[MUSIC PLAYING] - Run your law firm the right way. - The right way. - This is the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. - Maximum Lawyer Podcast. - Your hosts, Jim Hacking, and Tyson Matrix. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. - Welcome. - To the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] - All right. Welcome to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. Today we have Claude Simpson from Smart Advocate joining us. And Claude has been with Smart Advocate since 2013 and is currently the head of training. Prior to joining the team, he worked for the New York court system and practiced law for over 20 years. So Claude, why don't you start by introducing yourself and your company? - Well, thank you. And thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. In addition to those points you just mentioned with respect to my background, yeah, started with Smart Advocate. Actually, from it's basically its inception when we started marketing the product to law firms and have been with them ever since. Currently, my primary title is head of training, although over the years I've pretty much done everything at Smart Advocate except writing code. So I've been with them, help with the design, implementation, training, of course, that's my main title, and perhaps everything else in between. So I've kind of been there done it and done all, so to speak, at Smart Advocate. - I love that, that's incredible. All right, why don't you just give us a brief overview of Smart Advocate and we'll dive even deeper when we go into our questions. - Sure, so Smart Advocate is a case management system, well, correction. Smart Advocate is the case management system, okay. So the history of Smart Advocate and what's great about it is that it was developed by attorneys and paralegals in a law firm. So from the ground up, you're gonna see that the features and functions that Smart Advocate has were built right for the firm from the get-go. So things that you typically wanna use in the system are already there, things that we have thought about that you probably have thought about are gonna be in the system. So because of that and the way it was designed, it really lends itself to all areas of practice, all practice areas, especially mass towards where a lot of our competitors can't provide the functionality that Smart Advocate does. So across the board, it will work well for any environment, any firm. It transcends all areas of practice, as I said. And it's designed to be a more all-inclusive, comprehensive platform for the entire law firm and the law practice. - Perfect, all right. So we're gonna get started with what it's like when a law firm just starts to work with you. So I feel like there's a lot of unknowns, usually in any system or anything that they sign up for. So when they start working with Smart Advocate, can you walk us through the onboarding process? - Sure, and it's, the onboarding process can be, you know, can create a lot of tension for folks in the firm, apprehension, and that's understandable. After all, for most attorneys and most law firms, you're investing in a system that's gonna run your practice, your licenses on the line, your clients are on the line. So it's understandable that there might be a lot of apprehension. With that in mind, we kind of do the handholding, help to ease the fears of a client who want to come on board and walk them through the process. Now the process itself or the things that happens or need to happen will be dependent on whether the firm has never used the case management system before, as opposed to those who are coming from another system. By the way, Smart Advocates clientele are probably those who come from other system where they don't like what they have. The product that they're using is not doing it for them. So they look for other solutions. Smart Advocate typically comes into play in that way. So depending on whether they had a system before, or they did not have a system and kind of starting from scratch, the process might be a little bit different. And I'll briefly explain the two if you don't mind. - Yeah, that'd be great. - So let's say it's a firm that has never had a case management system before. Typically, they would have their data all over the place. In a document here or there, in a word document, it's not organized as you would see it with someone who's been using a database. In those situations, it's probably a little bit easier for the onboarding because they're starting from scratch and they don't have problems with their data. They don't have problems learning how to use a case management system. So for them, the process might be a little bit easier. For those coming from another system, we have to convert your data from the system that they're coming from. And also, we can run into issues with them having to unlearn the bad way of doing things from the way they were doing it. But in some in substance, the process is from the sales process where we do a demo of the system, what it looks like, the functions it has, the features it has, the next step, of course, is going to contract when they like what we do, want to use our product. After that, we will get, if they're coming from another system, we will get a backup of their data. We do an accurate data mapping, which a lot of our competitors do not do. We actually map the data from where they're coming from to where it should be in smart advocate. There's a process for that. We do the training in-house, in other words, all our trainers are at smart advocate. We don't form that out to others who do not know the product. So we will do a formal training with the new firm coming on board. We will train them how to configure the system to be our liking, what they wanted to do. We will train their staff on how to use the product, and then we do a final conversion with the data they're coming from into smart advocate, and then they go to town. So, in general, in a nutshell, so to speak, it's a general process of how things happen. - Sure. - The timeframe, you didn't ask, but the timeframe for all of that will obviously vary depending on whether they're not coming from another system, which is a little bit easier, and also what system they're coming from, because the systems out there are all different, and because we do such a careful data mapping, it might vary with respect to what system they're coming from to smart advocate. - Okay, and can you dive into that data mapping a little bit more? You said that a lot of competitors aren't doing that, so let's talk about what that actually is, and then what the benefit to the law firm owner is. - Sure, so in a typical law firm, you're dealing with a lot of data, and even though everybody tell you they're going paperless, that's gonna take a long time for the legal industry to catch up and be totally paperless. So, the data that we're talking about, and the things that we have to be careful where mapping is, is beyond just your contacts, right? The name of your client, or the name of the defendant, or the name of a law firm. In smart advocate, and by the way, smart advocate perhaps captures more data than any other system out there. So, the kind of data we were talking about on the data mapping, it goes beyond your simple contacts, it goes include things like your deadlines, your documents, where do they go, your notes that you had in your old system, where do those go? If it's a PI firm, where you're dealing with medical providers, the name of the doctors, and the hospitals where the client was treated, your request for medical records, where do those things go? Things like your appointments, and your calendar, where do those things go? Things like liens that comes into play that the client might have, that you have to deal with, negotiations that might have happened, negotiations, offers and demands, things of that nature that come into play, where your case expenses are. So, the amount of data that is conceivable you might come across is humongous. And so, we have to make sure that when we map the information, it's gonna go to the right place. And that's what I'm referring to as data mapping. Now, what's some of our competitors do? They don't go into such a minutiae. They don't go into the kinds of details that we go to. They'll say, okay fine, we'll do your conversion, we'll convert your data for you, and lo and behold, all they did was just transfer your contacts over. That's not data migration, that's not mapping. We go beyond that. - Okay, perfect, thank you so much. All right, so, when you first start talking to someone to understand their needs and goals, is this a call with a team member? Do you have them fill out a form? What do they actually have to go through when they get started? - Most of the time they get started, and again, it starts from the initial contact, and from that demo, which is super important, firms who are looking to go to our case management system, don't, in my opinion, don't spend as much time looking at the product before. Don't spend as much time having the smart advocate folk, or whoever you're thinking about, do a proper demonstration of the system, because you need to know in your environment, your practice area, how you do things, how that's gonna translate to using smart advocate, or anything else out there. It's gotta be a match, all right? And so, some of the questions that I encourage folks to ask is that, okay, here is a sample matter type. How do you handle that in smart advocate? How will my staff use smart advocate to enhance what they do on a day-to-day basis? So, a lot of that back and forth take place in the interim. There isn't so much, let's say, a form that you have to complete or fill out, 'cause a lot of the information goes back and forth, as I said in that demo, and then, of course, the data itself, we get a copy of it, and see what it is, where it's at, and bring that over. - Okay, you just mentioned a copy of the data, which is kind of related to my next question, which was, what do they have to give you access to? So, do they actually give you access to their current system if they have one? And then, like you said, there's another option where maybe they don't have anything at all, then how do you gather that information? - Generally, in the former situation where they do have data from another system, it's typically done by a backup of their current data, and that could be something that is downloaded from their website, from the system that they use. In general, we don't have to say have access to their current database or their current system. It does help if we do, but we don't have to, because what our engineers do is, and everybody knows what a backup is, it's just got a copy of their database, and then our engineers go to work and analyze that database, analyze the structure of it, see where the data is, how it is laid out, and then do the mapping from there. So, that's generally using a client who has a system that was already in existence. That's doing the backup. Now, the other one where the client did not use a case management system before, and they have things kind of all over the place, in that situation, they're usually starting from beginning. In other words, very rarely would they have data in a usable format, so to speak, where you can just have that transfer over to Smart Advocate. Quite often what they do, believe it or not, it has stuff on spreadsheets, and then we're able to then upload that information from their spreadsheets into Smart Advocate. You're gonna find that it is less comprehensive, in that way, as you would imagine, that it would be in a formal database as other systems are. - Absolutely, no, that makes sense. Okay, great. So, what are some misconceptions that lawyers have about case management software when they first come to you? - The systems are powerful, right? They can do a lot, and especially at Smart Advocate, you know, automation is a huge thing now. Everybody wants automation. Everybody wants things to be done automatically. At the end of the day, one of the things that a lot of firms have a difficulty grasping is that at the end of the day, you still have to have responsible people. You still have to have responsible staff. The attorneys still gotta do something. The paralegals still gotta do something. They can't just sit back for their arms and say, "Hey, Smart Advocate, do my work for me," right? So, it's one of the things that, you know, don't expect a case management system to make you breakfast. It's not gonna happen, right? You still have to review your deadlines. You still have to review your documents. Here's how the system helps. It will help you with those things, right? It will automatically populate your deadlines for you based on certain triggers, based on certain things happen. It can do that. It can create your documents for you, right? It can draft your letter, it can draft your pleading. Guess what? That information has to come from somewhere. You can't pull it out of the air. So, you have to have entered that information in the system to be able to benefit from the automation that it can provide. And so, a lot of folks, sometimes, perhaps expect too much, even though the system are fantastic. They can do a lot. But there is some things you still have to do. One of the other things that I think some firms struggle with, and it sounds simple, but it's an unwillingness to change how they do things, right? We get attorneys who are very, very successful. They've been practicing for 30, 40, 50 years. And they're accustomed to doing certain things, in a certain way. And it's just human nature. You don't want to change. We all are like that, right? We don't want to change. We have our comfort zone. And we are reluctant to change the way we do things. But sometimes you have to. Sometimes you have to be willing to make some change to take the full advantage of what a system can provide for you. Quite often, I go into firms and I see them. The staff does not want to enter data, let's say, for your medical provider information. And they keep it on spreadsheets. And that's a common one, kind of a pet peeve of mine. But you have to be able to come to the conclusion, a consensus that you're going to be entering your data in the system and then get the benefit from it. You have to be able to change some of the things that you do where it can be more efficient. Absolutely. OK, what are some of the common challenges that law firms face when it comes to their current case management system and then how do you help them overcome these? So I mean, what are pain points that they're seeing that actually cause them to look for another system? A lot of it, there are a few areas that are right off the bat that other systems do not do as well, things like client communication. That's huge for any law firm. I mean, it's probably empirical evidence. But most problems with problems with clients are complaints from clients. It's because the perception they have is that there's no communication with the firm or with the attorney. And that may be true or not. So one of the things that Smart Advocate does extremely well is to help you with that type of communication. And some of it can be automated. Quite often, a lot of it is automated for those who are using Smart Advocate where at certain milestones in the case or when something specific happens, rather than having your staff have to sit down and type an email or type a text message or draft a letter, have the system do it for you. Have Smart Advocate do it for you and send that out, right? So it will eliminate the redundancy that the staff come into with having to do that. And on the other hand, the client gets notified and the client gets the communication which satisfy what they're looking for. So that's one of the things that the firm can take advantage of. And use to their advantage using Smart Advocate in their firm. Another one is your document drafting, right? A lot of firms are still cutting and pasting. You know, they have a sample letter that they used in the past or they have a sample pleading that they used in the past. And they just take that one and edit it and cut it out and paste in the information from the case that they're working on. That's a huge waste of time. Things like that, Smart Advocate does well. As if you use templates to automatically draft your document for you without you having to do the cutting and pasting. You know, and that could be your letters, your text messages, your emails. Have Smart Advocate do that for you. So some of those things you will find that it helps you tremendously and help you be more efficient. The mass storage firms, right, that are dealing huge numbers of clients, quite often in one particular matter. It is a daunting task to sit down and send an email to each one of them, all 10,000. You have Smart Advocate send that email out and there's a fraction of a second to all 10,000 clients automatically, right? So many of those kinds of things. AI is now on the forefront on everybody's tongue. That's what everybody's talking about. Use the built-in AI functionality that you have in Smart Advocate to do some of those things for you, which we could talk about other as well. I do have that question coming up. I had one question with your email that you can send out, like you said, with mass torts. Is that something where it's... Are you integrating with an external email provider that they use or is it something that's done internally within Smart Advocate? Internal within Smart Advocate. So you send the email right from the system, right? And here's the beauty of it. Not only can you do it in bulk in mass, as I just mentioned, but it has the additional benefit that when you send the... When the email goes from the system, it's automatically saved in that client's file without your staff after all manually going and copying and pasting and saving it to the file. So it gives you that type of efficiency. Same thing with text messages. The text message goes out. It's automatically saved in the file. When the client responds, which most of them are doing these days, most of our clients, they'll get communication from their doctors, or their barber, or their hairstylist. Guess what? It's coming to them by text. They expect us in the firm to communicate with them that way. And so it's now one of the things that is commonplace and it will allow you to automatically have that saved, the client sends a text message, the system automatically grabs it, automatically notify you of the incoming text, and automatically save it to the file. That's fantastic. Okay, so as you mentioned, yesterday Natalia from your team did a presentation in our Facebook group and briefly spoke about your newer AI features. And if the listeners haven't seen that presentation, we will link it in the show notes of this episode. But can you explain how your AI features help law firms with things like document generation, data analysis, or summarizing their larger documents? All three. It does all three. So, let's say the last one first, summarizing your documents. One of the most difficult things that many who work on cases in the legal world encounter is analyzing things like, let's say, medical records, right? So medical records are a big one, and sometimes they're huge, okay? Another one might be analyzing documents like a transcript of a deposition, or the trial transcript. Attorneys and paralegals have to sit down traditionally, and read that stuff, and analyze it, and perhaps draft a memo. The built-in AI function of smart advocate will do that for you. So, you just tell it which document you wanted to analyze. It reads the document, and give you a summary of what it is. Give you a summary of the deposition of that witness. Give you a summary of the medical records for the treatment that a client has, where they went, when they were treated, what was the complaint, what was the analysis by the doctor, etc. So, those are some of the things that are built-in AI functionality can do with respect to documents. The other things that AI can do, it can draft your document for you. One of the things that I'm really tickled about is occasionally, and sometimes it's super important, well, it's important for all, but let's say you have a scenario where a stock member is drafting an email, right? An email to a client, or to someone else, and that email is drafted in a fashion that's less than professional, right? That's embarrassing, right? And if you have that goal that way, it might be embarrassing. Guess what? Our built-in AI functionality can redraft that email for you, and put it in a more professional, more palatable manner, so that you can see it redrafted in a more satisfactory way before it goes out. And you can do that with emails, you can do that with text message. It can translate, so if, let's say hypothetically, you have a Hispanic client, a client who is Spanish-speaking, and that client calls and leaves a voicemail message, and it's left in Spanish. That's the person's native language. The staff, let's say, who's working on that case, does not speak Spanish, let's say. Guess what? The AI can translate that into English and save the English version in the client's file, okay? So those are some of the things that, you know, the built-in AI functionality that Smart Advocate has that can work for you. That's great. Those are incredible. I love that. Okay, one topic that we haven't touched on yet is, can you share some examples of how law firms have used your dashboards and reporting tools to increase their efficiency or even profitability? Yes. A lot of firms, you know, especially from, well, they're loosely two types of dashboards and reports that probably would be germane in the firm. One, from, let's say, the user's perspective, where they need to, you know, perhaps have a dashboard of things that they need to do, or they might need to get a report of outstanding items. So from the user perspective, and I'm using the user loosely here, I'm thinking, you know, regular staff, not management, they could use those built-in dashboards and reports to their advantage. Okay, here are my outstanding tasks. I need to get these done. And you could, it would give them a list on a dashboard or a report, you know, and that's an example, let's say, from, let's say, the regular staff perspective. On the other hand, at the end of the day, a lot of firms are business, right? And so for management, you know, there are many things that they need to know are information that they need to get from the system to help them manage the firm, not only manage their staff, but manage other things. For example, the KPI, how productive is an attorney? How many cases did he or she settle last month, last year, right? The last quarter, okay? Where are my cases coming from? What's the advertising source that's most successful in generating the type of cases on the type of leads or the type of clients I want? How much am I spending in generating those kinds of cases, all right? What's my outlet, okay? What's my return on investment then with what I spent on that radio ad or that television ad or that billboard and how many cases did I get from it, okay? How long is it taking for my staff to settle their cases? What are the cases being settled for? How much money did we make last month, last year? How does it, did it come here to the year before? What's my projections? Based on my current cases that I have in my system and the anticipated time, it's going to take those to get resolved and the average that I should get from those cases, what can I project my income flow to be next month, next year, next quarter? Guess what? Those are all the types, but at least a fraction, a fraction of the types of dashboards and reports that you can get from smart advocate. Built-in, don't have to wear clear to get that type of info right in the system and some of them you can even design yourself. Okay, incredible. All right. Are there any upcoming features that you're particularly excited about that you can share with us today? Well, not to let the catalog about, but we are enhancing the AI functionality. That's one that we're excited about, the version that we have now. It's an initial, initial version that was released this year. There are a lot more things that we're going to have it do. Currently, you know, at smart advocate, with something like that, we're very cautious. We have to be mindful of confidentiality issues. You know, one of the questions that a lot of firms have, which rightly so, is does the system go out to send my client's information out to the internet when it needs to have it generate a summary? So we don't do that. And so those are some of the things that we're concerned about, hear full about, and so on. So we're going to have enhancements in those areas. One of the areas that I just mentioned, with respect to the types of dashboards that you can get, we're going to get more granular with that. We're going to start giving you the ability to create the type of dashboard with data points that you never thought of before, and so on. We're looking into enhancing mass communication functions in the system, the ability to automate a lot of the other things that we're looking at, or enhance the automation that we do now. We are currently building our own internal accounting system in smart advocate. That's new. Fully integrated accounting part of the system, that's going to be in smart advocate where you don't have to integrate with quickbooks, PC law, or some other application out there. So all encompassing, as I said at the outset, all part of the system, that's a big one that we are quite excited about. And that one's going to go beyond the law firm. So because it's an whole accounting package, it's going to help you with the other accounting functions that the firm need to be aware of, or need to do, other than say managing your cases. What about time off for your client, for your staff, payroll, right? The rent that you have to pay, that has generally nothing to do with managing your cases, so to speak, but because it's going to be an all-incompassing part of the system, we're going to have that in there, and that's a big one that we're truly excited about. Absolutely. Okay, a lot of new features coming. So a question that popped into my mind with that is with all these new features coming in, and if you have smart advocate, will these be separate packages? You have to upgrade to get this feature, or is this going to be, if you have smart advocate, you have access to all these features, what does that look like? You know what's amazing, and I was smiling as you were asking that, but you know what's amazing? Unlike our competitors and unlike other systems out there, at smart advocate, you know, the old, old adage, you know, you're nickel and diamond me, right? You know, a lot of people are like, oh, you need this, oh, you're going to pay that. Yo, you need this as well, you're going to pay this extra. You need that as well, you're going to believe it or not, all of what we've talked about so far. Except, of course, the texting which, obviously, smart advocate is not a cell phone company, so we have to use a third-party provider, and cost of that is quite, it's negligible to be honest with you. Guess what? All of those other features that I talked about are all part of smart advocate, what you get when you get the system. And here's the beauty of it. When we upgrade smart advocate, which is done at least once a year, we used to do three or four times a year, but because the upgrades are so big now, and we probably might go back to twice a year, it's all included in the system. Okay. Very rarely do we put something in. In fact, I cannot remember in 12 years, we've ever added some, maybe once or twice, where we say to apply, you know what, this is extra because it's not normally part of the system. And so, in general then, almost always, when we do an upgrade, it's included, and you don't have to pay extra for it. Not only that, but not only do we give you the upgrade, but we teach you how to use, freely, teach you how to use the new features. And with those trainings, is that something do you do, say like live calls, are you recording something and putting it out, maybe a help center, what does that look like? Our knowledge base is humongous, and so our built-in knowledge base is there. We go beyond what our competitors do. Personally, by the way, I send out a tip of the week every Monday, which what it does, it kind of highlights a feature and talk about it for that tip, and show you how to do it, how to use it, and then we culminate that at the end of the month, where we do our webinar freely, show you those in real time, how those things work. That's one. The training depends on, in general, depends on the firm. So many firms want that training to be done in person. They don't want to do it on Zoom, right? So their choice, we can go to their office and do their training at their location. We also have the ability for our clients to come to Smart Advocate, the Smart Advocate Headquarters, and get trained there. Some do that because they don't want the distraction when they're at the office, so they send their staff out to come to us, get trained, and then we have others who do training by webinar on Zoom or what have you. So one of the things is, and I think I mentioned that at the start of our conversation, Smart Advocate does not form out any of our training. It's all done by smart advocate staff that are part of Smart Advocate. So when you get trained, you're going to be trained by people who are in Smart Advocate. They're smart advocate employees. You're not going to be sent to some third party who don't know what the heck they're talking about. Okay, I love that. All right, so for law firms that are still relying on traditional methods or older software, what advice would you give them about considering upgrading to Smart Advocate? Some of the things we just talked about, the upgrades, we have competitors out there who've never upgraded their system in seven and ten years. Guess what? You're going to be left behind. If you're using a system, if your firm is using a system that's seven years old, guess what? You're going to be behind the table, right? So Smart Advocate is on the cutting edge of technology with new features and some of which we just talked about. It's on the forefront of technology with implementing new features, implementing new functions. It's one of the best ways to use Smart Advocate is browser base, which means that you can access the system from literally anywhere in the world, that you have internet access. You want to work from home this this weekend? Go right ahead. You access Smart Advocate from there. You're burning the midnight oil on vacation and you need to get something done. You access Smart Advocate from wherever you are. And as I said, our internal philosophy is, you know, the old adage, you build a better mousetrap, right? So our internal philosophy is to make it the best first and foremost and then everything will fall into place. Amazing. Okay. Lastly, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they want to learn more about Smart Advocate? Easy. My email is Claude, C-L-A-U-D-E at smartadvocate.com. Remember Smart Advocate is one word. So Claude at smartadvocate.com, if it's a training question or if you just have some additional questions about the product, how it can help you in your firm, absolutely reach out to us and we'd be more than happy to show you the system or even if you just want information on how to make a decision and what to choose or what to look for if you're in the market to shop for a case management system. Absolutely. By the way, if your listeners are so inclined, come and join us in Nashville this coming week, right? We're going to have our User Group Conference in Nashville and we're going to see all of us there and we're going to talk more about Smart Advocate and more about some of the other things that we are doing. But other than that, if you can't make it this time, please, yes, reach out by email. We'd be more than happy to talk with you. That sounds great. All right, Claude, thank you so much for joining me today. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks for allowing me to share a little bit about Smart Advocate with you and your audience. It was a pleasure. Of course. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer Badger. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximumlawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
