all day long, but there are also the reason that I get to exist and they're protecting my business model. And so, you know, hey, monopoly, I'm all in favor of it. As long as it, you know, favors me.

35:08Justin Chopin: Well, all you gotta do is take a, what, 20 hour test and you too can be part of this thing that we do. So, well, hey, I love it. I love hearing about it. Chris F.N. Rose with LegalFlare.com. I love it. So if you are a law firm owner, if you're out there, if you're thinking like, hey, this is something I want to be a part of, this is kind of cool. I want referrals and I want to send out referrals. Tell them, tell them how to get in touch with you. LegalFlare.com or I already said it.

35:44Chris Rose: Yeah. I mean, that's, we've got it right there. Chris dot Rose at LegalFlare.com. Or I like to say, go in the bathroom, turn off all the lights and say, Chris fucking Rose in the mirror three times.

36:01Justin Chopin: And that's awesome. I need to work on that. I should do that. I'm going to next time we talk, I'm going to have a way cooler name thing. It's not just going to be like Justin Chopin. I don't know what it's going to be. I don't want to copy yours.

36:13Chris Rose: Showtime Justin.

36:13Justin Chopin: Yes. We'll workshop. Everybody's always got one. Oh, Helena marketing coordinator. She loves it. She loves it. Everybody's always like Justin time, right? Chop through the red tape, chop the insurance cup of day of like all day long. Like, please stop, please stop.

36:30Justin Chopin: So, all right. Well, hey, thanks so much for coming on Above the Legal Limit. Love hearing about this and, you know, keep up the good fight, man. We'll be in touch.

36:41Chris Rose: Same, same. Love your content. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate you. And I doubt this is the last time we will ever speak, Justin.

36:52Justin Chopin: Fair enough. I appreciate that. All right. Take care.

36:52Chris Rose: You too.

36:52Justin Chopin: Thank you for joining me today on Above the Legal Limit. If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more about business and law, hit that subscribe button. If you didn't like the show, keep it to yourself. Remember there's no limit to what we can achieve. We will see you next week until then, even though we're above the legal limit, let's drive safely. Cheers. Everyone.