James Hansen: [00:00:00] attorneys think that what makes good legal service is judgment at the end. what happens at the end of a case, what it really is, is how the client felt all along the way.

like if they feel that they got value, It matters what happens, but it doesn't matter as much at the end of the case. Because if they look back and say, did I get more value by the way I was treated and how I was treated versus the money I paid? Well then yes, I'm a raving fan. Yes, I'm a write a review.

Yes, I'm going to refer people to you later on.

​

MPS: Hey, law firm owners. Welcome to the Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts, I'm MPS.

Richard James: And I'm Richard James. MPS, I'm so excited you're back. One of the last episodes I recorded, unfortunately, you were broken down on the side of the road and couldn't get in time for the episode. So, I recorded it without you. So now, they're going to get to hear you again. Welcome back, my friend.

MPS: Thank you. I'm excited to be here and happy that hopefully, my overheated engine will get [00:01:00] resolved today. So see.

Richard James: Time for a new car. I know you're cheap, you still have your confirmation money but time for a new car.

MPS: Tax code.

so, Hey, Michael, I'm super excited today about the conversation we're going to have, not only because we're going to be talking to a law firm owner. But we're going to be talking to somebody that was an entrepreneur long before they owned a law firm, right?

Richard James: And they make the best law firm business owners. Because they understand the moving, that doesn't make them the best lawyer. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about being the best law firm owner of understanding all the metrics that is necessary. And so we're here with James Hanson today. And James really leverage the opportunity that Arizona presented and James, I'm excited to have that conversation with you today. Thanks for being with us.

James Hansen: Awesome, yeah. Happy to help anyone who's listening and happy to be with you guys.

Richard James: Great.

MPS: James, like to break the ice a little bit. What is something that not everybody knows about you?

James Hansen: Not everyone knows about me. I love to mountain bike, I got into mountain biking not too long ago, Arizona [00:02:00] is great for mountain biking. For the last two years annually, in December, I ride my mountain bike for a hundred miles in the mountains nonstop. So, it takes me about 16 hours, I do that. And that's been a fundamental challenge for me.

Richard James: You go up to Prescott or flat flag or where do you go?

James Hansen: Yeah. So the last couple of times, I've done it, is in the Santan Mountains.

Richard James: Oh, you have, okay.

James Hansen: Yeah.

Richard James: Yeah. What is that one call back there? Is it diamond back or diamond head or something?

I don't

James Hansen: So you have, yeah, dynamite, dynamite, goldmine.

Richard James: Yeah, we lived not far from there. We lived all the way down on rigs in Higley in Seville. And so, we would go back there on a regular basis. Maria and I would hike it and it depended on the day, whether she was happy about it or not but we did it.

I always saw dudes like you riding your bike on these trails, thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I'm such a whoosh. You know what I mean? Here I am struggling to walk up the thing and you're riding your bike, passing me at 20 miles an hour or 15 miles an hour, whatever it is. It's fun to watch you guys do that and realize that I don't have that in me.

So congratulations on being able to, did you tackle it [00:03:00] because you wanted exercise or like, why'd you get into it?

James Hansen: Yeah, a neighbor of mine had been going for several years and so, he invited me to go one time and I fell in love with that. I love the, life application of mountain biking is like, if you want to have fun and hit some cool downhill, like, you got to work for it and it takes work to pedal and grind uphill. But then the downhill is so fun.

Richard James: That is a wonderful grit life lesson. I love it.

MPS: Yes, very well put. I remember the one time my father in law, he walks into the house because he likes to mountain bike too and he lives in Arizona as well. He walks into the house and I hear, ah, ah, and then, I hear the dogs run to him. He walks in, just blood is gushing everywhere. And he just gashed open, got flipped off the bike into a rock and just bam!

And I was like, yeah, I don't know. Mountain biking is really for me. That doesn't look very fun.

James Hansen: Yeah.

Yep.

MPS: no, but I think that's a great, way to put it in a good perspective on life, James, you have a more unique approach to how [00:04:00] you got into law, which I love, I think is awesome. So, walk us through kind of the high points of your entrepreneurial journey and particularly how you, got into law.

James Hansen: Yeah. How I got into my entrepreneurial journey is, I think I, struggle with working for people or for organizations. And so, really early in my life, I realized that I was unemployable. The first couple jobs I had in my early 20s, got fired from them. And which ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me.

So, I started doing from the from anywhere. I don't remember the age 8 to 10. I started doing paper routes and I did paper routes all the way up until I was 19. And then I started working for a bank when I was 21. And got fired from that job and that led me into an insurance.

And so, I started selling auto and home insurance in Arizona. Became one of the top producers for my company. And I realized, I probably should have my own business instead of working for the insurance company. So, I started an independent agency and the company found out I was doing that, they fired me. That led down that road and then what really led me down to working with law firms is, in 2007, when I had my insurance agency, [00:05:00] I was one of five local insurance agencies to pilot the AARP Auto Home Product to ever be sold by a local agent. And so for compliance reasons, I had to have something on the website.

So I emailed the wife of one of my insurance agents who built the website for free and it was nothing special. And a couple of weeks later, I had people walk in my front door asking me to get a quote through the AARP Hartford Product. And I was just, I was so confused as to why this happened.

And so someone's like talking to this person, I walk up to the front desk. I'm like, what's going on? Yeah, we want a quote from AARP. I'm like, I don't understand, I buy leads. I spend a ton of money to buy leads and my guys are like on the phones calling people all day long. No one has ever walked in my front door in my eight years of doing insurance.

Like, how does this happen? Like, Oh, we Googled it. Mike, what do you mean you Googled it? And so that led me down, that led me to really understand what digital marketing SEO was. And started kind of sort of really focusing on that in terms of, I control what the internet says about me. What Google says about me, I sold my insurance agency and had just started helping people.

I had a neighbor who was a couple of dentists there. This is during the [00:06:00] recession, during the GFC and started helping them with their marketing. And one of my friends who was an attorney, he had a business partner, a law partner who passed away in a car accident. And so, he hit me up cause his partner was the rainmaker.

And so, he was the transactional guy behind the desk doing the work. And so, he went to breakfast one day and he asked me, Hey, can you do this for me? I was like, sure but you have to focus to one practice area at the time. He's doing any type of case he can get. And he's like, okay, yeah, let's do PI. And I said, everybody wants to do PI let's do something else. And so he asked me, he's like, well, what do you recommend? And I had done some keyword research and I said, family law is pretty not that competitive. Online, you can probably make a splash pretty quickly.

So we did that, I built him a website. And after a couple of months, he was killing it for keywords and so I, stopped by his office or called him, I don't remember which, and I said, Hey, Kevin, you should be killing it. Like, you're ranking on the top of Google for divorce attorney, Mesa, Arizona, second largest city in Arizona.

You should be killing it and he's like, I, I dunno what you're talking about, James. I don't have any more [00:07:00] calls coming in. So I swapped the number out on the website to be a tracking number that I could track the calls and record the calls and sure enough, he just wasn't answering the phone like, calls are coming in. He's not answering. It's, it's him and one part-time receptionist, legal assistant. They're just not answering the phone. So, we fixed that problem and things kind of change from there on. And um. So that's, what really led me into entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship with helping lawyers help more people, more clients.

Richard James: Wow. What a journey, right? So you knew, I think I had this conversation with somebody else the other day that entrepreneurs are born, not made. I think, we just have it inside of us, we just know that we can't work for anybody else and we want to go out there and kill it and drag it in. We don't want to do it for just a small piece of the pie. We want to be able to determine who gets the pie and we divvy it out. And so, that's I think an internal thing.

Would you agree with that? It's kind of You were born this way?

James Hansen: Yeah, that in addition to like problem solving. Like, I love solving the problem. And I think when you're wearing that when you're in the corporate world is like, you're in this frame and you can't solve problems [00:08:00] outside of that. And even inside of that, it's difficult to solve problems. And to solve problems to where it affects the change of the organization.

Richard James: Well, and The next thing that you talked about was, in the 2007, 8, 9, 10, whenever that was. You could literally put a different headline on your website. Google would crawl it and you would get business. It's not quite that simple today but there was a window where if you just did some basic things right.

It worked magnanimously well, right? It worked, It magnified what everybody else did by a multiple. It's a little bit more competitive these days. But back then, it was a lot easier than it is today. Agreed?

James Hansen: Yeah, looking back on it, it was definitely a lot easier. I would say like, in that moment, it was difficult. Because you're learning something completely new. And so it took a lot of time from a time perspective, it probably took as much time then as it takes today. Looking back on it, you're like, Oh, that was so easy.

I could have changed it just like that. But in that moment in 2007, you couldn't, we didn't have the tools to [00:09:00] change things as quickly and as easily as we currently do. So yeah, I agree with you for sure. It was a lot looking back on it, it was a lot easier then than it is now.

Richard James: So now, we've got the framework for your story. And let's bridge into the lesson for that attorney who's listening right now. They own a law firm and we would think that, at this point, with all the information that's out there, every law firm owner should understand. It's not about the leads that you generate. Of course, you need leads but once you generate them, you got to convert them. And you would think everybody understands that but they don't necessarily, or they don't necessarily know how to go about it. And so look, when I cut my teeth in 1988 in owning my own business, I too had an insurance agency.

I learned how to sell life insurance back in the day. And that's how I got my start. And then I ended up into the funeral business, which was a whole nother deal. I couldn't necessarily sell all that much in that business. Cause you couldn't put a sign on the side of the building, said, buy one, get one free. But it was a great business that I learned how to serve. So you learn how to sell and you took that principle and you started to realize that your clients weren't selling [00:10:00] very well. And the first thing you did was, well, I don't necessarily believe you. You're not getting any leads because, I can see you're ranking for number one.

Let me put a tracking phone number on there. It's interesting, when I built the firm in Phoenix in 2009, 2010. The first thing I did was start buying tracking lines and I had 175 tracking lines for all the different Google keywords we were using and all the different internet properties we had.

And we could tell you what was working and what wasn't working because we were tracking. And so, did you learn the tracking because you own the marketing agency, or did you learn it because of your own business experience? And I guess the real question is, is, how important is tracking for all the law firm owners that are out there, that fundamental, foundational truth about tracking their leads?

James Hansen: Yeah. So where I learned tracking, I don't know specifically where. I just I knew, I wanted to know where my money was going. I want to know where my time or money was going. I needed to know where I could dump more money into. And so, to your point about tracking right now is so easy to do.

I think what most business owners struggle with when it comes to the tracking is actually mining the data from the [00:11:00] tracking. Like it's easy to go buy a call rail number and plug it in and build out your campaigns with these numbers. The challenge now is, just like the comparison between marketing in 2007 versus now is. You have so much stuff coming into your marketing stuff to then now you have this huge data pool and now you have to spend time or have someone spend time who knows what they're doing.

Look at that data and then help you understand what to do with that data versus before. Yeah, it was super easy. You can just, pull it out but now there's so many channels where ads or leads are coming from. It's a lot of work to go through that data and mine out what's working and what's not working.

Richard James: Yeah, it's a new position in the world today for small business. That role, whether it's an agency role they can do it. There's not as many of them that do it really well but some of them do it. Well, or That individual in person that's in the office. I remember, when I, built the firm of Phoenix, while I understood how to digest the data.

There was so much information coming in. I had a marketing assistant that their job was just to compile the data. And they had a guy [00:12:00] in China that they would send the stuff to and he would put it together into spreadsheets and the pivot tables and everything else. So we didn't waste the time doing that but just compiling the data was like a full time job.

And this was before the cool programs they have today and graphically and things like that, that you can measure things with. But agree with you that, having somebody can put it together and then having somebody who can educate you on to diagnose what that data is telling you. So you can determine what's working and what's not working.

But, it starts with a decision to make sure you're tracking everything. And as the business owner, that's the first step. Would you agree with that?

James Hansen: Yeah, totally. You need to understand that I need to do it. And why am I putting tracking on? What is this going to help me do? And I think if they can understand the why, then they're like, Oh, sure let's get that done. But even then, with the why it helps them figure out, understand later on 3 steps, 10 steps later of what, I can do with this data now that I'm tracking it.

Richard James: Cool. MPS, where are we going from here?

MPS: Yeah, so I'm curious, as, you started the journey into the law firm. What would you say was, [00:13:00] because usually there's several of them but what would you say was one pivotal moment that was maybe a bit of a low moment. And what did you take from that? For the law firm owner listening, that might be in one of these moments.

James Hansen: There's not a week goes by. There's not a low moment.

Richard James: That's a lesson of itself.

MPS: Yep.

James Hansen: know, So right now, we have this week, we got 2 offers accepted for 2 new attorney positions. So we'll have 21 attorneys at the firm. And we primarily do 93% of our revenue is family law. So we do a lot of complicated divorces, business owner, high asset divorces. That's what we specialize in Arizona.

The lowest moments that I've had as a law firm owner is, my team quitting or getting offers. like, I remember, this is like 9 months into having the alternative business structure. When we first started our first 2 hires, so my business partner, Kevin's been practicing for 20 plus years.

And our first 2 hires were 2 attorneys right out of law school. First jobs they ever had and we throw them into the wolves and doing family law. And 9 months later, basically two weeks between each other, they both quit on us. And [00:14:00] so now, we're back to 1 attorney, my partner, Kevin and both these attorneys are not going into family law.

Family law sucks. We're out of here. We can't. It's too emotional. It's too difficult. And so, they each have like 40 or 50 cases and they're not taking them with them. So guess who gets those cases is my partner. So now not only does he have all of his cases. and he, practices exclusively and so then he gets these cases too.

And at that point I was so low. Cause I'm, I didn't know what to do. Cause I thought I had done everything. I thought I had given them the cases. I thought I had tried to create a culture. I thought I was paying them well. And at that point, I realized that I hadn't been doing a good job of marketing. Just like you're always marketing for new cases as a law firm owner, you have to be marketing for new positions. And the conversion of that is exactly the same as it is for leads. If you want new opportunities, new consultations and you want to grow your firm, you have to build that funnel out and you have to build these same hiring funnel out for new team members. Because if you keep growing, you need new team members but you're also going to have some attrition too.

So at that point, I really realized two things. First, you [00:15:00] need to always be hiring. Secondly, I'm paying for experience next time. So now we only hire experienced attorneys and guess what? It costs more money. Like these new associates, you can pick them up for 80 grand, 90 grand a year. And now we're picking up associates for a lot more than that. But guess what? They already know how to practice. We don't have to train him a lot. They can build a caseload a lot quicker because they can convert those consultations a lot quicker than a new associate does. They can bill on those cases a lot quicker.

So yes, they cost more money but we actually generate a lot more money from them and we generate that money a lot quicker. So those are the two lessons that I've learned that were low moments. That actually turned into be great opportunity, learning opportunities later on.

Richard James: You know that there are law firm owners right now that just had somebody quit on them right before they started listening to this. And they poured everything they thought they had to into that person and they had no plan B. They were plan A, B and C. That person was there and they weren't constantly recruiting and they didn't [00:16:00] recognize what you just said to be true.

They probably feel like crap right now because they're wondering where do they go from here? Now, they've dealt with adversity in their life and they've got to pick themselves up and figure out how to go forward. But that lesson that you just gave them hopefully short circuited the lesson they needed to learn on their own.

Which is, if you're going to grow a law firm, you're in a service based business. You have to have humans, at least for now, until there are robots and AI that can do a lot for us. And that's not any time soon. So we need humans to do the labor, to do the service, to provide the service to the client. And which means, if you grow and you grow more money on the sales side and the front side, that's great.

But you have to service the client on the back end and you're going to have to develop a culture and a marketing system that is going to attract leads for people that could want to come work for your firm and put them through a process very similar to that of those that you want to have clients come into your firm and buy from you. Most lawyers don't see that. Most owners of law firms don't understand there's an entire [00:17:00] marketing side that has to happen for attracting talent. And there's a marketing that has to happen internally. And that internal marketing that we do to our existing team or with our existing team is as important.

And we, as leaders have to get better. That's part of the job. I was a lousy leader 20 years ago. I got the job done through brute force but it wasn't the best way to lead. I'm a much better leader today because I've invested in becoming a better leader. And I'm guessing that little down spell for you, James, has made you a better leader too, is that correct?

James Hansen: A hundred percent, it makes you really look in. You have to understand where you're going and what you want to do. So, you can do a lot of good marketing and you can build out some great ads and you can get some good quality potential clients. And you can sign them up and you can service those clients.

You can help them out with the legal services. But at some point, if your legal representation, legal service is not doesn't [00:18:00] match what your marketing was. Eventually the public is going to find out, right? Like, you can only make crap smell so good for so long before they go onto Google and they start writing bad reviews or they go to Yelp and start writing bad reviews.

it's that exact same thing with your team. Like, you can say that you have a great team to try to recruit new team members, new attorneys, new legal staff. But eventually when they joined the team and they find out that the marketing, what you told them you were going to have internally, isn't what it is internally, then that's when you lose them. And so just like you have to have a great legal service. And when I say great legal service, it's not the outcome. Attorneys think that, what makes good legal service is the judgment at the end. What happens at the end of a case, what it really is, is how the client felt all along the way.

like If they feel that they got value, it matters what happens but it doesn't matter as much at the end of the case. Because if they look back and say, did I get more value by the way I was treated and how I was treated versus the money I paid? Then yes, I'm a raving fan. Yes, I'm [00:19:00] a write a review. Yes, I'm going to refer people to you later on. It's the same thing with your team members is, are you giving more to your team members? It's not comp, comp is important. You need to have a good comp structure but you need to have the things put in place to build that culture to where they want to show up on Monday. And they want to help their team members succeed and grow.

And for me, that's been the biggest lesson that I've learned recently is, if you want to grow um, your law firm, you have to build an awesome culture and you have to have all of the things put in place. And I'm still learning a lot. Like, I'm not perfect. I mean, There's someone on my team may be listening to this right now and say, well, you know, this isn't aligned with what you're saying, with what you're doing. But we work on it.

We spend a lot of money. We spend a lot of time we reflect a lot on having one of the best cultures. For example, I got a call last Thursday from one of my attorneys, one of my, he was actually, so when these two, in the story I told earlier about these two attorneys quitting. I had done a phone interview with an attorney and he turned me down because I couldn't, I didn't offer him as much money as he wanted.

So when these two people quit, like, I'm going back to my old leads, right? Like, okay, Who are the old leads I can go [00:20:00] close? This attorney was one of the old resumes I had. I talked to him and I call him up and I say, Hey dude, like, what would it take to close this deal? I'll give you anything. What do you want? Basic. I'm not saying that, I'm not conveying that but in my heart, that's really what I'm thinking, like, I need somebody. I have all these leads coming. I got no one to close them. Like, I know I have no attorney to help these people out.

And so he calls me, says, Hey, James. I just, people go to church with like, they own a firm and they offer me this position. It's going to pay 150 grand more a year than what I'm getting paid at Genesis. He's like, I love working at Genesis, I don't want to leave, can we make something work? And at the end of the day, like I didn't have to come up, like, I gave him a fraction more than what he could get somewhere else.

Because he knows the environment that he's in, is one that he can flourish in and that he can grow in and that he loves to be in. And he gave me the opportunity instead of just going somewhere else. And I think people, for the most part, your team members, for the most part, if you have a great culture, they won't leave you just because of money.

There's some competitive things going on right now, at least in Arizona Legal Space and Family Law. Like, There's just not enough quality, there's not enough experience out there, [00:21:00] paralegals, attorneys, than what the demand is. And so there's a lot of. craziness going on. And so, building that culture out to where your team wants to be with you and is the one of the biggest lessons that I've learned.

MPS: And I'm curious. So talked a lot about culture there. What is maybe one thing, practically speaking, that a firm could do to improve their culture?

James Hansen: What Rich said is like, you have to be the leader that they want. like, It all starts with you. It starts and ends with you. Do you follow through on the things that you say that you're going to do? Are you leading by example? Are you giving by example? If you want your team to give, are you giving to them more than you're taking?

If you expect them to give more than they take, are you doing that? And I think, so it comes down to, there's a really good simple book I recommend everyone. It is called, The Motive. I forget the name of the author. but like,

Richard James: Lencioni.

James Hansen: That's right. Yeah. And in that book it's really like, when you read that book and as a law firm owner, if you say, what is my motive to have a bigger team? What is my motive have a law firm? Is it so that it serves me? provides more to my life? Because really, at the end of the day, [00:22:00] leadership, it's a burden. It's something you carry with you, you have to give more. And I if you have that mindset for your team, I think that's where the culture starts.

It starts with the leader, having the mindset of service. And if you're there to serve the team that trickles down and that's where it begins. Instead of, if the team is there to serve me and so I don't have to come into 11 o'clock, I don't have to come in until 10 o'clock, I leave whenever I want. And like, you do what I say, not as I do. I think that's where it starts.

Richard James: That's a great point. MPS, I don't know where you want to go but I have a burning question. I really want to,

MPS: Please. Please. So,

Richard James: James, the way, we have a Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year contest and Jonathan Breeden was a finalist two years ago. And then he's a family attorney in North Carolina.

And his firm was growing pretty rapidly and all of a sudden, all of his team like quit almost all at once for various reasons. But a lot had to do with, he wasn't a great leader and he came to our winner's day where we Mastermind with him and he really, everybody there was like, okay, Jonathan, it's time for you to invest in becoming a better leader.

And here's some [00:23:00] things, including books like yeah, The Motive and things of that nature. And he, did it and this year he applied to be Entrepreneurial Attorney of the Year as well. And he made finalists again. And basically he told everybody, the reason why he went from everybody quitting on him to now having a team he could depend on and being able to handle the growth is because he became a better leader.

So that's the background of the story that sets up my question. I noticed after 15 years of doing this with lawyers. They struggle to realize this truth sooner than other business owners do. You own a law firm as a non attorney under the Arizona structure that allows you to do that. And my question to you is, it's a two part question.

A, do you think that coming in, not being an attorney and not having to be in court, not working with the clients directly in a legal sense and having the business mind gave you an advantage of being able to think this way? And then B, What do you think other attorneys that own law firms can do to get out of their own way of the stuff that they're in the middle of to work on [00:24:00] themselves becoming a better leader?

James Hansen: Yeah, okay. do think that it has helped me because I'm not in the trenches. because I have a different vantage point, I care about the client experience I define that differently in my head than attorneys define client experience. And so I think, yes, absolutely, it has helped me for sure.

And there's some, I think one of John Maxwell's The 5 Levels of Leadership, I think level two is like experience, like you've done, you've proven yourself. And I think that's helped me, as my team has grown, they've seen the success formula we're using is working and I'm super upfront when I interviewed an attorney, like, Hey, listen, I'm a community college dropout. Like, you're going to be okay with that. You're going to get emails from me and things are going to be misspelled. I'm sorry, I use software but sometimes like on my phone, it doesn't work.

And so, I'm super upfront about my weaknesses as a leader. And as I think they respect what I've done and that I'm open about every, all my shortcomings and what I'm working on. So yes, I think that's helped me for sure. Just having a different vantage point and understanding. The client experience is the most important thing to me. And then the other part of your question was, [00:25:00] remind me, Rich.

Richard James: Yeah. No, it's just, okay. So you have 21 attorneys working with you right now, congratulations. And my condolences all at the same time. I I, you know, we have

James Hansen: They're awesome.

Richard James: They're awesome. We have hundreds of them in our world too. They're awesome too. The ones who aren't as awesome, aren't as awesome. Let's leave it at that. The ones who are awesome are fantastic. The question I have for you is, knowing what you know about working kneecap to kneecap with attorneys. And you probably don't work with a lot of them that see themselves as business owners. That's why they're working for you.

They see themselves as great attorneys and that's great. But what advice would you give them to get out of their own way to become a better leader? If they didn't have this experience you had, what could they do?

James Hansen: Yeah,

I I think they need to have a lot of self awareness. And I think, that's one thing that I think attorneys in general struggle with, is the self awareness. Understanding that they don't have to be perfect. And I think because in the client representation, I think it's difficult to say you made a mistake, right?

Because then you open yourself up for some malpractice claims but in the business world leading, it's a hundred percent okay to say you've made a mistake. And so, when you're running your firm, you may not want to [00:26:00] tell a client you made a mistake but if you tell your team members, you made a mistake and telling yourself that you've made a mistake, you're telling yourself that you need to do things differently.

I think that's what, you need to have. so I, What I would say with attorneys, if you do want to grow your practices, you have to understand what are your weaknesses. If you say you want this and you're here, what is like, being really self honest with yourself? And then saying, can I do that? Can I go gain the skills, the education to build my firm? Or do I need to outsource that? Do I need to partner with someone? Do I need to find someone who has those skills? And I think that's where it starts is, either you have to do it? Or you have to find someone that you can partner with to do that?

Richard James: and I know Michael might have a question, he wants to wrap this with. But you are a representation of where law is headed. The non attorney ownership model is coming and for those attorneys who own a law firm out there who are in a state that don't have to face this yet.

You are about to be faced with competition from folks who have a business acumen and business [00:27:00] background and are going to think about this differently. And so I inspire you, if you own a law firm and you're listening to this? And you're not already investing yourself to become a better leader and become a better small business owner?

Now is the time, because at some point in the future and nobody knows when, but at some point in the future, it's going to happen. Non attorney ownership is going to be allowed and people like, James, who have great vision, have lots of background understanding of business, have a pure heart for the customer journey, are going to come in and are going to dominate in your market.

So James, congratulations to you. I love the story that you've shared with us. And I loved the knowledge that you've given. MPS, I don't want to take it away from you. I know you have another question you want to ask before we go.

MPS: Yeah, just what's got you fired up and excited today, James? Could be personal, could be business, could be both.

James Hansen: AI got me really excited. And like, just leveraging that, I think can be so huge because it can help the client so much. It can save them so much money from a representation. And it can help the attorney, it can help the legal team [00:28:00] provide such a better service to the clients. And so, that's got me really excited of spending a lot of my own time and money to kind of understand how we can plug that in. So that's got me really excited.

Richard James: It's an exciting and scary time for as fast as AI is moving. All three of us could spend, every day, Michael sends me a new text just about, did you see this? This is happening and it's exciting and it's disruptive. And for those who aren't prepared, it's going to be a real threat. But for the prepared, it's going to be opportunity.

And so I, believe, James, for you, it's going to be opportunity. So I'm excited to watch what you're going to be able to do with that. And I, just want to say thank you for sharing your time with us today and the time with those that were listening, Michael, you want to wrap us up?

MPS: Yeah. James, first and foremost, thank you for investing your time with us. And obviously, to the law firm owners listening, thank you. Thank you for investing your time. We love doing this. And look, we've got the gentleman's agreement around here. This isn't your first time listening or watching, depending on where you're listening or watching platform wise. We just ask that you drop a like down below, hit that subscribe and follow button and turn those bell [00:29:00] notifications on and then show some love for James down in the comments. I mean, This was an absolutely fantastic episode and something that all of you could take something from. So, we appreciate it. And James, thank you again for investing your time today.

James Hansen: Love it, thanks.

Richard James: That's the pod.