Stephen Embry has spent years thinking and writing about the intersection where lawyers and technology meet. In Episode 17 of Lawyerpreneur we talk about how Embry has transitioned from spending most of his time practicing law to writing and consulting about legal tech because it’s the work that recharges him. We discuss the importance of networking and building trust equity with clients and potential clients during an absence of in-person meetings. Finally, Embry talks about how remote working environments may give law firms an opportunity to decrease overhead and even … wait for it … decrease billable hourly rates [gasp].
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The Intersection of Lawyers and Legal Tech with Stephen Embry
Jeremy Richter: My guest today is Steven Embry, who is a litigator from Kentucky. He writes about the cultural gap between technology and innovation and the legal profession at his website, techlawcrossroads.com. Steve, welcome to Lawyerpreneur.
Stephen Embry: Jeremy, thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to our discussion today. And hopefully we’ll have some fun.
Jeremy Richter: Oh, for sure. Alright, let’s just start with the purpose of your website, which you put out there in your About page. I’m a fairly tech savvy guy. I’m 38. I grew up when the personal computer revolution was occurring. My best friend in high school and I built multiple PCs. We worked at CompUSA, which doesn’t exist anymore. And we’re getting parts and putting things together. But I’m the guy in my office that people holler for when something goes wrong with their computers. Not that I can do anything for most of the time. But for a long time I was the youngest guy here. So there was the assumption that I could do something. But I can’t help but observe that most of the goings-on and the developments in the legal tech sector have very little effect on the day-to-day lives of lawyers like me, who are in the thick of litigation and practicing. In your writing over years now, have you observed anything that helps you say why that is?
Stephen Embry: Yeah, you know, a couple of things. Number one, a lot of developers in the legal tech space, while they may be lawyers, and they may have practiced for some limited period of time, they don’t have the breadth of experience and understanding necessarily of law firm dynamics and law firm financials. One of the most blatant examples of that disconnect is the fact that most lawyers, at least in in my world, and probably yours too — most of us bill by the hour, and you can say that’s a blessing or a curse. I tend to think it’s a curse–
Jeremy Richter: It depends what day it is.
Stephen Embry: And I’m not going to change it anytime soon. But the upshot of that is, every hour a lawyer that bills by the hour spends trying to learn how to use a piece of legal technology and or spends in training is literally, particularly if that lawyer is a partner or an equity partner, literally takes money right out of his wallet or her wallet. So consequently, we’re very hesitant to spend a lot of time with legal technology that takes a lot of time.
And my observation has been, a lot of the people in a legal tech development create wonderful, beautiful products with all sorts of fancy dashboards. But the problem is it takes forever to learn how to use them on the one hand. And on the other, they’ve got so many features that the lawyer using them gets kind of confused and fed up. The best tech products I’ve found are the ones that are simple or intuitive that don’t require a lot of learning time. And that do generally one or two things that help a lawyer out, that reach a pain point or a friction point that a lawyer has.
A good example of that is a product that works is LexisNexis — not to pitch it. Again, their product means that they came out with and it was I think it’s called Product Liability Navigator. And it’s an analytical tool for product liability lawyers. But in the way they developed this was they actually went out and talked to some 300 practicing product liability lawyers. Some were on the plaintiff side; some were on the defendant side; some were in-house; some were with small firm, some with big firms. And asked these lawyers what they really needed. What was their pain point? When it came to product liability litigation, what did their clients want to know? What would help them? And they came up with a product that does just that, with a very simple — I don’t want to say simplistic, but that’s probably the right word — simplistic dashboard that anybody, including me, could understand. And as an example, you know, I was a product liability lawyer for more years than I like to think. And if you’ve been practicing that area, the main thing that a client wants to know when they call you is, what’s the exposure of this case? And this product lets you gather data from various sources that give you a more empirical answer to that fundamental question, as opposed to saying something like my gut instinct is that blah ….
Jeremy Richter: I was sitting while you were answering that, I was sitting here thinking that I’m, I guess … complaining may be too strong a word, but at least commenting on people creating a product that is ostensibly there to improve the lot or the day-to-day real world of its clients. And yet, sometimes — I was talking to Brian Cuban about this [note: I was wrong in the interview; it was David Kempston]; well, at the very least I read it in his book and I think it was a part of the conversation that we had for the podcast — that there’s a lot of times that with our clients, they come in and we start working on their problems without ever asking them what their problem is and just start jumping into answering questions that maybe not what they’re not asking. So I’m fussing about it, but here we may do the same thing on a day to day basis.
Stephen Embry: Well, you know, and it’s — the disconnect runs both ways. There’s a disconnect on the legal tech development side for lots of products, but on the on the lawyer/law firm side, too many times I’ve seen law firms delegate technology decisions to their IT department. And not to denigrate folks in the IT department because without them, God bless them, we couldn’t function between these things we have these days and times, but they don’t have sort of the depth of nuanced appreciation for the problems that lawyers face. And so you’ve got that disconnect. And then of course, you got this kind of death by a thousand cuts. In many law firms where a vendor will pitch to an IT person, the IT person says, that’s great. Let me take it to my tech committee. They take it to the tech committee. They debate it for six months and then they kick it upstairs to the executive committee and they debate it for another three months and then they kick it to the managing partner. The managing partner says, yeah, that’s a great piece of technology. Let’s use it. Well, by then, it’s outdated, and it will do what it’s supposed to do or it won’t work with the systems that you presently got. So there’s sort of blame or fault to go all the way around here in terms of a disconnect.
But be that as it may, there are some really outstanding legal technology products out there that work really well. And you know, I can name several but all of them have sort of this this ability for lawyers to intuitively understand how they work and what they can do. I teach a class in law technology presentation skills, and one of the one of the products that we use is the web software TrialPad product and if you use those, you know how to — I mean, you really don’t need to read the manual, right? Somebody said the other day, you know, if you need a manual to know how to use this product, then you’ve already lost it.
Jeremy Richter: Yeah, that sounds right.
Stephen Embry: But with a TrialPad, you can pretty well figure it out on your own pretty quickly. And so there are lots of products out there like that, that make our jobs easier. But we as lawyers, sometimes we get burned once, we get burned twice, and we quit.
Jeremy Richter: Well, let me let me bring this around a different direction. What about your career, practicing as a litigator for a long time, led you to want to start writing about the legal tech sector and following it and reporting on what’s going on there?
Stephen Embry: Well, as you know, I have been interested in technology for a long time, and I remember when my kids were young and we were going on a vacation and I had a brief that I had to work on. And so we’re driving to Florida. My wife’s driving. I’ve got papers strewn all over the car trying to write. Kids are yelling and screaming in the background. And so I took a break and happened to have a legal magazine with me, and I was kind of turning in it, there was this article about Fred Bartlett, who’s a well-known Chicago litigator. He’d recently left the big firm that he was with and formed his own firm. But he was talking about sitting in his condo looking in Aspen looking at the mountains as he was working on his brief on the computer. And I said, you know, there’s somethingto this technology.
So I got interested in it in sort of fits and starts. And then after I’d been practicing for as long as I had, I was getting a little stale doing what I was doing. I was a mass tort lawyer, I still am, to some extent, but not like I once was. And I thought, maybe I need a change of substantive law. So I started looking at getting into cyber security and privacy. And particularly at that time, there weren’t that many experts in it, other than on the two coasts, and even those people was a new field. And so I thought, well, the way to get into that is to begin writing on LinkedIn about it. So I started writing on LinkedIn. And then the more I did that, the more it kind of morphed into sort of little more some substance about technology, more and more about technology. And somewhere along the way, somebody suggested, why don’t you write a blog, publish a blog. So I open the blog up and began to notice that every day I got up that I was going to work on the blog I was really charged up. Every day that I was not going to work on the blog but had to practice law. I was not so charged up. So finally, a couple two and a half years ago, I took the plunge and began focusing almost entirely on the blog, although I kept my law license and still do some high end sort of strategic advisory work in the mass tort area, but primarily now I’m a blogger. I’ve got my own hoodie.
Jeremy Richter: You know, that’s the mark right there.
Stephen Embry: Right? I’m ready to go. Basically loved every minute of it. It’s been a great ride and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. I met a lot of really interesting people, particularly in the tech space. And the only regret I have, and I tell people this all this all the time, the only regret I have is I didn’t do it sooner because that’s kind of where my interests were going. And I really enjoy helping lawyers with technology and understanding it and getting better use out of it. But I also enjoy helping people that are making the products and helping them understand what it is they’re up against, how to design a product that will work. Not from an engineering standpoint, but from a functional standpoint, and how to sell products to law firms, which is a which is an art in and of itself. And so, between offering advice to those two sides of the coin and maintaining a blog, I’m pretty busy and pretty satisfied with what I’m doing.
Jeremy Richter: Well, that’s really important. And that’s one of the things that I focus on here on this podcast and on my own writing is the fulfillment that lawyers can get in pursuing, whether it’s a side project, or changing professions all together. There’s not one right way to be a lawyer or have a law practice. It can take any variety of forms. But what’s really important is that you’re able to achieve that fulfillment and satisfaction with the direction that you’ve decided to go. And it sounds like as you transitioned in your career, you’ve really hit a spot where for the last few years, you’re doing exactly that.
Stephen Embry: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And it took some time. It took some time to figure out what I wanted to do and then it took some time to, in essence, pull the plug. I was with the same law firm since — well, I don’t want to say how long — it was a long time. And in our profession, as you probably know, a lot of older lawyers like this, they cannot perceive themselves doing anything different than practicing law. And many of them also are scared that by changing and no longer practicing law, they will lose their standing in the community, the respect of their peers, all those sorts of things. And I don’t mean to suggest those aren’t valid concerns because they are. And I struggled with that for a while. Although, you know, I’ve subsequently found that, that you may trade one set of reputation and respect for another set, from another group of people. But if you do quality work, it’s still there. And that shouldn’t be the thing that grabs you, in any event.
So yeah, I’ve told lots of lots of lawyers that I have counseled with in have recent times, you know, don’t be afraid to step out. I mean, the skills we have, as lawyers enable us to do a lot of different things if we if we’re willing to try to do them. Because particularly as litigators, we learn new subject matters with every new case. So we’re accustomed to challenges and learning and learning new subject matters. Being thrown into situations that we are not entirely comfortable with. And so it shouldn’t be that hard, but a lot of lawyers don’t — they want to hold back and they’re scared, and that’s understandable. But for me, it worked out really well.
Jeremy Richter: Well, let me ask you this. When you started writing, you were running a law practice. The same as when I started my law blog in 2016. I was a fourth year associate. So I had different concerns. There were several bumps along the way and a learning curve and trying to figure out what to say and what not to say, and where lines are that some can be crossed and others can’t. But through all of that, there’s the decision of how do I justify spending this time pursuing this other thing, this writing, when I could be billing or working. For some lawyers who are on contingency or not doing billable work, they still have to justify that time expenditure. I know you’re wanting to do that. How did you — whether it’s to yourself or to your partners — justify that time?
Stephen Embry: Well, that’s a good question. You know that I think to yourself, practicing law can be very hard and very challenging. Yeah, I mean it and it’s — between the people on the other side, often your clients, your partners, it’s a high pressure, high stress, occupation. You can look at the statistics on depression and substance abuse and all that is in essence evidencing having an outlet to do something that you really like to do. That may not necessarily be the practice of law but is associated with the business or the practice of law, if that’s what you’re interested in. Or something completely different.
I think for your mental health is important and it flows into your practice, as well as your ability to market, to be able to talk about various and sundry things not had in today’s times where there’s so many lawyers and there’s so much competition for clients. Often you’re competing against another lawyer or another group of lawyers that that have a lot of the same skill sets that you do, particularly for sophisticated work, because most clients aren’t going to solicit proposals from people that aren’t qualified. And often it comes down to the best fit between the lawyer and the client. And part of that is being a genuine and interesting person with other interests and other things to talk about. Somebody that you want to go have a beer with.
I got a huge case one time years ago from a client and they were interviewing only sort of New York law firms. And you know, I was in a relatively midsize firm in Louisville, Kentucky, but we got the work. And after it was all over, I asked the client, I said, you know, Tony, I mean, I’m so happy you hired us. It was a very good piece of work, that piece of business. But I’m in curious at the end of the day, why did you hire us? And he said, Steve, I knew we were going to be working closely together for several years, and we were going to spend a lot of hard nights, late nights together. And if I was going to do that, I really wanted to be doing that with somebody I liked pretty well.
A lot of sense and to get back to your question — in terms of expanding what you’re doing and doing things that are a little outside the practice of law or completely outside of practice law, in my opinion, makes you a better person, a more whole person. And that in turn makes you better able to look at issues with more empathetic eyes for your client, because you’re not just practicing law the whole time. You do other things and you see other issues. You see other problems, and so I think it’s important for lawyers to pursue those kinds of other interests. Even if it doesn’t necessarily and directly impact number of hours billed or how much you work or anything else. Work is important. It’s what we do. It’s what, in many respects, it’s what we are. But it’s not completely what we are. So I would call you know, I would counsel everybody to try to have other interests.
One of the reasons that I have railed against the billable hour quite often, is it tends to make you very myopic in terms of your outlook toward things. A friend calls you with a problem. And this has happened to me, the first thing I thought is, how long is this going to take? Because I gotta get back to billing, right? Billing my time. And before you know it, when somebody calls you with a problem, they usually don’t tell it to you like you’re billing time for it. They slowly, slowly evolve, and if you’re going to help them you have to be able to take the time. And so one of the problems of the billable hour is it makes us so focused on work that we sometimes lose sight and lose interest in a whole lot of other things that are going on in the world. That affects our ability to do good work, even if we don’t see it. So I always tell people, it sounds very trite and it is trite to say follow your passion because, okay, what’s my passion is good question. And it takes time to know. But you’ve got to have that space in your life to do something that you love doing, even if it’s different than practicing while making the time and making that space. It just makes you a better person, at least in my opinion.
Jeremy Richter: I totally agree. I want to go back to something you kind of touched on earlier. And you and I had a little planning session yesterday about some of the things we’re going to talk about today. And you kind of casually threw out there, that you’ve had a 25 year head start on this working from home situation that the rest of us have been forced into over the last three and a half months, because you’ve been working remotely since the 90s. So technologically, what did work from home as a lawyer look like in the in the age of landlines, modems, and fax machines?
Stephen Embry: Well, it was a, it was a little slower than it is now. That’s for sure. You know it. Computers ran slower. There wasn’t any video conferencing. The internet was still in its infancy. But and there was no – if somebody talked about the cloud, they got rain. So you know, you had to sort of access stuff differently. I hate to date myself, but floppy disks. I used floppy disks or a lot of things.
But it was always amazing to me how much you could get done even in those days remotely if you put your mind to it. If you use the telephone, if you used email. If you didn’t function entirely in a paper universe. And the thing that I discovered about it when I first started working at home — and I kind of got into it because as a mass tort lawyer, almost all my cases were across the country. So I was working remotely because that’s where the work was. And then it kind of dawned on me that, well, if I can do this work in Denver, I can certainly do it from my home in Louisville, Kentucky.
I had small kids at the time, and I wanted to spend more time with them. And the thing that I quickly discovered about it, even back in those days, was it enabled you to do your work at a time that you picked out as opposed to getting up in the morning, driving to the office, getting there 8:30, staying till 6:30 or 7:30, driving home, and turning off work. I discovered that I can work at home and yeah, I could pick my kids up from school at 3:30 and bring them home and spend some time with them. And then whatever work I needed to get done that I didn’t get done during that time, I could do later in the day.
So it added this sort of flexibility to what I was doing even in those days that I enjoyed and have always been thankful for. And now that we are facing the situation that we’re all in — I mean, thank goodness that that technology has evolved to the extent that it has. There’s always this debate that goes on, particularly when you’re moving from one way of doing things to a new way of doing things and you’re tempted to say, well, that’s not as good as what it was; having a video conference is not as good as talking to somebody in person.
And as I’ve been thinking about this over the past six weeks, you know, it’s come to the realization that that’s the wrong way of looking at it. It’s not as good as — it’s a trade-off of benefits and downsides, right? Yes, maybe I’m not seeing you directly, but I’m having the upside of much more convenience and ability to do things that don’t require me to spend as much time traveling. It’s sort of like, you know, I would love to have a limo driver pick me up and drive me wherever I wanted to go, and wait on me till I was ready to come home, as opposed to getting an Uber driver to drive me and then waiting for the driver to order it to come back. Yeah, we’d all love that. But the truth of the matter is, I can’t afford a limo driver, even if there was one available. And what I get in return for using the Uber app is the convenience and speed and efficiency and low cost of being able to do things that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. So, you know–
Jeremy Richter: It sounds like you’ve been on the wrong side of the mass tort litigation.
Stephen Embry: Yeah, that’s reflecting back on it. You may be right. But I think we have to constantly tell ourselves now that we’re working remotely, and we’re doing more things by computer and video conferencing, yes, it’s not the same. That’s doesn’t mean it’s worse or not as good. It’s just different. And we have to get accustomed to those differences and embrace the opportunities that it presents.
One of the things I’ve been really enamored with of late is all these virtual conferences that have popped up. And the blessing of them is the cost is so reduced that virtually any lawyer, any associate, any paralegal can now attend. Whereas before, if you wanted to attend a conference, and particularly for you, and we want to go to a conference in Hawaii or San Diego or Europe it’s a tough sell to our partners to pay for it, so this is really a tough sell when you’re a younger lawyer, young associate.
Jeremy Richter: Like you and I were supposed to speak together on a panel in Chicago later this year, that has been canceled. And even a place like Chicago, you still have however many hundreds of dollars of conferences, travel, hotel. But now those barriers are coming down to — okay, this is the nominal cost of setting up the conference. Plus, if you have speakers that you need to pay, then you’ve got that. And that hurdle of having people be able to attend, to hear things that are pertinent to their law practices, or even if it’s just something of personal interest. Like, for me if I wanted to go to a virtual conference, to better my writing career or something, those are things that I have options to do now, that there’s no way that I would have been able to do before.
Stephen Embry: That’s exactly right. And we need to look at that, particularly for younger lawyers because Lord knows I’ve been to my share of conferences eating a lot of rubber chickens over the years. But for younger lawyers, it’s a tremendous opportunity to see speakers and hear things that you wouldn’t have gotten to do. The thing that we haven’t figured out how to do is the networking that we all so much love about in-person conferences. But even then, there are ways to do it, and conferences are learning and getting better. And so I just think it’s a tremendous opportunity. I mean, let’s face it, I mean, a lot of conferences that people go to or used to go to, you’d be sitting in the very back watching the speaker on a big screen anyway. What’s the difference of looking at it on your MacBook as opposed to some big screen in a conference rooms in a huge exhibit hall?
Jeremy Richter: So we’ll go to networking, because I think that’s really important. I think it’s something that we’re all trying to kind of troubleshoot through right now. And so I’ll share one of the things that I’ve been doing over the last few months for not only clients, but people that I have relationships within the industry who aren’t clients, but you know, I would like to build up the trust equity that eventually they become clients. Whenever there are developments — one of the things that we’ve had a lot of developments within the last couple months is the business interruption claims and similar claims arising from Coronavirus or you know, just things that are changing in the legislature that I think could affect my insurance clients. I’ll type up a memo and send that off to them. And for me, that’s networking in a way that keeps me top of mind so that if they have something come up in Alabama, I want to be in a position that I’m the person they think. Because there are lots of good defense lawyers in Alabama, and lots of people that they could be sending their work to. But if I am the one who’s going to the effort to keep them updated, and I’m freshest in their mind when they think about Alabama, I think that that’s a really important way that we can network and provide value to our clients when we don’t have the opportunity to see them at an event or go visit.
Stephen Embry: That’s exactly right. I mean, I have heard several lawyers recently say, Well, you know, maybe now it’s not a really good time to be marketing or to be on social media or what have you. And I recoil from that because your competition sure is, and if your name is not out there, with everybody else’s, you’re going to get lost because you can’t have that personal contact. And I think we all have to realize that it is difficult as we are having dealing with what we’re dealing with. And it is difficult. I worry and I stress what’s going to happen, but it’s difficult.
As hard as that is for me, we have to appreciate it is really hard for our clients, particularly our in-house brothers and sisters, who have to deal with a failing business maybe or budgetary difficulties or working at home for the first time. And what I’ve found is just a phone call on occasion to some of those people and just to say, how are you doing? You know, how are you getting through this? And what can I do to help? Let me share an experience or let me tell you what I’m doing. And I think when I’ve done that it has been so well received. You know, they’re all they’re always thankful, and they seem to really appreciate just somebody was thinking of the difficulties that they’re in. And if you listen in those kinds of discussions, you will learn a lot of their concerns and what they’re dealing with. And you can put yourself in a position to help them. But if you don’t talk to them, if you don’t get your name out, you won’t be able to say that’s a really interesting question, I understand why you’re so concerned about what’s going on in the employment field or understand your business interruption concerns or is a big one, you know, force majeure clauses. Yes, we just threw those stupid things in a contract. That’s–
Jeremy Richter: Yeah, who knew that they were actually going to be used?
Stephen Embry: Yeah, I think marketing now is important, but it has to be done in a way that you’re client knows that you’re genuinely interested in what’s happening to them as a person, frankly, not just as a business opportunity. My marketing approach for most of my career was very long term. You know, I got a lot of good work simply by biding my time and being there and calling and to that end, going to see people even though it may not have looked like at the time it would ever amount to much. So often over time, it did. But it’s a still a long one — you have to pay to play the long game and market today and you have to you have to deal with the cards that we’ve got, which means you can’t get on a plane go see somebody, but you’ve got other tools, and you need to leverage them so you’re absolutely correct in trying to keep that going
Jeremy Richter: I think what you said is really important. Being genuine and being personable. And the being personable part, it does not come naturally to all of us. Whenever I call a client, whether it’s an adjuster, whether it’s whoever it is, I tend to be very business-focused about the very particular thing I’m calling about. But I have tried to make an effort in the last few months to have more personal conversations because people don’t have the opportunities right now to have those conversations unless you go out of your way to do it. And I have been more personally engaged with more of my clients in the last four months, than any time in the last eight years. But it does take a conscious effort. And it requires you to be genuinely interested because people can tell if you’re just asking a one off, how are you doing? Okay, let me move into my substantive issue now.
Stephen Embry: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s being able to have that touch of empathy. You know, as hard as it is, I mean, I don’t have the same amount of human contact that I did, and that’s hard, but so does ever — nobody else does either. And so being able to recognize that and know that that’s an important conversation starter before you do get into business, it’s well received, or at least it’s been in my experience and it sounds like it’s been the same way for you too.
Jeremy Richter: But I’m glad that you brought what’s going on with businesses and how some folks are having difficulties right now. I’m glad you brought that up in your last answer, because I saw an article that you had recently written on your website that touched on something that lawyers everywhere I think will initially balk at. And it’s the idea that we might be able to, in this climate and with changes that could be implemented, lower billable rates. To do that, if we’re decreasing overhead and other expenses more permanently with remote workplaces and technological changes, we can offer lower billable rates and still be more profitable. So initially, I think people are like, excuse me, I have no interest in charging less money for what I do. But tell me some more about that. So I thought it was really interesting and insightful.
Stephen Embry: Sure. Well, it went back to a virtual conference that I attended a couple of weeks ago for core the contract was put on by the contract or your provider law clerk. They provided all your contract lawyers for certain statute but they had Ralph Baxter, who was the former managing partner or Chief Executive Officer of org on and then he was talking about just that.
The two biggest expense factors for the practice for law firms is real estate office leases and personnel costs. And working remotely, you can reduce the former and using more efficient technological tools, you can reduce the later. So there’s this opportunity to reduce costs and get more business. And the example that he used was, Think about your TV set, right. Your big screen, I mean. The silly things used to cost a fortune. But as they as they went on, they were able to — the manufacturers were able to reduce the cost and then they translated at least part of that cost back to the consumer and driving down the price of the television and selling more TVs.
And Ralph gave this example of being in this meeting room for with a bunch of engineers and an engineer came running into the room and he said, guess what, I figured out how we can reduce cost on whatever product that was, the widget. And the guy was applauded and, you know, it took Ralph a minute to figure out he was being applauded, because he was by reducing the cost he was going to make more money for the company.
So there’s an opportunity to have that same mindset, particularly when you think about the vast underserved market that there is out there for legal services. And on the one hand, it’s an access to justice problem, particularly for people in lower socio-economic climates and status. But there’s also this huge sort of small and mid-sized business marketplace for people that need legal services, but don’t think that they can afford them, if we have the ability to lower our costs and tap into that market. It’s a huge market. Eighty percent of the legal needs of people in this country are not served. That’s a huge market. We’re only serving 20% if we could get to 50% — think about it! If we can lower the cost and make it economically viable, and, you know, a lot of particularly midsize firms are facing lots of competition and they’re all the same, right? And I don’t mean that to be insulting to law firm anywhere. But when you look at the number of midsize firms here in Louisville, where you are, a lot of them are roughly the same character, same level of experience, same expertise.
So how are you going to distinguish yourself in an increasingly competitive market? Well, one way is to pay lower rates. Now, as I said in the article, that’s going to take a lot of time for people to get their minds around, even at the client level. Because a lot of clients, if you went to them and said get really good news and we’re going to lower our rates, they can say, Well, are you guys in trouble? People leave? Or what’s going on here? So that could take some adjustment. But let’s face it, there’s a huge opportunity as we go forward to make a decision and to broaden those markets out and make a lot more money. And I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if it’ll happen. But it’s something to think about and something for law firms, I think to look hard at, as opposed to our typical reaction. When we save costs, we just give it all back to ourselves. We don’t give any anything to anybody else. And now may be the time that by doing, that we can indeed increase our profits.
Jeremy Richter: All right, well, I have really enjoyed this conversation. Now that we’ve made everybody mad, I think it’s a good time to wrap it up. So if people want to follow and connect with you, where’s the best place to do that?
Stephen Embry: Go to my blog techlawcrossroads.com. You can you can subscribe to that if you want. I’m on social media, Twitter at @stephenembryjd. You can always email me at sembry@techlawcrossroads.com. And, you know, I’m happy to always happy to chat with people about these kinds of subjects, because I just think they’re fun and in the legal marketplace for years has been sort of behind the business world. And now we’re catching up and it’s a really exciting time, I think.
Jeremy Richter: I think so too. I really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.
Stephen Embry: Thanks for having me. I’ve enjoyed it too. Take care.
