In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Mat Rotenberg discuss:
- Where lawyers are killing time and not communicating properly.
- Navigating technologies and programs for lawyers and law firms.
- The benefits of utilizing Dashboard Legal.
- Shifting mindset to a future focus, not just a precedent focus.
Key Takeaways:
- Many lawyers are looking for ways to better organize their data and to better communicate with their teams.
- There are many different types of software out there that can assist lawyers to better organize and communicate, but many require time and understanding to set up appropriately which can be daunting for many lawyers.
- The vast majority of tech for lawyers is built by non-lawyers, which can make it difficult for lawyers to transition to how those tools are built.
- Choosing to be more entrepreneurial with your practice is where the practice of law is going and where personal benefits can be derived in a way that isn’t happening at the moment.
“It’s using technology to start to manage the increased complexity. And lawyers have always done it…lawyers have always innovated. They are motivated to do it, they just need to see and understand the value that it brings.” — Mat Rotenberg
Connect with Mat Rotenberg:
Website: https://dashboardlegal.com/
Email: mat@dashboardlegal.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-rotenberg-10528537/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lawyers, legal, tool, technology, law firm, dashboard, practice, email, attorneys, steve, head, client, benefit, workflow, checklist, new york, automating, williamsburg, documents, built
SPEAKERS
Mat Rotenburg, Narrator, Steve Fretzin
Mat Rotenburg [00:00]
It doesn’t require a huge change in workflow. It doesn’t require reinventing the wheel. It can be a really small incremental change, like using a modern checklist solution that can have tremendous benefits for you in your practice.
Narrator [00:19]
You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer Coach Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:42]
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, as the announcer mentioned and shot out of a cannon again today every day just looking forward to helping attorneys to be that lawyer someone who’s competent, organized in a skilled Rainmaker, continuing to try to find great guests and interview people that are going to make a difference in your life. And one of the greatest challenges lawyers have and you know, this is all the options around technology and what’s a good fit and what’s going to help you accomplish the task of the day, the tasks of the day, how to automate your law practice and continue to get better and smarter and faster. Because time is money. And you know that that’s how you know how the world works for you. So we want to try to figure out ways to make your time as valuable as possible. And my guest today is no different. It’s Matt Rotenberg, who is the CEO and co founder of dashboard legal. How’s it going today, man?
Mat Rotenburg [01:33]
I’m doing great, Steve. Thanks for having me on.
Steve Fretzin [01:35]
Yeah. Thanks for being here. And you’re in beautiful New York.
Mat Rotenburg [01:38]
I am. I am. It’s cloudy day today. But New York. New York’s a great place to date.
Steve Fretzin [01:43]
Okay, yeah. Well, I hear lots of hustle and bustle in New York and Chicago where we have that too, but we’re a little bit less hustle and bustle. Is that the case?
Mat Rotenburg [01:51]
I think I think there’s a little more hustle and bustle here and better pizza. They better pizza. Oh, man, it’s gonna stir up a hornet’s nest.
Steve Fretzin [01:59]
Yeah, yeah, it is. And I had someone from Detroit say that to me. And I went up there and punched him in the head. So we don’t want it. We don’t want to go down that path. No, I think look, I think there’s in there is a New York style pizza place near me. And it is really good. So I think I think it’s just different people have different tastes. Listen, man, your your lawyer turned legal tech experts. So give us a little bit of your background so people can understand more about about you and dashboard legal.
Mat Rotenburg [02:24]
Sure. Thanks, Steve. So I started as a corporate m&a attorney here in New York City, worked for two big law firms here in Midtown, was working on public company, m&a transactions, big public company, big public company, m&a transactions, where I was responsible for running really sophisticated deals, and was working with teams from all over the world to get things over the finish line. I started looking at legal tech when I joined the tech committee at my prior firm and was looking at tools to really help with the day to day, how do I run a more organized deal? How do I collaborate with colleagues in a way that gets everybody on the same page. And what I saw was that the legal tech that was being built for lawyers really wasn’t addressing this organizational and collaborative need. When I took a look at the tools that our clients were using the asana, as the Mondays of the world for project management, the slack and teams tools for collaboration. I said, you know, lawyers could absolutely benefit from the efficiencies that these tools provide. So how do you bring it to them? How do you get lawyers to use these really lightweight, important tools to make our lives easier? And so my co founder and I set set out on a mission to address that issue? How do you build something that lawyers understand and want and matches their workflow? And that’s what we built with dashboard legal.
Steve Fretzin [03:54]
And so you identified the issue in your world, and what are you seeing now working with lawyers and helping them to get organized, what what are the main areas of disorganization, that they that they’re finding where they’re, they’re, they’re killing time and not communicating appropriately?
Mat Rotenburg [04:09]
I think it’s two buckets. The first is organization. It’s, where’s my stuff? I’m on a call with client a and client B calls? How do I how am I getting up to speed? Right now, virtually every lawyer in this country is going to their search bar, trying to pull up all the relevant emails, going to their their checklist solution or pulling documents, emailing colleagues, but we want to enable is if you’re on a call with client a and client B calls, click into that context. Click into that into that dashboard and get up to speed. It’s about that contextualized view of information and removing the clutter, having what you need when you need it. So that’s what I would call organization set click to context. Second is about how you’re working together with your team. Most attorneys right now especially senior attorneys have an ad hoc method of task management, who’s doing what is organized in their minds? And if they need to figure it out? They’ll email it. They’ll email their senior associate who’s working on this. What’s the update with that? With modern checklist solutions, modern project management solutions, law firms and lawyers can enable that universal view of information. Everybody can go to that checklist, which updates in real time and see, what am I responsible for? How does my heart play into the broader transaction or case? And how do we feel as a team that we’re moving in the right direction. And what what has really been a, an incredible learning that we’ve had over the past year is that it doesn’t require a huge change in workflow. It doesn’t require reinventing the wheel, it can be a really small incremental change, like using a modern checklist solution that can have tremendous benefits for you in your practice. And so trying to communicate that incremental change the benefits of that, and using some really lightweight modern project management, collaboration, technology, is the goal of dashboard legal and where we’re headed.
Steve Fretzin [06:11]
Yeah, and I think those are two really critical elements to what can really sidetrack a small law firm, for example, in how they get worked on and how they feel confident that the client is being taken care of the matters being handled properly. And the managing partner or the senior partner isn’t isn’t feeling like they’re gonna get let down, because it’s all being organized in such a way that in the communication is such that, that everybody’s on the same page. Is that kind of the gist?
Mat Rotenburg [06:39]
That’s right. Yeah, it’s about making sure things don’t slip through the cracks. Yeah, and, and also implementing tools that can can just, you can just use right away. I mean, if you think about most of the practice management solutions out there, or the document management solutions out there, it requires a tremendous amount of investment, both of time and resources. Just to get started, you have to move everybody on to a new system, you’re having to learn all of these new ways to do your daily work that are not really what you’re familiar with. And so the alternative is to find ways that are much easier to get started with, and really can can unlock those benefits without having to reinvent the wheel.
Steve Fretzin [07:21]
So is one of the issues that lawyers have that there’s too many different software’s. So there’s the case management, there’s the CRM there, and that stands for client relationship management tool for those who don’t know, and then and then there’s, you know, then there’s research tools and ediscovery tools, and there’s all these different technologies. And they have, you know, 2345, is that is that the concern? Or is that the issue that that some of them are finding,
Mat Rotenburg [07:46]
in the in the lawyers and law firms that we speak with? I think the the, they’re overwhelmed by the amount of new technology options that’s flooding the legal tech market for decades, literally, there were just a few things that lawyers would use, they would use research tool, they would use a docketing tool if they’re litigators, and they use their email. And that’s, that’s really been it. And then we’ve seen in the past, you know, 510, but closer to five and under years that there’s been an explosion in legal tech. And so I think that a lot of law firms and lawyers are just overwhelmed by it. Where do I get started? What is the what act, what is actually going to move the needle for my practice? What’s going to help? And a lot of the a lot of the practice management and, you know, other tools that lawyers are using right now are really important. We’re dashboard legal is different, where collaboration and project management is different is we’re talking about where you do the work. Case management practice management software, in large part is how you run the business of your law firm. How do you do client intake? How do you do billing? How do you track some communications, but it’s really the work is still happening and emails still happening in email and documents? So we want our tool is really built to support the work? Where’s the work happening? Who’s responsible for what where’s this document? How do we bring in some lightweight communications into where we’re already working? And that’s anything that’s where we’re seeing the most important need and the most unaddressed piece of the market at the moment. Okay.
Steve Fretzin [09:20]
So it’s almost like if there was a digital agency, and they had a couple of different people working on website, right, and they want the client involved, they want the beat the staff involved, and they want the person that’s managing the project. They want to be able to communicate all that. So it’s not about the bookkeeping, and it’s not about the intake and all that and dealing with prospects. It’s really about the actual work and how that gets managed and communicated, to even out to make sure that flow really, really works. Well.
Mat Rotenburg [09:49]
Exactly, exactly. How do I get organized? How do I collaborate and having a digital workspace to do it with your team?
Steve Fretzin [09:57]
And that’s really one of the main things I wanted to get across was how it was done. Different. So I really appreciate you taking a few minutes and kind of sharing that with us. Because that’s that’s a critical moment is because everybody seems seems to feel. Not everybody seems to feel but I hear that, you know, they’re all kind of like, like morphing together. And it’s hard to sort of figure out what, you know, what’s what and what, you know, what you really need? And what is more of a luxury?
Mat Rotenburg [10:21]
Yeah, yeah. And, and the, the, the ability to segment and store information just makes lawyers more effective. Yeah. And that’s what we need to build systems to help track communications and then recall that information when we need it. That’s that’s where the that’s where the need is,
Steve Fretzin [10:41]
yes, do me a favor if you would in let’s get into the weeds even further. And let’s, let’s let’s go through a sample client of yours a sample scenario. So it’s, uh, you know, X number of person law firm that you that went through, you know, what’s, what’s the process soup to nuts of how they would they would hear about you, then how would they see if it’s a fit? And then how would you take them through and actually incorporate the software, train them? And then and then how are they using it effectively. So let’s go through sort of the lifecycle. So I’m that lawyer who has a 10 person firm, like, take me through the whole process, from soup to nuts of what I would go through with you.
Mat Rotenburg [11:19]
Sure, you’re a 10 person law firm, and you’re working entirely out of your inbox? Yep, you know that there’s a better way, there’s got to be a better way than managing all my matters out of my inbox. Okay. So you look at the market, you see what’s being built what’s use. So there’s practice management solutions, or as collaboration tools in the market, like asana and Monday, then you take a look at dashboard legal, we are built into your inbox. So the change is minimal. That’s the huge upfront benefit that our our our product provides. So think about this as a layer on top of Outlook. Instead of folders, you have workspaces. Click into that workspace on the left side. And now you’re brought into the work environment for that client or matter. You have a discussion channel where you and your team can come and talk in real time, you have your documents linked to your document management system, or use our in house DMS, you have your checklists, which enable that universal view of information, you can track tasks, deadlines, turns of documents, and you have your sort of emails just like you would in an Outlook folder. So you can really just get started right away, because we’re just adding capabilities, you don’t really have to go somewhere else to do the work, which is an important benefit. You can just, you know, connect your email get started right away. So the real value is how easy it is to get started. But once you start working, I think that the most important values that we’ve seen with our early customers, is the benefits of chat and checklist. If you work internally with your team in chat, which is what slack is, by the way, everybody gets to see the work happen in real time, you take some of the pressure off of email, and you can enjoy a much more conversational workflow. This is how millennials want to work. They don’t want everything in their inbox, they want a conversational type of workflow. And after just a few days of using it, most attorneys see the difference.
Steve Fretzin [13:23]
And so if they if they decide that and sorry, if they decide that they want to incorporate this, is there, is there training provided? Is it online? How do they get this Incorporated? So they feel confident that it will work and not not get? Not, you know, just just drag out?
Mat Rotenburg [13:40]
Yeah, yeah. So it really takes it takes 30 minutes of onboarding, okay, all you do is you connect your email, and then all of your emails will surface exactly as they do in Outlook. So you’re immediately immediately familiar to the user, it takes a few days to get used to, but the benefits really start to show themselves immediately. So it’s a 30 minute onboarding, you connect your email, and then you just start using it, you start chatting in the in the discussion channels, you start using the checklist solution to manager manager matters. So we really want it to be different in that way different from DMS, different from practice management in the ease of access, the ease of getting started. And that’s a that’s a that’s been a big key for onboarding our early customers.
Steve Fretzin [14:22]
Yeah, it’s, it sounds like it’s really combining a number of other tools into one, so that you don’t need to have the practice management, the slack and like two or three other, you know, software’s working, it’s it’s kind of an all in one for getting the work done and making sure that communication is handled. So what So what are you what’s the future look like? Are you are you looking, is it going to incorporate into other technologies, or is it going to be more of a standalone moving forward?
Mat Rotenburg [14:50]
Yes. So right, right now, it’s an internal workflow tool. It’s for your team to have a place to get organized and collaborate. I think in the future. There’s so much to potential for tools to be built for lawyers and their real time work. Now we think about the process. For example, this is a small one, but coming soon on our roadmap, redlining lawyers need to redline documents all the time. The process to do it is is tedious, you need to download the document, run the tool to download the PDF and then circulated via email. With dashboard legal, if you want to put if you want to create an update and show an update, you just enter that checklist and then write in the update and you’re done. Or if you want to use our redline feature, you just put a checkmark next to version one, put a checkmark next to version three, you see a red line unchecked version three, check version four, see the other red line. So it’s about creating just a more fluid and less tedious workflow. And the opportunities for that are abound. There’s so much there’s so much need for it, and just simple ways to make our lives easier. And that’s our priority. That’s the space that we occupy. And I know is for you to Steve as well. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [16:03]
Yeah. And if you don’t mind, Matt, I’d like to flip the conversation a little bit, I think we have a really clear understanding now of dashboard legal, its value and where it sort of fits in the legal tech space, and how it helps lawyers. Talk to me for a few minutes, if you would about your your decision while you talk a little bit about your decision, like how you moved into legal tech, but but there are lawyers out there that enjoy practicing the law, but they’re also entrepreneurial, and they also enjoy technology. So yeah, what in the legal background that you have in in just being a lawyer in solving problems? How does that help you in growing legal tech company?
Mat Rotenburg [16:43]
Yeah, I love that question. Because there are, there are some really important lessons I learned as a lawyer that have that have been a huge benefit to starting this company. And the first is is really attention to detail, focused on all the different moving pieces and being diligent about it. I think being a lawyer trains you to do that extremely well. Seamless, being able to talk to lawyers, and that’s that’s the best training there there can be understanding their real need understanding their pain, understanding the day to day, and there are so relatively few former attorneys that then go into building technology for lawyers that the vast majority of the market of legal tech is built by non lawyers. And that doesn’t mean that those tools aren’t valuable, but they lack an understanding of what is actually going on in our day to day and how do our workflows, how do our workflows matter? What needs changing and updating and so I think that leveraging that information has been a huge benefit in how we’ve chosen to build our tool and how we’ve access the market. I think the earlier point that you you said, which is encouraging lawyers to do it, and why more lawyers don’t do it. And you know, we’re a precedent focused profession, we look backwards, what has been done, how can I apply the success and match the future? Whereas entrepreneurship takes more of a forward looking view? What is possible? What can we create, and that shift in mindset is rarely encouraged in the legal context, in big law firms and small law firms were rarely encouraged to think like that. But when that switch happens, there’s an incredible unlock potential that I’ve seen with many other legal tech founders who are former lawyers. And that is really where I think where we’re going to be able to address our value in the future, we’re the only ones that are going to be able to do this. Other Other outside forces want to make money want to add value for, you know, their VC companies, or PE or whatever it is they’re doing whatever their motivation is, if we want to do this, right. It’s got to be built by us. And that’s, that’s, that’s a guiding principle of death for legal as well.
Steve Fretzin [19:01]
Yeah, that’s really great. And again, an inspiration to lawyers who maybe are a little frustrated with practicing law. It’s become a job I had a post recently about, you know, are you doing a job? Or do you have a career, and I feel like there’s a lot of lawyers right now. So slammed with work and being handed down work by the lawyers, that it really just is a job, and they just go at it every day, after day after day. And there are some that are going to hopefully see the light and want to, you know, either go out on their own or decide to do business development as a way to get more client interaction, and others are going to figure out, Hey, maybe I need to get out of practicing law and get into some other business and then it’s just about what is that business? Was it a factor meeting your partner and is he a technology that expert guru? Is that what makes you to a great partnership?
Mat Rotenburg [19:51]
Yeah, he is. He’s a full stack engineer and he’s really a wizard when I when I think about it, and he’s been able to create an incredible product and what is possible with technology these days, this has absolutely blown my mind and something I rarely thought about as a practicing lawyer. So So yeah, the my partner has been a big a big part of this and, and we’ve been able to play on our strengths has built built up the company. The point you make about lawyers either choosing to be to become entrepreneurs or lawyers, maybe choosing to be more entrepreneurial with their practice, I think is is is where the where the practice of law is going and where personal benefits can be derived in a way that isn’t happening at the moment. So I made the choice to, to jump ship and become an entrepreneur, and I wake up every day, believe it or not, I wake up every day excited to look at my phone, I never felt that way, as a lawyer, you know, I’m building something, I have a purpose. I’m trying to help lawyers that has become my guiding light. And I feel like a light switch has gone off. But even if lawyers are not ready to make that move, I think there’s opportunities to embrace some of that entrepreneurship, for lawyers who are running their own practices. And it can be trying to implement some new technology, how do we make the client experience better with some new tech, let’s let them pay with a credit card, let’s create a portal where they can come in and see the same information that I see just using some lightweight innovation to improve your process can be tremendously just just beneficial to you as a human and growing and having that growth mindset and feeling good about the value of rain, I think that’s huge. And then using those kind of entrepreneurship ways to improve your practice as well, is a way that you can get a lot more fulfillment out of your day to day. Yeah, and I’m
Steve Fretzin [21:45]
trying to push lawyers to different technologies is a way of helping them automate. And there’s a way to help them be more entrepreneurial, because if you’re locked into doing the billable hour, and you really need to be out there networking, be out there, meeting with prospective clients and building the building the business of law, right, and you’re stuck inside managing and micromanaging and trying to get a project across across the finish line. And you don’t know where it is, and you got to you have to have a tough conversation with an associate that you don’t want to really address, like it’s taking away from the time you should be outgrowing. And so I think the technology tool you provide in some of the others, it’s just it’s you know, it’s it is what it’s the tool, right is the tool of the trade. But that tool allows you to be I was talking with someone the other day, I’ve got a remarkable to I’m showing you it’s this pad that I do all of my notes and the notes for this podcast, the notes for prospective clients that want to talk to me. And I have no paper like I’m looking around in my desk, and I can show you there’s zero paper anywhere around me. And it’s it’s a tool, but that tool has made me so efficient in how I take my notes and make them into a PDF and incorporate them into my CRM, incorporate them into my Dropbox, and everything’s connected. Wow, you know, I don’t have to go through five, you know, 510 20, you know, posts to try to figure out, and that’s similar to what you’re talking about someone’s inbox where lawyers might get three 400 emails a day or 200 a day or whatever. And how is that going?
Mat Rotenburg [23:18]
Yeah, exactly. And it’s, it’s using technology to, to start to manage the increased complexity. And lawyers have always done it. I mean, there’s this there’s this narrative that lawyers don’t want to change. Lawyers have done things the same way forever. And they’re, you know, they’re stuck in their ways. But I actually don’t buy that. I think that that’s not true. And I look at I look at the evolution of legal research, as one of the prime examples of the ways that lawyers have always innovated. For decades, lawyers looked in hardcopy books. My dad is a as an attorney, he looked at hardcopy books forever, until online research. And by the way that was resisted by most law firm partners at first, when West rolled out their first online research tool. But then when they saw the benefit, and younger attorneys started using this incredibly powerful new tool to get the same information that revolutionize the industry. And now you couldn’t, you couldn’t get caught red handed in any law firm in the country without a research tool. So I think that lawyers have always innovated they are motivated to do it. They just need to see and understand the value that it brings. And kind of coaching them and moving them along the journey is something that I think our legal tech industry can do a better job of as soon as that shakes out a little bit more.
Steve Fretzin [24:41]
Well, yeah. And I think the other piece of it is ease of use. And so like just as an example, I’m personally using law Maddix for my CRM, and I’m doing that for two reasons. One is because it’s automating how I’m doing everything for myself, and also because then I’m going to be in a better position to help train and coach and help people that need Need a CRM like that for themselves. And part of what makes this work for me is I have a marketing team and they are also using it. And they’re, they’re automating my email, they’re automating my newsletter. They’re automating my, you know, the way that I’m setting appointments, and the follow up emails that go out to confirm, and everything, my contracts. And that’s in that the fact that I’ve got a team in place that’s helping me and making it easy for me to implement. That’s important. So I think the other piece I’m just mentioning to you, Matt, is the ease of use and the ease of the implementation, which it sounds like dashboard legal is like right there. Like it’s not complicated at all, to all use and incorporate.
Mat Rotenburg [25:43]
You can be up and running in 30 minutes. Yeah. For legal and the law. Maddox. I love the law Maddix example because you’re talking about a value that the general market uses this well, there are CRMs, like Salesforce and HubSpot, things you’ve heard of that are huge market leading categories. Legal, and what law Maddix or Nixle provides, or if you look at DMS, we’ve documented this and what is what is net docs are I managed provide that SharePoint, Microsoft SharePoint does not we deserve our own tools, and the easier and more and the more relevant they are to lawyers, the better chance we have of using them. So if you think about a Microsoft Teams for lawyers, or an Asana for lawyers, that’s the space that we’re occupying. And having our unique things is important, we deserve them and it matters.
Steve Fretzin [26:36]
Well, man, I want to I want to wrap up that that portion of the show and I think what you’re offering and what you’ve shared with my audience today is absolutely critical. And I recommend everybody go look at dashboard legal to understand if it’s a good fit for you. And I’m sure I’ll ask you, Matt in a few minutes to kind of give your your contact information and it’ll be in the show notes. But as I mentioned to you at the very beginning, we have now the three best of the three best of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, which is where you’re from Correct. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. So hit us up if I’m coming to visit you, and you’re going to take me out and it better not be pizza although no I’d be I’d be happy to take to try some some good some good Brooklyn pizza. But where would what’s your favorite restaurant? Like? What’s the place you’d have to take me to if I come and visit you?
Mat Rotenburg [27:21]
Yeah. All right. Well, I’m excited to get you over to Williamsburg, Steve. And the first place I’m taking you to is is a restaurant called Lilia, it’s incredible Italian here and in Williamsburg gotta get a great vibe, but the food will absolutely blow your mind. And we’ll also we’ll we’ll head over to Nick and sons, which is my favorite croissant pastry place. We’ll go thereafter. So I know you’re a foodie got some food items for you there have a laundry list of restaurants but I’ll leave it at that.
Steve Fretzin [27:50]
But those are the two that we’re going to start with awesome. And then And then so that’s that’s a stone that’s our starter appetizer now the main course. You need to show me something spectacular. I’m coming to visit I want to do and see something really cool. Where are you taking me?
Mat Rotenburg [28:04]
Yeah, so Williamsburg, Brooklyn and generally I think the thing to do is see some live music. So we can we can head to McCarren Park, everybody brings out some picnics, there’s a lot there’s some groups and then they’ll they’ll have a DJ there although I have a band that’s playing. There’s a lot of incredible live music in New York. It’s something I love about the city. And so that’s our that’s our main course when you come visit
Steve Fretzin [28:27]
awesome awesome. And then what are you and other people in your area doing on a day to day basis that is how it can be relevant to the timing of of you know the COVID you know epidemic or more just you know, just just things that people are really enjoying in your area.
Mat Rotenburg [28:41]
So I’m gonna give you a bland but powerful answer and that is taken a walk taking a walk Yeah, this has been the biggest change for me from going from practicing attorney to entrepreneur and me have to do with COVID but it’s probably has to do with the career changes well just taking the time to clear your head to read for the first time in a long time read books that are not directly relevant to the practice that is something that’s so important and I think could absolutely benefit lawyers more in their day to day just taking 10 minutes take a walk find a new book that’s outside of your practice area and and really trying to trying to grow in that way. It’s easy and it’ll it’ll give your head a break or combine
Steve Fretzin [29:25]
them take a walk like I listened to podcasts on walks all the time. And books on tape right or books on on your phone super easy. Yeah, but yeah, I’m same thing in my neighborhood. I’m seeing every nook and cranny of my neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods, just taking walks and really enjoying the the fresh air and unfortunately in New York and Chicago, you know we have these things called winters where it’s a little it gets a little rough. But yeah, but live music great food taken walks I love it. So, man if people want to reach out to you to learn more about dashboard legal, how do they get how do they get in touch with you?
Mat Rotenburg [30:00]
shoot me an email at Matt with one t ma T at dashboard legal.com We’d love to hear from you. Some of the best part about this journey is connecting with new people and fantastic, fantastic practitioners like Steve so it was it was great. It was great hanging out with you today.
Steve Fretzin [30:15]
Yeah, this was a lot of fun and and again, you know, this is this is so important everybody to consider, you know, look, every automation isn’t for everybody, every technology isn’t for everybody. You need to consider what your challenges are and look for solutions and if it’s disorganization and lack of task management and communication, you know, look at look at desperate illegal not not a sponsor, by the way, but I think a really cool, a really cool automation and technology that lawyers need to be considering. So thanks for being on the show and for sharing your wisdom and your amazing technology and we will keep in touch right?
Mat Rotenburg [30:52]
Appreciate the of course well we’re going to head over to Lilia Nicholson
Steve Fretzin [30:56]
there we go I’m gonna I gotta get to New York that’s going to be one of the maybe from my wife’s 50th birthday. We’ll head out your way. She does like the Broadway shows. But I think there’s more. There’s more than that right? Yeah. All right, everybody in bliss and thank you for spending some time with Matt night today. Hopefully you got some good takeaways and ideas you learned about a new technology that you’re going to check out. And listen, it’s all about being that lawyer someone who’s competent organized a skilled Rainmaker. Take care everybody be safe and be well.
Narrator [31:27]
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes