02. How New Tech is Transforming Court Reporting: The Good is The Enemy of the Great

[00:00:00] Eric Baum
Using artificial intelligence is just a natural step in the evolution of the legal profession. You want to use reliable, secure forms of it.

[00:00:10] Bobby Steinbach
Welcome to Hot Docket, the show where we talk about winning marketing strategies that have built the most successful law firms.

[00:00:16] Andrew Nasrinpay
Join us every two weeks for the latest trends and tactics to grow your law firm.

[00:00:21] Bobby Steinbach
Hey everybody, and thanks for joining us today. We’re going to be talking to Eric Baum, the founder of Parrot Tech, a remote deposition platform for attorneys, to go over his tech platform that he’s built to enable attorneys to conduct remote depositions. We’ll talk everything from the marketing and the sales of it, All the way through to what it means to balance your work, your family, everything you’ve got going on.

[00:00:44] Bobby Steinbach
We’re going to learn

[00:00:45] Andrew Nasrinpay
about some of the changes in the remote deposition space and how that’s impacting lawyers on both the defense and billable hour side, all the way to the plaintiff

[00:00:54] Bobby Steinbach
side. Very excited for you folks to listen today.

[00:01:02] Eric Baum
Thanks for joining us, Eric. Thank you so much for having me. It was very nice to see you guys, Bobby, Andrew. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m excited to, I’m excited to join you guys today. Awesome.

[00:01:10] Bobby Steinbach
So, I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t start by just asking, you know, why did you get started? You’re a trained lawyer.

[00:01:17] Bobby Steinbach
What made you jump into, uh, building a tech platform?

[00:01:20] Eric Baum
So I was a, right out when I went to University of Miami for law school. Um, I was always interested in stopping bad people that were hurting other people, hurting kids  particularly. I volunteered in Haiti after the earthquake. I lived down in Port au Prince for like six, seven months and just being at the hospital there experienced and saw some really terrible things.

[00:01:37] Eric Baum
Kids, women, girls that are being taken advantage of. Because of the terrible infrastructure there, I went to law school to try to hold people accountable that we’re doing bad things to innocent people. Um, started to get internships at the prosecutor’s office, homicide division, human trafficking, and knew that I wanted to be a sex crimes prosecutor for a long time.

[00:01:57] Eric Baum
And so I went to the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office with Dave Ehrenberg, Adrian Ellis, all wonderful leaders. and worked my way up to the Special Victims Unit. I was prosecuting internet crimes against children, trafficking cases, and sex crimes.

[00:02:11] Bobby Steinbach
What made you think that this was the right move?

[00:02:14] Bobby Steinbach
My

[00:02:14] Eric Baum
whole trajectory, the whole life, everything I’ve always wanted to do was helping people and then making things better. And so after about seven and a half, eight years there, My brother, who’s a tech entrepreneur, has started a lot of different companies, and is very successful. You  know, asked me one day, he said, what is the most, and this is the same question that I ask anybody else that asks, you know, how do you start a company?

[00:02:35] Eric Baum
What do you, what’s the first step? The question he asked me was, what is the most inefficient part of your practice of law? What can be made much better through technology? While I was the Special Victims Unit, the major case I was working on required the review of dozens of hours of, Audio and video, phone calls, and the onus falls on the lawyers and the police officers to review those files  because it is so expensive and the turnaround is so long to get a reliable transcript back from traditional old school legacy court reporters.

[00:03:07] Eric Baum
The burden falls on these highly trained professionals to be doing transcribing. Uh, and so, in some cases write for police officers at the expense of the taxpayers, you know, because these officers are putting in overtime to just transcribe recordings. So, the answer, which is staring me in the face, very much so in the sense of a stack of CDs on my desk, is if there was a way to get highly accurate transcripts.

[00:03:29] Eric Baum
recordings of legal proceedings in a cost efficient manner, it would really be a game changer. And so that was the start. My dream was always to be a prosecutor, you know, state level and then hopefully federal level. And this was just a side project at the time. My son, who was seven at the time, was diagnosed with cancer.

[00:03:48] Eric Baum
And it caused me to take on a completely different life path. It was right in the hotspot of COVID. Um, you know, when, when, when we pick a jury on a sex case, you’re talking about, you know, 90 to a hundred person of an ire. And so I just could not be in a room with that many people at that time. And it caused me to make just a very difficult choice, you know, something I’ve always been passionate about, something I always wanted to do.

[00:04:11] Eric Baum
For the rest of my career, um, and I had to take on a different path that would allow me to work from home and be there for my family. And so something that was just a side project at the time, um, you know, with my brother and a, and another excellent software engineer who specialized in machine learning, natural language processing turned into what is now like a major [00:04:30] national company.

[00:04:31] Eric Baum
Yeah,

[00:04:31] Bobby Steinbach
I can’t imagine that happening and you know, it really speaks I think to your character to be able to turn that into something So amazing right with Parrot what you’ve recently passed 14 million in total raised capital

[00:04:46] Eric Baum
Yeah, that’s right 14 million and working with for soon to be a fifth national insurance carrier, you know I like to think of it I like to think of it a lot in terms of like uber and taxis Um, you know, the old school style of doing things, [00:05:00] um, I think that as lawyers, the blame lies on us because the normal workflow, right, with court reporting is that you have a reporter that’s present for your deposition or for your hearing.

[00:05:08] Eric Baum
You pay hundreds of dollars. In the state of California, you’re paying thousands of dollars for them just to show up. Right? And then, but you get nothing in return. The only way you get something in return, right, is if you spend another 500 to 1, 000 on a certified transcript. It’s just the way the world has been forever, and it’s extremely inefficient.

[00:05:26] Eric Baum
And so what we theorize and what has come to fruition is that if you can provide a very accurate way, right, someone can still order a certified transcript with the core reporters who provided a deposition. But what we discovered, right, is that if you can provide a very accurate way to get a rapid, accurate transcript, it saves attorneys a tremendous amount of time and in most cases, a lot of money.

[00:05:47] Eric Baum
And it just was not something being done. There have been a couple of people that have sort of copied our way of doing things since, but, you know, we were really sort of first to market. They’re doing this kind of thing like purely with technology. So

[00:06:00] Bobby Steinbach
for you, is this really a tech problem or is it a people problem?

[00:06:03] Bobby Steinbach
Like, do you think that the harder part of what you’re trying to do is build this technical solution to a difficult problem? Or is it trying to get attorneys to buy in to a new way of doing things? It’s a

[00:06:14] Eric Baum
combination, right? So, um, it’s a numbers game in a sense that you, at the current state of the law, right, you will absolutely need a certified If you want to use a, a, a testimony right from a deposition or hearing or trial in court, it needs to be done by a reporter, right?

[00:06:28] Eric Baum
And that needs to have human eyes on it. However, the way that industry standard and custom has led us to believe is that the only way to get a record of the testimony is that certified transcript. A reliable record of the testimony is that certified transcript, and it’s simply not true. Right? I, I don’t mean to phrase this.

[00:06:44] Eric Baum
You can, we did. Develop sophisticated enough technology that you can get a 97 percent accurate transcript, right, within 90 minutes of your deposition ending that is synced up to the audio video of the depo and it’s cost efficient. And again, it’s for work [00:07:00] product, right? If you’re going to be introducing it at trial, you’re still going to get a certified transcript by the reporter we provide.

[00:07:05] Eric Baum
The goal is that the typical turnaround time for a certified transcript with any other legacy vendor, right? It’s going to be 10 business days, 10 business days turns into like, depending on when you do it, it’s like 14 days, 15 actual days. And so that is you take like 10 days to 10 to 15 days from when you can get started, you know, on your work.

[00:07:24] Eric Baum
On the results of that proceeding. And we’ve shortened that to, to, to, to 90 minutes. And so it’s, you know, it’s certainly an uphill battle in the sense that some attorneys are, a lot of attorneys will say, well, I’ve always done it this way. It’s certainly about, you know, not necessarily re educating, but sort of evolving the workflow.

[00:07:42] Eric Baum
Um, because people don’t like change, especially someone who’s been practicing law for a long time. I like to flip sort of this analogy that I’ve heard a lot. People say like the enemy of the law. the enemy of good is great. I like to flip it around because I think in our case, it’s like the enemy of great is good or good enough.

[00:07:57] Eric Baum
And so in a lot of  circumstances, We will talk to prospective clients. They’ll be like, I mean, I’ve done it this way for 20 years. I’ve been working with Judy, you know, or Jim, my co reporter for 20 years, you know, yeah, they can’t handle a lot of volume. Yeah. You know, it’s just a piece of paper they’re sending me.

[00:08:15] Eric Baum
Um, but you know, it’s not broken. It’s not bad enough that I have to do, it’s not fantastic. It’s not great, but it’s good. Like it’s good enough for what I need. And so here I am on the other end of the line or the zoom call saying, we’re syncing your [00:08:30] transcript for you, right? Something normally that is charged out, costs thousands of dollars.

[00:08:33] Eric Baum
Every depo is going to be on video. Normally something that’s 150 to 200 an hour. Um, you’re getting it in 90 minutes, which if you ordered a transcript from a traditional court reporter, same day, circle back to your question, right? It was, is it a technology problem? Is it a human problem? I would certainly say that there’s a reeducation that needs to happen in terms of what’s possible via attorneys through technology.

[00:08:53] Eric Baum
There’s certainly right now. Some trepidation as far as because you have attorneys that are, you know, in the news, it’s, it’s not uncommon to see some attorney has used chat GPT to look up case law and there’s, you know, hallucinations in there. And so it’s a human, it’s a human problem and a technology problem.

[00:09:09] Eric Baum
I don’t get it. Like, I wish I could talk to those attorneys. I’ve seen, you know, their explanations, right. When you have these state bar disciplinary hearings and they’re like, why did you do it? And the reasons are crazy right there. I think in the one Avianca case, which is the first time it happened, the answer was like, I forget if it was Westlaw or Lexis, but he’s like, my, uh, subscription lapsed.

[00:09:26] Eric Baum
And I just needed to, like, I just needed to get some cases and it’s [00:09:30] like, why it doesn’t, you know, it’s a human problem because you’re not doing the diligence. I mean that what’s necessary to do is just the standard amount of diligence that you would use with any, uh, with any service provider. You know, I’m an attorney.

[00:09:41] Eric Baum
So you asked the question, you know, you asked the question, is it a technology problem or a human problem? And the answer is, you know, it depends. I mean, tell me which client or prospective client you’re asking about and I can tell you. I love

[00:09:51] Bobby Steinbach
that. The enemy of the great is the good. Yeah, that, that is a great line.

[00:09:55] Bobby Steinbach
And I think it goes to show that education is sometimes the biggest barrier to a sale.

[00:09:59] Andrew Nasrinpay
Kind of sold us on the benefits of remote deposition, all the technology that’s going into it. If you looked from a high level right now, what percentage of depositions are done remotely that are tech enabled versus the more traditional way?

[00:10:14] Eric Baum
I can say without much doubt that it is above 90%. It’s probably more around 95 percent of depositions right now are being done remotely. You have to remember that most cases, there are some cases where people, you know, they say, I want to see the whites in their eyes. I want to make them sweat. And some old school  attorneys that still want that, but the benefits of doing a remote deposition.

[00:10:35] Eric Baum
You know, number one, you’re getting video. Number two, you know, especially if it’s something like out of state or a federal case, you know, multi district litigation, you’re, you know, it kills your whole week. If you have, you know, you’re in Florida and you have to go out to California or, or even New York, right.

[00:10:48] Eric Baum
For a depo, I mean, you’re talking about losing an entire day of work. You’re talking, or multiple days of work. So you’re away from your family. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re away from your actual work. Um, As opposed to sitting in your office and just [00:11:00] doing it for an hour or two. I’m not going to say that there aren’t some depositions, right?

[00:11:05] Eric Baum
That you want to be in the room with someone for, but for, I would say again, for probably 95, 97 percent of cases, there is only the benefit, only significant benefit to doing it remotely because of all the functionality that you have.

[00:11:16] Andrew Nasrinpay
Being in the legal tech space, are there any other big problems that you see that aren’t, uh,

[00:11:24] Eric Baum
depositions?

[00:11:25] Eric Baum
With technology, there’s plenty of problems attorneys have in general, you know, around, you [00:11:30] know, as far as the profession goes, you have like, you know, overuse of substances. I think that you have a lot of, you know, You have a lot of objections and the relationship between attorneys is not great overall, especially in the civil side.

[00:11:40] Eric Baum
But, you know, as far as technology, I think that what you’re going to see and what the literature shows is you’re always going to need attorney’s judgment. You know, this is Chief Justice Roberts, right? He just issued his year end opinion for 2023. And he talks a lot about artificial intelligence in there.

[00:11:53] Eric Baum
And what he talks about is that, you know, using artificial intelligence for some of these tasks. is just a natural step in the evolution of the legal profession. And the same thing with the internet. It’s just, it’s a new technology tool. And just like any technology tool, you want to use reliable, secure forms of it.

[00:12:08] Eric Baum
But again, I’m giving you a long winded answer. I’m giving you an attorney answer, a non answer to your question of what new technology tools. You know, there’s a lot of push right now on the case management platform side. Um, I went to Legal Week last year. The downtown Hilton in New York City, there was like three floors of their ballroom full of case management platforms.

[00:12:26] Eric Baum
And so it’s very hard, I think, to differentiate, um, between them. When I know the common problems that, that a, that a case management platform like called ZenCase is doing is, you know, the tracking billable hours, you know, a big portion, a big problem, right, that most attorneys find is that at the end of the year, at the end of the month, right, you’re having to backtrack and figure out what you worked on and start adding up and tracking your billable hours.

[00:12:48] Eric Baum
And so what I think this tool does, right, is like passive tracking, it’s passive tracking of your billable hours, syncing all the different, through email, through Outlook, through all the different tasks you’re working on. And it knows, right, it knows you’re within a case. It knows what you’re working on.

[00:12:59] Eric Baum
It  knows what you’re looking up in legal research. And so it’s tracking that for you. We will always need lawyers and judges are lawyers, but of course, but their judgment But there are a number of tasks, particularly when it comes to like doc review, you know, in discovery, in big cases, you have tens of thousands of documents.

[00:13:16] Eric Baum
And the traditional way of doing it is you have an army of people that is like reading these for what’s relevant, for what needs to be turned over, for what’s privileged. You just really have much more accessible on a cost side and a time saving side, forms of technology that are capable of document review that are reliable.

[00:13:32] Eric Baum
So I think we’re going to see tasks that typically take Attorneys, right? Many hours that don’t necessarily require a high level of judgment start getting automated.

[00:13:40] Andrew Nasrinpay
That’s super interesting. So you brought up legal week and how there were Tons of case management softwares. You walked us through how when you were practicing, you had literal CDs on your desk and everything is shifting to becoming quicker and easier to do and a lot more organized.

[00:13:58] Andrew Nasrinpay
Is that something you all are working [00:14:00] on right now or does it already exist?

[00:14:02] Eric Baum
Yeah, that’s a great question. So the old school way of doing things right is that the core reporter would email you the transcript. And for us, it gets problematic from a Security, privacy, confidentiality side, you know, cause your corporate is sending it to you, you know, like from their hot mail address or their, you know, their AOL, I can’t say how many corporate still have those kinds of email addresses, you know?

[00:14:20] Eric Baum
So we store them attached to a case record on a SOC2 certified encrypted platform that has all the necessary. Uh, Precautions Privacy Confidentiality. When you’re creating a case with us, it’s not just A lot of co reporting companies have it where it’s like, here’s your repository of transcripts, right?

[00:14:36] Eric Baum
You can just Here it is. You can double click it and download the PDF of it. And so that is just in line with the evolution of the entire practice of co reporting, which has always been, here’s what you The standard product is is a paper transcript. That’s just always what you get for thousands of dollars.

[00:14:53] Eric Baum
There’s so much more we can do with technology. And so in line with that, right, is that when you’re working with us, it’s not just a PDF of a transcript. Like it is a synced audio video file with the transcript that you can cut clips off, cut clips with, you can highlight, write notes, tag, tag your colleagues, um, you know, compare testimony across all of discovery.

[00:15:11] Eric Baum
You know, you’ll get notifications, for example, whether a Part of someone’s testimony conflicts with documents and, um, images and files that are in discovery. If, you know, for example, someone testifies that they were, you know, wearing their seatbelt, but the citation says they were not wearing their seatbelt, like, you’ll get notified.

[00:15:27] Eric Baum
There’s like a level of analysis here, uh, that  is far reaching and far beyond what a legacy core reporting vendor is doing. In regards to are we like integrating with other case management platforms, the offer has come up. It’s just about finding the right one because there’s a big benefit to being selective about who you partner with, like getting that like exclusivity with a specific partner.

[00:15:45] Eric Baum
But that is a huge piece of it, right? If you can be a one stop shop, put it all in one place, then that’s ideal.

[00:15:50] Bobby Steinbach
Erik, I’m going to switch things up a little bit here because I know, you know, one of our primary purposes in this podcast is really giving other lawyers a sense  of how to market, how to sell.

[00:16:02] Bobby Steinbach
Some ideas, some strategies, sharing that knowledge. So this is going to be a little bit distinct because you’re a little bit closer to us where you’re more like B2B. You’re selling to other lawyers, but I’m still curious, like, have you found any strategies that you’ve Seem to be especially successful in your sales

[00:16:18] Eric Baum
process as far as selling and what has worked You really have to tailor the talk track and what part of your software that you’re communicating Depending on the individual it can morph and it can evolve the way you’re talking to somebody and it’s really about being an active listener And just being empathetic to what the pain points are for some attorneys, right?

[00:16:38] Eric Baum
It’s that I’m using this company And they’re awful. We’ve used them forever. I don’t know who else to use. It’s a pain in the butt to switch, to have a huge organization. To have everybody switch is going to be a pain, but it just has to happen. You know, they’re messing with our invoices. They’re messing with our scheduling.

[00:16:52] Eric Baum
They’re unreliable. So we need somebody new. It’s all about is like, what are the pain points that they’re communicating? When you look at whether it’s an insurance  carrier or a company, they’re very worried about costs. They have hundreds of thousands or millions of cases a year, and they’re responsible for the costs.

[00:17:06] Eric Baum
If you look at the plaintiff’s side, they have to communicate why things cost a certain amount to their clients. Plaintiff’s attorneys, right, for the most part, are passing off that bill to their clients and aren’t going to be personally responsible for it. A lot of it is about understanding who, at your respective customer or your existing customer, not only is a decision maker, Right.

[00:17:24] Eric Baum
But also what their pain points are and why they want to switch or why they should switch. And a lot of it comes from just listening, you know, actively listening and what the right questions are to ask, to discover what they want to do. Nobody likes being pitched to or sold unless you’re like, unless you’re like on Shark Tank, right.

[00:17:40] Eric Baum
And they get paid to sit there. When someone calls you, right. And someone is like, can you donate money to this cause? Or can you, um, I want to tell you about this new thing we came up with. You’re like, I’m in a meeting, I’m busy. Send me an email about it. I think we all probably get out of dozens of emails a day where it’s like, I want to partner with you.

[00:17:54] Eric Baum
I want to pitch to you. I want to talk to you about this service or the software, this product. And in most cases, we don’t even look at it. It’s really just about doing diligence ahead of time and actively listening during that opportunity to speak to the person about the product. What the pain points are and how do you get their business?

[00:18:12] Eric Baum
If you can communicate well enough, right, you’ll get that answer. And sometimes you have to know, like, again, like kind of when to walk away. There are some where it’s like, it’s just persistent, no matter how persistent you are, you may not be able to get to it, but you will have the opportunity to leave a good impression and circle back.

[00:18:24] Eric Baum
And you know, a year from now, six months from now and get it. Yeah, that idea

[00:18:27] Bobby Steinbach
of active listening is universal. People don’t want to be sold something they don’t need. Listening to the pain problems and finding those opportunities where you actually add value is, I think,

[00:18:38] Eric Baum
universal. More and more companies and carriers are having to like reduce their staff.

[00:18:42] Eric Baum
And so just this idea of doing more with less, it’s on with a lot of people. I think

[00:18:46] Andrew Nasrinpay
I already know your answer to this based on what you just said, but looking at your brand and how you currently acquire clients. Do you focus all of your marketing and sales on, uh, [00:19:00] inbound, where because you have a great product, a lot of folks are coming to you, or have you also had an outbound team that directly solicits attorneys and shows them the benefits of your product?

[00:19:11] Andrew Nasrinpay
It’s a great

[00:19:11] Eric Baum
question. We do have both. We have outbound that are being proactive, they’re out in the market at conferences, at trade shows, um, attorney organizations, paralegal organizations that are out there pitching, actively pitching the company. But certainly a huge part of the legal sector, right, is social proof, right, is referrals, um, is building that trust.

[00:19:32] Eric Baum
Because attorneys, I’ve found as a species, they don’t, they want to trust, right, they only really want to use someone that, unless they’re being forced, right, by their supervisor, by their higher ups to do something, that They really only like doing, working with someone or working with a service or software that they trust.

[00:19:48] Eric Baum
Referrals within the legal community are extremely important. Getting someone to legitimately buy in and be a champion and to vouch for your software is extremely important. A warm welcome intro  is so much more beneficial and so much more likely to be successful than a cold email or a cold call. And that goes, that just goes to how you treat people and what your relationships and interactions with them have been like, where your reputation.

[00:20:13] Eric Baum
Your reputation within the community is extremely important. Um, you know, if you’re known as someone that is not going to be truthful or not going to be reliable or not going to perform or produce results, then, um, a lot of times attorneys will say, you know, who else is using you, right? Who can I call to find out, to find out if I can trust your service or trust you?

[00:20:30] Eric Baum
So having those references, having people. Being reliable, being on time, being trustworthy, producing results, all that is extremely important. As a general principle though, and I think this is true for any kind of sales work, is that referrals, inbound and warm intros are much more likely to be successful than cold outbound.

[00:20:48] Eric Baum
That makes

[00:20:48] Andrew Nasrinpay
sense. Do you want to tell our listeners what events you’re going to be at this year, if you have them planned out? We don’t currently have them

[00:20:55] Eric Baum
planned out, but what I will say is that trade shows and conferences are, are extremely important, um, just to get your name out into the ether. Even if at the first conference or the second conference, the same people go to the same conferences every year.

[00:21:08] Eric Baum
and so even if it’s the first conference or the second conference that you don’t. Get someone’s attention. I don’t get it. You know, exposure is extremely important. And so that’s, I think one of the ways that I know that we want to do better because of how excellent, you know, mean bug is and the team that you have marketing and outbound and all that is certainly something that we’d like to leverage more with

[00:21:25] Bobby Steinbach
all the stuff that you’ve got going on.

[00:21:27] Bobby Steinbach
You’ve got the business, you’ve got the family, everything. How do you  balance it?

[00:21:30] Eric Baum
You know, sort of classically trained attorneys have this mentality, right, that you always have to respond to that email to the client, no matter what time it’s at, you know, you could be in the middle of dinner, you could be putting your kids down.

[00:21:39] Eric Baum
Someone, you know, an email comes in and you have to absolutely respond to it. Um, and so a lot of it is just text. Reprioritizing your family always comes first. In addition to that, right? If you’re not at peace in your mind, you’re not going to be able to perform well. You’re not going to get your best results at work.

[00:21:56] Eric Baum
That’s not to say that, you know, there will always be stressful cases, there are trials and hearings will always, you know, getting memos out on big cases will always be stressful. For me, you know, exercise is a huge way that I center myself. Lifting weights my entire life, played football and lacrosse in high school and college.

[00:22:14] Eric Baum
Lately, just a lot of pickleball, a lot of tennis, which I found lost a ton of weight, you know, got a lot healthier. I’ve been to the doctor recently, cholesterol, blood pressure all lower, but it’s always like that. You have to really embrace that work will never be the most important thing in your life.

[00:22:26] Eric Baum
You have to like truly embrace that. Like when stuff’s going on with your family, when stuff’s going on with your mental health, whatever it may be, you have to, you should, and you need to, and you have to prioritize that. Work will always be there. I’ve been in jobs like where I thought that I thought I was like, you know, I’m irreplaceable.

[00:22:41] Eric Baum
Um, it’s extremely important for me to be here. What’s going to happen here if I’m gone? And there’s always somebody, you know, when I was at the state attorney’s office, I was so passionate, and I loved that work so much, um, and the person that ended up taking my spot after I left is a very good friend of mine, and, you know, to be honest, she’s doing an unbelievable job.

[00:22:59] Eric Baum
And so the work will always be there. Part of that too is growing and building and forming relationships with a really good team around you. Um, which is knowing, right, that if you do need to step away for a family reason or a personal reason, or you need to take time for it, that you have someone that has your back, that will communicate with the client, that will help you on a project, that will help with the research, whatever it may be.

[00:23:18] Eric Baum
We are trained as attorneys that the client is always right. No matter what time it is, you have to respond to the client’s question. Just the classic way of doing things. You just don’t need to, you can prioritize your family. You absolutely can prioritize your family.

[00:23:31] Bobby Steinbach
A hundred percent with you. And I, you know, I think for attorneys, that’s an especially prescient problem, but.

[00:23:38] Bobby Steinbach
It’s true for our business. It’s true for pretty much anything that’s relying on a billable hour. Just being able to step away and find some way to balance yourself for you. That’s exercise for others. It might be yoga or art or whatever it might be, but I think that’s really good advice. I want to wrap up here, Eric, with a word association game.

[00:23:57] Bobby Steinbach
I’m going to just give you a word and you’re going to spit back the first thing that comes to your mind. MeanPug. MeanPug, right, right, right, right, right. Excellent work. All right, here we go.

[00:24:09] Eric Baum
First word. Journey,

[00:24:11] Bobby Steinbach
Children, Florida,

[00:24:12] Andrew Nasrinpay
Hot,

[00:24:13] Eric Baum
Lawyers, Need to Embrace Technology, Sales, Relationship Based, Law School, Worth it for some, not for others, Pug, Mean, Parrot, The Future,

[00:24:26] Bobby Steinbach
Love it. Alright, that’s it. That’s the word association game. Eric, this was a great chat. I, I learned a ton. I really appreciate you coming out to join us today.

[00:24:35] Eric Baum
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would be remiss if I didn’t, and I’ve said it, but didn’t give, didn’t give a huge shout out to, to MeanPug. Um, and obviously to you, Bobby and Andrew, not just for having me, but just for being really just a fantastic and excellent software and service provider. I love having you guys, not only just the work that you do, but your reputation in the community is second to none and well respected.

[00:24:54] Eric Baum
Um, and of course, everyone, I know that, that. That’s what uses you as well. Absolutely loves using you and has seen excellent results.  So, um, I would be remiss again if I left this podcast without giving you guys a shout out. We

[00:25:05] Bobby Steinbach
appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Eric. And, um, everybody go out and check it out.

[00:25:10] Bobby Steinbach
Check out Parrot. Embrace technology. Don’t be scared of it. And we’ll see you on the next episode. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Hot Docket. We’re your hosts, Bobby and Andrew, founders of MeanPug, the marketing agency for ambitious law firms.

[00:25:24] Andrew Nasrinpay
Have questions about marketing or anything we covered today?

[00:25:27] Andrew Nasrinpay
Email us at bark@MeanPug.com. Be sure to subscribe to learn more.