Mathew Kerbis: [00:00:00] if you don’t have an assistant, you are the assistant. Well, automations and software are my assistants. I’ve seen this thing circulating sometimes where it’s like good, fast and cheap, and you can pick two, but you can’t pick three, right? Like that’s pretty applicable in the subscription based model. People hire you because they know, like, and trust you. That’s it. That’s it. And they keep working with you because they know, like, and trust you. Every month I have to be providing minimum value or they’re going to unsubscribe.
Jonathan Hawkins: the old ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. You know, the client comes to you. Oh man, I just messed all this up. And the lawyers thinking in their head, they may say it out loud. You should have come to me three months ago.
[00:01:00]
Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to founding partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This episode is going to be a little bit different than the way we usually do our interviews here. we have a founding partner and we’re going to do some interviews, but we’re going to touch on his background, but then we’re really going to go deep on his area of expertise because I’m really interested.
And I think. This is a topic that I think all lawyers should look at. So today we’ve got Mathew Kerbis. He’s known as the subscription attorney, and we’re going to talk about all things subscription for providing legal services and we’re really going to get into it. Into some of the weeds.
So hopefully stick around. I think it’s going to be really interesting. So Matthew, why don’t you introduce yourself? Tell us about your practice, where you are, all that.
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah. So, uh, so I’m Matthew Kerbis on the subscription attorney, as you said. I’ve been practicing law for over a decade, but about [00:02:00] really even longer than three years ago, though I’ve been doing this at my own firm for three years. I was fed up with billing by the hour. I mean, long story short, needed to find another way and I did, and I found that it was subscriptions.
And there was not a lot of information out there to get started with that, but there were some lawyers who were doing it and I started to have those conversations and I thought, well, if I’m looking into this, like, there’s got to be other lawyers. So that’s why I started my podcast Law Subscribed. and really, the podcast came first.
But in having those conversations and preaching. You know, I’m talking about the subscription model. I couldn’t also be like billing my time. and it like, there was just this cognitive disconnect that was tearing me apart. And as one of the partners said when I ultimately told him I was going to leave, to go start my own firm.
They said, I get it. It’s hard to build a practice in a practice. Right. And, they were great and they were supportive. And but they’re, you know, there’s an insurance defense firm. They’re still billing hours, you know? And I needed to get out. So [00:03:00] I was building like. All these things that I’ve now, I think I’m, really well versed in.
It was all just it was like just my gut and like what happenstance led up to of like building a book of business, like just business skills in general about running a practice and being a business owner, things that don’t have to do with actual practice of law. It turns out I’m really good at a lot of those things and I was just doing them naturally.
So I decided to lean in and get a lot of education and, do a lot of learning around. The non practice side of things, and I thrive in that in addition to the practice of law. And so for the last almost three years now, I’ve been a true solo practice attorney. And since I got started not billing time, I’ve been leveraging AI and automation since literally day one, since day zero, because in the preparation to launch my practice, I was signing up for and demoing and testing out all these tools.
And so I know when they say, if you don’t have an assistant, you are the assistant. Well, automations and software are my assistants.
Jonathan Hawkins: I want to explore all of that. And you mentioned your podcast. I was going to get to that later, [00:04:00] but it’s really good podcast. I’ve spent. A good amount of time on there, really diving in and listening to the episodes. I mean, you’ve been doing it. I mean, you’ve got over a hundred episodes, so you’ve really got a ton of content out there.
It’s going to take me a while to get through it, but I am working through it. There’s, there’s some good stuff. Hopefully we can summarize a big picture. Some of the things you’ve learned in those hundred episodes in this hour or so that we’ve got together.
Mathew Kerbis: You got
Jonathan Hawkins: you mentioned it, so you started out. Insurance defense, which we all know that’s, you know, litigation and lots of hours, lots of hours. Do you do litigation now?
Mathew Kerbis: No, I do litigation avoidance. And I’ll tell you, there’s no lawyer who’s better situated to advise clients on litigation avoidance than a former or current litigator. So I hear all the time from litigators. Well, I’m a litigator. I can’t do subscription. Yes, you can. Who better to know what happens and how to avoid litigation than the litigators who’ve seen it all, right?
And I’m able to settle and resolve disputes without ever going to [00:05:00] court and because I’m not incentivized go to court and bill a bunch of hours. And I’m not saying lawyers are consciously saying, Oh, this is going to be so many hours for me to bill. If like they get a new litigation thing versus, Hey, I know how to settle this thing.
So we don’t even have to go to court in the first place. The financial incentive just isn’t there. And if it was, then maybe you’d see a lot more of that. And you’d see, and I sort of jokingly, but also like seriously, if you think about it, say sometimes, My, my crusade to end the billable hour and get lawyers to subscription, regardless of practice area, regardless of deal lawyer or litigator is I’m just trying to save the taxpayers dollars, right?
That’s all I’m trying to do. Saves taxpayers dollars. That’s all. And I’m I am not running for office.
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ll tell you, I am a believer in the subscription model. I’ve tested it. I’m not there yet. this part of what I’m going to ask you about throughout this conversation So I’m I’m with you. I’m with you, but it’s not easy. And just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but I’ll say it’s not easy now in the litigation front is probably more challenging.
Although I’ve heard [00:06:00] of some insurance defense firms that get paid a monthly fee to handle X amount of cases no matter what. So maybe in some essence, that’s sort of like a subscription, I guess, sort of,
Mathew Kerbis: And then they’re just trying to get them done. You know, like they’re not taking extra depositions that they don’t need to take and then have a big fight over it with the insurance company on why was this relevant or you should have sent this in your last opinion letter. I did. You never got back to us.
We had to make a decision to take the special deposition, extra deposition, right? Like I’ve been there. Oh, yeah.
Jonathan Hawkins: you know, it’s funny. I talked to a lot of plaintiff’s lawyers and a common complaint that comes up is, you know, the defense lawyer that needs to build the hours. So they’re going to file these motions and drag it out for a while, or really they know it should just, they should end it. So maybe the plaintiff’s lawyers should wish that all the defense lawyers become subscription lawyers.
Maybe it’ll get things done faster, right?
Mathew Kerbis: I mean, you just got to align incentives, and if you’re, if you’re, If the incentive is I got to keep this client as happy as possible for as long as possible because I’m thinking about lifetime value, thinking about keeping them subscribed, then yeah, then you’re going to align [00:07:00] incentives differently. And I think there’s something to be said about still litigating.
The reason I don’t even touch litigation anymore is I can sell to my clients that I will never try to do anything in trying to resolve settlement disputes that results in litigation because I don’t make any money. When you go to litigation, I have zero financial incentive. Now that’s my approach to it.
It doesn’t have to be a litigator’s approach, but I find my clients trust me and they listen to me. And if I tell them they need to take a settlement or they need to offer something to get settled because they know I don’t make money if we go to litigation. They listen to me. And so there is something to be said about just swearing off litigation like I’ve done but, but all that being said, when your client is paying you every month or every year, every quarter or however you set up the subscription, you’re able to build trust with them.
And if you bundle as part of that subscription as a benefit, unlimited scheduled communications. That have timeframe set of beginning and end, just like this podcast, episode, like when we scheduled the call, it’s got a beginning and an end time, [00:08:00] right? You keep your clients to those scheduled calls, make it unlimited.
They will call you and you’ll be able to develop a relationship with them. And they will bring you more business when you’re talking to them. You just have to properly scope and price your services.
Jonathan Hawkins: And we’re going to get into all of that. Before we get into that, I want to go back to the beginning. So you, you left an insurance defense litigation practice because you wanted to try something a different way. You want to do a different business model. You start your firm at the beginning. Did you decide we’re going to do subscriptions only?
What was the beginning like? Or was it a And evolution into subscription only. And let me back up. It may not be subscription only. Maybe you do some other flat fee project type work too. So if I’ve got that wrong, you can correct me.
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah, and bear with me. For those of you who you don’t actually watch this video, I am tinkering with my lights here to like, get like my lighting right while we’re having this interview. So this is a shout out to, go watch the video version of this if you want to see me playing around with my lighting. So, Well, so did you want me to answer when I got started what I decided or I forgot that [00:09:00] you just asked me like a second question
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, it’s really, you know, when you started your firm, did you know you’re going to be subscription only? And I assume it’s subscription only, but then I added that
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jonathan Hawkins: some flat fee.
Mathew Kerbis: that’s right.
Jonathan Hawkins: stuff.
Mathew Kerbis: Right. Right. So I take the Costco approach where in order to get access to the amazing fixed fee deals, you must first become a member. You must first subscribe. Right. So I have a hybrid. I do have pure subscription clients where they just pay a higher ticket monthly subscription and it’s sort of scoped amount of projects and types.
It depends on the business a month. So those are pure subscription and I’d still say that makes up the majority of my revenue for my firm. but I do have just clients paying a de minimis monthly amount, like 20 a month That is how clients get started. And then there are fixed fees that they get access to on top of that.
And so, and that was from the very beginning, that was my model. It was designed to have high ticket. Higher level monthly subscription packages with more fees bundled in and so really what I did is I looked at what are all the services I could provide not just [00:10:00] legal services Services where all the services I could provide that are quasi legal still because it is still a law firm They’re engaging with right things like being a registered agent Like is there anything that’s like inherently gotta be a lawyer to be a registered agent for no, but it’s related to helping small business owners, right, to also be the registered agent.
So I’ve unbundled that and that has its own monthly subscription add on fee. So they subscribe at 20 a month. And if they want that service, I can’t remember exactly what I’ve got to price that now, because I do play around with pricing sometimes, but it’s all my prices are on my website. So like they could subscribe to add that on if they want me to be the registered agent for them, or if they’re subscribed at a high enough level, that’s just bundled back in.
Same thing with negotiations. Same thing with it’s 50 a page is like the true a la carte. We don’t know what it is. I’ll help with whatever it is. And it’s 50 a page, whether I draft it, review it, whatever. But we stopped counting pages at the higher Subscription tiers, we just count projects. So there’s still like a counting metric, but clients understand what a page is.
They understand what a project is. They don’t understand like what a tenth of an [00:11:00] hour was and why you had to spend a tenth of an hour on that kind of a thing.
Jonathan Hawkins: Sounds like you focus on business clients. Is there a particular niche within the niche? Is it like, you know, restaurants or automotive dealers or whatever it is?
Mathew Kerbis: You know, I’m only three years into this journey, like I said, and so I’m still sort of feeling out if there is a particular industry specific, like niche, niche, niche, you know, both ways. I’ve heard it both ways.
Jonathan Hawkins: I’m from the South. We call it a niche. I call it a niche.
Mathew Kerbis: well, you know, you can’t say riches in the niches and make it rhyme. So I understand that.
I’ve always called it a niche. just how I was first introduced to it. So, so like my niche is I’m the subscription attorney and I’m an affordable monthly rate and otherwise fixed fee prices to subscribers and like. That’s my niche, right? As far as businesses, like they tend to be like I call it a small business. What’s a small business under my definition? Small enough that you don’t have a full time in house attorney. I mean, I’ve represented clients that have hundreds of employees, but they’ve just always outsourced their legal. They don’t want a full time in house attorney. And I am one of. it. Several counsel [00:12:00] that they hire, but I’m essentially their fractional in house attorney, right?
And it goes all the way down to just an everyday person. I do have a retail practice where I’m representing everyday people and consumers and just their engagement in the world when it comes to signing documents and stuff. And they’re all the same documents that I might draft for the business that they’re signing.
Right. So the expertise, there’s plenty of overlap. and frankly, I kind of wish the business had hired me. because like this dog groomer just gave a terrible agreement to this client or this contractor is doing work on my client’s home. And like, their agreement is a mess and like, I need to clean it up.
Right. So like, I, like, In a way, like it’s all kind of the same work that I’d be doing whether I was representing that contractor or the homeowner who’s been offered an agreement to sign by their contractors coming to do work on their home. And I’ve gone totally down market, right? So like my philosophy is taking that blue ocean market strategy approach.
Right. So there’s the Red Ocean. There’s the institutional clients and it’s you know, there’s sharks. They’re swimming. They’re eating fish. It’s red, right? Like I’m going to swim over here where there’s plenty of [00:13:00] fish and fewer if not no other sharks and there’s there’s downsides to that. We can talk about that.
But like my clients have been long unserved by lawyers and the legal profession for a really long time. And so like, Like, it’s no wonder I’m seeing contracts that were cobbled together from, you know, copying and pasting from Google searches. And now these days, chat GPT, where it has things in there like, like this doesn’t, this is not that kind of contract, like, like this person has no idea what they’re doing, they’re doing kind of thing.
I’ve even get business clients that are like, Oh, I drafted this operating agreement with chat GPT. Oh, you did. This is more of like an executive summary of a summary of an operating agreement. Like this is like eight pages. We’re going to need a few more pages than that. So it’s, it’s wild what you see like down market in my space, but there’s ample market opportunity.
That’s another reason why I’m happy to teach other lawyers to do what I do. I do a lot of CLEs because I’m not scared of competition over here. Like rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing. Like. The more lawyers doing what I do or some version of it, the more it creates awareness that, oh yeah, you could subscribe to an attorney.
So I’m happy to teach [00:14:00] folks even literally in my backyard how to do it. And frankly, I just referred a potential client of mine to one of those lawyers who’s like also in Illinois and does versions of what I do, but he was just a particularly a better fit for this particular client. So there’s plenty of competition or there’s plenty of market opportunity.
I’m not worried about competition.
Jonathan Hawkins: You’ve talked a little bit about pricing and some of your approaches. I want to dive into that a little bit deeper. So, now you mentioned you, you work sort of down market, but let’s say you’ve got a client that’s, you know, business that’s got basically it’s a sole provider basically versus a business that has a hundred employees.
I would imagine. The amount of work and the issues that come up for the a hundred employee business is going to be a lot more just, just by virtue of just being bigger. Do you set your pricing differently depending on the size of the client?
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah. So, sometimes yes, but I, still ultimately let the client decide. and you’d be amazed, like, you know, sometimes people are like, well, how do I know what to charge? Well, you kind of got, you got to give your client some options, right? But you kind of got to let them choose. And the subscription model lends itself [00:15:00] really well to that.
And I do have some set prices with some scoped packages on my website. And realistically, like, Like only a handful of my clients actually like go with those exact packages. I’m happy to customize packages for clients. And frankly, if they do sign up at a level and it’s too low or too high or not quite right, like after about a quarter of helping them out, like after about three to four months, We’re able to have a conversation and say, like, these are really your legal needs.
You know, let’s re scope, like, maybe you don’t need my help with negotiating things because you You just like to handle the negotiations. So we’re going to unbundle that from the bundle, but we’re going to add another project a month kind of a thing, right? And it’ll come out to like either the same price or slightly increased or slightly decreased price depending on their circumstance.
And I’m one of the benefits of being an independent is I’m able to just make these decisions. I don’t have to go check in with the committee. don’t have to go, you know, make decisions with anybody else. I just get to decide and experiment and play around with it. And like, I, I am still sort of sorting it out [00:16:00] and figuring it out.
And obviously it depends on like a lot of factors, right? Like context really matters. But, like, you’d be surprised. Like, some businesses, even though they’re larger, maybe they’ve got their legal things wrapped up. Like, I have had some clients who have started up paying, like, mid thousands a month and gone down to low thousands a month because now that I’ve been in their business for six months, I’ve helped like tie up some things, improve some processes and procedures.
And so like, they don’t really need a lawyer in their business as much as they did when I was like helping get them out of some stuff that they were stuck in and help create some. um, Like, you know, negotiation playbooks and contract playbooks that now they could follow without always having to loop me in.
But they still like having a lawyer available. They just don’t need me as much, right? And so like getting the clients to a place where they’re like that, and now I’m just in maintenance mode with them, it’s actually great for me because I’m still providing great value and being available. And it’s actually less work for me.
So even though I’m making less revenue for that client in that. That month or over the next few months, if they stay subscribed forever, that’s [00:17:00] lifetime value. That’s, you know, that’s worth way more than just being able to bill a lot of hours on a few projects when they first come to me with a problem.
Jonathan Hawkins: So there’s a couple of things I want to unpack from that. But the first one is you said you’d start off and you do a lot of stuff for them early and then you scaled it back. So I’ve heard from some lawyers, their fear in a subscription type Model is that they’re going to get taken advantage of the client’s going to come in month one and say Here’s the list of everything to do go and then you do all that and they’re like, thank you.
I’m discontinuing my my subscription Have you dealt with that? And how would you address that? What would your response to those lawyers that would say something like that?
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah, yeah, it’s just about properly pricing and scoping your services, right? And if they have a lot of things they want to get done right now, that’s a premium for right now. And you can still charge like a fixed rate for that if you want to, but you could also tell them, Look, like, I’m busy. You know, like you gave me a lot of stuff.
It’s going to take six months to get through all of this. Let’s prioritize which are the first five things that you want done. And maybe we could get that done in the [00:18:00] next 60 days. And you just have to have a conversation with them. Lawyers are scared to talk about money and they’re scared to talk about value.
It’s like, what’s it? Ask the client, what’s it worth to you to get this all done in the next month? And it’s not about hours spent. Because when I have conversations with lawyers that they feel like they’re going to take advantage of, they’re still tracking hours. I am not tracking hours. I’m about how quickly can I get this work done as effectively as possible?
Because also when you’re helping businesses in particular, but this is true of people too, You know, time isn’t money in that you have a billable rate when you’re a subscription based attorney, but time is still valuable. And the quicker that you could turn something around, the more valuable it is for a client.
So you could ask them, Hey, do you really need this all next month? Well, it’s going to cost 10 times what I originally quoted you because that was not part of our original conversation. Is that something that you can afford right now? No. Okay. Then let’s figure this out and see matters more to you.
I’ve seen this thing circulating sometimes where it’s like good, fast and cheap, and you can pick two, but you can’t pick three, right? Like [00:19:00] that’s pretty applicable in the subscription based model based approach is, you know, like if you want something fast and good, it’s not going to be cheap. And so you just got to have that conversation with your clients.
Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s interesting the scope issue you know, obviously it’s coming up here for the subscription comes up a lot on the flat fee or fixed fee type billing and it’s not easy. I mean, you got to define the scope. I’ve done lots of flat fee. I still do a lot of flat fee stuff. And if you miss define or don’t define well enough, the scope, then you can get really screwed.
Or if you, what I call scope creep, you do define the scope, but then you just start letting little things slide. And so yes, scope a hundred percent important, but it’s funny. Most, lawyers that bill by the hour. And I’ve been there and I still do that. it’s sort of a lazier. You don’t have to take the time up front to find the scope, communicate it, do all that stuff.
Now, sometimes things are moving so fast. You just got to go. I get it, but scope huge. So definitely on that. Let me ask you another thing [00:20:00] about subscriptions. Another model that I’ve seen out there. It sounds like you don’t bill your hours. You don’t track your hours. It sounds like it all.
Mathew Kerbis: Right, that’s
Jonathan Hawkins: I’ve seen quote, subscription models out there that are something like this. And so you pay X amount a month and you get up to five hours of my time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are your thoughts on that kind of model? It seems like,
Mathew Kerbis: That’s not a subscription model.
That’s a billable hour wrapped in another thing. And by the way, you said it, I didn’t have to say it. You said the billable hour is being lazy and you bet it is right. And you know what else is being lazy with, that is paying your employees on an hourly rate and not, you don’t have to be a good manager either.
Like I take all encompassing approach of. Time equals money is bad in all situations, and you said it, so I’ll repeat after you then, although I’ve said it before, too. It’s lazy. You don’t have to actually think about what’s the value of the work I’m providing to the client. You don’t actually have to think about what’s the value that this employee is giving to my business and my end clients, right?
It’s about, You have to think of the value [00:21:00] when it comes to your work that clients are paying for and when it comes to your employees and if you’re paying them by the hour to move them away from that. Not necessarily like a traditional salary, but you got to think like if this is what you’re making every week, here’s the minimum things you have to do every week.
Minimum things you have to do every day and that requires management and not micromanagement. But that does require management and requires at least two check ins once at the beginning of the week and once at the end of the week to make sure they’ve got their stuff done. And you give them stretch goals and you give them a bonus based on that.
So you align incentives. The subscription model with clients aligns incentives between the work product and the client being happy and getting results and not paying your employees by the hour. Also aligns the incentives of, Here’s the things that need to be done. Stretch goals. You make more money.
Talk about aligning incentives. You think they’re gonna get their stuff done? Yeah, and they don’t have to track their time and clock in and clock out. They just get the work done and they’ll be financially rewarded for that? Absolutely. So I mean, I take that approach with everything. You know, with the whole you know, It’s pre selling, it’s [00:22:00] pre sold hours when you do it the way that you mentioned of like you get five hours a month or whatever.
There are so, it, maybe other professions can get away with it that don’t have the ethics that we have. But that’s billable hours and you have to refund any hours they don’t use. And so you’re not actually accessing the benefits of the subscription model when you’re pre selling hours because you have ethical requirements under your, rules. Rule your professional rules of responsibility or rules of professional conduct or whatever your jurisdiction calls them about fees and refunding unearned fees.
Well, with the subscription model, it’s a recurring fixed fee under most ethics and it’s just educational information purposes only. I’m not ethics counsel for anyone. The lawyer listeners know I’m not their attorney. So you know, like, like, be super careful with that. For me, what, like, how do you define your subscriber benefits?
And for me, they get access. They get access to a certain amount of projects a month. They get access to schedule unlimited scheduled calls, right? They get access to below market fixed fee services [00:23:00] and subscription add ons, right? They’re getting access. And even if I only do a handful of projects a month and they’re paying for a lot more, if I were to have charged them per page, and this is the benefit of really looking at your legal services and unbundling all them, if I were to charge them 50 a page, they would have probably still paid more than their monthly subscription.
Right? and that’s also psychologically difficult for lawyers when pricing legal, when pricing subscription. Services is, yeah, you could be charging more, but you’re not trying to maximize profit in the short term. You’re trying to maximize profit in the long term. And that might mean in the short term, you’re charging a little bit less.
And that’s hard for some lawyers to wrap their heads around when you’re trying to maximize profit with the billable hour in the short term, because it’s all short term.
Jonathan Hawkins: And you touched on, you touched on
Mathew Kerbis: don’t pre sell your hours.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. You touched on something too for a subscription, I’m sure, but flat fee, all of it, most lawyers that bill by the hour, when they start to make a move that way, they do this internal calculation. How long is this going to take? What’s my hourly rate?
And they try to convert in their [00:24:00] head. And then that’s what they price. And as you have said here, you got to just break out of, it’s a completely different paradigm. You just got to. You just gonna go with it And the other thing you hit on, which I think is important and is scary for a lot of lawyers, you just You gotta experiment.
You gotta learn. And every time you get a little bit better, I’m sure. I bet you your subscription model has been tweaked so many times over the last three years. It’s probably getting better and better. By the day, right?
Mathew Kerbis: I mean, it hasn’t been tweaked. too much. Like I try not to like tweak it like every day, but I have definitely made pricing changes and scoping changes like several times over the last three years, you know, probably like fewer than 10 changes a year, but still like I’m making changes like as I go and I have my in my engagement agreement.
I explained that I could make changes. Right? I let the clients know and my engagement agreements on my website, by the way, so talk about transparency, like even if they can’t like find it, like imagine your client trying to find your engagement agreement or having to ask you for it. Then, you know, you’re in trouble.
[00:25:00] Well, you know, my engagement agreements just on the website and with the scoping problems to like you talked about earlier. if you realize they’re going outside the scope or there was a scoping problem, you have to have in your engagement agreement, Hey, if there’s any scoping issues, we have to have a conversation and change the price.
You just got to let them know. And like, usually like that’s just good customer service, but it’s also probably in your rules of ethics that you got, that you got to let them know, right. And have that conversation with them. so those are the really important things to do.
Jonathan Hawkins: Okay. So I want to move on. I want to get to technology to support this, but before we get there, I want to talk about selling the subscription service to clients. I’ll tell you my, my story, and then maybe you can give me some advice. So, I represent lawyers primarily, and I have toyed with, I’ll call it a subscription, but basically some sort of service where there is that package where they get this per month, whatever.
and I’ve market tested it. I I’ve asked dozens and dozens of [00:26:00] lawyers, would you like this? Would this be interesting? La la la. And I’ve gotten a lot of pushback. So, uh, you know, some say, well, if I need you. I’ll just hire you and pay you by the hour. I hear, I’m scared I won’t, I won’t really use you.
I have others say, I just I’m just suspicious of subscriptions. Period. So that’s similar to what some of the feedback I’ve gotten. I still think if I design the right value proposition, it will sell itself. Both what’s included in the scope, the pricing, all of that.
I want to know what’s been your experience.
You know, you’re not selling to lawyers, you’re selling to business owners. What’s been your experience with selling a subscription model versus something else?
Mathew Kerbis: So a lot of it’s mindset and like your customer avatar, and as you’ve identified their lawyers and you’re selling to the one industry that still builds by the hour,
Jonathan Hawkins: the problem, right?
Mathew Kerbis: that’s the problem. Like, like, okay. So I’ve never had this conversation before because. In every other conversation, it’s like, well, they’re already [00:27:00] paying for subscriptions and like everything else they do.
And now for their lawyer, like you get to have that conversation with them, but for you, like their business model, or billable hours are contingency usually. Right. that’s a tough one. It is tougher because of that. Like, I do sell to lawyers inadvertently. Not as a lawyer though. Like, when I started teaching this and doing CLEs, like, lawyers would come up to me after CLE or message me, you know, after a virtual one and say, Can you pay me?
Or could I pay you and you teach me how to do what you do? And so begrudgingly and kicking and screaming, I did develop a little bit of a course that I’m talking about re evaluating. It used to be one on one and I just don’t have time for that. Like I might do cohort based stuff in 2025. So I’m recalibrating because the waitlist is long.
Now the difference between you and me is these lawyers are already interested in subscription. And so that I charge like, you know, a fixed rate over depending on how quickly you want to launch five weeks, five months or 10 months. It’s a short term subscription. I mean, it’s kind of a payment plan, but like [00:28:00] you’re getting different things every month.
So I think it’s still a subscription. like it’s, it’s a little bit different because they’re already in the mindset of subscription is good. So what I would do for you is I would have a conversation with you. And let’s see, like, how many subscriptions do you have, right? And you got the obvious ones, the streaming platforms.
But then what about the other memberships, the shopping memberships, right? Amazon Prime, Costco, right? Now think about the other things. Their internet plan, their phone plan, their salaried employees are on subscription, insurance is on a subscription. And if you start helping them see that everything they’re paying for is on subscription, and that if they’re, in particular, if they’re a founding partner, If they’re a managing partner, they’re running a business.
it’s easier to manage and run a business when you see what your outgoing spend is going to be. In particular, when your incoming revenue is also on subscription, that makes it really easy to manage. Right? I have all my, like, I, sorry to all the law firm CPAs out there, but like, my balance sheet is easy.
Like, it is so easy. I do not need your help. I do have a CPA and they’re great. And they, they take care of everything for me. And I’m one of their [00:29:00] easiest customers. So like you just got to let them see that they’re already paying for everything else on subscription with the exception of legal services or like some professional services.
And that this is actually to their benefit to be able to budget for it for the year. and for your industry in particular, something that I’m trying to do more and more with the subscription model is you could really show ROI. How can you show ROI? It’s a little bit harder in like The family law space and like the criminal law space, because you could do post decision, like, like petition and and settlement agreement or probation style maintenance. But for all the other areas you can, I think, show ROI, right? Here’s what it was going to cost you if you didn’t amend your estate plan. You wouldn’t have this annual subscription check in, right? Here’s what it would have cost you, like you started making money on this deal six months sooner than you would have if I took three months to get back to you instead of, you know, 48 hours with every redline turnaround, right?
So like you could start to show the ROI. So here’s what this would have cost you in defense fees when this client filed a [00:30:00] malpractice case against you, but now because you’re paying me 100 a month or 1, 000 a month or whatever it is. When we are having monthly check ins, I’m able to help you avoid tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses or in, premiums for professional liability premium increases, right?
So like, like you just got to explain to them the ROI on that would actually help you price your services too. because you could see like, okay, like if I’m saving them 100, 000, You know, a year or in two years, like then it will help you price like 10 percent of that, you know, divided by 12 and there’s your monthly subscription or you maybe just charge an annual subscription and you have monthly or quarterly check ins or something like that, right?
So like, and then any additional fixed fee services on top of that, they get access to a discount for those fixed fees by being a subscriber since you already are offering fixed fees. If you weren’t already offering fixed fees, my recommendation would be don’t even. Like, don’t go down that road of being like, here’s my fixed fees, here’s my subscription, but you get a discount on the fixed [00:31:00] fees.
I normally just say, just do the subscription. Make them subscribe and have a de minimis amount that makes sense for the market you’re trying to serve. But in your instance, you’re already offering fixed fees. And so you can pivot to subscription, With a discount on those fixed fees, if they ever happen and occur, and that’s another incentive.
But over time, my recommendation is still eventually just drop the fixed fees because I don’t think any, eventually none of your clients will hopefully be even just doing that. They’ll all be subscribed.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. So that is a, a strategy that I, or a, a value add that I did consider, or, or at least pitch these people that, you know, if you’re in the subscription, you’ll get X percent off if you ever hire me for anything outside the subscription.
​So, a, a a related question about, you know, you’re selling the subscription to potential [00:32:00] clients, now you’ve got clients.
In the subscription model you know, in the software world, there’s a, the concept of churn. And first of all, you know, for those out there who may not know what that is, maybe explain what churn is and then what strategies. Can you employ to perhaps minimize the churn of clients?
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah. So, I’ve, I’ve consumed a lot of information around the subscription economy as it relates to the software industry in particular, right? And churn is this concept of users who are not, who were subscribed and are no longer subscribed. And there’s inadvertent churn, like a credit card expiring, although there’s a lot of technology now that just fixes that in the back end.
I use Stripe, and Stripe kind of just does that. It’s amazing. I don’t even have to do anything. Stripe only makes money when I make money, and I will happily give up 3 to make 97 every time. Especially since I make it right away, before I do any work. So, and lawyers need to get in that mindset. But think of all the lessons that you could extrapolate from the software industry and other subscription businesses and the subscription economy, I think the whole churn [00:33:00] stuff is not applicable.
We are a service based business. People hire you because they know, like, and trust you. That’s it. That’s it. And they keep working with you because they know, like, and trust you. And, like, when you
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, well, I
Mathew Kerbis: in these anti churn
Jonathan Hawkins: I guess maybe it’s not churn in the traditional sense. let me, maybe uh, modify the question. You’ve got a client that’s, that’s in the subscription. And then maybe after eight months they say, you know what, I don’t need it, or I’m not getting any value anymore. How do you combat that reaction? How do you continually show that you’re delivering value? What strategies do you have there?
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah, and this is what I love about the month to month subscription, is every month I have to be providing minimum value or they’re going to unsubscribe. So like, it’s just the incentives are aligned. In the same way that you get a new case and you start thinking, how many hours can I bill? On this thing, right?
But you but just Your incentives are now, I have to at least have one monthly touch point with this client to say, Hey, I’m here. Here’s the link. Schedule a [00:34:00] 15 minute call with me. Let me know if anything’s happening, you know? and, And you don’t, I don’t actually say this, but I explain this when they’re onboarding. How like you’ve paid, you’ve paid for this, for these conversations.
And there are some lawyers who are like in Calendly or their scheduling tool. They’re limiting like this. Each client gets a unique scheduling link and they’re limited to five. You know, scheduled calls a month or whatever. Well, the client, the client’s horror to those five until they need them. So that’s one other reason why I like Unlimited, because I actually want the clients talking to me and reaching out to me.
So I don’t cap the quantity of communications. I just limit it to 15 minutes at a time, and I put everything in my calendar. My personal life is in my calendar, in addition to my, work life, right? To make sure I’m never double booked for anything. It happens very rarely, but it does happen. So you still have to be prepared for some of that.
But if you put everything in your calendar, it will almost never happen. In the last three years, I’ve had like three double bookings. So like, it doesn’t happen very often. You know, having said that, like, It kind of just happens because your clients are calling you, right? And if they’re [00:35:00] not, then there’s a pricing problem or you’re not doing enough outreach and there are, there’s technology out there to start the technology conversation that automates emails, right?
It’s a little bit with a lack of a personal touch and I’m not crazy about that stuff. Although I’ve seen like I recently demoed like law Maddox and they do have some pretty cool tech and their client portal is like so close. I might actually just want to like use it if they do a chat feature in there, like where I could actually chat with the clients to become clients.
Like, so there’s like some tech out there that’s even legal tech that will do this, but there’s tons of non legal tech, right? You could schedule just in Calendly, you could have all kinds of automated follow up messages just in like your scheduling tool, let alone like a CRM tool. right? And in my CRM tool, which is SweetDash, which is, it’s serviceable.
It’s a 7 out of 10, you know, it’s, it’s good. it’s not the best ever, but it’s also only cost you 150 annually and it’s HIPAA compliant if you turn on those features. So, you know, you could automate a lot of stuff in there and I automate some, but I don’t automate a lot. They help you group different clients.
You could just automatically message certain clients and you’re just about keeping at [00:36:00] least once a month, maybe once a week, contact daily is crazy. Don’t do that to your clients. And for the biggest clients, like I have mandatory like standing meetings, Whether that’s virtual or in person. Because even though I’m a virtual law firm, inherently my business is very local.
And so I’ll do onsites. I’ll do a weekly with my biggest client. It’s like four hours a week I’m onsite. And with other clients it’s once a month for like an hour. Right? And so doing things like that and having standing meetings like you’re going to be providing value. You’re going to be putting in actual FaceTime or virtual FaceTime, and there are standing meetings that you have with these clients and getting that on the calendar far in advance, right?
And having a plan. Procedure in place for rescheduling. If something needs to be rescheduled and whether or not that’s even considered a subscriber benefit or it’s just an added value is up to you and how you define your subscriber benefits. But I have found that the best way to like, do like the professional services version of like churn management is let them self serve [00:37:00] unsubscribe and resubscribe and that’s scary.
Right? But I have plenty of boomerang clients. I just let them unsubscribe and resubscribe. And even when they’re not subscribed, they think of me as their lawyer. There’s no attorney client engagement. My engagement agreement is crystal clear about that. And you know, if there’s a client who subscribes in the interim and there’s a potential conflict if they’re resubscribed, like my engagement agreement says, like, like I have to do the conflicts check before we’re reengaged and I’ll, I’ll refund the whatever, you know, if there’s a, If he doesn’t pass a conflicts check or there’s no conflicts waiver signed.
So I can’t automate that. I wish I could. But I haven’t found a way to automate that yet, but it’s never really been an issue because like the markets I’m in, like, it’s just, it’s really not an issue. So I just let clients unsubscribe and resubscribe whenever they want. And it’s scary. But in my opinion, it works.
And when you’re down market and you’re not, and like no one client is going to make or break your business. If you’re only representing like five clients, you know, they’re all paying you 10, 000 a month. You know, like, yeah, losing one client could be a serious [00:38:00] blow. But I’m more of a volume based practice and that for me anyway, like it’s okay.
Let that unsubscribe and resubscribe. It’s not going to make or break my business.
Yeah.
Jonathan Hawkins: It sounds like you are solely subscription. You don’t really have any outside, but let me run this scenario by you. Cause this based on what we talked about me, for example. So I have a number uh, service or a schedule of project based flat fee work we do. We could have a scope for a subscription and then maybe they get a discount on some of these other things. We define the scope. Pretty tightly. And we say, okay, for these things that’s in the subscription and this is probably a technology question, but how do you manage a client calls you or reaches out, is it within the subscription scope or is it without, how do you make that determination? Is there a way to.
Funnel in the inquiry. So it’s very clear on the front end. And when it’s just you, it’s probably much easier. One [00:39:00] person, you can figure it out. But let’s say you have a team of three or four and different people are getting calls from different clients at the same time. How would you approach that from a technology standpoint to make it very clear to you on the internal side about whether this is it.
Within the subscription or not.
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah, so I don’t have a team yet. And I’m going to try to keep that away as long as possible. Not because I don’t like leading teams. I actually love it and I have a lot of experience doing it. But I just want to push it and see how far I could scale without actually hiring. But I am thinking about hiring because eventually I want to sell my law firm and you can’t just sell a solo practice.
You have to have a team that goes along with With the sale of the firm right now, that’s like decades away, but I’m thinking about it and what I would have the team members do in particular if they need to talk if the client ultimately needs to talk to me is they will just use Calendly to schedule a time on my calendar that I’m available, right?
Like that’s like something the team members are going to do is triage it and identify. okay. Matthew needs to handle this one. We’re going to schedule you on Matthew’s calendar, you know, and they will just They’ll open [00:40:00] calendly and talk with the client through dates and times available, right?
If the client doesn’t want to do that. As far as like communications and how that’s handled is the way that I recommend for every firm. And you got to figure out the price point for this, right? Is communications are handled as part of the subscription. it’s just part of it. Because realistically, like, I think there are a few situations where.
You’re going to have to do substantive work over a 15 minute phone call, right? Like, if you’re already a master of the space in that legal area, and you’ve answered this, this question a million times. Well, first of all, you should be building a knowledge base and attaching a rag implemented AI, you know, chatbot that could just answer the question.
So when you’re not available, they could do that. And that technology is, is this close to being there. Some of it’s there, but it’s not great for legal yet, but it’s good for like other things. Well, you know, like you just answer that question. In my experience, three years of doing this, I’ve unlimited communications.
That’s part of all my subscriptions. Even when clients are like, well, I just want a simple estate plan for the retail side, right? Or I just want this commercial lease available. Do I, can I just pay you the [00:41:00] 50 bucks a page? Can I just pay you the 400 for the simple estate plan? Well, that 20 a month, that covers our communications.
engages us as attorney client so we could have a confidential attorney client privilege preserved communications and it gets you access to those fixed fees. That’s what that does. And I just bundle any communication that I have with my client is part of that monthly subscription.
that just, is just included. And I really limit it to 15 minutes at a time unless there’s a really good reason. That it needs to be 30 minutes or an hour. And that’s what I do. And that’s how I do. it. I just control the amount of time at a time. because almost always, almost always they’re bringing me more work.
I need this thing reviewed. There’s a fixed fee with that, or that counts against your project limit for the month. I need this thing drafted, right? I need a research project. I have a question that requires research. That’s a project. That counts against your project, right? Well, one of your projects. And I’d only offer that to the business clients.
I don’t really, I’ve tried fixed pricing with the research stuff, and I just, you got to be a business client to get research questions answered. Calendly
Jonathan Hawkins: Another this [00:42:00] is this is sort of a technical question, and I don’t know what’s out there You’ve talked to a lot of people on your podcast again people need to go. No go check it out law subscribed Subscribe follow the podcast listen to it. There’s a lot of good stuff there I’m curious through all the discussions you’ve had and maybe your own experience This is again, this is technology question.
Let’s say you’ve got a team of five lawyers that all can service any client at a given time. You’ve got 20 subscription clients calling in, emailing in to give any given time they come into the system, whatever it is, and they need to be almost like a ticketing system for a it firm or something. How do you direct the incoming client?
Inquiry to the correct attorney. So for example, let’s say your schedule, your calendar’s full. So then we go, how do you assign that inquiry to a particular attorney? Is there technology out there that can help with that? That you know, of
Mathew Kerbis: could definitely do that without question. I don’t, I’ve never used those [00:43:00] features. But I’ve seen those like seminars and, and like in some of their FAQs and knowledge base. That routing is like one of the things they happen to be really good at is routing to the right team member and automating that and folks who are watching the video have seen i’m drinking from a calendly connectors water bottle So like I talk about calendly so much they send me swag and like they asked me to be part of this like thought leadership group so I know about some things in calendly i’m not even using but they for sure can do that jack shelton I think episode one on one. He like Aegis space law. They, he’s been on the podcast. They were implementing, I think, Jira, which is it ticketing software to do exactly this type of thing. also like, but like their clients could also access it and it would be like segmented like for each client so that the client knows like, A status of what’s happening to just like it ticketing.
And it’s like, not like a sexy implementation of like a software, but like, Hey, it works and it’s efficient. And like, it, like, it does exactly what you’re saying. Right. And it’s much, much easier to do it. If every client is on subscription, right? Like, [00:44:00] advice I give all the time that’s really hard for lawyers to understand is you gotta burn the boats.
Like, do you want your subscription model to be successful? You gotta burn the boats. Whether that means leave a practice and start a new one, or everybody getting on board with a plan to implement. It doesn’t mean tomorrow. It doesn’t mean you go cold turkey. But it means tomorrow. let’s pretend that your Bar Association, your State Supreme Court, your governing body has said billable hours banned next year, like 365 days.
What do you do? You create a plan to pivot. and so getting on the same plan and sticking to it as a team that, okay, and you let your clients know, okay, Starting in six months, we’re going to start moving, you know, people to the subscription plan. Those who want to do it at six months, this is the plan they’re going to get.
Those who want to wait until the end of the year, they’re going to be paying a higher subscription price. Right? But you’ve got to commit. And then it’s a heck of a lot easier because you’re not like, well, this person [00:45:00] has billable hour quotas, and this person is servicing the subscription people. Commit to the business model and it will be much easier.
Because subscription models always fail. When you’re still billing hours and still doing other things, it’s just you can’t do both.
Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a scary, scary proposition, man. You know, you’ve got lawyers out there who are risk averse. You say burn the boats and they’re over there going, Oh my God, no way. So, is there anything you would recommend in lieu of burning the boats for people to get started? If they want to test this out, experiment, what are some first steps maybe that they could do?
Mathew Kerbis: I mean, you want to talk to your existing clients and work it out with them. Hey, you know, look at last year, and again, this is having a money conversation. This is also scary for lawyers.
So maybe you just want to burn the boats. Maybe this makes you want to burn the boats. You know, last year you paid us 20, 000. You know, maybe you didn’t want them to know that. Last year you paid us 20, 000. Here’s all the work that we did. We think that we could save you 5, 000. And [00:46:00] we’re going to be more proactive rather than reactive, And we’re going to charge you, you know, 12. 50 a month, you know, to take care of these, these things Is that something that you’d be open to, you know, but you’ve got to look at your data and you can do it in the aggregate too. you could do it per client.
Like I just talked about, or you could say our average matter makes us whatever, you know, 24, 000. Let’s do 24, 000 because it’s easier math, right? you know, some cases, you know, maybe they make us more, and they’re more complicated. You know, so maybe instead of charging 2, 000 a month, you know, to get that 24, 000, you know, maybe we charge 2, 500 a month because some cases will be more complicated.
And if you just want fixed pricing because it’s easier to manage, like, this is my price for this 2, 000. type of scope services and that’s it. Again, I kind of wanted to do that. Ultimately, I’m not doing that, but I’m automating all the charges and stuff. and frankly, like I’m a true solo again. So, like. If a client goes over a project, I get to be magnanimous and be like, you know, I could charge you the 50 a page for this, but let’s not worry about it.
And they do that two or three [00:47:00] months in a row. Hey, you know, really? We got to bump you up a subscription level, right? And then they’re like, well, yeah, I get it I am because I’m getting the value right? So like I’m happy to be magnanimous like that I’m also a true solo if I had Bigger people if I was a bigger firm and I had more people and I needed more of a system I probably couldn’t do that But you could maybe get away with a little bit of that if it’s only like a five five attorney team for if you, you know, if you, if you want to do like the no, everybody’s on the 2500 a month level or 5000 a month or whatever it is, right?
Depends on what your figure is. you got to look at your data and you just let people know this is, this is the number and on some cases, on some clients, you’re going to spend more time, but on most, you’re going to spend way less. And so if you really were tracking your time, which you shouldn’t be, then you’re still going to be better off in the long run holistically, because a lot of lawyers have trouble, like, it’s just this case, like I’m losing money on this case.
but what about holistically? What about on all of your matters, on all of your clients? Because I don’t think about things in terms of matters, I think about things in terms of clients. And I may have a [00:48:00] bunch of matters for one client. Right? Because I’m helping them with, you know, tons of different things, right?
Like I’m their fractional GC, whether it’s their personal life or their small business. So yeah, I mean, I, I could spend a lot of time on that conversation, but that’s the, I think that there’s a lot there for the listeners to take
Jonathan Hawkins: Well, one thing you mentioned um, I think it’s the proactive versus reactive advice for clients. And I think that’s something all lawyers have seen firsthand. You know, the old ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. You know, the client comes to you. Oh man, I just messed all this up. And the lawyers thinking in their head, they may say it out loud.
You should have come to me three months ago when this was going on. And I could have saved you all of this and all the heartache and the additional cost. And so I think that’s huge. I think that would be a really good selling point. It’s it’s the more Not only you’re going to pay less probably in attorney’s fees overall, but you’re probably going to have fewer headaches We can help avoid problems that may arise Otherwise and and you encourage them to reach out instead of thinking i’ll [00:49:00] just wing it because I don’t want to pay the lawyer I’m already paying for this the subscription, right?
Mathew Kerbis: Exactly. I mean, spot on. Yeah. So I do kind of have to wrap things up. So let’s talk tech fast, if that’s okay with you, if you want to talk
Jonathan Hawkins: No, I’m, I’m sort of, I’m done with tech really. I mean, you know, what, what I was interested in, I mean, you talked Calendly, you talked about routing the questions, that’s the thing that, that gets me, cause I, you know, I could see this, if you really get going, this thing could scale. And then if you have lots of team members, how do you route the inquiries from the clients to make sure that they’re, you know, timely serve?
Cause if, you know, Matthew Kervis is busy for the next three days and the client needs an answer. Now they need to get somebody. How do you figure that out? So I think there are some things out there. So let’s talk about real quick some of the things I like to talk about with you know, on this podcast.
So how do you get out there and market? Your services to people, how do you find your ideal clients? I mean, obviously you have a podcast, you’re on this podcast, but this is for lawyers, so how do you get out there and market your services?
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah, [00:50:00] Actually, podcasting is like a big part of it’s become a big part of it. So, I have a that I piloted I think eight episodes in 2024 and in 2025, I’m going to really try to commit to a weekly podcast for this. It’s called the law for kids podcast, and it’s just covering. legal concepts that you got to pay six figures for to learn about in law school, but like definitely kids can understand it if you just explain it for them.
So like, what is negligence? What are damages? What’s assuming a duty? You know, what’s a statute of limitations? What’s eminent domain? Like all of these questions, like even even some like some simpler ones, right? But I’ll tell you what, like the, what are damages is like actually really important.
one. I find I explain all the time, it’s like, okay, sure you could sue, you could win. What are your damages?
Right? Like, is it worth it? So now I just share that podcast episode when somebody asks me about that. So like doing that more and I’ve actually gotten, I got a couple of clients from it, which is pretty exciting.
Cause you know, podcasts, like I’m an Illinois based licensed attorney, So. like doing stuff like doing all that marketing. Like I got to spend a lot of money to do [00:51:00] like targeted ads and other things. Like I do zero marketing and advertising in a traditional sense. And that I, I think about this 20, to 20 a month clients pay me as making money marketing rather than spending money marketing.
Cause like realistically, like I might be able to answer some substantive legal questions over the phone. But usually they’re bringing me work. And so I’d like to think that it’s it’s 20 a month that I’m making to market to clients. And then being involved with local nonprofit boards and my local chamber of commerce.
Now the chamber of commerce, everybody’s there to do business. And so that’s, you know, you get that. I’m involved with local nonprofits that actually matter to me, that I’d be involved with anyway. But I happen to get business from it because you just do good in the community and people want to, they want to hire you, they want to tell people about you, right?
So the local boards and the local nonprofits are a way for me to give back to my community and I happen to get some business referred to me through that. The Chamber of Commerce, I’m starting a podcast that I’ve been doing interviews for this year that we’re launching in 2025. And so, you know, being a podcaster now, I get FaceTime one on one with a lot of chamber members.
I’m the host [00:52:00] and we’re sending it to all the members Yeah. You know, in the chamber, and it’s I’m just volunteering my time for that because it’s an actual value for the members of the chamber, but I’m getting extra face time with everybody for that. And like, there’s my small business owners. Those are the perfect clients for me.
And I, I mean, I’ve gotten enough business through the my local chamber of commerce, and I’m, I’m on the board too, that, like, it will have paid for my membership for several years. So like, like the local, like, don’t underestimate your local chamber of commerce. The only reason I even offer like simple estate plans is I’m there networking with small business owners or biz dev people for small businesses.
And without fail, even though I’m there, like I’m a fractional GC, they’re like, do you do estate planning? Like, I need a will and powers of attorney. So I was like, you know what? I don’t. But you’re the 50th person to ask me that. So I’m going to go take some CLEs and build some automations and get something put together, right?
Like that’s, I’m going to go, I’m going to go figure out how to do that. And I, I actually still refer a lot of estate planning work. that goes far outside of what I’m capable of providing, but a lot of people just have a simple situation, right? So, you [00:53:00] know, like that’s how I do it. And I just, I block time to do that.
And I just make sure that I’m doing that. And when you’re not billing time, it’s a heck of a lot easier to do biz dev because you’re just like everything, every time that you spent all time spent is for the better of the business at that point. Right. And so it’s easy to do things like that.
Jonathan Hawkins: Do you have a few minutes? I got a couple more topics I want to cover. so one of them is, it sounds like another thing that fascinates me about particularly smaller entrepreneurial lawyers is you know, they aren’t just lawyers. They have other little I’ll call them side hustles or other businesses.
It sounds like you’ve got a few. So let’s go through. So you’re running the law firm. You’ve got sort of a training education course thing. You’ve got maybe for other lawyers. You’ve got your podcast and you’re speaking all over the place. Is there anything that I didn’t, didn’t hit that you’re doing?
Mathew Kerbis: well, I haven’t done it in like over eight months because I kind of, I never really advertised it, but I stopped telling people I do it, but I used to be also be a [00:54:00] wedding officiant. And the hypothesis was, you know, I’m in front of a bunch of people and it’s just another, it’s another. Way to like, get my name and face out there and people will look me up and see that I’m a lawyer and I did get a couple of like, law firm clients They’re doing the whole wedding thing and I do a lot of pre nups, but I never really wanted to co mingle the pre nup clients with the wedding officiating stuff.
And so I like, I did spin up like a. You know, like a website and other things like that. And so I’ve, I’ve done that and it’s fun and I like doing that. But at the end of the day, I kind of like just stopped I stopped officiating. I have gotten a couple of calls this year and I was just like, you know, I’m too busy.
Sorry. Here’s some recommendations for some other people to do. But at this point, it’s pretty much the law firm is pretty Probably how I spend like 70 to 80 percent of my time and the rest is on, you know, the podcast. It’s on public speaking and some coaching stuff and I’ve, I’ve actually found like a lot of businesses that I’m helping as their lawyer need a good business consultant too.
And so like I find that I’m also like consulting. Like as a business consultant and their [00:55:00] attorney at the same time. I was just on a phone call with a client this morning. Here’s how you set up Stripe,
right? Like, like I should probably be charging extra for this, but I’m just happy to, you know, because it’s kind of related.
Like we got to put it in the contract, like they’re getting paid via Stripe. It’s in their consulting contract, right? So I’m going to just help them set up Stripe and then they’ll stay subscribed with me as their attorney is sort of the thing. So I’ve, I’ve been thinking about, is there a way for me to bifurcate the business consulting With the legal with I mean the legal consulting essentially is what it is like the legal work that I do and so 2025 I might do something there too.
Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I would explore that. I think that’s a good idea. So, one other comment and then we’ll wrap things up. Earlier you mentioned you want to one day sell your firm. And, you know, I, I help a lot of lawyers do that. And, you know, the one thing I’ll say for everybody out there, which I’m sure you know this generally speaking, if you’ve got A subscription model, the valuations are going to be higher than if you don’t.
So, for those out there that may be [00:56:00] considering going all in on subscriptions or maybe adding that as a potential, you know, service area in your practice you know, at least for those clients and that revenue typically, you know, across industries, you get a higher valuation for those types of clients.
I’m sure you knew that, right?
Mathew Kerbis: Yeah, I mean let’s say uh, I mean there really isn’t an industry standard with law firms. You know that if you help, but it’s like one to maybe, maybe three per three times like receivables. Like three times if you’re lucky if your contingency you’re hourly based. But like you’re talking about ten, Maybe more times your subscription based revenue in terms of valuation when you’re selling a subscription based business. I don’t know of any actual law firms that have been sold that have subscriptions, but if you look at other industries, I mean, sometimes it gets up into a stupid figure of what your subscription revenue is.
So, like, really, really high. So, but I think more reasonably, like, 5 to 10 times is not unreasonable for if you’re selling your law
Jonathan Hawkins: I agree with you, I’ve not seen any law [00:57:00] firms that really have a subscription model. So I can’t tell you I’ve seen it, but yeah, if you’re getting a higher multiple, you know, one way to think about it is the enterprise value of the firm is way higher. you know, the, the month to month revenue may be lower, but the value of the firm is going to be way higher, multiples higher.
Versus an hourly or some other type of practice. So, yeah. So I know you got to go. So, Matthew, I appreciate you taking time for those out there who want to find you, we’ve mentioned your, your podcast law, subscribe again go find that subscribe to that, follow it. There’s some really good episodes there.
Where else can people find you?
Mathew Kerbis: So if you search the subscription attorney, pretty much anywhere but especially on LinkedIn or just Matthew Kerbis connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s the best place to reach me. You know, DMs are open. I don’t always respond right away, but I do get back to you if you send me a message on LinkedIn.
That’s a great place. If you want to see other places that I’ve, I’ve spoken, I’ve talked about things that we were able to cover some things I haven’t covered before. on the founding partners [00:58:00] podcast. Yeah. All my other talks are at MatthewKerbis. com. That’s my speaker portfolio. I Highly recommend folks check that out if they’re interested in some of the other talks I’ve given.
www. lawsubscribe. com. Whether you are into podcasts, if you’re listening to this, you probably are, but if you just want something in your web browser something in your email, that’s a great way to sign up to get the podcast right in your, your email feed right there. And the lawfirmissubscriptionattorney. com. All my pricing’s on my website, my engagement agreement’s on my website. I’m not shy about sharing what I do. So go check that out too.
Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. Matthew. Appreciate it, man. I learned a lot today. That’s really good. Thank you.
Mathew Kerbis: Thanks for having me.
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