Why Most Legal Referral Networks Are Broken

0:00Chris Rose: Mailbox money, man. There's no such thing as mailbox money. Like, mailbox money is, is like sending a lead to me so that I do all of the dirty work and the rules.

0:07Harry Nalbandyan: That's, that's exactly right.

0:14Chris Rose: It's mailbox money because, you know, you don't, you don't see how the sausage is made.

0:30Harry Nalbandyan: Welcome back to Harry Handles It. I'm Harry Nalbandyan. Most attorneys treat referrals like quick handoffs. My guest today says that lazy habit isn't just bad service, it's a massive malpractice trap. Chris F.N. Rose is the founder of LegalFlare. Instead of building another tech app that sells leads to the highest bidder, Chris built LegalFlare as an actual law firm, meaning his own license, liability and malpractice insurance are attached to every case. Today we're talking about why referral marketplaces are broken, how lazy handoffs put your practice at risk, and how to put real accountability back into the legal system.

1:07Harry Nalbandyan: Chris, welcome to the show. Before we get into anything about LegalFlare or what you do, talk to me about the FN.

1:13Chris Rose: So, well, if you say it fast enough, you know what it really means. Yes. And anybody that has met me in person knows what I actually go by. How many, how many swear words am I allowed on this? Or are we gonna just

1:26Harry Nalbandyan: A thousand.

1:26Chris Rose: Yes. So I always go by Chris F.N. Rose. That's why everybody knows me. And it's just, it's a way of standing out in the crowd and differentiating myself, being authentic. And also it helps me to essentially kind of identify my crowd. It's a sorting mechanism. So anyone that, that I say, "Hey, Chris F.N. Rose, nice to meet you," and they kind of cringe a little bit, I know that we're, you know, probably not going to go to the club later.

1:51Harry Nalbandyan: That's a very, very good filter. And then I bet you when you say Chris F.N. Rose and somebody opens up with their arms open and embraces you, you know you got your people in.

2:01Chris Rose: How true. Till death.

2:01Harry Nalbandyan: That's exactly right. That's awesome, man. So, Chris, tell us a little bit about your origin, background. Your lawyer, you were practicing, and now you got LegalFlare. Tell us a bit about that journey, how you got there.

2:13Chris Rose: Okay. All right. So I grew up in Alabama. It's terrible, don't ever go there. I mean, like, if, if you, if you got pretty cousins, then, you know, it's, it's probably a good place, but otherwise there's just not a lot to do. So I moved to Vegas when I was, on my 21st birthday, sight unseen, and spent a long time in the casinos, and then decided at some point that I would have to grow up. Decided to go to school, get my undergrad in poli sci and then law degree.

2:37Chris Rose: I went into politics, and that's kind of, kind of boring actually. Two percent of the time super fascinating, really exciting. 98 percent of the time committee hearings, budget meetings, punch me in the face. So I decided to, I know, right? It's, and I've got stories too. But so after that I decided to go into sales and marketing for a court reporting company. Depositions. It's, it is exactly as sexy as it sounds. And so, but that's like where I learned to be authentic and, and how to, essentially, life is sales. And that's when I learned how to be myself, how to be authentic, how to relate to people, and essentially announced myself on the circuit.

3:23Chris Rose: And then after some time doing that, I decided to open up my own law firm, and LegalFlare kind of tumbled out of that, because I, I really don't want to talk to clients. I don't want to talk to clients. And the best way to not talk to clients is just to refer cases. So, like I said, I was drawn to it.

3:42Harry Nalbandyan: That is the number one way to not talk to clients, is to not have any to deal with. Yes. Right. So you put up your practice, you quickly realized what you like and don't like about the practice of law, and so you found an opportunity for yourself to create this referral network, so that you can still monetize on being a lawyer, but you didn't have to do any of the great work that you didn't want to do. So what was that process like, and how did you develop a tool like LegalFlare that you thought was different than whatever else the marketplace had to offer?

4:09Chris Rose: Okay, hey, that's, that's a great question. All right, I like this.

4:13Harry Nalbandyan: So I asked, I asked questions for a living.

4:13Chris Rose: I can tell. No, that, that, that's a really, that's a really pointed question. So I knew I wanted to get into something like that, but I wasn't sure how it would work. I, I thought I would be like B to C. I, I would market to, you know, the general public, you know, maybe through social media or something. The real inspiration was James Helm, Top Dog, and I really admired the way he was approaching this from a, from a business standpoint. But I can't compete with Top Dog. I can't compete with these guys who are spending so much money, you know, for marketing. And so I was kind of running into a wall. But my idea was, I want to, I want to do referrals. I want, you know, to try and capitalize on that whole mailbox money.

4:56Chris Rose: And someone reached out and said, "Hey, I, I, I need help finding a lawyer. I hear you help people find lawyers." I was like, "Yes, actually, I, I do that all the time. That's what I'm best at." When, you know, I've never helped a lawyer find another lawyer in my life. But you know, it's all about seizing the moment. And so, right, yeah, thanks, thanks. And then I, I helped that, that person find a lawyer to refer a case, and I was like, "This, this is great. I did that. If you, if you have any more." And she said, "Actually, we've got like two more that we need to refer out for litigation." And, and then suddenly a business was born.

5:30Chris Rose: And it's, it's all about, you know, helping someone solve problems. Like, they've got a problem and I'm going to set to solving it, and every problem, it's just like, it's like pulling on a sweater thread, you know? Like, every problem just exposes more problems. And so at first I was using emails and Google Docs or Sheets, you know, basically Excel, and just keeping track of it that way. And it was, it's, you know, the bottleneck is me. I can only input information so fast. And then I brought on an executive assistant to help me, and she kind of increased my bandwidth a little, but it's still a lot of manual. And then I was running into RPC issues, you know, we got to get all the compliance, fee split agreements. And so it's just pulling on it.

6:17Chris Rose: And then I realized that the real, the real bottleneck to scaling is how quickly I can input data into my system and then send it out to, to all of the partnered for. And so I tried talking to other vendors who are, you know, software designers, and when it turned to me, like, you know, my first born. And so like, like 250,000 for a, for a wireframe. That's, that's ridiculous. And so I did what, yeah, yeah, crazy, crazy, right? And so I, I was like, all right, well, how can I, let me, who should I go to? Who's the professional here? Dear ChatGPT, I have this problem, right? And, and ChatGPT, you know, being the, the cheerleader, was like, "You got this, Chris fucking Rose. Go out there. You can build your own software. It's no problem." But, you know, obviously it was like 10, right? And 10 was enough.

7:08Chris Rose: So I just learned to like write code and use AI to begin building my system, one at a time. You know, first it was like a database, and then it was a, the n8n workflows to move data around, and then it was a user interface. And then when Claude Code came out, that was a game changer, because now everything I do is through Claude Code. It is like, I answer my emails through Claude Code, messages, every, literally everything I do. I, I want to look up, you know, what DJs are, are playing in Ibiza on this weekend: just go out, you know, I like house music, come back to me with a full itinerary. Just like that. And so it's, it's really been a game changer. And now I don't, I don't have that executive assistant anymore, and it's just me and like 15 robots running around. And so it's, it's really changed things. I know, I know I threw a lot at you there, Harry, so I, I appreciate you sitting with me.

8:06Harry Nalbandyan: And it's, that's wild, because I just had this conversation yesterday with somebody, and, you know, any, any, any kid or anybody now with the ability to access the internet, if they have a problem that they can solve, or if they've identified a problem that they could solve with the help of these AI robots or AI agents, they literally can create a workforce that uses a computer like a human being and just sets them to work, which is the potential, and the unlimited potential there is pretty wild. So I got, hearing your story, you know, made me remember that story. And what's it like going from, you know, managing that EA to now having to manage your army of robot labor? I mean, different problems.

8:48Chris Rose: Yeah, for sure. So that's, that's a great question, and, and I'll boil it down. So a lot of what I do is, yeah, that, that I'm, I've, my problems are really in two camps: managing robots and managing people. And so all of my partnered firms, everybody wants cases, everybody wants leads, but then when you send them to them, like, they don't always respond right away. They don't communicate. They don't call these leads right away. Where are the updates? You know, is this case settled or not? This, the amount you sent me is not accurate. And so a lot of that, the human component is the hard part, just chasing people down. Like, you know, like running down the street to catch an attorney to, you know, beat the shit out of them and, you know, dump out their wallet for the money they owe me. You know, it's, it's, it's not that bad, but like, it's that unreliability. Yeah, sometimes. Honestly, honestly.

9:41Chris Rose: And so managing, and so that's why I say I don't do case referrals, I do, my job is relationship management, because the case referrals, the system handles that. It's actually getting these people to respond, you know: write me back, send an email, call these people, what's going on with this case. And so that's the hard part of people. They are whimsical, unreliable, that they, they are volatile, you know. And so you can never predict, like, what's going to happen. Someone who's reliable two months in a row might not be reliable the next month because of some, something that happened, or they just, like, that's how they are, and I just wasn't over a long enough time horizon.

10:18Chris Rose: The, the difference with managing robots, well, I'll be honest, the, the main disease I, I recognize and I'm always working on is robots will try to defer judgment whenever possible. And that's, sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad, but life is about ambiguity. You know, outcomes are probability distributions. And so we as humans understand ambiguity. We understand that the, the future is not set, and, and we just embrace that, and, you know, we'll see what tomorrow brings. Robots, no, they, they want an answer right now so that they can move on to something. And so sometimes that means they'll fabricate, you know, or hallucinate an answer. Other times it means that they'll, you know, say, they'll attribute some definitive outcome to me and say, "Chris decided this," and then move on, and I've got no idea what they're talking about. So that's kind of in the weeds, but that's, that's the difference.

11:08Chris Rose: And, and so if I can ask, I love asking this question, Harry: do you use AI? Like, what do you do? What, who are you, of course, rolling with? Yeah? Okay, tell me about it. What's it, what's your, what's your user, use case?

11:23Harry Nalbandyan: So we have various different use cases. So we have AI plugged in into different areas of workflows that it could help it. We have it in our intake process, we have it in our sales process, we have it in our client experience process, we have it in our litigation process, we have it in our management process, and I'm maybe forgetting a few other areas.

11:40Chris Rose: I mean, that's a lot of them. Like, you, so AI is interwoven into your systems and processes.

11:47Harry Nalbandyan: 100. Yes. And I don't, it's such a powerful tool, and it's still so relatively new, that I think a lot of people are struggling with where implemented, how to implement, and what problem to solve. And so, like, my suggestion to any law firm operator would be just pick something and see how it enhances your production line. So if we think of a case as a production line, the sales process happens when they call, they sign, and now you're on the production line from case sign up to resolution to the assignment being over. And in that space there are so many things that happen, thousands of things that happen, and a lot of them are repetitive, and every practice group is different, and one practice group might want something to be done this way or that way. It doesn't matter. You can have, utilize whatever tools that are available today to be able to manage that workflow somehow. So, long-winded answer, but it's everywhere. It's everywhere, and it's constantly changing. I'm getting better.

12:45Chris Rose: Yeah, I, I agree. I, and I'll say your long-winded answer was like a fifth of the, the length of mine, so what does that say about me? But okay, so let me ask you this. Like, what, what, what one AI tool, like, if, if I said, "Hey, you got to give me all these, give me all your toys, you can only have one," which one would you want to keep?

13:05Harry Nalbandyan: Good question. Probably Eve. So we use e. All the companies are similar. If you find a closed box system where you can upload your own data into, that's the one I would advocate for. Helps with workflow processes, it helps with just lawyering faster. I mean, the, the name of the game when clients call is to get the best result possible in the quickest time frame possible. And so things that would take lawyers hours to do, and because it would take hours to do, it be a barrier to the project even starting, right? Procrastination. What the, the tedious, gritty, disgusting parts of the job are always going to be last, because people just don't want to do them. And so these tools kind of take that and get rid of it. Something that would take hours now takes seconds by the use of a clever prompt, or even non-clever prompt. Just ask one GPT to draft you prompt to do what you want, and plug that into whatever system you're using, and you'll get something that's usable.

14:03Harry Nalbandyan: So for me, that's been, in the kind of practice that I run, because we have a high litigation all your practice, a trial practice, and that tool has been a game changer to my ability to jump in on the case last minute and be ready to try that case the same way and the same confidence I'd have if I had handled everything myself from day one. So I don't know if that's saying a lot or not, but no GPT tool.

14:26Chris Rose: Yeah, so, so what I, what I believe I hear, I'm hearing you say, is that it is allowing you to process information faster and more accurately. Would you say that's, would you say that's accurate?

14:41Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, yeah, like, fundamentally, yes. Yeah, I mean, I've go on, now the generative components are also pretty good too. So in addition to processing and synthesizing information and data, it also just generates reasonable work product that needs, you know, fine tuning, but it gives you a draft. And sometimes I felt it myself, man, when there's a project I want to start, I press that Word, word button, and the thing pops up on my screen, and it's just blinking, blinking, blinking, blinking. But, and, and it's just hard to get started, right? But this does that for you, and it gives you a base to work off of and removes that point of friction.

15:16Chris Rose: You know, I, I do, and, and I, a million percent agree. I am someone who works best when I'm telling other people what to do. And so, like, having to write something myself, no, I'd rather tell someone what to write, you know? And, and, and having robots, you know, all the AI that can do that, especially as they're getting better, you know, reducing m dashes, the, the, the words, phrases that keep recurring, it's getting better and better. And so now I can create more quicker. And so let me ask you this, and this, this is one that, that I find is a constant thorn: was it hard for you to get buy-in from your firm, from everyone else, you know, from the other lawyers to the, the paralegals, case managers? What, how did that look?

16:04Harry Nalbandyan: Interesting. So I'm lucky enough to be in a position where sometimes, you know, when, when you want to make a decision, you make the decision, and sort of everyone has to also kind of fall in line. But adoption is definitely a barrier to entry, or a barrier to use, for any sort of tech. And so I, in kind of the revamping of our firm since I came on in 2019, and changing the technological infrastructure for, you know, how everything was run, there's always been some sort of hesitation to any new technological updates, because that means new processes, that means new workflows, that means new ways of doing things, that means new ways of thinking about things. And there's going to always be resistance to change, no matter where you want an organization, especially when there's a change that's so kind of monumental with the advent of AI.

16:46Harry Nalbandyan: And when we adopted these tools, use, usage wasn't the highest in the beginning, but continuous training, especially when it comes from the top. I, I firmly believe if you have a culture that embraces change, if you have a culture that embraces accountability at your firm, and a culture that represents, or embraces just excellent client service, when people start to use these tools and they see how, they see how it can move the needle in all of those areas, for themselves, for the clients, for the firm, that initial point of hesitation for the new technology kind of goes away. It's always going to be there, but I think the more you communicate about what's coming, the more you can communicate about the ability of the tool that you're using, and the more that you can be hands-on with the team and talk about use cases together. So we have small groups that meet, different pods, all the different teams, and everyone gives a use case in the beginning of how they use it, how the technology helped, in what way they found value. And I just feel like that, that environment just fosters curiosity for the employees to just go and poke around.

17:46Chris Rose: Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, and I love that you said that. The, the, the firms that I've seen implement AI quickest and ubiquitously were the ones that had someone on a lower level essentially champion that effort, like, "Oh, this, this has been great, like, it has made my life so much easier, and we are in a similarly situated position, you should try this," to essentially say it's okay to use this.

18:14Chris Rose: There's, I, I saw, there's a video about leadership, and it's this one guy at a concert, and he's like dancing on the hill by himself. It's at an amphitheater, and he just looks like a crazy person out there, just flailing about. You know, there's people everywhere, they're all sitting down, but it's just one guy having the best time of his life, looking like a madman, but it's just him. And then at maybe like a minute to two minutes in, somebody joined him. Like, there was one other person that was like, "I'm down to be a madman too." And suddenly there are two people, and it goes from being just one crazy person to suddenly, maybe this is kind of acceptable. Somebody said, "Hey, you know, I, I think this could be fun." And then two went to three went to six went to 12, and then suddenly the amount of time that it took that one guy to get one person was the same amount of time it took for there just to be a large mass of people all dancing like crazy people.

19:10Chris Rose: And so having that, you know, if you're at the top saying everybody needs to do this, implement AI, you don't have that other person, you know, who says, "Actually, maybe he's not just one crazy person on hill, maybe he's actually on to something." And then it spreads. It's like that social proof, you know. So I, I, that's, that's great. I, I love that you did that.

19:29Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, it's a great visual. And it's like, in an organization, everybody from top to bottom has got to be, you know, a champion and advocate for the processes. And I like to, to advocate for kind of like that Elon Musk model of process review and revitalization every month or so. And so team members are, team members are encouraged to make things break. Team members are encouraged to speak up when things are silly, or when a process is, is, doesn't make sense. So with the addition of all these tools, it just makes it easier for, I feel like, the team to see where those breaks are, and, and to use them to break all the processes, and

20:08Chris Rose: Yeah, agree. It's a continuing evolution. A million percent, especially as fast as this is developing. I mean, a year ago I, I was just like, you know, having pointless conversation with ChatGPT, and it was kind of a novelty, you know. And, and now today, it's like, I'm, I'm fully red-pilled on this. Like, I, you know, every, every morning when I get up to my desk, I put that Matrix jack into the back of my head, and like, I'm in a different world. And, and so, you know, it's, it's really incredible how fast this is all changing.

20:41Chris Rose: And, and you said to have those moments, like Elon Musk said, where you, where you re-evaluate and you determine what's going on. I, I, when I'm using my own systems and processes and, and creating plans for a project, I call them Gawande moments. I forget the name of the author, but he, well, I mean, his last name is Gawande, but his first name. He was a surgeon, and he realized that if the surgeon is in control and is just saying everything, everybody's going to follow a checklist even if that checklist is wrong. Everybody's just going to follow the instructions. And so it was like his, his determination was you're, you're either following a recipe or you're, you know, following a plan. And if you're following a plan, you always have to have those moments where you stop and have everybody take a moment to say, is everything going smoothly? Everyone has to contribute to, to basically perk up and say, "I saw something that went wrong here," you know, or "This is working better than that." Everybody has to contribute to make sure that the, the ship is aligned, because if nobody feels that, that level of comfort to speak up and say, "Well, as a matter of fact, I noticed that the patient is dead," you know, then you're just going to go on operating on a dead guy, you know. And so I, I love that, that you did that. That's, you know, you've, you've implemented that. So, yeah, super cool.

22:02Harry Nalbandyan: Especially for, for firms that try cases, I feel like if you don't use these tools, you know, a lot of times trials are analogized to war, and I see the similarities there too, version of war. But if the other side's got a bazooka, and you're also have the ability to use it, but instead you're using, you know, paper airplanes or paper clips trying to fight this battle, you're gonna lose. So if you have these tools that are available to you, especially at such a cheap cost, just using champion GPT premium or even free, it gives you a leg up in the game. So, yeah, I'm a big proponent of the tools.

22:34Harry Nalbandyan: And, you know, transitioning from talking about these tools to LegalFlare, like, how has LegalFlare been so game changing in the referral space for lawyers who need to refer out clients? Or, you know, I get thousands of calls a month, I can only help out 15 of the people, what should I do? How does LegalFlare help to service the rest of the community who I can't necessarily help?

22:57Chris Rose: Yeah. So, Harry, I know you've seen it on, in the list serves, where someone's like, "Hey, does anybody know a, you know, a lawyer in North Carolina I can send this peak PI case to?" or "Does anybody have an employment law attorney up in, you know, Oregon or something?" And so it, these are the informal systems by which we refer individual cases, which, I get it, you know, that's, that's just, the legal space is, is siloed. You know, we have individual state bar associations, you know, and a lot of them don't get out, and we're all kind of, you know, recalcitrant to change. And so I looked at this space and, and I thought, why, why doesn't anybody have a network? Why isn't anybody just, like, you know, meeting all those people?

23:40Chris Rose: I mean, quick segue here, or side, a side note: I am an attention whore. I love to be popular, I love to be, like, noticed. And so that feeds right into this, where it's like, I can just have a network where I know everybody. I'm super popular because I send cases to everyone. And so it's establishing those relationships and then systematizing the processes.

23:58Chris Rose: And so it started with just one or two, but then I realized, asking people, asking firms, "Hey, what do you do with those employment law cases that, that, you know, filter through every now and then?" "Oh, we turn them away. We don't, we don't take employment law." "Well, why don't you just send them to me?" "Okay." "Well, what about, you know, those, you know, those PI cases that you turn down? Do you do, why do you turn them down?" "Oh, because, you know, we don't, we don't want them. Like, they're not cases." "Well, how do you know? Like, did, is anybody else taking a look at them?"

24:32Chris Rose: One of the things I hate, and everybody, everybody fucking says this, Harry: "We sign a hundred percent of the cases we want." Well, that's fantastic. I go on a hundred percent of dates with women I want to go on a date with, and you know how I want to go on a date with them? Because they say yes. Like, you are skewing the numbers here. You're introducing your own bias into the sample size. So I'm introducing this, like, layer of redundancy. Like, what if there was another question that your intake didn't ask? What if, you know, they were having a bad day? How do you, what is your layer of redundancy? What is your safety net below your, you know, trapeze?

25:07Chris Rose: And when I started doing that, I really didn't expect to catch much on that one, but actually on declined PI leads I'm converting like 17 right now, which is crazy, right? I mean, it says, it says a lot about how cases can sometimes get through. And, and I, I even see it all the time, because I make my firms state their decline reasons. Why, why don't you want this? Just, it feeds my system, and I can review it, and I get answers like, you know, disputed liability, or, you know, no, no insurance policy. And then I go in and it's like, what are you talking about? They were hit by a commercial vehicle. Like, there was a, like, you didn't look at this, you just declined it. And, and so, you know, giving firms the opportunity to capitalize the, the value that is just being thrown out in the trash. And, and so that's, that's what I do, and it's, it's working out really well, because nobody's, nobody's really doing this.

26:09Chris Rose: The, the competitors I have, you know, AttorneyShare and Lexamica, and, and I'll say I, I love them both. I, I'm not, like, I'm not saying either one of them is bad. Like, I, they're, they're great. AttorneyShare is, is very one-to-one: if you have a case, you don't know who to send it to, you just got one, you want to send it out, you don't really mind who you send it to, it's great for that, and, you know, oftentimes it's going to be fine. Lexamica is, if it's more software, if you already have those established relationships with your partners, then, you know, you just need something to track those referrals, Lexamica is great. But if you don't have established relationships, if you don't want to spend the time determining who's worth a shit, you know, you don't want to spend the time chasing people down, well, then send it to me. I'll, I'll go beat someone's ass in the street for you, you know.

26:57Harry Nalbandyan: And so how does the, the system work? So I got leads that come into my CRM, I'm not taking them. Do they just get forwarded to LegalFlare, and your team screens them and sends them out to whatever partners that you deem would take that kind of lead?

27:09Chris Rose: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's essentially how it is. So let's, let's, let's walk through it, Harry. Someone calls your firm, and, and you're a litigation firm, so I, I doubt you're taking many of those, you know, minimum policy cases, or things like that, with, like, dispute liability, you know, or, you know, the medicals are pretty low or something like that, right? What do you do with those when someone calls you?

27:31Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, we have referral partners that, you know, if we're not going to take them ourselves, we'll give somebody else a chance to take it. And if they don't take it, they don't take it, then, you know, they go back on Google.

27:39Chris Rose: Okay. And, and so let's, let's walk this out. So these people call you, it's not for you, you refer it out. How do you refer it out? Do you refer it out by, like, just an email? Do you call someone? Like, what's that look like?

27:51Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, so through our CRM we have a filter system, and then our sales team refers it out to the referring partners via email. They'll follow up through the CRM and see if it got signed, it didn't get signed, no, how it all shook up.

28:04Chris Rose: Okay. And, and so you, you said you have people on your sales team following up with those partners. How are they tracking performance? Are they, like, monitoring what the conversion rates are? Are they monitoring the value of those cases? How do you know?

28:22Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, through, through our CRM.

28:22Chris Rose: What was that? Okay, okay, I'm gonna keep pulling. Through your CRM, what metrics are your c, is your CRM tracking?

28:27Harry Nalbandyan: What do you want? It tracks it all. So conversion rates, estimated values, time on desk, how long it took for the referral to get signed, signed to resolution, how long that took, and then, you know, resolution to when we get paid, if we do.

28:47Chris Rose: Oh, fantastic. Okay, so all great things. Absolutely, you should. And, and simply the fact that you are aware of those puts you in, like, the 99th percentile, because most firms aren't even doing that much. And then, so let me ask you, who is going through and systematically reviewing all those partners? Who, who is the one that determines, yeah, this firm is doing well because of, you know, these metrics, these, you know, KPIs that, the benchmarks that we have, and, and who's doing poorly? And when someone is doing poorly, like, what do you do about that? Do you find someone else? Like, what does that process look like for you?

29:21Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, interesting. I've never really had to intervene myself. Sales team kind of looks at that, and then on the back end, if I see that something looks fishy, if a lead I thought was supposed to be better isn't better, or is better, sometimes the clients will call us to say, "Hey, like, what happened? Why don't pick down my phone calls?" And then, you know, there's some intervention process there. But yeah, it's mainly the manager of our sales team.

29:42Chris Rose: Yeah, okay. So what, what, hold on. So the manager of your sales team, is that their only job, or are they in, in charge of just business development in general?

29:49Harry Nalbandyan: Oh, they're basically in charge of intake.

29:57Chris Rose: Yeah, gotcha.

29:57Harry Nalbandyan: I like to call, I like to call my intake my sales team, because that's really what it is.

30:03Chris Rose: Facts, facts.

30:03Harry Nalbandyan: It's not like it was before. You know, you got somebody on the phone, you got to sell them to get the retainer signed, otherwise, you know, probabilities say that they're going to be on. So I, I like to treat our intake, I like to treat that first customer phone call that we get as a sales call: put the customer at ease, prospective customer at ease, let them know how we can help them, and then let them know how great we are helping them, and then ideally we get a signature. And so with that comes a filtering process. Doesn't meet our qualifications? Well, that's a lead that can be monetized. It's a, that's a human being that needs help that we can't help, but somebody else can. So it all falls into that umbrella of, of our sales team.

30:38Chris Rose: Yeah, you're, you're exactly right. When someone calls your firm, like, you know, a lot of times they're, they're ready to sign right away, you know, they're, they're highly motivated because they've just been in an accident or something, you know, right? They, they want this, like, pressure, like, "I want a lawyer to handle this for me." But there are those where they'll call a firm, and if somebody has the wrong tone, or the, the phone rings for too long, or the, the person doesn't sound empathetic, then they'll go somewhere else, you know. Like, the hard part is, you know, getting them through the door, but that doesn't mean your job is done. Like, you gotta, you gotta pounce on them and, and, you know, get them to sign. And so I, I agree, that's, that's the sales component.

31:23Chris Rose: And again, you're, you're much further ahead in all of this than anyone else, or a lot of other people, because they have intake people who just send those leads out, and then they don't know what happens to them, or, you know, it's, it's just a friend, or, you know, nobody's monitoring to make sure that, you know, they signed, or that the money is going, you know, when the case resolves, that somebody's sending you a check. Yeah. And, you know, that requires a person, it requires a responsibility, it requires a role. And a lot of firms, you know, they either don't, you know, don't want to build out that referral department component, or don't want to train someone to do it, or they simply don't recognize what it takes to do it, because everybody talks about mailbox money. Mailbox money, man, there's no such thing as mailbox money. Like, mailbox money is, is like sending a lead to me so that I do all of the dirty work, and

32:23Harry Nalbandyan: That's, that's exactly right.

32:23Chris Rose: It's mailbox money because, you know, you don't, you don't see how the sausage is made.

32:29Harry Nalbandyan: So that's, I guess that's the value of LegalFlare then. So it, instead of you having to build out this entire process, a team, email that or send it via the widget or whatever to LegalFlare, and you handle the sausage making, and I handle the mailbox money portion.

32:41Chris Rose: That's exactly right. I, I am elbows deep in sausage right now.

32:48Harry Nalbandyan: Nice. And so the difference between LegalFlare, though, it is like your license is on there. It is a law firm.

32:54Chris Rose: Yes, yes, you're exactly right. And that's, and that's the biggest difference, in that I, in order to receive a percentage of attorney's fees, in something like 36 jurisdictions, first of all, my malpractice insurance has to attach. I have to assume joint responsibility for the outcome of the case, and that means if, you know, it goes sideways and someone blows the statute of limitations, my, my malpractice insurance is on the line. You know, I can get a bar complaint on that. And additionally, I'm, I'm held to the same ethical and reporting standards that a law firm is, whereas that doesn't apply to, like, lead gen companies or, you know, even AttorneyShare and, and Lexamica, because they're, they're software platforms.

33:36Chris Rose: And so they're, you just kind of think of them as, like, telephone lines. You know, what, what happens on each side, that's you, and, and in between, that's just infrastructure. Whereas with, with mine, like, you're, you're giving it to me, and, like, I'm holding on to it, and until you get your, you know, until you get your paycheck or your referral fee and everything is resolved, like, that's my responsibility. It's, it's still on my shoulders. And so that's, you know, again, that's, that's what makes it hard. You know, no one, no, no one from Lexamica's, you know, you know, beating up other attorneys and, you know, and at conferences and things like that, you know, shaking them down, holding them upside down to get the money, or, you know, where's the updates.

34:19Harry Nalbandyan: That's funny. But, and so what's, how does LegalFlare, you know, make money? Does it get also a piece of the referral fee? What's your incentive for providing the service?

34:32Chris Rose: Yeah, great question. So I take five percent of the attorney's fees on all cases that resolve with some type of settlement. So right now, across the board, I'm handling something like, I mean, I'm handling, it's getting up to like two thousand, two thousand cases a month. Like, it's crazy, crazy. But, you know, not, not all of them turn into anything. And so I'm handling a very large volume, but a lot of it is just, it never turns into anything. And so I'm just, those ones that actually turn into a case and make it to resolution, that's when I take five percent of attorney's fees, whatever I've negotiated on the front end with the handling firm. So let's say, Harry, you and I have, I negotiate on behalf of the originating firms. And so let's say, just for round numbers, you and I have a fee split agreement of 50. You take 50 of attorney's fees, I would take the other 50, but I only take five percent, and so the remaining 45 would go to the firm that originated the case.

35:31Harry Nalbandyan: Interesting. That's a great model. Have you, have you run into, like, trust issues? Have you run into how you confirm something settled? There's always that kind of risk too, I feel like, in, in the business.

35:45Chris Rose: Oh yeah, no, trust issues all the time. Like, I don't, I don't. So when I begin to work with someone, yes, I, I have to extend a certain level of trust, but, and, and I talk about this all the time. So what is trust, Harry? What is trust? Trust is not something that, that we, that, you know, you know, honesty is not a virtue. That's bullshit. Honesty is a repetitive interaction. It is the promise of seeing someone again so that you can be held accountable. Because if we think of it in terms of game theory, if I'm only ever going to see you once, I'm incentivized, you know, to, to steal your shoes. Like, there's no accountability there. And so we trust people less when we think that we will never see them again, or see them very rarely. How can you actually have trust with someone when there are essentially going to be no structural ways of, of consequences? And so we establish trust by having repetitive interactions, by setting expectations and following through, and when something goes sideways, you know, showing, "Hey, I, I am here to, to, you know, essentially, you know, be the one who's responsible to show how things will change." That is trust.

37:06Chris Rose: And, and if we, if we apply it to law firms, everybody thinks that, like, billboards are a way of, like, you know, marketing. Like, you see, you see a billboard, it's like, "Oh, I want to call that lawyer." That's not what billboards are. Billboards are for establishing a brand so that you can attach emotions to, you know, who they are, what you see, and so that you can establish this innate understanding of structural accountability. My billboards are up there, you will always see me around, and so, you know, I'm not going to skip town with your money. Like, this is a, a repetitive, a structural, ongoing interaction.

37:47Chris Rose: And so to establish trust, I just talk to people as much as I can. Like, I'm here, I'm sending everybody emails, like, I, I'm sending out reports, you know, I'm constantly asking people what's going on, how's everything going. And, and that's one thing that I, I've really learned through sales, was that, man, you got it, you got to just, like, live in someone's pocket, because if you're out of sight, there's always that, like, small, small whispering in your ear that's like, am I ever going to see that person again? Are they going to, they're going to skip town with my money or my referrals. And so by just showing, "Hey, I'm here every day, I'm sending out reports every day, I'm calling you every day, you know, I sent you a lead two days ago, what's going on?" or "Hey, your, your money's coming, it's in the mail, just want to let you know it's there." And just by being an ever present force in people's lives, like, that's, that's really how you, you know, it's, it's the same as the sun. You know, the sun shows up every day, so we trust it's going to show up tomorrow. So there, there's your long-winded answer, Harry.

38:53Harry Nalbandyan: I like that. I like, I like it, wrapping up with "I'm like the sun." That's great.

38:53Chris Rose: Yeah, yeah, thanks.

38:53Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah. So, Chris, tell our listeners and viewers how they can get in touch with you, find out more information about LegalFlare, sign up, get more info, the whole deal.

39:03Chris Rose: Yeah, the easiest way is chris.rose at LegalFlare.com. And, you know, I honestly, I'm, I'm never, I never sleep, I'm always working. You know, a lot, law school taught me how to just, just push through a fatigue. And so that's, that's the best way. And go to my website, but the best way is just to find me and ask questions. But let me, let me throw it back at you, Harry, just so I know: how do I get in touch with you? Like, if I want to follow up, what, what would I do?

39:32Harry Nalbandyan: You can email me, harry at lnnlaw.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Harry Handles It, Harry Nalbandyan. I'm the easiest man to get a hold of. I think my cell phone number is everywhere.

39:42Chris Rose: You know, I'll, I'll send Claude out to look for you, and I'll let you know how easy it is. It won't have any problem, I guarantee that.

39:47Harry Nalbandyan: That's awesome.

39:47Chris Rose: But I, I appreciate you having me on. It's, it's been, it's been a real pleasure, and I especially appreciate hosts where we have a dialogue and interaction, you know, a conversation, as opposed to just, you know, throwing, throwing questions at me.

39:59Harry Nalbandyan: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of what this is about, and I view this as, like, a, a very efficient way to get to meet people that I probably would have to go to 4,000 conferences to meet. And so I kind of treat it the same way. So it was a real pleasure, Chris. Very nice to chat with you, meet with you. Love your energy. And I'll probably see you at a conference soon anyway.

40:18Chris Rose: I, I will find you at a conference, Harry.

40:23Harry Nalbandyan: Awesome, man. Thank you, thank you.