Human Empathy or Indistinguishable Automation? The Battle for Legal Intake

0:00Chris Rose: I always thought, how do I distinguish myself? How do I stand out? Two and a half years ago, I was at a conference. I showed up late and I was supposed to give a five minute presentation and I completely just didn't make it. One of the organizers, they had run out of name tags and she was pissed at me because I wasn't there for my speech. And she's like, Chris fucking Rose Ticker name tag. And she wrote that out. I was like, I love this so much.

0:27Chris Rose: But it was the response I got. People were just like, Chris fucking Rose. This is great. Chris fucking Rose. And then from that moment on, I was like, this is who I am.

0:49Marc Rioux: Welcome to Jon and Marc podcast. I am here with Chris fucking Rose of LegalFlare. Thank you for joining us. Jon is not here. He's still out of paternity leave. We miss you. But we are at the Encore in Vegas. Thank you for joining us.

1:01Marc Rioux: Interesting story about you. So I get pitched guests all the time from people from the outside or from Randy over there who pitches me guests. And I'm like, Randy, who is this person? Why is his middle name FN? He's like, oh, it's fucking. So Chris fucking Rose. Welcome to the podcast.

1:21Marc Rioux: I did some more research about you, about your company. I was very excited to speak with you when Randy told me more and more about you and prepping for this episode. I want to talk about your personal brand to start.

1:30Chris Rose: Okay.

1:31Marc Rioux: You know, is having a curse word as your middle name is an interesting choice, but it is quite memorable. What was the thought process behind there and when did that come into existence?

1:40Chris Rose: Oh, there's been a lot of... So let's see. First, I tell everybody it's my maiden name. That's the joke.

1:48Chris Rose: But so I've been in conferences for about four years and I've always thought, how do I distinguish myself? How do I stand out? When I first started coming to these and I didn't know anybody, I would sit at choke points where everyone has to move through and I would just sit there and I kind of thought of it as like a billboard for myself. And so I spent like the first six months just like just being seen and then people, oh, I, you were at whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm Chris Rose. I mean, it's not the worst name, but it's okay.

2:21Chris Rose: And so maybe two and a half years ago, I was at a conference. I showed up late, had a little bit too much fun on night one.

2:28Marc Rioux: Yeah.

2:29Chris Rose: And I was supposed to give a five minute presentation and I completely just didn't make it. And when I got there, one of the organizers, they had run out of name tags and she was pissed at me because I wasn't there for my speech. And she's like, Chris fucking Rose, take your name tag. And she wrote that out. I was like, I love this so much.

2:51Chris Rose: But it was the response I got. People were just like, Chris fucking Rose. This is great. Chris fucking Rose. And then from that moment on, I was like, this is who I am. This is.

3:04Chris Rose: So I actually hiked the Appalachian Trail like 20 years ago. Are you familiar with the Appalachian Trail?

3:08Marc Rioux: Very familiar. Never done it, but I know I live in Atlanta. It's like the end of it. So yes, it's very popular.

3:14Chris Rose: There are trail names because after a while, it's like tall guy, long curly hair, beard, smells bad. That's everybody. And so everybody gets trail names and some people would pick their own trail names. And it just felt so, I don't know, self-serving.

3:29Marc Rioux: Mm-hmm.

3:30Chris Rose: And the really good ones were ones that were applied to people. Mine was Popsicle.

3:35Marc Rioux: Gotcha. Well, that's for all nicknames. There's never good one to choose your own nickname.

3:39Chris Rose: So many people choose their own nickname. And it's the ones that they choose to tell other people.

3:45Marc Rioux: Yeah.

3:45Chris Rose: But this is my favorite because I love to say Chris fucking Rose and then I watch.

3:51Marc Rioux: Yeah.

3:51Chris Rose: Because it's a sorting mechanism. If someone's like, you know, then I know that we're probably not going to jive.

3:57Marc Rioux: Yeah.

3:58Chris Rose: And, but if they're like, that's the best name ever, instantly friends.

4:02Marc Rioux: I think it's genius personally because I remembered it right away after we picked. I was like, is this really fucking his middle name? And then I met you. Now, like from a memory perspective, it's like, that's Chris fucking Rose.

4:14Chris Rose: Exactly.

4:15Marc Rioux: I see a lot of people in day to day and I say this nicely. I forget a lot of people because like you get the first name that like my name is Chris is pretty generic. Like why do you name Chris? There's a thousand of them.

4:25Chris Rose: Why do you name Marc?

4:26Marc Rioux: Yeah. Same thing. Just blend right in.

4:27Chris Rose: Yes.

4:28Marc Rioux: It's like, what makes you different? How do you speak out? Just so someone actually remembers who you are in the sea of a zillion people at these conferences.

4:35Chris Rose: Yeah. That's what we have to do. We have to distinguish ourselves. We have to make ourselves memorable. And I do it by cussing at people.

4:42Marc Rioux: Yeah. I love it personally. My business partner, Jon, he's been in the industry. He's pretty well known for those who've been around the space. People don't really know me. I stay behind the scenes more. But when we started the podcast, no one, not as many people know who my name is. They just know me as that podcast guy.

4:56Marc Rioux: The team follows us around with cameras at all times. And they're like, they just know me from the, as the podcast guys are like with video crews around. We're just uniquely different from everyone else rolling around because we have a video crew with us at all times. And then like people now remember us or I'll be, people don't know my last name. Like you asked me what my last name before we started was, but people will know just my first name. I've had a couple now where people are just like Marc. And I'm like, oh no. That's what I do. Just Marc. Yeah.

5:21Chris Rose: And then I've heard one of the, one of the best ways to brand yourself is the something guy.

5:27Marc Rioux: Yeah.

5:28Chris Rose: The podcast guy. I've worked on being the referral attorney, but I think even the referral guy is just better.

5:35Marc Rioux: Yeah.

5:35Chris Rose: Because it's simple and it, you know, you own something that way.

5:39Marc Rioux: Yeah.

5:39Chris Rose: So the podcast guy, do you, how does that sit with you?

5:41Marc Rioux: Good and bad. A little debate we have with Randy. Technically we run an agency, which makes us all of our money. So podcast is a passion project. We love doing it. It brings the business, but the marketing guys would be better, but the podcast guys is a good second for us.

5:57Marc Rioux: Okay. I want to take this time to transition to what you actually do in your day to day. You said like the referral guy, you started LegalFlare for a very specific reason. I don't want to like butcher it. What was the thought process behind starting LegalFlare?

6:11Chris Rose: I wanted to put my law license to work and I didn't want to speak to clients. Like I don't want to work the cases at all. Because if you can either work in the coal mine or you can own the coal mine. And if you were working on a case, it's a one-to-one ratio. I mean, maybe the value of the case scales, but the effort that you put in is still one-to-one. I would rather build systems and scale that. That is, that is how you really accumulate wealth.

6:42Chris Rose: And so I looked around and one of my inspirations was James Helm with Top Dog.

6:47Marc Rioux: Yeah.

6:48Chris Rose: And he did, he did.

6:50Marc Rioux: Former podcast guest. If you haven't watched the episode, the editors put a link this way.

6:55Chris Rose: Absolutely. He is inspirational.

6:58Marc Rioux: Yeah.

6:59Chris Rose: A super great guy. And I watched what he did and I was like, okay, you know, he's basically bringing all of these cases in and referring them out. He's not going to court. He's not working them.

7:09Marc Rioux: Yeah.

7:09Chris Rose: It's like, this is a great idea. And I even told him, I'm going to steal your idea.

7:13Marc Rioux: Yeah. Yeah.

7:14Chris Rose: But he's much better at marketing than I am. And he has a lot more experience, a lot more inertia. And so as I was trying to make this work, it just wasn't happening.

7:25Chris Rose: And then I spoke to a few attorneys and they said, you know, actually we need to refer out a few cases. You do that, right? And absolutely I do. I do that all the time. I do that now. Yeah, exactly. I'll figure this out. And I started doing that and it just kind of like caught, you know, you get that traction.

7:47Chris Rose: And I started speaking to more and more attorneys and I realized that case referrals, it's a very opaque part of the industry, very opaque systems with, you know, handshake deals. And so as I began to talk to more and more people about this and realize that everybody's just operating on vibes, you know, you need systems, you need KPIs.

8:07Marc Rioux: I know I work with a ton of firms with their, not a ton, but like where the referral network is like a black hole. Once it's sent over to that person, they have no idea what's happening. And then one day they just get a check and they're like, oh, I guess that's nice. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. Not always.

8:21Chris Rose: And hopefully it's for the right amount too.

8:23Marc Rioux: Yeah.

8:24Chris Rose: And it's just because nobody's tracking any of this. Nobody is. And I say it all the time. Case referrals are fucking tough.

8:31Marc Rioux: Yeah.

8:31Chris Rose: Like everybody thinks mailbox money. No. I mean like I try to make it mailbox money for you, but that's because I'm doing all the fucking tough shit behind the scenes. Like I'm following up with people. I'm like, did you call this lead? You know, did you sign this? Where are your monthly updates? You know, this case settled three months ago. Like where is the check? Let's go.

8:50Chris Rose: And so I'm the one like, what I do is I'm a professional lawyer babysitter is what it is. Just constantly on these people to do a better job, improve your systems. And so in that way, like I'm improving the system, the industry, like that's my contribution, increasing efficiency, accountability, transparency. And it's a very opaque part of the system that nobody's doing.

9:14Marc Rioux: Yeah. Because there isn't any like standardized system for managing or tracking referrals. It's not like a, it's not like a standardized like banking system, how money gets transferred. It's like referrals get sent in any which way. People have their own networks. They've built out of people, of systems they use. Some people just forward an email that they don't, for cases they don't want to other firms. Their clients have no idea that that person's calling them because they didn't reach out to them. It's cluster.

9:39Chris Rose: It is. That's exactly right. And referral partners are like girlfriends.

9:43Marc Rioux: Yeah.

9:44Chris Rose: Once you have more than three, it's all headaches.

9:46Marc Rioux: Yeah.

9:47Chris Rose: And so like you really want fewer referral partners.

9:51Marc Rioux: Yeah.

9:51Chris Rose: And so that's how I kind of see it as just make me your referral partner, whatever kind of cases, just send it to me. I'll take care of it. You know, don't worry about it. I will take care of it. And that's what I do.

10:01Marc Rioux: So explain that to me. So you say, Hey, make me your referral partner, send them all to me. I'll build the network of where they go and I'll keep track of everything of like, I'll make sure they go to the best home and then I'm going to get the updates and make sure everything is moving in the right way. Fill me on more of the details there.

10:18Chris Rose: Yeah. So somebody sends me cases right now. It's predominantly personal injury, employment law, work comp in a distant third, maybe some med mal and I'm dabbling in other cases.

10:30Marc Rioux: Like, let's go with this scenario. Like a lot of personal injury lawyers get a ton of work comp leads, but they don't want work comp because lower values, higher volume, they're not interested. So they want to refer it out. So in that scenario, how does that play out?

10:43Chris Rose: They send it over to me. I have my established partners and I have pre-negotiated all of these fee splits. I know all of the administration compliance. As soon as it comes into my system, it's logged, it's recorded. I've built all of my software myself. I owe my life to Claude Code. Like it's incredible.

11:01Chris Rose: And so it goes out, they instantly have those leads. They're instantly reviewing them. If the first one declines, it goes to a second one. If the second one declines, it goes to a third one. If the third one declines, it's rejected. And so that way there's layers of review, layers of redundancy. If one of them signs it, we create a fee split because I'm a lawyer. LegalFlare is a law firm. I take a 5% attorney's fees off of the overall amount.

11:26Marc Rioux: You have a tiered, not tiered system, but like, so you're going to send it to your first partner. If they don't want to sign it, you're automatically then going to send it to the next second or third person. So you have redundancies in there to increase the likelihood of it being signed.

11:40Chris Rose: Correct. Yeah. And everything is speed to lead. The better performers get all of the top ones. And then it just kind of cascades down. Honestly, the tier threes, they don't sign very many cases, but that's just the nature of it.

11:56Chris Rose: But as they get bigger, like one of my top tier referral partners right now, he's getting too many leads from me. And so now I'm going to have, like my number two would be what a number one would have been, you know, a few months ago. And so I think that's the best way of just having a system of review, you know, but just like we said, problems, just solving problems. That's what business is over and over, just solving problems.

12:21Marc Rioux: So how do you deal with on the technology side, tracking this with each, you know, referring firm that you're sending to having different systems? Yeah. Because everyone has either, you have Litify, you have Filevine, you have some people have Needles, some people have, like, you never know. Some people have Google Sheets. Google, you never, all over the place.

12:40Chris Rose: I don't work with, at least I don't think I work with any of them. So I built out all of my own software.

12:46Marc Rioux: Yeah.

12:46Chris Rose: My backend is Airtable. That's my database. I use n8n for a lot of workflows. Everything is run through Cloudflare. I have my own software. Everything is proprietary. And so that way I don't have to rely on any of these other ones. I can integrate with, like, Lead Docket or Filevine, Clio, any of them. We can open those up and, you know, have a personalized integration. But really everything is contained in my system. And that's where I can track declines, decline reasons. Everybody's required to have monthly updates, things like that.

13:23Marc Rioux: How well do you get compliance on the monthly updates piece? Because I would say, like, the biggest complaints I hear from my clients are just people, is getting consistent referral updates back to them about what's going on with the case.

13:38Chris Rose: I train them.

13:39Marc Rioux: Yeah.

13:40Chris Rose: That's what it is. And then we monitor. And after five months, I get, or excuse me, after five days, five business days, I get a notification. This firm hasn't done their updates. And so I, you know, email them, call them. Hey, where are all of your updates? What's going on? Let's find out.

13:56Marc Rioux: What is the extent of the updates? What's that look like?

13:59Chris Rose: Sometimes it's just like still in treatment.

14:01Marc Rioux: Yeah.

14:01Chris Rose: Others it's, you know, more. Status and sub status or something like that. And really, the update is only just to make sure that they're paying attention.

14:08Marc Rioux: Yeah. Yeah.

14:09Chris Rose: That's all it is. So let me ask you, you talk about referrals with your clients?

14:14Marc Rioux: Yes.

14:14Chris Rose: What do they, I mean, as I wouldn't necessarily call you an outsider, but definitely not someone from standing for my position. So I would love to hear what your perspective is on all of this.

14:26Marc Rioux: Like, it's a couple of different things. So from my perspective, selfishly as a marketer, I love it when our clients have a good referral network of where they can monetize every lead that we send through. And just if I could be marketing only for car accident cases, but there'll be just people don't read ads sometimes. We'll call in about anything. And like, I'm like, Hey, you got all these work comp leads coming in. They're like, we don't do work comp. I'm like, send them to somebody.

14:53Chris Rose: Right. It's free money.

14:55Marc Rioux: Or it's like, there's always downstream effects of ways you can get an additional dollar of monetized leads that you're not capturing on or monetize additional case, like value from cases you have, whether it's social security, disability insurance. And they're just different ways. Like build out your referral network, train your intake team, build those systems. So you can refer out the stuff you don't want to handle, whether it's stuff you don't want to handle because it's, you don't have a practice area for that, but you should monetize them when they come in and don't let those fall through.

15:24Marc Rioux: Whether it's even, we even talk to our clients all the time. Like you aren't a mass tour firm, but if we just put a couple of pages up on things that you're not opposed to, you will get local ones. Email your clients. When something comes up, it's like 3M earplug, you email them back in the day about that. You have a bunch of veteran clients, sign them up, refer it out. Like it's just free money with a little bit of effort and paying attention to that you're just leaving on the table for no reason. We said, once again, mailbox money, ideally, but from a marketer standpoint, we're like, we want you to monetize as many of these leads that you're paying for, for us to generate as possible.

15:58Chris Rose: Yeah. Every time their phone rings, they paid to have it ring.

16:01Marc Rioux: Yeah.

16:02Chris Rose: And if there is some monetizable value there, be a good business owner, figure out how to squeeze that out of there.

16:08Marc Rioux: Yeah.

16:09Chris Rose: But you know, I think a lot of the issue is that we, at least from my perspective, I'm addressing a problem unaware audience and explaining to them, you have a problem. You are letting money slip through your fingers. Like every time you don't capitalize on that, you're not, you are losing money. And so they have to get in the right frame of thinking. And then once they're problem aware, then they can become more solution aware. But right now, everything I do is education, explaining all of that, you know, and I'm still workshopping all the different ways to, you know, kind of explain that.

16:51Chris Rose: And so you send them all the leads. Do you review their intake? Like, do you tell them like, these are what benchmarks should be? Or do you just like send it to them? Because I assume a lot of them are going to blame you when they don't get as many leads as they'd like, or as many signed cases.

17:06Marc Rioux: Chris, that would never happen. Right?

17:09Chris Rose: Yes. Why would they blame you at all?

17:10Marc Rioux: That's exactly how it works. A big thing for us is we do very detailed reporting on all the leads coming through that we generate. So with technology, it makes it a little easier, but there are some loopholes depending on the firm. So whether it's like CallRail, we have that set for any calls coming in. We're able to see all inbound calls coming in. We can see transcripts. We actually built an AI tool so that reads all the calls, give us an analysis. If it was like handled well, was it a good case or a bad case based on their qualifications? Who is the intake person?

17:40Marc Rioux: So we can see like, okay, we actually got like 20 really good phone calls in that were 15 minutes long. They're auto accident cases. And then we can like follow up the firm and like see their case management system, like how they transpired. So they'll be like, we got no good leads. I'm like, what about all of these?

17:55Marc Rioux: So we do that same thing as we connect directly into their case management system. So any inbound form leads as well, and as well as the calls, we're monitoring to see how many of those turned into good cases, how many of them they signed up, how many they referred out. We meet with them on a weekly or biweekly basis. We're reporting how many leads were generated, how many of those we think were really good, how many of those you guys signed up and how many you referred out. And that's like the constant metrics we're tracking to see how well they're doing.

18:21Chris Rose: And how open are your clients to your, you know, basically confidence level in the quality of these leads? Like if you say, you know, you got 20 great leads, but you only signed 10 because of your intake. Do you find that they are defensive or they recognize that as an area for growth?

18:40Marc Rioux: Runs the gamut. Yeah. I would say most of the time it, there's either two major issues from either the leads are not actually good, which is an us problem, which does happen. And we need to resolve that from a lead volume or lead quality. Sometimes you're just fishing in the wrong pond and you need to fix that. That happens a lot as well.

19:00Marc Rioux: The easiest thing to make us look good as marketers is fixing intake. It's like almost always the number one issue. It's because like, there's just things slipping through the crack. There's random things that pop up there they're unaware of. And like some people are have like really good intake, but as they grow, the volume grows, the team hasn't grown yet. They're not actively watching it at that moment, checking everything like they used to. And then some things pop up. So it varies, but intake is usually like a huge lever to pull if they clean up some stuff to get more cases coming in.

19:29Chris Rose: Yeah. I mean, you're pouring water into a bucket. And if the bucket is full of holes, like plug the holes, that's the best thing.

19:36Chris Rose: So let me ask you this. And I, this is something I've thought about a lot. People want people on the other end, you know, there, there's this push for AI intake, you know, everybody's trying to do that, but it's not really catching on yet because other people do. I mean, even myself, I feel like, you know, when there's an AI on the other line, I'm just like, let me speak to a human, you know, but I'm like a grumpy old man.

19:58Marc Rioux: Exactly.

19:59Chris Rose: I'm like representative.

20:00Marc Rioux: Exactly. Exactly.

20:02Chris Rose: Oh, it kills me when I'm calling my pharmacy. Let me speak to a representative.

20:06Chris Rose: And so I think that most people do want people on the other end, but people make mistakes. People have bad days. With AI, what it is now, and you can have a real time analysis of the call. My thoughts are that the next step would be, it's just a person reading a script from an AI. The AI tells them exactly what to say. And so the other person can tell that there is a human there, but really they're just kind of like a puppet in a way. And in that way, they're not going to make any mistakes. The AI can tell them, ask this question, you know, say this. And so you remove a lot of those mistakes. Have you, like, where do you see this going?

20:50Marc Rioux: I see, it's like the wild, wild west right now from the AI side. I see a lot of firms who are trying to forward thinking or using like, hey, we're going to use AI for after hours or overflow, which is working like okay for them. I'm a big, I'm in the camp of like, humans should always do intake. Like it's your service business is, it's the first personal touch you have with someone. Make it someone in your company is actually having that. It's worth the money to invest.

21:18Marc Rioux: And I also believe intake people are salespeople. So like, not only do you need to do a good job qualifying the call, you need good job selling why your firm is the best firm to represent them in that case matter. So I believe in all those things. AI might be even better one day, but for now, I'm in the boat of a human should do it.

21:34Marc Rioux: I think AI tools can make it easier and more effective to get people trained, to monitor and get better coaching. And like you said, there might be the real time guidance. It makes it faster to get people up to speed of like, they already have these tools that exist today for people like to kind of cheat on interviews, where people ask them a question, it's giving them the answers in real time on screen. I think that's, I haven't actually thought about that, but I think that's probably a better use of AI for intake people so that they're not doing the hold the mic and ask their manager how to answer this.

22:05Chris Rose: Why do you think that? Because at a certain point, AI will become indistinguishable.

22:12Marc Rioux: Yeah.

22:13Chris Rose: Right? We're in agreement there, right?

22:15Marc Rioux: Eventually.

22:15Chris Rose: Eventually. It's on the way. It is inevitable.

22:18Marc Rioux: It'll either be, it could be in a year, it could be in tomorrow for all we know.

22:21Chris Rose: Exactly. And so, if we can agree on that point, then, I mean like, we don't need a human then, right? Because of it's indistinguishable.

22:31Marc Rioux: Yeah, just because you don't need a human doesn't mean you have to cut them out. Why?

22:35Chris Rose: Great question. Yeah, because again, I mean, think about it. Indistinguishable. Which means 50-50, you could be talking to a robot or you could be talking to a human. You don't know. I'll take the robot every day of the week because the robot is never going to call in sick. The robot is always going to know what to ask. They're never going to have a bad day. And so, inevitably, everything is going to be indistinguishable robots. And so, the sooner we get there, the better it will be.

23:07Chris Rose: But my question is, what is it about a human? What makes us feel more comfortable speaking to a human or at least more comfortable speaking to an indistinguishable robot? Like, if you really think that we should be having humans.

23:22Marc Rioux: I think there's a couple of things. One, I think there is a trust that you build as if you talk to a robot and it's indistinguishable, that's fine. And you think you're talking to a human, there's no difference to the end user. If it's actually indistinguishable. If they find out it was not a human and it was a robot, all trust is broken with them. So, that's like a trust factor, in my personal opinion.

23:51Marc Rioux: I think that, once again, indistinguishable from a conversation perspective, but like a real empathy perspective, I don't think AI has gotten there from an understanding how to properly handle situations when someone's calling in because their daughter got t-boned in a car accident and is dead. Versus how our AI currently does that. There's like a human connection of actual emotion that hasn't properly been trained in an AI that I think is going to be very hard to replace. For AI today, they'll be like, oh, we're so sorry about that. It's not like the same. And then they'll go on to the next question. There's like this training of gap of emotion feeling for these very serious scenarios that someone's calling in about that I just don't think is there yet.

24:35Chris Rose: Oh, definitely not.

24:36Marc Rioux: Yeah.

24:37Chris Rose: No, I 100% agree with you there. And I would even go so far as to argue it's not there a large portion of the time with actual humans as well.

24:48Marc Rioux: Oh, yeah, yeah.

24:49Chris Rose: And so, if anything, that's a better argument for going down the indistinguishable robot path. Because then, I mean, because we can just train empathy. Like, it is a conditioned response. If we know what good empathy looks like, why can we not train a robot to do that? And it would be more reliable and more empathetic.

25:09Marc Rioux: As a person who's rolling out a ton of AI, I'm a big fan of it. I think of it as a tool to solve problems. And if that is the proper tool to solve that problem, I'm fine with it.

25:21Chris Rose: Marc, I knew I liked you. I've been preaching this forever. AI is not the solution. AI will help you build the solution.

25:28Marc Rioux: Yeah.

25:28Chris Rose: That is exactly right. People want to slap a coat of AI paint on everything and say, like, all problems are solved. That's not how it works. But I agree. AI will help you build the solution. And the solution is a better intake, a more empathetic intake.

25:46Marc Rioux: The goal is to have the best possible client experience. And if that helps you get there, that's fine. And to capture as many of the possible intakes without error as possible. I think AI definitely helps you get there. I'm not going to argue on that one. I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not sold on it yet. But as it gets better and better, we'll see. I know that there are firms that are using it more and more for outbound dialing to, like, get med records or, like, deal with service providers where they don't care.

26:13Chris Rose: I find it's easier to hang up on a robot than a human.

26:18Marc Rioux: I agree. Funny story. Waymo's take longer to get places because people won't let them in to, like, traffic as easily as they would a human because they know it's a robot driving. So they, like, won't, like, stop and let someone in versus when they see human driving.

26:33Chris Rose: Oh, man. I mean, this, it almost feels like a...

26:37Marc Rioux: But it is like, hey, like, why not, if it's in the signal, if someone knows it's, like, AI, they, like, people are less empathetic than they used to, but they still have no empathy for a robot. First, they do for an actual human on the other side of the phone.

26:50Chris Rose: I mean, so you recognize the logical solution to that, the Waymo problem.

26:55Marc Rioux: Put people in them?

26:56Chris Rose: No. Take the people out of the other cars.

26:59Marc Rioux: Oh, yeah. Eventually. Eventually. That's a lot. You need a lot of new cars on the road for that to happen.

27:07Chris Rose: And again, inevitable, right?

27:11Marc Rioux: Potentially, yeah. I just...

27:13Chris Rose: And so, I mean, I'm gonna segue this one hard, if you don't mind.

27:16Marc Rioux: Go ahead. This is the, this is your podcast now. Welcome to the Marc and Chris podcast.

27:23Chris Rose: Are you familiar with Cassandra? She was the sister of Helen of Troy, I believe. She was cursed with foresight. She could see the future, but the real curse was that no one would believe her.

27:34Marc Rioux: Okay.

27:36Chris Rose: And so, when this large wooden horse shows up at the gates and she's like, there's people in there. Don't let that horse in. There's people in there. They were like, stop. It's a wooden horse. We'll be fine. They weren't fine.

27:50Chris Rose: Going back to PI and autonomous vehicles. Because this is, this is going to decimate the personal injury space. How do you see this shaking out? Like, what, what do you, what do you envision for the industry in 20 years when there are, you know, when car accidents are reduced to near zero, you know, when commercial vehicles are no longer driven by, you know, fallible people are driven by robots, you know, and there just aren't accidents. Like, people are causing all these accidents, you know, it's people. And you take people out of the equation and suddenly we no longer have a, you know, the thriving personal injury space that we do right now.

28:37Marc Rioux: I have a lot of different takes on this.

28:38Chris Rose: Oh, okay.

28:40Marc Rioux: I think self-driving cars will happen much slower than predicted for a couple different reasons. People are just stubborn and be like, I don't want one.

28:50Chris Rose: Fearful of change.

28:51Marc Rioux: Fearful of change. The humans as a whole, especially Americans, don't like being told what to do. Don't like change. Things happen very slowly then all at once. So you never know, right? Yeah.

29:04Chris Rose: Another COVID comes around. Suddenly nobody's driving. It's all robots out there.

29:09Marc Rioux: Once again, you know, I have no idea what's going to happen, but like from just a economical standpoint, having people have to buy all new cars over, even over a 20 year cycle that are, you know, self-driving, it's a, it's a big leap in my mind to get there. I could be wrong. Who knows what happens? I can't predict the future. So I think that'll change a little bit.

29:29Marc Rioux: I think maybe the biggest impact I think immediately might be the self-driving like semi trucks from like the horrific accidents there. But then again, the things that you don't account for is human nature, which is humans will fight change with lobbying and fight regulation based on individual interests of groups. First, what we think should be the best for everyone. I'm not taking any political stance here, but like self-driving semi trucks might be the best thing for safety. But there's a lot of truck drivers that are going to be out of work and it's not best for the United States to have those people not working and have robots driving. So it's like, it's safer, but now we have this whole population that's negatively effective. I don't think having tens of thousands of unemployed 30 to 40 year old men floating around this country is a good idea to have self-driving trucks.

30:22Marc Rioux: So it's like, it's a, my point I'm trying to make is changes, not linear. It's very different based on these things on technology perspective, like self-driving cars. And I think humans just also continue to make bad decisions. No matter how good technology was, people will continue to injure other people through bad decision-making and accidents. I think, I think there might be less car accidents, but I think the industry will evolve as a whole. It's already evolving with tort reform. Nothing stays the same and there'll be different injury types, different things that are happening. Practices will evolve and they'll continue to adapt accordingly.

31:00Chris Rose: I agree. I definitely agree.

31:02Marc Rioux: It was a tough one. So I did my best.

31:04Chris Rose: No, no, no, I, it is a tough question and it requires, you know, forecasting looking into the future. But I think, can we agree that autonomous vehicles are inevitable?

31:17Marc Rioux: Oh, they're already here. So yes.

31:20Chris Rose: Ubiquitous.

31:24Marc Rioux: Yeah. I think it might be come down to the scenario where everyone has one, but then like when we're like 50 and we're making a bunch of money, we're like, oh, we're, we all own like gas cars. Cause it's like cool. Yeah. And we're driving those around like a motorcycle. Yeah. Like that. It might be like, that's the cool thing to do is like, go back and buy like a V8.

31:43Chris Rose: I'm going through a midlife crisis. I'm going to get an earring and a gas guzzler.

31:47Marc Rioux: Yeah. But that might like be the cool thing to do is like, oh, you have a gas car.

31:50Chris Rose: Yeah. No, no, no. I personally think that car ownership will decline because if everything is autonomous, why would you own a car? Cause you only, you only need it to get somewhere. And we have cars because we need it to get somewhere right now. And if it's autonomous, you just click a button and you know, the next car comes up. And so car ownership, I think will decline drastically. But if we both agree that autonomous...

32:14Marc Rioux: I think we, I agree at principle. I don't think I agree on, I don't know if we're going to be in agreement on what the timeline is for that.

32:24Chris Rose: Agreed. And that's where I, exactly where I was going timeline. And so the industry will have a chance to adapt, but you're right. Oftentimes society advances, not smoothly, but lurches, you know, all of a sudden everybody's working from home because we have to, or, you know, or, you know, who knows what's going to shake out with AI. Like we are in the middle of the most recent technological revolution right now. And people just aren't like paying attention to that.

32:56Chris Rose: But I really see in 20 years time that the personal injury space, it's just, it's not, is going to be a shadow of what it is now. And everybody's talking about getting cases, you know, but we're seeing these pressures on margins because up until this point, the legal industry has been a cottage industry. You know, the small shops with high margins, bad business owners, but because the margins are so high, they can be bad at business. But all of that is going to begin to collapse. And I'm curious. I know that the largest players, speaking of, are going to gobble up a lot of the industry, but it's not going to be, you know, the bonanza that it's, that it's been for so long. And so I'm very curious about what that looks like.

33:47Marc Rioux: I don't have a crystal ball. I have no idea what it's going to look like. I think right now it's just an interesting change too. I think there's a lot of market dynamics going on right now. I think self-driving cars are like such a far off fear that like, there's so many more pressing issues to keep your eyes on. It's like, I think biggest pressure for law firms right now is just general increased competition. There are just more firms and more better firms in the market, or before you can be like the main regional player and you kind of dominated for a while.

34:17Chris Rose: Can I, can I stop you right there for a second? Better firms.

34:22Marc Rioux: Better run.

34:22Chris Rose: Okay. And can I, can I pull on that thread a little bit? Like, what does a better run firm look like? I mean, from your perspective, you know, the marketing side, you want them to be better at, you know, monetizing the leads, you know, at growing like that, that makes a lot of sense. And so as someone who gets to see firms that are not better run versus the ones that are better run, what are some of the main themes that you see in better run firms?

34:50Marc Rioux: I think it's just like any stroke you can put for like a well-run business. Like they have standardized processes. They have great people. They have great reporting systems in place for what they need to do. They, from a law firm specific, it's like they're good at marketing. They have efficient marketing engines. They have a great intake team and they have great lit and pre-lit departments where they're able to maximize the value and compensation for every case that comes in, whether, and then referring stuff out. And then they're handling their caseload in an efficient manner with their existing staff and technology.

35:21Chris Rose: Yeah, I agree. Systems and processes is really what I've seen define firms from like good firms to great firms, you know, how well do they have these systems built out, you know, and how strictly does everybody follow the systems?

35:39Marc Rioux: Because you can take two firms the exact same size and I'm like, here, I'm gonna give you 10 million dollars. I'm gonna give you 10 million dollars and one firm can make money with that. And some firms will crush their business trying to spend 10 million dollars more in advertising. It's like, like, can you actually scale your business and grow to fit effectively? Or is it every additional dollar you put into marketing is just going to cause you more problems?

35:58Chris Rose: Are there any red flags that you see? Like when you're talking to a firm that is like interested in your services, but it sounds like you guys are, you're going to squander these leads, like any, anything that like sticks out?

36:11Marc Rioux: I think just general, like whole, like grasp on data and tracking their systems of how that's going, intake, how they view intake. And like some people don't really focus on it as like, it's critical. Like intake is like the first piece of the business. Like the whole, the rest of the business doesn't grow unless you have that nailed down. And how much investment they have in there is from our perspective is usually the biggest red flag and just general control of like understanding where their leads are coming from, understanding where their signed cases are coming from, how they have those processes defined.

36:43Marc Rioux: I think from my perspective, and we kind of want the same thing. Well, I, once again, I'm involved with the firm, but until they sign it and after they sign it, you know, realistically, I don't need my hand, my hands involved there too. I want them to make the most money out of it possible. I care if they sign it or refer it out, but then after that, I don't have as much visibility into the pre-lit and litigation departments and how those operations are run.

37:08Chris Rose: Oh, agreed. But it's usually something that I don't often see firms that have amazing intake departments and then the rest is like, shit.

37:20Marc Rioux: Correct.

37:20Chris Rose: You know, agreed. It's usually is the whole, is the whole operation running well or is something, you know, those, the symptoms appear everywhere of a common disease.

37:25Chris Rose: And I think the, from my perspective, because, you know, I want these firms to sign leads as well. You know, what I send to them, if I had to define it, like boil it down to one quality, it's like hunger. Like, do they want these? Like we'll sign it, we'll get it signed. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.

37:48Chris Rose: Or I had, you know, especially as I was first starting and I would send leads, they'd come back and they'd ask a lot of questions. Well, you know, where did, where did this come from? You know, can you get a little bit more information? It's like, just call the person. What are you doing? Yeah. Like, are, do you want to sign this or not? And so there was that hesitancy and I don't want to call it aggression, but like, it's definitely a very, like, let's get this done. Let's sign this and we'll figure it out. And I think that's kind of kind of the one quality that I look for the most.

38:15Marc Rioux: Like, I'll like some of the things that like for your thing, like your comment, we have like some managing partners that are like, if it's a good lead, they're like, they'll pick up their phone. Like they don't give two shits. Like if they, they see a good one come through, they're monitoring, they care about those inbounds, they're going, teams calling them, didn't get them on the phone. They're like, I need to get that. I need to sign this case based on the form fill information. And they're calling them because they don't want any good ones getting by. That's like an ideal scenario. You shouldn't be calling every lead if you're running the firm, but like, they don't want to miss out on a single one. And they want to make sure their intake is like doing everything they can to get those people back on the phone if they need to.

38:54Chris Rose: Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's the hunger, you know, and then, and then you build better systems so that you don't have to pick up the phone. Yeah. Your system is built out, you know, well enough. It's something that firms like they don't have a choice they have, they have to get better at.

39:06Chris Rose: And I see some that are falling to the wayside, you know, they're just, either they're going to get bought up or they're just, you know, going to go out of business. Like it's inevitable. The market pressures, the consolidation is forcing this industry to get better at business. The, you know, the days of being a bad business owner and still, you know, owning a compound or coming to a close.

39:32Marc Rioux: I, yeah, but I think on the, on the positive side on that, it's making everyone get better.

39:39Chris Rose: As it should, as it should. I mean, that's capitalism, right?

39:44Marc Rioux: Correct.

39:44Chris Rose: That's efficiency. The market, you know, moves toward efficiency always. And that's, I mean, that's what I do. Accountability, efficiency, transparency, like bring this all to light. Let's see what's going on. Who are the best performers? Let's systematize this, you know, and make it more efficient. Let's move things quickly. You know, no more, you know, just handshakes or, you know, calling someone on the phone, Hey, I know this person, you know, give them a call. Like, no, this is a business. We need to get more efficient. We need to track this.

40:19Chris Rose: And it's funny. Cause I, I often, I get frustrated that so many other business owners don't see it the way I do. Like, what are you doing? You're bad at this. You're so bad at this. But then I also think if everybody was good at this, I would be out of a job.

40:31Marc Rioux: Yeah.

40:31Chris Rose: Like there'd be no place for me. Right.

40:38Marc Rioux: Correct. Yeah. I think the industry has changed too, which has been really positive where I know we've been going for a while. It's been a great conversation. I'll wrap this up soon for us, get you out of here. But like there has been the change in the model of how firms operate, where there used to be historically like a lawyer operator, managing partner who was like, lawyering and running the firm. But like, I'm not saying this mean, but like, wasn't good at business, but was a great lawyer. And because they're a great lawyer, the firm was successful because of that.

41:04Marc Rioux: And I think the models moved away where there are certain people that are like, Hey, I'm the, I'm, I'm a lawyer at heart. Right. I used to try cases, but now as the firm's grown, I'm the operator and I'm a great business operator. And that's what I do day to day. I'll get, I'll do a case here or there just to, you know, scratch that itch. But I'm a business operator and they're great business people. And then there's people like, I am a great lawyer. I hate running the business. I'm only going to lawyer. That's where I make the most money. I'm going to hire staff. I'm going to hire a COO, hire a CEO that's going to run the business as a business operator. And those two shifts have been happening, which has increased like how better or more efficiently the firm's been running versus the old model, where it was just the managing partner that was a lawyer that didn't know how to run a business effectively, but was just doing the best they could by running.

41:52Chris Rose: Yeah. And that I see that as the old model, the cottage industry model. And I've got friends that are, that are moving into that, you know, going from like the, you know, the 10 attorneys to like beyond. And I tell them all the time, pick a lane. Like, what are you doing? You can either have a practice or you can have a business at a certain point, you can't have both. You need to decide and somebody has to fill, you know, that role, the business role. So pick a lane, but you know, not everybody sees it that way.

42:28Marc Rioux: Yeah. I always say it's like a business owner. Your job is to do whatever makes the most revenue for the company. And for certain people, it's trying cases is the best, the number, if you own the firm, that might be the best. If you're the best trial lawyer in the world, that's what you should be doing. You should be paying someone else to do the other piece.

42:41Chris Rose: That's exactly, I think of it as a zone of genius.

42:45Marc Rioux: Yeah.

42:45Chris Rose: What is the highest return on your invested effort? And if it is trial work, like go do trial work. Great. That's great. But somebody needs to run the business. You can't do, you can't bifurcate your attention that way. Like nobody, I mean, at a certain point, you just can't do it. People learn or they will fall by the wayside.

43:04Marc Rioux: Chris, I loved having you on the episode. We could have gone, we went down a lot of different routes, a lot of interesting topics. I haven't talked to other people about before that I really enjoyed for those who don't know you and those who want to get in touch with you to the camera. How can they get a, get a hold of you?

43:22Chris Rose: The easiest way is Chris dot Rose at legalflare.com. Or I tell everybody you can go into the bathroom, turn out the lights, look into the mirror and say, Chris fucking Rose three times.

43:36Marc Rioux: We'll end it with that. Chris fucking Rose. Thank you for being on.

43:36Chris Rose: Hey, thank you for having me. I really appreciate you. Chris fucking Rose on the Jon and Marc podcast, like, subscribe, smash that like button, right. And listen to everything. Listen to this one twice. It was a good one. I really appreciate being on.