The ALPS In Brief Podcast

ALPS In Brief Podcast - Episode 80: Empowering Women in Law - The Girl Attorney

Rio Peterson:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode 80 of ALPS's In Brief Podcast. My name is Rio Peterson. I will be your host today. I am the Bar Partnership Strategist at ALPS, and I'm very excited to be here, kind of sharing hosting duties with Mark, who will be joining us on a future episode. But for today, you got me, and you've also got with you and myself with Susan Carns Curtiss. Susan, hi. Welcome.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Hi, Rio. Thank you for having me.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. Thank you for joining us. So for those of you who don't know, Susan is not just a lawyer, but also the founder of an incredible group called GIRL ATTORNEY. So today, we're going to sit down and chat with her a little bit about her work as a lawyer and her work with the group. And in honor of Women's History Month, we're going to be exploring all of the incredible opportunities and ways that GIRL ATTORNEY has brought women together. So, Susan, do you want to start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Sure. So I am an attorney based out of Oklahoma City. I am a personal injury attorney, and I handle cases just within the state of Oklahoma related to when someone's injured as a result of an auto collision. I do a little bit of other things, but mostly, if someone calls me about anything else, I tell them where they can find good representation, not from me. I know what I know and I know what I don't know in plaintiff's personal injury and, specifically, auto neg, auto negligence. So that's really my sweet spot, and that's what I'm focused on. That's what I do.

Rio Peterson:

Sick. And I feel like knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know is kind of a superpower, actually. I don't think a lot of people know what they don't know.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And truly, that's one of the most valuable things I've come to appreciate as an attorney, is the value of practicing in an area where you know what your limits are. So you're never going to know it all. And even if the laws on the books haven't changed, how it's applied, it is evolving. There's new fact situations, and people are always looking for new ways to understand how the law applies today.

So one thing, and we'll get to GIRL ATTORNEY later, but one of the most valuable things that I have gleaned from my years of watching women have conversations there is, yes, I should not dabble in anything else, because as they have conversations about nuances and areas of practice I don't have, I realize more and more, "Yes, good to know. Interesting." And it's just affirmation. My comfort level is to stay in my lane.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

No pun intended.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. And being a specialist is a fantastic thing.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Well, yes, focusing on one area of practice is what works well for me. So I can feel confident. Like I said, even when I don't know, I know what the boundaries are, I know what the questions are, and I know it's not a function of, "I just don't know this area of practice well enough." I never want my client to have their case handled by somebody who really doesn't know.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Right?

Rio Peterson:

Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

That's where you want your clients. So my personal injury clients, if they call me about estates, I say, "I love that you trust me with that. I do not trust me with that. So let me find you someone." That's my point.

Rio Peterson:

Fantastic. I love that. I feel like your clients can really trust you to do what's best for them and serve their best interest.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Hopefully. Hopefully.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes.

Rio Peterson:

So how long have you been practicing law, Susan?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Since I graduated in '06, December of '06. And so, I took the bar early '07 and got sworn in a couple months later when, thankfully, I passed that sucker first try. So that's how long I've been practicing, and very thankful for that. Yup. It's been a bit.

Rio Peterson:

Awesome. What first drew you to law?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Oh, okay. And actually, we did not talk about this ahead of time, so you don't know, but I love telling the story.

Rio Peterson:

Excellent.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I was a juror. That's why.

Rio Peterson:

Wow, really?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I was a juror on a case in Oklahoma, of course. It was a bad-faith case, which is basically when someone sues their insurance company because they believe the insurance company didn't handle their claim properly, and not just a mistake, like, "They did bad. That's why it's bad faith." All right. So I'm a juror on this case, and it was a week-and-a-half-long trial. I, at the time, was working at a flower shop part-time, thinking about, "Maybe I should start my own business."

I checked out a library book for break time during jury duty on how to open a flower shop. This is kind of where I thought my life was going. And over the course of a week and a half, I thought, "Oh my gosh, this is the best show ever."

Rio Peterson:

That's so cool.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Well, I mean, truly, bad-faith cases, it's insurance. It really shouldn't be interesting, but I was fascinated with all of it. So long story short, at the end of that week-and-a-half-long trial, I reached out to the judge, a woman, because I was relatively new to Oklahoma City, and I didn't know anyone who was an attorney. Well, I didn't know any women who were attorneys. So there was a neighbor, who was a guy, who was an attorney. But anyway, I didn't know anybody. And so, I thought, "Well..." I mean, I was just so young, just such a baby, little baby adult. I was pregnant with my third when I was going through jury duty.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And so, I spoke with the judge and asked her, "Hey, can I take you out for lunch?" And she said, "No, but I can host you for lunch in my office." And so, we had lunch, and she was so, so nice. And I've done a little homework. I found out she was a parent. She had children. I've since met her daughter, and she's a lovely person and all this. But anyway, the point is, I thought, "Well, I guess, clearly, she's a successful woman attorney," even though she's a judge, not an attorney.

But anyway, I didn't understand all that. I mean, I knew she wasn't an attorney, but the point is, I was like, "She's a successful woman with a law degree," because I was thinking, "Maybe I should do this." So I met with her. And then after that, I called her back a month or two later and asked her, "Hey, I'm really still curious about this. Could I make your coffee and sweep your floor so I could see more about what happens in a courtroom?"

And I literally did that, and she was like, "Yeah. So I already have people that do that, but you are welcome to come in anytime." So I did. Over the next year, she was so kind. She let me come and watch. We'd sit and talk about things after they happened out in the courtroom. I mean, it was nothing that was even on the other side. I know she didn't cross anything since she wasn't supposed to.

But she would let me hash out my questions about, "Why did it look this way?" or "Why did they handle it this way? Why didn't they do this?" and then her two cents on it. It was just a really amazing experience. She actually also would let me read the briefs that had been submitted to her. Again, all public record, but it was a unique experience. She'd say, "Why don't you go read this stuff and let me know your thoughts on how you think I should rule?"

I know nothing. I was like 0% helpful to her. She was just being nice to me. But it did really get me interested in being a lawyer and being a litigator, and grew my appreciation and my understanding beyond that of being a juror, because that was clearly a front-row seat to what litigators do, but getting to have a better feel of what happens up until and what might potentially even help resolve a case without a trial.

Anyway, so yeah, a year and a half later, I was on a jury in June of '02, again, pregnant with James, my youngest. And then in the fall of '03, when my son was nine months old, I started law school. So I had three kids. And yeah, it was incredible.

Rio Peterson:

That's so cool. That's so cool. And really, kudos to the judge. Sorry, what was her name?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I didn't say. Her name is Nancy, Nancy Coats.

Rio Peterson:

Nancy? Yeah. Well, kudos to Nancy for really nurturing your curiosity and providing that vehicle for you, really, that ability for you to explore and dive deeper into that. That's a really incredible story. Have you kept in touch with Nancy at all?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Oh, yes.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I'm the president of her fan club. Wait, she doesn't really have a fan club. But yes, we absolutely have, and it's so sweet. In fact, she just got honored a few months ago, and she invited me to sit at her table. Right? I was her guest at this thing.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, that's wonderful.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So that is the long story short as to our relationship.

Rio Peterson:

Gorgeous.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Absolutely. She has maintained a relationship with me and invested in me, and she tells me all the time how proud she is of me.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, wonderful.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And it's funny. And actually too, another fun, crazy thing about this: The defendant in that bad-faith lawsuit, we found in favor of the plaintiff as against the defendant. The defendant was Mid-Century Insurance Company, which is a subsidiary. I may not be using the right word. But basically, they're under, and also, they are a Farmers Insurance company.

Rio Peterson:

Got it.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

When I graduated law school, my first litigation job was with Farmers Insurance.

Rio Peterson:

Was it with Farmers?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes.

Rio Peterson:

That's great. What a small world.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Oh, yeah. So small. My eventual boss, I mean, technically, he was a colleague. He wasn't really my boss. But he had decades of experience on me, and we both worked at Farmers. He was my boss in my mind. He was on the stand for four or six hours of this trial.

Rio Peterson:

That's incredible.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Crazy. And they did know. They did know. Yeah. But they still hired me. And we entered a verdict against Farmers for, I think it was 2.1 million.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, wow.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Anyway, at any rate, it wasn't like chump change. It was real dinero. Anyway, but yeah, that's crazy. It is crazy, but it is true. That is how I ended up in law school. I just was a fascinated juror, and did homework that just made sense to me. At one point, Judge Coats said to me... I don't remember now if it was weeks or months or years into it, but she, at one point, said to me... And this did stick out. She said, "It took a lot of guts to reach out to a judge."

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, if someone would've told me it takes guts to do this, I would not have done it." It just made sense to me. I was just like, "Who else am I going to ask? I don't know any women attorneys. This is the one woman attorney I've ever been exposed to in this city or state. I might as well ask her."

Rio Peterson:

Did you?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So, yes-

Rio Peterson:

It seems like she would know.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

... I had no idea. I just was a desperate person for information, and she was nice enough to respond. So yeah, it is kind of funny how, looking back, I accidentally did things just by following my nose that led me to the right place to be at the right time. Yeah.

Rio Peterson:

Wow, that's such an incredible-

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I'm very thankful.

Rio Peterson:

... origin story. I really love that you reached out and that she received, and here you are. It's really incredible. And I think that that's also a really good, possibly, segue into how you came to found GIRL ATTORNEY, because I think there's a lot of parallels with women lifting each other up and helping each other kind of get further and move forward. So tell me a little bit about how GIRL ATTORNEY came to be.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So I worked at Farmers for a few years, and I had a great experience. My colleagues were great. The company was good to work for. Our clients as lawyers were the insureds. And I was in an office where it was very clear, my loyalty was to my client, not the person who paid my check, because you can see how that could be an issue. And all I can say about the office I was in was, is there was never a question. Never. Your loyalty, your obligation is to our insured, not to Farmers.

And it's rare anything came up, but I never felt like there was a pushback when there was something. Anyway, so great experience, but I was 13... 12 or 13. I can't remember. I think it was 12, maybe it was 13, jury trials, three-and-a-half years into doing the work with Farmers, and I started to feel a tension about whether or not I have been given this opportunity to go to law school to save an insurance company money.

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Again, I worked with great people. You need to have good, nice people on both sides that will advocate hard for their clients. So I always took a lot of pride in the work I did, but I would often get verdicts for zero for the plaintiff, or very little for the plaintiff, which, by the way, my clients loved, the adjusters loved, Farmers loved. I was not loving myself as much as each trial went on. I thought, "Oh." I mean, you win one, two, three, or four, and you're like, I was anyway, "I'm a killer. I am so good at this. Oh, I'm a boss. People love me."

Okay. But eventually, this is happening over and over and over and over, and I thought, "I mean, I know I'm just doing my job. I'm not calling anyone a liar, but I'm just trying to get the impression that the system is slanted in favor of my position on the civil side." And that was my experience. That is not always the case, but it just ended up being my experience.

And so, I was this many. I was at least a dozen trials in, and I had gotten one verdict total. It was my second trial, where a verdict was more than our last offer. But everything else was a zero or it was less than our offer. And so, it's a win. I mean, that's how they calculate a win. So even if it's a plaintiff's verdict, if it's real low, then... If it's lower than our last offer, it's a win.

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So I started feeling like this wasn't the long-term career for me, because I wanted to be able to go and fight hard on behalf of my client, respectfully, but hard and focused. And if I somehow accomplished more than maybe I meant to, I could still be excited. Right? Instead, I was like, "Oh, man. I zeroed him out again." Like, "Thank you. Thank you. Adjusters love me." But I just wasn't enjoying it, because I thought, "Some of these people really should be getting something, and they should be getting more."

And so, it was around that time, a lawyer from the other side reached out and asked if I would be willing to switch to the plaintiffs' side. So long story short, I ended up doing plaintiffs' work, and that's when I came to find out or more clearly understand that there are so few women that do plaintiffs' personal injury work.

Rio Peterson:

Oh.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I mean, even my own experience, every jury trial I had was against a guy.

Rio Peterson:

Ooh, interesting.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

There are very few women that do plaintiffs' personal injury work. So it was going to trial lawyer conferences and having... Occasionally, I did. I had bad experiences, and somehow connected to the fact of being a woman among... three women among 100 men at a conference. Right? So sometimes bad things happened, but really no worse than what anybody experiences out there as a woman in a profession, period.

Rio Peterson:

Being a woman in the world is-

Susan Carns Curtiss:

It happens.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And not in a passive way, but just to say there's just like... That was the norm. That's a baseline. But also, I would have people just being polite, saying, "Oh, so whose wife are you?"

Rio Peterson:

Oh, yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Right? They're not even trying to be a jerk.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

But I was constantly expressing to people that, in one way or the other, "Oh, I actually belong here. Oh, so anyway, funny story, I'm one of you. I hear you. I don't have that bonus body part, but this is news to you. This is not a reason to assume I'm here as a spouse." Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. "I assure you that I can be here."

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But all that to say too, these are people who are not trying to be ugly. They were trying to be polite to somebody's spouse. But it's just these culture norms, and living and then now working in a very male-dominated space is what led me to look for a space online. I literally looked for it in the back of a room at one of those conferences. I was like, "Now I'm getting on my laptop looking for something. There's got to be something out there."

And, of course, there's women's bar associations, and they are awesome, and there are organizations for networking for women professionals in general. But I couldn't find something across the US that was a community for women attorneys. And maybe it existed, but I couldn't find it. So anyway, that is really the shortest version of the GIRL ATTORNEY origin story. I was looking for a place, and then I created a space where women attorneys could be a part of it, and no one would say, "Yeah. I'm sorry, do you belong here?"

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. Yeah. "Is your husband coming to the meeting? Should we wait for him?"

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. "Who's endorsing you today? Who's sponsoring you?"

Rio Peterson:

"Who vetted you?"

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes. But that led to me starting a Facebook group, and this was in 2016. I really did, at that point, only imagine... No, it's '14. Anyway, whenever it was. Whenever I started it, I imagined... It was on Facebook, and it was before a lot of law firms even had Facebook business pages.

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I imagine today, I say it's kind of like people who have... TikTok feels like, "Well, that's for younger people." I can say that because an old person. And kudos to all the people who are in their 50s and older, and they are rock stars on TikTok. I'm like... But it feels foreign to me, right?

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And so, when I created this group on Facebook, I imagined it would be a social space. I never imagined what it became. And that's really a sweet testament to what the community is, which is, it's very organic. It's what the women bring to the group, which allows other women to receive from the group. But yeah, it started as just a social... I added, I think it was just under 50 people.

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

"Hi, everyone. You're all my Facebook friends who are lawyers. I know all of you." I literally did this. "I know all of you, but you don't necessarily know each other. So I'm just thinking, if you want, you can introduce yourself, and you're welcome to invite other women." And that's how it started. So that was 50-something women.

And then about a week later, there were 1,000 women in the group. And then within a few weeks, people started asking practice questions. Kind of like if you walked down the hall and you asked the lawyer at the other end of the hall, "Hey, how would you file this?" or "Have you ever filed one of these? Do you have a template or a go-by that I could look at?" Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

People started asking those questions. And sorry, I'm going on a little bit.

Rio Peterson:

You're great.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

But anyway, so that... Okay. And people were saying, "Hey, I woke up at 3:00 AM with a sick kid. I've got a docket in such and such county." There's a call. Their docket call... "Is anyone possibly going to be there already who can answer for my case and let them know XYZ?" And otherwise, total strangers were saying, "Yeah. I'm going to be there. Happy to help." Right?

Rio Peterson:

Wow.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I know, right?

Rio Peterson:

Like a very organic process.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yup.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

That led to somebody saying, "Hey, can we get a separate group for just our state?" And I think that was Texas. And so, I started a Texas group. And then, of course, I'm based out of Oklahoma, so most of the women were in Oklahoma. I started a separate Oklahoma group. But that original group is the one that we call GIRL ATTORNEY - NATIONAL now. And so, that's just because sometimes things are federal questions or it's something that you really just...

I encourage people, if they're going to join a state group, to also join the national group, because sometimes people will ask a question, "Oh, I'm looking for an attorney in Tennessee," because they think, "Oh, I don't need to join the Tennessee group." They don't need to join the Tennessee group. But if they do, they're going to get 30 people answer their question, as far as if they need a referral, or if they need a question, they asked.

In the national group, though, it does give sort of a clearinghouse for just addressing whomever, because it's not a state-specific question, or you're just asking, "Hey, does anyone know anyone in this other state?" that they'd recommend, or raise your own hand. So that's how it happened. And now, just recently, just within the last week, we confirmed we're over 37,000-women strong.

Rio Peterson:

That's incredible, because I think when we talked a couple weeks ago, it was like 34-

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Close.

Rio Peterson:

... or it wasn't too long.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

36.

Rio Peterson:

34.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

It was 36.

Rio Peterson:

But still, it's incredible. I mean, it started with just 50 people being like, "Hey, you guys, maybe we could chat." And now you have 37,000 members, and you have chapters in, what, all 50 states, I believe. Isn't it?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Okay.

Rio Peterson:

Oh my God.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I have a group for every state on Facebook. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the Vermont group. Okay?

Rio Peterson:

Well, come on, everybody. Anyone listening from Vermont, let's go.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. And it really is interesting. It just happens organically. What typically happens for a group to hit the ground running, all the groups have existed now for a few years, but for a group to just take off, it usually... And this is by observation. I've never asked anybody to do this, but this is what happens. One person in a state decides to do what I did with the first group. They add not one or two people, but they literally invite 50 friends, and they're like, "Hey, ladies, this is a space we can use."

Rio Peterson:

Right. Oh, that's interesting.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

"Introduce yourself to each other." And whenever that has happened, it has just taken off from there, and it's just sweet. And there are some states... Let me give a good example. Ah, golly. Well, I won't name names, but there are some states where I swear all the people who are in the group are people who went there to say, "Hey, I'm looking to refer a case to someone in the state for a family law issue." And no one's there to answer their question. Right?

And so, now we've got five or six or eight people in certain state groups where the only people in the group are people who are like, "I would like to hire a lawyer here." But there's no one in the state who's been added or found their way there yet. So it is interesting. I feel no urgency. Technically, it is GIRL ATTORNEY, LLC, but I don't charge for membership. It's more or less run in terms of the members as a nonprofit.

Rio Peterson:

Right. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Now, I'm not speaking as someone who does nonprofit law, so don't misunderstand that as like a legal term. I'm just saying there's no membership fees. There are no boards. I think the value is not creating yet another organization to ask for your time or money. Right? Nobody needs that. There are ample nonprofits. There are wonderful, professional, your bar associations, whether it's the state bar for everybody or a women's bar, or the plaintiffs' bar, the defense bar.

All those organizations already exist and provide great opportunities for leadership, education, and I like to add to that. I like to support what the bar associations are doing. I try to follow as many as I can on social media. I repost their events into the groups. But we're here to support women helping women. That's what I do. The no-fee is also partly based on my desire to create a space where, whether someone has had their law school paid for, they have no debt, and maybe they're going straight into big law. I mean, good for you, girl. Go get it. That gal's got plenty of extra dinero. And if I charged whatever a year that she thought it was worth, she can and hopefully would pay it. Right?

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

But there's also women who've graduated with a mile-high pile of debt and who are in public service work. And guess what? If I charged $5 a year, I mean, is it worth it? Yes. It would absolutely be worth the $5, but it would also be a reason somebody said no, because they're like, "That is technically not necessary, so I'm not going to pay it." And I want everybody to be in there regardless of their economic situation and also regardless of their connections in the legal profession, because many women come from legal families, and there are plenty of women who do not.

And they don't have the connections. They don't know who's who in their state, in their city, and the GIRL ATTORNEY community helps provide access to them. There are partners in law firms in the very same Facebook group as the brand-new associate. I love that. And when I see partner so-and-so post a meme, and her associate gets to laugh at it with her, I'm like, "That's kind of like passing the woman in the hallway and giving her a high five."

Rio Peterson:

Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Who gets to do that? Law firms can be very not chill.

Rio Peterson:

Right. Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So this creates a space where they can help each other. Also, this associate gets to contribute to questions, pick up cases, and it's potentially an opportunity for that partner to see this gal going and getting it done. Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So it's just a way to facilitate connection and, hopefully, elevate women in the profession, which helps elevate the woman in her community, which helps her help her own family, and make a difference... Well, I guess I sort of did that backwards. I mean, really, ultimately, I want her to be helped individually, professionally, and also, it impacts her ability to help her community, and it helps everybody.

Rio Peterson:

Absolutely. And something I really, really love about this and about the GIRL ATTORNEY community is that success and opportunity is not a zero-sum game. There's enough for everybody.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes.

Rio Peterson:

And I really feel that just how GIRL ATTORNEY has evolved and grown is really testament to the fact that there was a major need for a community where women feel equal, where they feel seen, where they don't feel embarrassed about asking a question, or where they have opportunities to connect with each other on an equal footing, is really incredible. And I'm so excited. I'm so excited that it just keeps growing, and that women keep connecting, and that it keeps just building. It's fantastic. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I'm thankful.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. I mean, I hope we all are, because it's great.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yeah.

Rio Peterson:

And so, I know we've got just a few more minutes left here, but I did want to talk about some of the people and experiences you've had through GIRL ATTORNEY and through building this. Now, I know that you put on a conference just before the great pandemic.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yes.

Rio Peterson:

And so, I know you've gotten to connect with some pretty incredible people. Can you tell me maybe who was someone that really stood out to you or a moment that really made you feel like, "This is a really good thing that I'm doing and building"?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Okay. I've got two answers to that question. One, I have to give explicit props, express my admiration and appreciation for the role that Judge Coats had in facilitating the conversation, which led to the opportunity. Right? So that was, for sure, a difference maker for me. I have no idea if she would've not been willing to make time in her schedule to meet with me. Maybe I would've never taken those next steps.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And then, otherwise, I can say broadly just the fact that I get to see all these women helping each other, and making each other laugh and encouraging each other. So without singling any one person out, just to say, that has really made an impression on me. Okay. I have a theory. I'll try to be as quick as possible.

Rio Peterson:

Okay. I'm ready.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So we have heard for years that women are hardest on women. And I will tell you, one time, we had a situation in Oklahoma. It was a few years ago, and it's a good story. But the point is, on the other side of... They had the teacher walkouts. There were a ton of teacher walkouts in maybe '17, '18, I can't remember which year, across the US.

And in Oklahoma, we had... There was a woman in the GIRL ATTORNEY Oklahoma group who said, "Hey, who wants to go down and support the teachers?" I'm thinking, "We'll go down on Friday, if anyone's interested." Well, a whole bunch of people were like, "Yeah." Long story short, yes. A lot of people said yes. And this lawyer then posted on her social media, something like, "We're going to be there, legislators. You're on notice, and you'll know us when you see us. We'll be the women in black."

And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I just love that." Assertive, right? But she just threw the gauntlet down. Funny story. Then she goes to take a shower, and her husband's knocking on the door of the bathroom. He's like, "Did you post something on our social media page?" Because the post blew up. Right?

Rio Peterson:

Wow.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So we ended up having about... Gosh, I don't want to exaggerate. Well, we had hundreds, maybe a couple hundred, I can't remember now, women from all over the state that showed up. And by the way, men who covered their dockets so that they could be there that Friday. Right? Super sweet. Right?

Rio Peterson:

Wonderful.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So we show up, and this all was facilitated. It was not the group that organized it. It was a woman in the group who asked, "Hey, anybody else want to do something about this?" Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And people were like, "Yeah." So this question was asked on a Thursday. By Sunday, we're being interviewed by CBS Nightly News.

Rio Peterson:

What?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I know. It was insane.

Rio Peterson:

Incredible. That's incredible.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

It was insane. Women on Sunday night were like, "Hey, should we have tables out there to pass out things to teachers tomorrow morning?" And by Monday morning, at 5:30 in the morning, there were three tables donated, brought, and set up. Someone had a tent. We had cookies to pass out. We had gas gift cards to pass out. And here's the thing: No one was in charge of this. It was women going, "Well, I could do this. I'm going to go do that."

Rio Peterson:

Wow.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

It didn't need to be cleared through anybody. It wasn't like we're looking for volunteers to do. It was just women thinking, "Here's the situation. I could contribute this way." One person thought to call the bar association and ask, because it's right next to the Capitol, if we could organize there, and they said, "Oh, yes. You can come and organize, but don't park in our parking lot." Okay. It didn't even occur to me.

So we all show up, because, again, I'm not in charge. But in the end, we were a visible group in support of the teachers. Laws don't change because a bunch of people show up on one day. It's just not the way it works, unfortunately. But we were able to show up in force. We get there. I get word that there's a local high school band that heard we were going to be marching from the bar association to the Capitol and wanted to lead us in.

Rio Peterson:

I love this.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And I was literally in that moment when they were like, "They're all here." I'm looking over, and there's literally... It's the Norman High School Band. And I think there's two bands here, so I don't remember which one. But anyway, they're there, and I am like, "Oh." I'm like, "No, no, no," because I'm not like the, "You'll see us, the women in black." Right? Someone else said that. I did show up in black, but I also was just stressed. Right?

I'm just like, "Oh my gosh, it's not about us." And even in that moment, they're like, "Oh, we're here to do this." And I was like, "No." I started to say no, and I thought, "No, but it isn't about you. It's about the teachers, and it's about this band. They also want to participate. We all want to be here and show our visible support for these people."

Okay. On the other side of that, this is getting to my point, I heard more than one person say, "See? Look what happens when women help women." And I couldn't help but think, Rio, I don't think any one of those women were pushing down their natural inner bitch.

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Believe me if you need to.

Rio Peterson:

No.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

But I do not think that anyone was not being themselves.

Rio Peterson:

Wow.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And I thought, "Wait a minute. What if that narrative is, 'I understand. There's competitive people in the world who are very unpleasant. They are both male and female'?"

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And I think based on what I observed, because I was like, "Wait, wait, wait," this is incredible. All these women, nobody was asked to do anything, but they all were now operating in a space where clearly what they wanted to contribute was going to be received. And look what happens when you create a space where women get to lead.

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

They get to follow their own lead, their heart, their mind, use their experience, their access, their connections. Guess what happens? A really wonderful, beautiful thing. When we came around the corner, the band, the teachers cheered. They felt loved. They were literally crying. We're crying, they're crying. It was a powerful thing. And all of it happened because there was a space where women got to trust themselves and do what was next. Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So I was like, "Oh my gosh, this really makes me wonder. This whole narrative of women who are attacking women, who created that narrative?" It would've been, in my opinion, the dominant society, quote, unquote, "society," of whatever fill-in-the-blank business culture that now, a few decades ago, not that many decades ago, maybe five decades ago, started allowing a woman. Oh, now we have two women. It must've been quite the spectacle, right?

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And whether you're the first or the second woman, you're not the majority. And the people who are observing are telling the story of what's going on, and they basically pit these two people against each other-

Rio Peterson:

Yup. Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

... or maybe there's three, or maybe there's four. And I have a suspicion, with zero data to back it up, that this whole narrative of women are fighting women is because they were pit against each other, but not because women fight women.

Rio Peterson:

Right. Right. Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

What do women do? Look at the bathroom in the bar. That's what women are, right?

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

They're like, "Girl, you got this. He is not good enough for you."

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

That's who we are.

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And I'm not saying that men can't support each other. It's not a contrast. It's not a zero-sum game. Right? Like some people, "We're the gender who's nice to people." Not that. I'm just saying, this narrative is wrong.

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I saw it in this microcosm from Thursday to Monday. I was like, "What even just happened? What just happened?" And then in the years since, I just get to see it every day in the community.

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

It's the most delightful, amazing, kind of sacred thing. And I just hope I don't screw it up. That's really my goal. That, and I don't want to get hit by a bus and not have a succession plan. That's my other big problem right now.

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I'm like, "Oh, I don't really have a structure. I oversee this space, and what happens if something happens to me?" I really got to get that in order. Right? But anyway, that's what we do. That's what it does.

Rio Peterson:

It's incredible. It's incredible.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

It's women helping women.

Rio Peterson:

It really seems to me too, to your point, about competition between women. What better way to keep women from succeeding than to pit them against each other?

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Absolutely.

Rio Peterson:

It's the thinking that they have to compete with each other for a seat at the table, when in reality, we need to just maybe make that table bigger, and then that makes room for everyone.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And, of course, we're talking about GIRL ATTORNEY, and it's about women, and it's Women's History Month. It also was just Black History Month.

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And, of course, there's all sorts of faces where, similarly, if you're not the dominant culture, you are pit against each other.

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yup. Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So I don't want to equate like, "Oh, because I am a woman, it's kind of like being a Black person." No, no, no, no, no, no. No. I do not have that same experience. But I would be remiss to say, "Hey, women are really left out. Women have been pit against each other," without saying, "Hey, look, that is a thing." And then if you also are not a white woman, which, if people are listening to this and not watching it, I'll tell you, I'm a white woman.

Rio Peterson:

Absolutely.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And so, I have only that. But that's another reason why access is so important to me in the groups, because I think it's important that the space invite everyone in, because if you're not white and you're a lawyer, male or female, you're a minority in the space.

Rio Peterson:

Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

You are.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Right? And then there's sexual orientation. There's so many ways that you can be basically pit against other people and made to feel that you're not a full member. You're not a full member.

Rio Peterson:

Right. Right.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So this all started because of my experience just being a woman. But the more I learn about the experience I have had and what I feel, the more strongly I feel about broadening that welcoming experience to anyone who has been made to feel that they don't... "Oh, wait. Why are you here?" That they aren't actually a full member, just because they don't look like the dominant. So first, we've got white men, and then we've got white people. Right?

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And it goes out from there. But it's so important to me that the group be a welcoming place for everybody, and everybody has access to everyone.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Level playing field.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. It's really inspiring, Susan. Really, this has been such an incredible conversation. I had no idea about supporting the teachers, and just the depths that this community has, I guess, explored and is starting to explore, and how open it is to anyone, regardless of experience, background, where you came from, what color you are, sexual orientation, anything. We need more of that in this world. And so, it's really fantastic that you're creating that, and I think that's a pretty incredible thing.

And not only that, but making space for it. Not just to be the thing that you started, but to be something that all women have a hand, all members, and everyone who's part of it has a hand in building and crafting and making their own. That is a really special thing, to be able to make space for others to claim it as their own as well.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

I hope so.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, I'm going to get weepy. I'm getting weepy. It means a lot. It really does. It means a lot. So I know we've run over time. I think we could probably just talk about this forever. But maybe let's wrap up with, can you just quickly tell everybody where they can go to join GIRL ATTORNEY, and how they can find out more? Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

So all of the groups are... There's two things. There's a website, girlattorney.com. Also, if you go to boyattorney.com, it goes to girlattorney.com.

Rio Peterson:

Wonderful.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

LOL. But anyway, and from that site, it will tell you how... It tells you more. Alternatively, and there is a directory that you can register for on the group, on the website, and that gets you on the newsletter, stuff like that. But alternatively, if you do have to be on Facebook, so you got to deal with Mr. Zuckerberg-

Rio Peterson:

On the book of faces. Yeah.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Yeah. Yeah. If you can get past that hurdle, and you are on Facebook, then the fastest and easiest way to get to any of the groups is to go to the GIRL ATTORNEY, LLC Facebook business page.

Rio Peterson:

Okay.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

On that page, there's a tab somewhere that says, "Groups." You may need to go to the one that says, "Other." And under Other, you'll find groups. But from the business page, there's a tab that says, "Groups." And under the groups, every single one of the groups is listed with a button there, the Facebook button, where you click to join. You'll need to answer a few questions. And once you have answered those questions, I'll get alerted, and I admit you.

And then from there, you can request to join any other group. And it's basically automatic because of the way Facebook has set it up, that once you've been admitted, cleared for one GIRL ATTORNEY group, you're automatically approved to any other. It's usually, you just request and you click Refresh after being admitted to the first. So that's it.

Rio Peterson:

Perfect.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

And then you can help, be helped-

Rio Peterson:

Fantastic.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

... et cetera, et cetera.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, wonderful. Oh, that's so fantastic. Well, this has been great, Susan. Thank you-

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Thank you so much for your time.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing and telling us about this really exciting kind of group that you built and just grown. Yeah. And I hope many more people join, and it just continues to grow and create space for everyone.

Susan Carns Curtiss:

Me too. Me too. Thank you so much again. Really, it's an honor. I appreciate you so much.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, thank you. I appreciate you too, Susan. All right, everybody. Well, join us next month or next week. I guess we'll see. We've got a couple new podcast episodes coming out pretty soon here. But otherwise, have a fantastic day, and we will see you... Well, you'll hear us soon.

 

ALPS In Brief Podcast - Episode 79: Exploring Careers in Insurance: Insights from ALPS HR Experts

In this episode of ALPS In Brief, our Bar Partnership Strategist Rio Peterson sits down with Liesel Brink and Amber Kuhlman from the ALPS HR team to talk about careers in Insurance. Learn about their path into HR and learn about all the exciting opportunities that exist in this often overlooked industry.

 

Transcript: 

Rio Peterson: Hello, everybody, and welcome to this month's installment of In Brief. This is episode 79, and I am your host for the first time ever, Rio Peterson. I'll be joining you, hopefully more frequently in a rotation on the podcast, and very much looking forward to it. So this month is Insurance Careers Month, and so we thought it would be really, really appropriate to speak to the two people here at ALPS, who really make sure that people can have careers at ALPS and bring us new talent, and really keep the lights on and run all the things. So I'm going to be talking to Liesel Brink and Amber Kuhlman. Kuhlman. 

Sorry, Amber. So Liesel, do you want to start by introducing yourself, telling us a bit about who you are, what you do here at ALPS? 

Liesel Brink: Sure. Thanks so much, Rio. This is an exciting opportunity. So I am your manager of HR and payroll coordinator here at ALPS Insurance. Do everything from hiring, recruiting, all the way to payroll. 

Not to take any of this under from Amber, I can't do it all on my own. I've been with ALPS for, it's going on nine years, and yeah, been a great time so far. 

Rio Peterson: Awesome. How about you, Amber? Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. So I'm Amber. I'm the HR generalist here at ALPS Insurance. I've been here a little about year and a half now, but in my role, I focus more on the onboarding, recruiting side of things, but I also participate and help out all things wellness with our employees, so that's great. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, that's right. You kind of run things on our Employee Wellness program, which I will speak from experience, is an incredible program and definitely a major perk of working here. So thank you both for all your work and for putting that together for us. It's really fantastic. So we're kind of taking some time to explore careers in insurance this month. 

I don't think necessarily, an industry that a lot of people wake up when they're like five or six, and they're like, "Ah, I want to work in insurance," but so I think it's really important that we can take some time and kind of explore what we do and all of the incredible kind of opportunities and possibilities that exist when you do choose to pursue a career in insurance. So I'm really curious to find out kind of from both of you like, "What was your life before ALPS? What did you do? What was your world before that?" 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah, I can start off. It definitely wasn't insurance. This is my first job in insurance, but prior to coming onto ALPS, I actually came from retail sales, so very different. It's a great learning opportunity, working with individuals, helping them find what they need, but definitely enjoy the insurance side a lot more. Love the stability within insurance. 

Everyone needs it for a variety of things, whether it's car insurance or attorney's liability. So I love that aspect, and we have a lot of opportunities at ALPS as far as diversity within our department. So there's Liesel, myself and HR, but there's also business development folks in sales. We have our claims attorneys, account management, maintaining our policies, and everything else you may need from finance all the way to the C-suite, so it's great. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. Fantastic. And Liesel, what about you? Where were you at before you found your way to ALPS? 

Liesel Brink: So before ALPS ... I mean, how much time do we have, Rio? 

Rio Peterson: We've got a couple minutes. 

Liesel Brink: Yeah. So I've been doing HR for about 25 years, and in the last, ooh, 12 mostly in HR, previous to that, nonprofit work, and many people know in a nonprofit, you become a jack-of-all-trades, right? 

Rio Peterson: Absolutely. 

Liesel Brink: You do a little bit here, do a little bit there, and that's where I started in human resources, HR, people operations. So for me, what really resonated were employee benefits, and so being able to talk with individuals about what truly they get with the benefit and having that understanding come to light is what fulfills me the most in my role. I not only worked in a nonprofit, but I too did some retail, but it wasn't retail-retail, it was concessions, some more food. Sorry about that, Amber. That was a really long stint. 

And then, I also worked for a third-party administrator, which is insurance adjacent, and then from there, came to ALPS Insurance. I did do three years as a paralegal assistant. Learned a lot. Not sure I'd go back, but who knows? Someday, maybe. 

Rio Peterson: You never know. You never know. 

Liesel Brink: Exactly, exactly. But yeah, that's kind of my journey in the insurance world, mainly having the most excitement and fulfillment from the employee benefits side. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, got it. Fantastic. So how did you two find your way to ALPS? Was it sort of like serendipitous? Did you seek it out? 

Yeah, I'd love to hear. Maybe Liesel, we'll start with you. 

Liesel Brink: Yeah, sure. So I was actually headed back to the university for a degree in computer science, and I received a phone call from an acquaintance at a local company, and they shared with me, "Would I be interested in considering?" And at the time, ALPS wasn't sure what they were going to fill this position as. They needed a payroll person, and so I decided, "You know, I'll have that conversation with Chris Newbold," the Chief Operations Officer. "I'll just talk to him, and nothing's going to come of it." 

And then, four interviews later, I was made an offer and decided, "Hey, why not try payroll?" And then, because of the previous experience, grew into the HR role. 

Rio Peterson: Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. And Amber, what about you? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. So I kind of go back to the university as well, with my connection with ALPS. I took a human resources course, in which required you to network with a human resource professional. 

Rio Peterson: I love it. 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. I got connected with Liesel for a group project, and then we worked on that together, and then I was interested in being an intern, because then, I was very interested in HR after that class and everything. So then I did a summer internship, and then Liesel realized, "Oh my gosh, this girl's so much help." 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. 

Amber Kuhlman: So then, she was like, "I need someone full-time." So then, she posted an opening for a full-time role, and then now, here we are, so yeah. 

Rio Peterson: Fantastic. So you both dazzled each other, and you were like, "This needs to continue. This is an excellent partnership." 

Liesel Brink: Definitely. 

Rio Peterson: That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So it sounds like we have a pretty good connection with the university. And I understand you two also just did some kind of speaking yesterday. You spoke with the HR Program, is that right? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. Is that something we do quite a lot of? Is ALPS pretty involved in working with the university and connecting with students? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. I know Liesel has presented before. That was my first time presenting to a management course. However, we do often go to their career expos, so when we are hiring and recruiting, it's a great way to network with local folks and get connected with them, so it's great. 

Rio Peterson: Got it. Fantastic. So let's maybe shift a little bit and talk about kind of ALPS in general. What are some different career paths that somebody could explore at ALPS? I know we've got quite a lot of things. 

I know, Amber, you touched on them a little bit before. Maybe we can dig a little bit deeper into that. 

Liesel Brink: Definitely. Amber, jump in when I'm off track. So for individuals within ALPS, when they come in and they've learned their job that they were hired into, we always encourage individuals to learn more about different departments, and we encourage them to do continuing education. If it's a department that they were hired into that doesn't require licensure, we encourage them to consider that. We encourage them to do continuing educations, whether it's a CPCU or an IEM, or any of the credentials that you can get in the insurance industry, we encourage them to do continuing education. 

So when a position in another department might open, they can be considered, if it's something that truly interests them that they want to try out. We start individuals, a lot of times, in our lead generation specialist roles, and then from there, they learn a lot about marketing, and sales, and account management, and the insurance, like how insurance actually works in the lingo and the terminology. So it's a fantastic place for individuals to start, and we usually implement an interim program within that lead generation specialist role to get people considering like, "Could insurance be for me?" That is, to be honest, your opportunities are only limited by what you put on yourself. I know that's cliche. Sorry to be cliche, but- 

Rio Peterson: I love it. I love it. 

Liesel Brink: It's one of those things where truly, if you were in sales and you were interested in underwriting, we would love for you to pursue what that might look like. 

Rio Peterson: Right. 

Liesel Brink: We do not put limits on individuals. In fact, we encourage individuals to become more involved in improvements that we're making within our product, and then also, just be more helpful to individuals in different roles, cross-education, which is super helpful. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, fantastic. And then, I'm kind of wondering, so lead gen, that's obviously part of our sales team, right? And so what I'm hearing is that's a really good place for someone to start. If they don't know anything maybe about insurance, they don't really ... Maybe they're fresh at a university, maybe they're just trying to figure things out. That's a good place for them to start, and to kind of get a broader overview of the rest of the functions of the company. 

Liesel Brink: Definitely. The lead generation specialist role, our client processing specialist role, that's an administration position. And not to change the topic, Rio, and I know we'll come back to this, but what I appreciate most about the insurance industry is that you can learn it on the job while doing it. 

Rio Peterson: Yes. 

Liesel Brink: You don't need a college degree. College degrees are great, but you don't need a college degree to be successful in the insurance industry. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. 

Liesel Brink: That is the biggest takeaway I try to leave with individuals that I talk with. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, that is absolutely fantastic. It's really good to know that as well, because I think that's something that can really intimidate a lot of folks like, "Maybe I don't have the right education, the right credentials," so it seems very accessible industry to get into. I know for myself, I mean, coming from the tech industry, I did not know anything about insurance, and let me tell you, I have learned all the things, and that is, I can definitely attest to what you just said, I have learned them all on the fly as well. So that's really important, I think, for people to keep in mind is that you can be taught. You can learn it and go forth and achieve big things. 

Liesel Brink: Definitely. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. 

Liesel Brink: And if I may, I would share that it's not always easy to break into the insurance industry, however, if you align the skill sets that you already have with the skill sets that are necessary within the insurance industry, such as detail-orientedness, follow-through, dedication to the job at hand, if you align the skill set that you currently have with those needs, you can get into the insurance industry. 

Rio Peterson: Got it. What would be some kind of obstacles or some things that would make it difficult for somebody to break into the industry, is maybe not knowing anyone who's already in the industry, just kind of not having any knowledge of it? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah, I- 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. I would say not having the knowledge. I don't think, especially coming from the university, they don't really say push insurance or mention it, really, as a career path. That would be a good one. So I would think the biggest obstacle would, for sure be just not knowing it's out there and kind of where you can go from there, for sure. 

Rio Peterson: And it's kind of surprising to me that they don't push that or even recommend it, because to me, insurance is pretty good industry. It's pretty fail-safe, like recession-proof when times are tough, everybody gets insurance. Everyone needs insurance, like it's really- 

Amber Kuhlman: I think there's a misconception with insurance, that it's all sales. 

Rio Peterson: Yes. 

Amber Kuhlman: So that's another one, I mean, but realizing there's office positions as well, like what Liesel and I do, HR within insurance, or finance, or marketing. 

Rio Peterson: Right. 

Amber Kuhlman: It's all needed, so yeah. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, claims, we hire lots of attorneys as well, and so yeah, there's lots of different options out there, absolutely. So what would you suggest maybe for someone who was looking to get into insurance, like say they were like, "That's the thing I want to do. I want to find out. I want to break into that industry." 

What would be a good way? I know, Liesel, you mentioned kind of aligning the skill set you already have. Would you recommend maybe reaching out to recruiters or HR staff such as yourself, people, operations, et cetera? 

Liesel Brink: So that's a great question, because different individuals, like the hiring teams, different companies think of things differently. 

Rio Peterson: Right. 

Liesel Brink: For me, I would be happy for anyone to connect with me on LinkedIn. That is a fantastic way to start your network. You can connect with one individual, and then from there, you actually can learn more about other individuals within the industry. They post fantastic things from, I believe it's in invest.org, and how you can use the skills that you already have in the insurance industry. Networking outside of the computer, of the internet, it was also very helpful. 

Rio Peterson: Right. 

Liesel Brink: I know once in a while, we go to our business after hours for the chamber, and there are a variety of different industries, industry specific organizations that you can connect with, especially in more urban areas, so that would be a consideration. Amber, what am I missing? I know a lot, so ... 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. I mean, I would say, just kind of going back to the university, connecting with their resources. Often, nearby universities have a lot of connections with surrounding companies, and who knows, they might be an insurance company, so ... 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you both mentioned the career, the job fairs as well. It's probably a good place to make some connections. Fantastic. I know for myself, I also knew someone who worked at ALPS, and was able to make the move that way, so definitely a lot to be said for putting yourself out there and meeting people and making those connections. 

So let's kind of shift a bit back to you two, and tell me a little bit of like, "What are some of the things you like best about your roles, and maybe also working at ALPS specifically?" Amber, you want to start? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah, I can start. 

Rio Peterson: So I'm going to put you on the screen. 

Amber Kuhlman: No, that's okay. Some things about my role that I like is really focused on the wellness side initiative that we strive for. As far as work-life balance or wellness program, really, making it a place that people want to come to and enjoy working with their fellow coworkers is kind of, yeah, a big part of it, for me. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. 

Liesel Brink: Definitely, Amber. The people are great to work with, what continues for me to bring me back every day, but also, for me, the type of work that I get to do, it's never the same thing every day. The process might be the same, but the individuals are different, the circumstances are different, and so that truly is what the variety is what I enjoy the most as far as human resources and specifically ALPS. 

Rio Peterson: Got it. Fantastic. So talking a little bit about the wellness program, was that in place? I know, Amber, you've been here about a year and a half, but, Liesel, was that in place when you started at ALPS? 

Liesel Brink: So when I started back in 2015, it was not in place. We implemented little things here and there. At that time, I believe it was once a year, we tried to do something fun, and then it went to a quarter. Every quarter, we tried to do something, and then we aligned with a tech company, and then they offered physical, mental, emotional, and then also financial wellness options, and so that kind of started us off. I believe that was in 2017, and then the tech company decided that it wasn't what they wanted to focus on, and so we then went to a homegrown kind of wellness program. That is what Amber has definitely made her own over the last year and a half, so ... 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, fantastic. Amber, do you want to tell us a little bit more about the program, kind of what kinds of benefits we offer, kind of how you come up with all these awesome ideas, because I know there's always something great going on in that program? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah, yeah. I get my awesome ideas from all the subscriptions I have. I will say, all the wellness networks, for sure. 

Rio Peterson: Awesome. 

Amber Kuhlman: Awesome. Can't take credit for them all, but no, it's great. I love planning. I try and do a monthly highlighted activity that focuses on kind of those four functions that Liesel touched on, financial, mental, emotional, and physical, so I really try to get those all in the mix. They're all equally important. 

So each quarter, I focus on one of those, and we award our employees for staying healthy in many different ways, so there is an incentive a little bit there, but they get gift cards. It's a point-based system. They get gift cards in PTO quarterly, so there's that, but it's always really nice when we hear the feedback from employees that stop by and really enjoyed a walking challenge that we had going, or earlier last summer, we did a stair challenge, and seeing everyone come up the stairs as opposed to the elevator was great. And yeah, I love seeing that, so it's good. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, it's fantastic, and it seems like that's something I noticed right from the get-go when I started at ALPS. Everyone's very engaged with the wellness program. It's a very big hit, and just the benefits offered in it are really fantastic and very thorough. It's definitely another benefit to working at ALPS. Just putting it out there if anyone seconds, so ... 

Liesel Brink: But if I may, one of the important wellness aspects I find too, is the financial wellness that we focus on. 

Rio Peterson: Yes. 

Liesel Brink: We've partnered with a fantastic company, Best Money Moves out of Illinois with Ilyce Glink. She is the CEO and founder. They have come up with some fantastic opportunities for employees to learn more about how to save. They do monthly webinars. We've learned to, over the years, that if you help individuals understand their financials, that it could lead to less stress within the employee population. So I just want to do a shout-out to Amber for continuing that program with them because it's definitely very helpful. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, absolutely. And financial wellness tends to be something that isn't normally included in wellness, but you're so right, it is really deeply connected to a lot of the stress people experience, because financial literacy is something that we're not really taught in schools in any capacity, so it's really, really important to be able to provide that peace of mind and those tools to everyone. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Liesel Brink: One of the other benefits that we've come up with, well, that most companies provide is the Employee Assistance program, where individuals have access to talk to professionals for personal or professional reasons. If things are going on or they want to bounce ideas off of someone, that's not their supervisor or their family, we offer an Employee Assistance program that has an in-network list of providers that we can go to for free visits, but we've also implemented a reimbursement if our employees want to go to out-of-network providers, and that was a huge, huge implementation last year. Something brand new that we hadn't heard a lot of companies doing, so we're like, "Let's try it," and it seems to be going well, so ... 

Rio Peterson: Fantastic, and you've gotten ... I'm guessing you've heard some good feedback about that program? Yeah. 

Liesel Brink: So we've heard a little feedback, right? It's an anonymous program, so it's one of those things where we do get some numbers about, like if they have an intake, but we get to know other information other than that. So it's great that we are giving utilization. We have, I believe, 13% utilization rate, Amber, where the national is four to six usually. 

Rio Peterson: Whoo, that's fantastic. Love that people are taking care of themselves and that they're able to do so. 

Liesel Brink: Exactly. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, it's fantastic. So what are some of the other kind of benefits and perks that we've got here, working at ALPS? I know there's quite a long list. Do you guys want to take us through a couple of them? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. One of my favorites, I'll highlight, is the Lifestyle Spending Account. Coming from a different company, that's a benefit I haven't had before. So the Lifestyle Spending Account, ALPS gives us funds monthly that we can utilize towards a variety of things, whether it's an event ticket to go to the movies, or maybe a concert. Pet insurance can go towards that, or just your typical gym membership, so it's great. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, my standing desk. Thank you guys. 

Amber Kuhlman: Yes. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, I'm a big fan of that program too. 

Liesel Brink: Nice. For me, we have an Adoption Assistance Program. We also offer discount interest rates through SoFi, and we provide a high-yield savings options through that SoFi option too. We do a 6% match at 100% for our 401(k), so that is something, and we're fully vested as of our first contribution. So for me, those things have been very beneficial for ALPS employees. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. And it is something that I've really noticed about ALPS too, is that as an organization, we are very invested in our employees, not just well, their employees, but in their futures as well, whether that is moving on to the next company or into retirement. I mean, I know that a large number of our staff has been at ALPS for 15, 20, 25 years, so it's really, I don't know, reassuring and nice to see that we are so invested in everyone regardless of where they're at in their career path. I don't think a lot of companies think about that, so ... 

Liesel Brink: Yeah, Amber does a great- 

Rio Peterson: It's [inaudible 00:27:46]- 

Liesel Brink: Yeah. Amber does a great job with the training and development, and ensuring that our continuing education classes are getting credentialed for continuing education. It's one way we support our employees in licensure, and then we also encourage individuals and have supported them in earning their additional certifications of their choices. 

Rio Peterson: And I think we do student loan assistance as well, don't we? 

Liesel Brink: We do have a Student Loan Assistance program. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. 

Liesel Brink: And we- 

Rio Peterson: Then, we do all the things. There's too many things to list. We do everything. 

Liesel Brink: I mean, we do employee photos, fun photos, so they're not the stuffy headshots, which is super fun. We have an employee that has a hobby to take photos, and they've been so kind to provide us with photos of employees, so that's super fun to do. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, and they're so well done too. They're really nicely shot. That's fantastic. So we've got just a couple more minutes here. I think, first of all, what are some of the roles that are currently open at ALPS, if anyone out there listening is interested in checking us out? 

Amber Kuhlman: Yeah. I'll highlight the business development representative that we have open, specifically outbound. So we are looking for individual to come on and do sales. So you're interested in that, definitely connect with us on LinkedIn. It is also posted on LinkedIn, so check it out. But yeah, I'll let Liesel highlight the other one. 

Liesel Brink: Yeah. We are looking for a claims attorney. This position does require an individual to have their Juris Doctorate, so that is an important aspect of this. We will train an individual and get them licensed as an adjuster. However, we do need them to have that Juris Doctorate. We do hope and ask that they've had five years of experience working in the field of law, because what they'll be doing is helping our insureds during their time of need when a claim actually happens. 

So understanding a little bit about how things work in the practice of law is super helpful in this role. Happy to talk to someone about that. If they have more interest, they're welcome to reach out to us. I don't know if you want me to put my email, lbrink@alpsinsurance.com. Happy to have that conversation. 

Yeah, but if someone already has previous claims experience, we'd love to have that talk too. So yeah, reach out. Yeah, or if you live in Montana or want to move to Montana, it's a great opportunity. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah, Missoula is fantastic. It is a really fantastic spot. And so we've got, LinkedIn is a good place to reach out. We have a career section on the website, yup, so we can reach on your website. 

Liesel Brink: Correct. 

Rio Peterson: Can reach out to Liesel directly at lbrink@alpsinsurance.com. And yeah, we hope that you consider a career in insurance. It's a really fantastic industry, and I mean, I'm a little bit biased, but ALPS, in particular, is a pretty incredible place to work. So that's my two cents about the whole thing. Is there anything else? 

Liesel Brink: We agree. 

Amber Kuhlman: Yes. 

Rio Peterson: Is there anything else you two would like to add before we sign off? 

Amber Kuhlman: No. Thanks for tuning in. 

Rio Peterson: Yeah. So well, thank you both for joining me. This has been fantastic. And for those of you listening, we will catch you next month for the next installment of In Brief. Again, I'm Rio Peterson, and thanks for tuning in. 

ALPS In Brief Podcast - Episode 78: Succession Planning & Selecting a Backup Attorney

In this episode of ALPS In Brief, our Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte talks about the importance of creating a succession plan and naming a succession/backup attorney.

 

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Transcript: 

Hello, I am Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS. And welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Of course, that's where our home office is, and if you ever get out to Missoula, you should stop by. It is a beautiful, beautiful area. 

It's a time of year where you get to thinking about all kinds of things. We have a year coming to an end, and boy, what a crazy year this has been, huh? And a new year starting. And these are the times where at least I do, and I don't think I'm alone or unique in this, just start to do some processing, start to think about what was good about the year, what things need to be done. And also, I've been with ALPS now coming up in 26 years, and I've been thinking more and more about what's next for me. Again, I've got a lot of years left, God willing and knock on wood here that ALPS will want to continue to have me. 

But I want to say a lot of years, I don't know, five, six, maybe eight more years of work here, but I also think about retiring and what's next. And there are interesting things you start to think about just looking at all kinds of stuff. And I won't get into my sort of what's personally going on with me, but it does bring up an important topic, and that's the topic of succession planning. And I want to talk a little bit more about this in some interesting ways. It's something I've been talking about writing on for years. 

I can simply say it doesn't happen overnight. I'm in a community where I see lots of people. We're in a 55 plus community now down here in Florida actually. It's been just a wonderful, wonderful decision for us. But I see a lot of people in retirement. I see some that have been very successful and I have seen and visited with some where it's not working. There's different drivers behind why retirement happened for some. Some had happened earlier than they thought, think health issues as an example. Others are still very, very active in second or third careers. Just because they retired doesn't mean... They retired from their profession perhaps, but they're still doing all kinds of other things. 

So I want to talk about this. The first thing I want to say is regardless of your age and where you are in terms of your practice and your career in law, it's never too early to start. We've been dealing with the transition issues and decisions and financially restructuring for, oh gosh, now it's been a good six to eight years easy. And of course, we're blessed that we have the ability to retire at some point here. Again, I can say I've worked with lots and lots of lawyers, and I mean that literally who are not financially in a situation where retirement ever seems likely, and it doesn't need to be that way. So I just encourage you to start early, particularly on this, just the savings side, if nothing else, but okay, back to succession planning. And we're going to also explore backup attorneys in this context, which is the central issue I want to focus on here. 

But before we get there, being a lawyer is hard. I understand that. And it can be quite a challenge. It's an ever-changing landscape, if you will, in terms of the introduction of AI and how that's impacting things, but also different types of clients and different types of matters and all sorts of things can go on. And as some of you may know, if you've followed me over the years, whether on the blog or podcast, I've been at this a long time and I've done a lot of consulting and I have worked with lawyers that have dealt with cancer as an example. And one lawyer in particular was so involved out of necessity, don't get me wrong here, but so involved in his cancer treatment, having to travel and be gone extensively for chemotherapy. And the practice was being neglected in very, very significant ways. And there was some fallout unfortunately to that. 

I have been involved with numerous lawyers that have had, let's just say, challenges with competency. When there's dementia, which is, again, it's just a very serious problem with our profession. It's not unique to lawyers, but there's a lot of issues I've seen over the years that have led to claims and all kinds of things, unexpected things happen in life, in other words, but it's just wild in terms of all the crazy things I've seen. 

So I want to, again, to underscore, we need to think about succession planning. This is not something we do, again, in the twilight of one's career. I really see it as a strategic and forward thinking approach. That's what we need to be thinking about. It's going to benefit you regards to, it's obviously more important if you're in a solo space, but it's important even if you're in a small firm or even larger firms. Now, sometimes the problems, the issues that come into play as you get into larger firms are a bit different than what you're dealing with in small firms, but we do need to prepare for the unexpected. It is about, at the end of the day, taking care of our clients. 

So let's move forward here and talk about some other reasons why I see this as mitigating risk, preserving client relationships, again, thinking more importantly in the solo space, but again, absolutely not limited to this, but if we are unexpectedly taken out by a car crash, I've got a story about that. Won't bore with it today, bore you with it today, but someone ended up in a coma for quite an extended time, and a number of matters were neglected. So I see this as a competency issue thinking about rule 1.1. A diligence issue, 1.3, and there's some language in the rules, particularly in commentary and at least some of the states and in the ABA model rules that talk about the diligence mandates and attorney moving forward with some type of succession planning. It's just not optional. 

So I see it as an ethical obligation. I see it as taking care of one's career, reputational kinds of things. Particularly if something goes wrong, something unexpected happens, I see it as taking care of clients, building relationships, because we can talk about it. So it's about ensuring coverage in the event of some short-term health issues, but it's also about taking care of things in the unexpected deaths or long-term disability scenario too. Again, we could talk for quite some time about stories of how this has just been a problem. 

So I hope that kind of helps. I know it's a little bit of a ramble here and I've got all kinds of things going on in my head, but I really hope that you begin to get a sense of the importance of succession planning from a business perspective, from an ethical perspective and from a malpractice perspective. 

Let's move more now toward really what I want to focus on and center on. And it's really looking at a basic decision of backup attorneys. Now, before we dig into this, one of the things that I have found over the years is some attorneys are reluctant when asked to be a backup attorney. They're reluctant to agree to do so for a variety of reasons. But two of the more common concerns at times, I think, also used as excuses are I've got my own full-time practice, and how in the world can I handle two practices at once? Well, a successor attorney/backup attorney isn't necessarily charged with running a full second practice. In the backup situation, you're just covering for somebody for emergencies. Well, they're on a two-week vacation or whatever it might be, or whether they're in the hospital for a week or so for some immersion kind of thing. If it's an unexpected death, you're really being brought in to wind up the practice and oversee that. You're not running a full practice, you're not charged with taking on all of these clients and immediately doubling the size if your practice. 

And something else to think about whether you're agreeing to do this, being asked to do this and thinking about agreeing or doing the asking. The backup attorney/successor attorney situation doesn't have to be limited to just one individual. I have seen some situations that have been very, very successful in terms of there was an untimely death. And what happened was, for instance, a group of three, four, I've even seen five attorneys will agree to be there for each other and we have this group. And so if I'm the person in this group that passes unexpectedly, the other four can share the load. One might be responsible for putting out fires, one might be responsible for contacting clients, getting that letter that goes out, et cetera, taking care of those kinds of things. So you just split, you split the workload. Can make it very, very easy. 

The other excuse that I hear at times is the, well, is my malpractice going to cover me? Is there some... And again, I don't want to be sued for all this stuff. Well, first off, understand, again, in the winding up of the practice, you're really not doing anything legally. You're administering the duties of transition of client notification, et cetera. Now, I guess, at times, if you pick up a matter and once you make it your own, of course, your policy is going to be in play. But I could see there could be some situations. We try to figure things out, put out fires. Maybe something goes a little wrong here or in the backup situation. I can't say 100% for sure because policies differ between carriers, et cetera, et cetera, and the circumstances are going to dictate. But here's how I look at it. 

A carrier wants to make sure that when something goes wrong, again, an emergency illness, we like people taking vacations to stay fresh because burnout leads to depression and addictions and all this. We want to see lawyers take care of themselves. So getting some vacation time is a good thing. But if a backup attorney or successor attorney isn't trying to help, good Lord, it would make no sense for a carrier to say, I'm not going to defend this, or we're not going to get involved. It's just not a decision I would think any carrier is going to be feeling good about making. That's not in their best interest. Maybe that's another way to look at it. So I just don't think the coverage issue is as significant as some want to make it. 

There is language, I should say, in a number of policies that will describe or are in terms of under the definition of insured, will include a description of attorneys who are stepping in to help administer the winding down of a practice. There for backup. As long as they are doing so under the authority of an agreement of some sort, that kind of thing. 

Okay, so let's put that outta way or put that out of the way. So the next thing, and I've been asked at times, what do I do? How do I go about selecting a backup attorney? And this really gets to the heart of the issue. If you're working within a firm setting, hopefully there's someone else within the firm that has the skills and et cetera that can step in. If you are one that's, and again, typically it's going to be in a small firm setting that has some unique skills, well, you're going to have to find somebody outside of the firm and name because if no one else in the firm has the ability, that doesn't really solve the problem. So you might need to look external, but let's talk about that in the context of the solo attorney. 

And really what you need to do is just try to identify someone who is going to be competent. That is your obligation. So they have to have the skillset necessary to step in and understand what's going on in your practice, both as a backup attorney if ever needed, and then again, as a successor, should that ever come into play as well. They need to have good communication skills. They need to be experienced in the practice. And we need to think about, I guess, conflict concerns too. They should be somebody that isn't going to bring to the table or have all kinds of conflicts in light of their practice and yours. It can't be somebody that you're constantly on the other side of, is constantly opposing counsel to many of your clients. That's going to be problematic. So we just need to think about, again, is this person competent, diligent, a good communicator, as conflict free as possible, et cetera? And that can really be a good thing. Okay? 

And I guess the other thing, needs to be somebody that's going to have the time or the ability to make the time to step into this role. If someone is constantly on the road just by virtue of their practice and being available on not necessarily a minute's notice, but being available at times, if that's going to be problematic, that might not be the right fit. So again, we just need to look, does this work for the individual that you are asking? 

When we finally identify the individual that we think is going to be a good fit and this individual agrees or group of individuals, please don't overlook the importance of letting key staff know that this step has been taken care of, who this individual or group of individuals are, when and how they are to be reached so that the staff in the event of emergency know what to do. Again, I could tell stories where staff had no idea that there was a backup attorney, had no idea what they were supposed to do in a situation like this. The was a new receptionist and that was the only position she was charged with and she had no clue, was not really experienced in the legal profession or working in the legal profession and just sat there taking calls day after day. And a number of claims rose out of that because it was person injury plaintiff attorney who was in a coma for a while and some statutes ran during this time and she just sat there, had no clue. So again, we need to let people know. 

Some other things to think about. You might want to have a formal written agreement with the backup attorney successor. One and the same in most instances or group, and that's document or at least outline if you will the terms of the engagement, the scope, the responsibilities. There may or may not be compensation here. And you have to figure out if there is going to be some compensation, and particularly in the succession plan, successor attorney coming in and winding up a very busy practice, that can take some work and some time. And you can deal with covering those expenses in a variety of ways, not the least of which might be some type of key person life insurance, but there are ways to deal with this. But I like the idea of having some type of agreement so that we're all on the same page and really understand what the expectations are. 

And a number of times too, this can be a two-way street, if I ask you to be my backup attorney and you agree, and it might be, well, I agree to do the same for you. And so we can have these discussions and really talk about what are the roles going to be. 

So it's also worth letting your malpractice carrier know. There are some carriers out there, particularly in the solo space that will request knowledge of, or you need to report who is this, other carriers mandate or require it. They may not agree to insure you perhaps in a formal designation because they want to know who to contact if something happens here again. 

Some things to think about in terms of preparation. I would periodically review the plan and the agreement just because things change over time. And as you think about that, here's this other side not coming in. We've talked about, here are the roles, responsibilities, what we're anticipating, what we think we should be doing for each other, et cetera. But we should also perhaps have some type of writing. Could be a letter kept in a drawer somewhere, staff knows about, and this is primarily for the succession plan situation, but you need to think about setting forth the things that the successor attorney needs to know to run your practice, to be able to wind down your practice. 

So where's the calendar? What are the passwords to key programs or applications or laptops? That kind of thing. What about signature authority on the trust account? I don't want to see money locked up. And there are different ways to deal with that. Could even be just a contingent signature authority agreement of some sort. So there are a number of things you can do here, but I have seen situations where an attorney passed and none of this was done, and a lot of time and money was needlessly spent on trying to literally hack into computers because that's where all the information was and no one had any idea how to get in. So there has to be some ways to do that. 

And here's an interesting thought on this one. You can set up emergency access to password safes. More and more of us, if you're not using a password safe for cybersecurity reasons, boy, now's the time. That's a conversation kept for a whole nother day. But there's one way to do some of this. You can have emergency access and set that up. It varies in terms of what you can do and how you do it with these different password managers, but it's just another thing to think about and nothing to look at. There's all kinds of spins on this, but I'm hoping you have found something of value here and some encouragement to move forward. 

The one final thought I have is at the beginning I was talking about, well, there's this piece of client communication, and I want to take that just a little bit further. I also mentioned reputation can be an issue here and the failure unit to have a backup attorney leading to mistakes because you never get out and take a vacation or take care of yourself and prioritize wellness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You can get run down, burned out, depressed. Reputation can suffer in that way. Reputation can suffer because there is no plan. And you're in the hospital for four, six weeks in a coma, going back to that one story that I've been alluding to, and your reputation is dead there. 

But there's another angle to this reputation piece, and I see it as communicating the decision. I have some language and you're welcome to email me or look it up. I have some of this on our website, but if you have trouble finding it, you can let me know. But consider putting some language in your engagement agreement. And it might say something, I'm just going to read a short little paragraph as an example. But think about the message that you're giving. So I'm a new, our potential prospective client coming in, looking and all that, we're talking and I see this language, or you might even highlight it for me in the agreement, and it'll say something like this: 

While I strive to deliver excellent legal services to each and every client, I also have an ethical obligation to protect your interests during any extended absences such as a vacation and illness or any event of my unexpected death or disability. To accomplish this, I have named, of course, you insert the name for your backup attorney as my backup attorney who will be available during any extended absences or will step in to assist in the closing of my practice, should that ever prove necessary. I will personally provide you advanced notice of any planned absences, and my office staff or backup attorney will contact you with information on how to proceed should any unexpected event ever occur. 

I guess I'm a risk guy, okay, I get that. But I got to tell you, if I saw something like that, I would say this attorney is really thinking through the issues and doing everything he or she can to see that his or her clients are taken care of. And he's really thought this through. I want to work with someone like that. Wouldn't you? That's demonstrating commitment, loyalty, diligence, competency. And that just speaks volumes to me. So there's this other reputational angle to it that's saying, he's thinking about this, she's thinking about this. I like this. I'm going to work with them. Then you deliver. Man, I'm even more excited and I'm going to go out and just tell people. How do you think referrals... Referrals come on reputation and good work. Good reputation, you provide great service and all of that, referrals are going to come. So I think there's an angle to that as well. 

So I've been rambling on here for I don't know how long, but I hope you found something of value. I really believe that it's hard to do this at times. It's hard to get started. But I really do believe in the value of this. And once you have this taken care of, I think you're going to sleep better. I think it's going to be one less thing to worry about, and you can concentrate and focus more clearly on some other things in terms of just taking care of your clients. So name that backup attorney if you haven't. Name that successor attorney if you haven't. 

And once you do, please, please take the time. Take advantage of what you've just done and make sure you're getting that extended vacation from time to time to stay fresh, to nurture the significant, important, I'm sorry, the important and significant support systems in your life. Go on a cruise with your spouse. Go visit the grandkids and children for a week, whatever it might be, because wellness is so, so important in our profession too. It just helps you stay sharp. 

That's it for me. I hope you found something of value, and please don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything I can ever do for any of you. You do not need to be an ALPS insured to visit with me. There's no costs or fee to visit with me. If there's something I can do, hey, I'm here. My email address is mbass@alpsinsurance, ALPS Insurance, one word .com. 

Have a good one, all. 

Bye-bye. 

ALPS In Brief Podcast - Episode 77: 25 Holiday Risk Management Tips

In this episode of ALPS in Brief, our Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte shares his 25 holiday risk tips to keep your law firm's cybersecurity happy and healthy as we roll into the new year!

Transcript: 

Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at Alps, and welcome to another episode of Alps In Brief, that podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. As you can tell, it's the end of the year and I'm trying to get ready and set for the holiday celebrations and whatnot, just having a little fun. 

So I thought about what to do for this month's podcast. I thought, why not share my 25 holiday risk tips as a countdown. And these are risk tips for 2023, the end of 2023, and maybe we'll do this every year. Who knows? We'll see. Let's jump right in, shall we? 

Number one, don't wait for that after Christmas sale. Make sure your firm's security software and operating systems on terms of all the devices, the servers, the computers, the laptops, everything. These updates need to be current systems need to be patched, and the reason is I just want to make sure you're properly protected during all of that online holiday shopping. 

Number two, the turkey helpline. I remember back in the day, they used to have these shows you could listen to, and my memory was it's on the radio, but you could listen to people calling in. They record some of these crazy calls to the Turkey hotline. I remember a woman very upset that her bird tasted like soap. And apparently what she had done was read in the instructions, you should clean your turkey before cooking it, then rinse it out, that kind of stuff. 

And apparently she used a lot dish washing soap and that's going to taste like soap. That's not how you clean a turkey, but I always got a kick out of that. But sometimes things don't work out quite as planned when it comes to the holiday bird, and some people really don't know what they're doing with these turkeys. And there is a turkey hotline out there to help you out, use it. 

Well, in a similar vein, if you have no idea how to properly secure your smartphones or other devices, the files that you have in cloud storage, even your home router, if you're using it for work, rest assured there's a support line for you too, and that's just called your IT support. Whoever he/she/they may be, please don't hesitate to reach out and get the help that you need. 

Number three, untangling the lights. As you search your attic or your basement, wherever you have your holiday decoration stored, remember to protect and organize your firm's virtual storage space so your digital files don't end up sort of in a similar mess. I remember year after year for a lot of years, trying to untangle all of these light strings and checking for the bulbs, etc. It's just a headache, just a headache. So, let's try not to let that happen with our client files that are virtually stored. 

Number four, make a list and check it twice. And before taking on a new matter, make certain that you and your client are in total agreement on the scope of representation, and that might even include discussing what you're not going to do. And then of course, make sure that you thoroughly document all that in writing because after all, memories really can be short. I mean, even Santa, after all, why do you think he has a list. 

Number five, up on the house top. Some of us excel at navigating a snow covered roof to hang the lights. Boy, there's some guys around here, I've seen this here, I'm thinking, these guys don't excel and you're just worried that dickens that somebody's going to take a fall. But on others, you really do need to learn that the annual trip to the ER can get expensive. 

The point of all this is no one excels at everything. Learn to say no when you really know that you should don't dabble and don't take on clients that you can't work well with. Otherwise, the control of your professional life is going to end up in someone else's hands and that someone else could easily be a problem client that just isn't worth it. 

Number six, let's talk about Santa's laptop. If you're traveling for business or a family gathering, always carry your laptop with you rather than checking it with your baggage, because sensitive information, perhaps your naughty and nice list, could end up missing. I really can share over the years when I look at some of the cyber claims that we've had, stolen laptops, lost laptops are not uncommon. So really try to stay in control of that as you travel. 

Wrapping the gifts, when it's time to wrap up a client matter, tell the client what your file retention policy is and document what they want to have happen to their file at the end of your file retention period. This is one of the most common calls that I get to this day. What do we do with these old files? Because we've never dealt with it. We've never informed clients what to do or what our policy is. And taking care of that at the time you know where your client is and you're closing a file can really solve a lot of headaches down the road. Or I should say prevent a lot of headaches down the road. 

Number eight, to Grandma's house we go. If you need to check in with the office on your way to wherever you're traveling, remember to use a VPN when traveling. This is especially important if you're going to be using open public wifi, if you're using a hotel signal or even a signal at a friend or family's home, you need to encrypt your data stream in these situations. It's just essential as I see it. 

Number nine, remember the reason for the season. Providing pro bono legal services is really a wonderful way to not only bring a little holiday cheer to someone else, but it really may just change their life. Don't minimize it. Give back. 

Number 10, hang your stockings with care. According to the most recent ABA profile of legal malpractice claims, almost 52% of reported claims in recent years were based on a substantive misstep, such as a failure to know the law or properly apply the law, and conflicts of interest. So don't dabble and don't short shrift your conflict resolution process unless of course you enjoy finding coal in your stocking. 

Number 11, no two snowflakes are alike. As with client expectations, no two clients are going to be alike either. Really take the time, learn to listen, ask the questions, try to determine each and every client's unique legal needs as well as their desired outcomes in order for you to meet their needs as best as you possibly can. 

Number 12, don't become Scrooge. If a client becomes delinquent on their account, investigate early, and either work out an alternative arrangement or get out if you can. Allowing someone's past due balance to soar when they are already unable to pay and then suing them for your fees when you're finished could result in a haunting tale of a malpractice counterclaim. Not fun, not good. 

Number 13, bells will be ringing, while a wonderful sound this time of year. Be careful not to have an alarm sound due to a shortfall in your trust account. Never allow the proceeds of a check to be dispersed prior to that check clearing. And remember, there's a difference between a bank saying, "The proceeds are available," and those funds being collected in good funds. And often that difference is five to seven business days and can even be longer in some instances. Caution is in order. 

Number 14, look out for the Grinch. Take the time to ask what can be learned from an experience with one of those problem clients, once the representation of course has ended. The failure to do so often means that another Grinch could be in your future. If you don't learn, you're likely to make the same intake mistake again. Ask the questions, look for the learning. 

Number 15, not a creature with stirring. To make certain no unwanted creatures are stirring in your office network, confirm that everyone in the office knows to never open an email or click on a link sent from an unknown source. Better yet, institute an ongoing mandatory social engineering training program that everyone must attend, everyone who works at your firm, including you. 

Number 16, let it snow. Clients will tend to more readily pay bills that are sent on a regular basis and that provide detail on each charge. Tell your story in the process of creating and presenting your bill. There is a huge difference as an example between saying, "Research five hours," and "Research case law on inviting nuisance, five hours." Let the client know the value they are getting, what they are getting, for the money that they're being charged. 

17, the ghost of files past. When it comes to computer files, delete is not always what it seems. If you don't want the recovery of deleted files rattling around late at night, you really need to electronically shred all that data by using a program that will overwrite it, thus making it unrecoverable. So before you recycle those phones or donate some laptops or whatever it might be, don't just delete files. You need to digitally erase them. 

Number 18, It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey, if you recall, saw what his town would've been like if he were never born, such a great film. If you're a solo, however, what would happen if you were no longer around? Name a successor attorney to ensure that your clients and their matters will be properly cared for should the unexpected ever happen to you. Then sleep better knowing that you did the right thing. Succession planning folks is absolutely an essential obligation as I see it. Please take the time to do so if you already have it done so. 

Number 19, The Little Drummer Boy, just listening to some music last night. It was that time of year, once Thanksgiving rolls around, my wife has a rule, Christmas music is it until the end of Christmas. But bang that drum to get your message across. Make sure your colleagues are in step with the confidentiality rule. No files, for example, should be left accessible after hours. 

No one should use open public wifi networks or free email accounts like Gmail for professional purposes. And don't talk about client matters in public places. Sometimes maybe just a little review. Get the staff together for a 10 or 15 minute meeting over the lunch hour, have a little pizza or something. Maybe do this monthly. But just these gentle friendly reminders really can help keep the rules and our obligations fresh in our minds. That can be very, very helpful and very beneficial. 

Number 20, how about those New Year's resolutions? Enjoy the holiday party season more by learning what callback phishing is and how not to fall prey. Then relish in knowing that you now have a cybersecurity leg up on most of the other attorneys in the room. You really will. If the FBI just issued an alert talking about callback phishing, so binging it, Google it, or you might even go to a wonderful site. This is just an excellent, excellent resource. 

It is Know Be4, K-N-O-W-B-E, the number four, knowbe4.com, and look at some of their resources that are available for free. You could search callback phishing on their blog, and I assure you, you'll get some information and it's well worth knowing about. 

21, the night before CLE deadline, fulfill your CLE requirements on time. You might look with the Alps. We have a lot of CLE out there, online, on demand, and if you're not familiar with it, it's www.alpsinsurance, one word A-L-P-S, insurance, one word, .com/cle. After all, that December 31st deadline for some of us is fast approaching. 

22, setting out Santa's cookies. When do I remember those days? Our kids are all grown and adult now, and we are Brady family, but we had five kids in our blended family, and I do remember, and it was a lot of fun, setting out the cookies and doing all the things that we did. For many families, this is one of the last things done before the kids are tucked in and that little detail counts. 

Similarly, once a matter is closed. Don't overlook the last important detail of properly preparing a file for storage. Use a file closing checklist to make certain that all the closing tasks are taken care of. If you don't have a file closing checklist, I invite you to get one of ours. I have one available on our website. Again, it's alpsinsurance.com, and you can click under resources and there's a section there for sample forms, a sample checklist, and you will find a file closing checklist there. Perhaps that might be helpful to you. 

23, giving thanks. You really are being honored. Every time a client places a new matter in your capable, competent hands. Honor them back by sending a thank you note at the conclusion of every matter. Just say, "Thanks, it's been a pleasure." You may find that referral and repeat work just starts to go up and maybe even soar, because you understand and remember who has hired who. 

24. Give yourself a gift, and this is so, so important in my mind. Remember, one of the best ways to serve your clients well and truly to keep your practice thriving is to prioritize taking care of yourself. After all, gingerbread, which I love, always tastes better when life is good. Take care of yourself, and don't forget to nourish the relationships that you have with your support systems, whoever they may be. You want them around years from now as well too. So take that time.

And finally, 25, we're just looking through the years. I have been in this role of risk manager here at Alps just shy of 26 years, and I really have felt so honored and blessed to have had this opportunity. And don't misunderstand me, I'm not going anywhere. I hope to be here for a number of years yet. We'll just see. 

But it really has been just an incredible honor to serve as a risk manager, as your risk manager, to be a risk manager and a resource in the legal community at large. So with that in mind, I'd simply like to say, may your holiday season be both merry and bright and most importantly blessed. I hope you found something of value in my short, quick countdown this year and stay well. Take care of yourself. Bye-Bye. 

 

ALPS In Brief Podcast - Episode 76: Practicing Law as a Mom Shouldn’t Be an Either/Or Proposition

Mothers understand each other. In this episode of the ALPS In Brief Podcast, Attorney Abigail Benjamin talks with ALPS Account Manager Meg Ratzburg and Underwriting Manager Leah Gooley about the hardships and triumphs of being both a mother and an attorney — and how legal culture shifts like ALPS' new Parental Leave coverage help to better accommodate women who want to bring their best to both worlds (and not have to leave law practice).

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Transcript: 

Leah Gooley:

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Leah Gooley and I'm the underwriting manager here at ALPS. And I'm here with Meg.

Meg Ratzburg:

Meg Ratzburg. I'm the account manager for the states of Georgia and West Virginia for our ALPS insured.

Leah Gooley:

And Meg is here, both of us are here to introduce Abigail Benjamin. She is an experienced West Virginia attorney and one of our insureds and is here to share an amazing story with us. So with that, we'd just like to turn it over to Abigail to tell us a little bit about your experience, starting with how you began in a solo practice of law.

Abigail Benjamin:

Yeah. Oh, okay. You guys just see me. This is kind of an eclectic story, so you just let me know if I'm going too much in the weeds, but I'm almost 50. This practice has been going on for seven years and I sort of did the traditional college law school graduate at 25, found what I thought was my dream job in public interest law, and then had two kids and I ran into that barrier, I think we're going to talk to later about being a female attorney with young kids. And I want to say it wasn't just a time crunch. It was wanting to show up for my family and my kids in a way that I wasn't just exhausted and overwhelmed.

So I didn't get that support and I just chose my kids. And at age 40, I had made what I thought was a very happy life, not practicing law. I had six kids, ages 13 to 1. I was growing kale in my backyard. I was writing fiction, I was following politics and on the news, living in a corner of my home state of West Virginia, about 70 miles from DC and God bless anyone from dc but there's a lot of lawyers in DC and there's a lot of unhappy lawyers in DC.

So I was very comfortable not practicing law. And The practice came out when I was 41 on a base of a very ethereal idea and some very good, wise people giving me thoughtful advice. And so the first start was in my faith tradition, Pope Francis is our head, and he really encouraged us Catholics to lean into this idea of environmental justice. And I had been a nonprofit lawyer. I was very keen to economic issues and worries about justice with the poor, but I hadn't really, really thought about economic justice issues and how that impacts both poor Appalachians and people of color around the United States.

So I just had this thought, but again, raising kale, homeschooling six kids, I took a one-shot volunteer opportunity, limited, limited, and I volunteered at an environmental film festival called the American Conservation Film Festival. And I saw this film that just blew... It knocked my socks off. It just really opened up my eyes. It was about a water crisis event we had in West Virginia. It was the Elk River Crisis. And this was the interesting part about art and film. I definitely was somebody that was educated in the audience. I knew what my state's problems were. I read the news. But seeing this timeline, as a lawyer, I was just like, oh my gosh, this was not an inevitable catastrophe.

What happened is we have these giant chemical plants storing chemicals, very dangerous stuff, right on the waters that we all drink from. And it was two rust holes the size of quarters that dumped all that toxic stuff and one half of my state's population lost their drinking water. And it wasn't the regular boil advisory where it was an inconvenience. You put the pot on the stove for 30 minutes and you have drinking water. You could not bathe in this water, you could not wash your clothes. The smell coming out of the taps was making people sick, skin rashes. And all of the environmental protocols were followed. They called the spill line, they did this stuff, but it was these local small businesses in Charleston. It was an ice cream shop, Ellen's Ice Cream, that was making their ice cream for the day. And this terrible smell came in and they were like, "This is not good." And they called the public health coordinator. And that's what started this looking at this environmental issue.

So I was amazed at that film and the discussion around it and I was very interested as a lawyer that this catastrophe, people had known for about seven years that this firm was not following protocols. And they were calling in complaints, like nuisance and complaints about smells and spills, but they didn't file a lawsuit. I mean, it was just sort of stacking up and stacking up.

And so, as somebody who was a lawyer, I was like, "Man, I wonder if encouraging lawyers to take these small cases and looking at environmental protection, not as, I mean God bless them, Sierra Club or these kind of large swaths, but that individual boots on the ground thing." That's what really got me excited. So I called up my property law professor who I had not talked to in 10 years, at the University of Wisconsin, and he's super cool, and let me know if I'm going on too long in the weeds.

Leah Gooley:

This is amazing. [inaudible 00:06:08].

Abigail Benjamin:

He's actually South African. It's so weird. But he's South African. His name was Heinz Klug and he worked with Nelson Mandela. He helped to do the South African Constitution. And he actually ended up being my law professor now 20 years ago because his work against Apartheid was so dangerous there was a price on his head. So he had to come to America to save his life and ended up falling in love with an American girl who taught sociology law. And so he just found himself in Madison, Wisconsin and was my property law professor. So I called him and, again, just supposed to be a one-shot deal. I'm like, I have this amazing film about my home state of West Virginia, and I think it'll really jazz up the 1L's in your class, and I want to come share it.

And we had this amazing meeting of the minds, and that's what happens with business, I think, it's this synchronicity. And he was like, "Abigail, I get you." He's like, "This is just in Africa." And honestly, I was kind of offended as an American. I was like, "No, no, no, no. I know West Virginia's weird, but we're 70 miles from Washington DC. You have your problems over in Africa, but it's not that bad over here." And he's like, "This systemic problem, the way that justice can fail to get implemented on the ground, this is systemic, this is worldwide, and I think you should come."

And so again, retired lawyer for over 10 years, I had never been on an airplane. And he sent me an airplane ticket and a really nice hotel room to come to my law school to give this presentation. And I was really humbled because my friends who had stayed on that linear path, I mean they were partners at law firms in Milwaukee and Chicago. And here I was getting the red carpet rolled out to come back to my law and speak. And so the idea of my practice, it really came from my South African professor, a visiting law professor from India, and then one of the environmental law professors who just happened... They were a little younger than me, but grew up in Tennessee and really understood the thing that I was seeing.

And so that kind of weekend conversation about this idea I had for a practice, and I initially didn't think I had the resources, the time or the money to start my own practice. So I was like, I need to fundraise. I have a great idea for a practice. And the idea for the practice was not somebody that came in from the top down like Sierra Club or Natural Resources, not that they're not doing great work, but in West Virginia, there's a very much stiff resistance against outsiders telling us what to do.

Leah Gooley:

Sure, sure. Yeah, that's common, I'm sure.

Abigail Benjamin:

There's real pushback against like, "What's this Clean Water Act?" And so I thought having a native child that's in the community, that is going to rotary meetings, and I do a lot of acting, so is on community theater. And when I go and do my presentations in court, which are some environmental, but quite honestly are a lot of basic property rights, I don't get dismissed as the outsider. I'm really representing how these harms are hurting us as a community. And so I thought I had six kids, that disqualified me. I was trying to find a new grad and I was like, "Hey, I think you could do this for $60,000. I'll fundraise. I'll call my friends and we'll put this together." And God bless that person from Tennessee because he kept saying, "This sounds like a you project. I don't have a student at 25 I can just fling into this Appalachia to try to make a change. This sounds like a you project."

And I'm like, "Well," I'm like, "I'm too busy. I've got these six kids." And so just that idea of not "I can't," but shifting a question to "Could I do that?" And I'm really lucky. My husband was really supportive, my kids were supportive. I had a group of community people that I was working with on the heroin issue, because Appalachia, we got a lot of stuff wrong, but one of the things was the opiate epidemic. And they really just held my hand through that nervousness phase of I'm going to sit down and retake the bar exam in West Virginia for the first time at 41, and I'm going to show up.

And I ended up taking the bar exam in a hotel that overlooked that river, that inspired me to do the thing. And so within a couple of days after I passed the bar exam, I had an opportunity because there's not a lot of pro bono lawyers out here floating around in West Virginia. So I got a call from an environmental group to join an action against a state gas company that was doing a monopoly. They were trying to build a natural gas line over geography that we thought was unsafe.

And I just went in to do a speech in front of a group of people, and one guy just literally took off his hat and passed it around, and they threw in $800, enough money for me, because I didn't need money for me, but I had to pay the court reporter. And so we got a deposition from a really good scientist about damage to the Potomac River, which is the drinking water for not just us in West Virginia, but for all those poor people in DC.

Leah Gooley:

Talk about grassroots. That's amazing.

Meg Ratzburg:

It's like they needed you and you needed them. I love that.

Abigail Benjamin:

Thing, Well, again, I jumped into this lawsuit. I was number 17. I was the 17th lawyer in this lawsuit, the only one who was living in the area. Everybody else was down south in Charleston. And the only one representing what I feel is the people. And I was so poor I didn't have a working printer. So I went to Kinko's and they were my law office, and I would print out the 19 copies I needed and stapled it and sent it off, but it ended up working and we got an environmental concession and I got to get on TV. And so just that type of feedback, I think of having an idea, having really solid people encouraging you to go to that untraditional idea and then having that success. Anyway, that's how I got started.

Leah Gooley:

That is an amazing story.

Meg Ratzburg:

I love that.

Abigail Benjamin:

It's very weird. Yes, it's very-

Leah Gooley:

Not focused.

Meg Ratzburg:

I love it.

Leah Gooley:

The fact that you provided a local solution from a local person with community support, as Meg noted, in a non-linear [inaudible 00:13:20].

Abigail Benjamin:

And supported by that international perspective. I mean, who would've thought about that? But that's the beauty of it.

Meg Ratzburg:

It was universal, yeah.

Abigail Benjamin:

I think, lawyers, the analysis we can carry to something, we can be from very different backgrounds, but we can be working on the same solutions. And that's just so exciting to me.

Leah Gooley:

And not for a shameless plug for ALPS, but our focus is solos and small firms, and that's the value that those solo firms you can provide in that capacity with this organic idea that you put together. And that's really, we're very proud to be able to support attorneys in that position with the pieces that we have, the risk management, the affordable policies. That's really awesome to see that, especially in your local community. That's so exciting.

Abigail Benjamin:

Yeah, yeah. And I would just say the importance of my work with environmentalism is it's really important to be a solo because I would be conflicted out of all of these interesting cases if I was in a larger firm. And also just for me, personally, trying to balance having kids and having a practice, I'm the boss, so I don't need to ask permission to move back a meeting to take care of my kids. That's just built into the practice that I have. Again, we'll talk about how ALPS is really special to this story, but it's nice to have those big firm tools and expertise, but still preserving for me the passion and the interest that really drives me to be a good lawyer.

Leah Gooley:

That brought you out of retirement.

Abigail Benjamin:

Yes, yes, yes.

Leah Gooley:

Well then this feels like an excellent time to talk about your experience as a female attorney and more specifically your experience as a mom and that piece of the story.

Abigail Benjamin:

Again, I had started this dream of a practice thinking basically that my having kids was finished. And about 10 months after I had started going back all jazzed up about environmental issues, my husband decided to take a job as an academic. He's an art professor, and so it was really great for him to switch out of being a long distance commuter to DC and teach, his love, but he lost half of his income. And so suddenly this project that for me was just sort of, oh, interesting, volunteering and pro bono, I suddenly had to literally get the grocery money for the kids.

And so I transitioned. Thank goodness ALP started me on that little first flights program. And then I moved in organically. And then two weeks after I signed my commercial lease to move back to my hometown and open up a more standard solo practice, I found out that I was surprisingly pregnant with my seventh child. And it was really awesome, but it was really scary because suddenly I had this commercial lease and I had run into trouble earlier in my career balancing, I felt like, kids and law. And now suddenly I was by myself and having to do that.

And, Luke, who's awesome, but I had a high-risk medical pregnancy with him. And I ended up on bedrest in a hospital, really trying to run my law practice, brand new law practice, with a locked file cabinet in my hospital room and some phones. And I was able to do it, but I didn't have that sizable kind of war chest, that backup. Again, just like daily bills I was paying, but I didn't have enough to pay my ALPS insurance premium. And so that was so beautiful. Luke was born and he was premature, and he and I were here but still shaken up by the experience.

And I reached out to Meg and I just told her my situation and I said I was a new mom and I had this premature baby and that I wasn't going to be able to meet that deadline. And she reached back out to me and said, and this was the line that was like... She said, "I remember those days. I remember those days and I'm going to look..." And she worked out the payment plan for me. But getting that affirmation, I think, from the corporate identity of a malpractice insurance, having them have that caring central thing about caring for me as a person and willing to bet that this was just a temporary hiccup for me and I was going to be a great client moving forward. It just meant the world to me.

And I actually, I don't know if I shared this with you, Meg, but I used the confidence from our exchange to go talk to a local banker who was also a woman in my town, and I got a better line of credit. So it really affirmed to me that the practice of law was valuable for me as a young mother, and it was okay to ask for accommodation so that I could stay mentally healthy, be there for my kid, and also serve my clients. It was a fragile time for me, and I really just appreciated that vote of confidence.

Leah Gooley:

That's so awesome.

Meg Ratzburg:

I love that. That just touches my heart. Even when you sent me the email I cried through the whole office. I'm kind of a crier.

Abigail Benjamin:

So the backstory is I sent a thank you note to Meg when my little son, Luke, who was the premature baby five years ago, when he celebrated his fifth birthday, and he's super healthy and happy, and I was just like, "Thank you, because I have this healthy baby, but I also have a healthy law practice and thanks for not making me have to choose one or the other."

Meg Ratzburg:

I love that. Women and mothers understand each other and can support each other. I love that.

Leah Gooley:

Everybody take a minute. In the backdrop of law that you mentioned earlier where that can just be a conflict, trying to show up for your kids and your family in a real way as you also balance some pretty heavy expectations in the larger law firm space can be so overwhelming, especially to women who have the mantra of doing it all and some of that context that it's hard to mentally work your way through. Clearly you said, "Well, at some point I'm not going to do that. I'm going to step away." And that's not what the law profession needs.

And we see that in that women are a majority now of law school students, but after five years start to drop out of the professions for a lot of the same reasons that you've talked... So very interested to hear more about your thoughts on what some of those challenges are for women in law and where we or the law community might be able to meet some of those challenges.

Abigail Benjamin:

I'm so glad you asked that question because this was exactly my story. I had gone from a really small town in West Virginia, 5,000. I went to a women's college, Smith College out of Massachusetts, and I went to a really good public interest law group in University of Wisconsin. And I had gotten the plum job. I worked as legal service attorney. I worked with a lot of women, and everything seemed to really fall into place, from being 25 to 29 for four and a half years. But when I got pregnant with my second child, I felt exhausted.

And one of the things that makes me upset is we, as attorneys, we are expert at managing expectations and delivering conflicting things. We're experts at crisis management. I mean, at least my practice, but I think a lot of other people, it kind of feels like an ER doctor. You plan to work on one thing and a client called and they have an emergency, and so you're going to shuffle your day around. And those are exactly the skills that you need for balance in terms of having a lot of kids or just having a creative life.

I mean, I got to do Wizard of Oz this summer with my kids, and let me tell you, those two weeks that we were in tech rehearsal, not a lot of law was getting done. But those kind of shifts, that's really normal as a lawyer. And when I look back, I'm upset at myself at 30 because I felt inferior, that my child needing me or being pregnant or asking Meg for an extension because I had a premature baby and had been working for three months, that's life. And that's a healthy, well-rounded life.

And it's just amazing that right now in my stage of life, I had a mom that died of cancer after two years of treatment, and my elderly dad needs some help. And it's weird, judges and other lawyers are so much more calm about giving me elder law care, flexibility, than they were about me giving birth and having kids. And I don't know how much is my uncomfortability asking for that, but once I started as a solo, I really had this idea that my husband and my kids were my first eight clients and they got the top eight slots of my day.

But that also means I can handle about 30, so there's a whole bunch of work that I can do for the community, and occasionally somebody has a deposition or I've got a hearing, those clients bump up and they trump my five-year-old. But most of the time my family gets the top billing and I'm really comfortable handling the rest of the time. And so the issue then, honestly, right now at 50 isn't so much balancing my being a mom versus being an attorney. It's really making sure that I'm being healthy for me, because I tend not to put myself in the mix. So trying to be healthy and sustainable, keeping up my exercise program, eating right, those kinds of things, I struggle with much more than telling a client to pause for a minute while I talk to my kids.

And I would also say, when I was growing up, I thought having kids meant you had a career disruption, very small, when they were little, like zero to three. But my teenagers, I swear, need me way more than my five-year-old. And it's like the teenager is fine until my 20-year-old's in college, and then suddenly I'm at the door for work and you've got to stop and take that moment and connect with them. But that's where being a solo or a small firm is perfect because it's very, very rare that I have to be in my law office at 9:00 in the morning. I can take those moments to connect with them when they're ready. And I still feel like a great lawyer if I've spent 30 minutes with my teen and show up at 9:30 instead of 9:00, and so-

Meg Ratzburg:

You're probably a better lawyer, because you're taking care of what you need-

Abigail Benjamin:

Exactly.

Meg Ratzburg:

... so you're present for your client because your life's taken care of.

Leah Gooley:

Yeah yeah.

Meg Ratzburg:

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Leah Gooley:

Abigail-

Abigail Benjamin:

So I would say... Oh, go ahead.

Leah Gooley:

Oh, just asking what advice would you give to a 25-year-old, 30-year-old attorney in that position, male or female, facing the crux of kids versus work? What advice would you give them?

Abigail Benjamin:

I would say try your best not to see it as kids versus work, but what makes you a healthy human being and how can you practice law in a way that's healthy? I made the mistake of, I had female role models when I was 25 just starting off in law, and they were awesome attorneys. Their lives with their families did not look anything like how I wanted to be. I had really amazing managing attorneys, but they either had the swap where the husband was the kind of 1950s spouse that did everything, and they were in the office for 80 to 100 hours a week, or they outsourced. The nanny came and picked the kid up in the morning at 5:00 AM and then had them until 7:00 and fed them every meal and stuff.

And not that that's bad, but the idea of a lawyer sitting in the office for 100 hours a week, and I would say 85-plus was very normal for me in an 85-person public-interest law job. I don't think that makes for healthy people. That's unsustainable, I think, when you have a tiny newborn that's waking you up. But I wasn't living a healthy life when I was newly married, but it didn't hit me as bad as when I had this little one-year-old who, even when I saw them, I was so obsessed with worrying about my cases and how tired I was from this stuff.

So male or woman, just really try to find lawyers that are healthy, that are energetic, that are doing awesome in the courtroom, but you want to, A, have time to take you out for a beer or a coffee, and then are interesting to talk to over a beer or a coffee. It's more than just can you practice law well in the courtroom? That's what I feel like. So it's finding a sustainable practice.

Leah Gooley:

That is such great advice. And so, for the current atmosphere, right in the profession, being able to talk to attorneys in general to say, be a whole person, have a well-rounded life.

Meg Ratzburg:

A whole person.

Leah Gooley:

The attorney wellness right now is a moderate crisis. People are in a tough spot. And so being able to have that message to folks is so important right now, reinforced from folks within the community, people who have made those difficult journeys. Yours is so inspiring in that way. The weaving and being able to be back into a position where you're providing value, you're providing value to your family and yourself, and you're-

Abigail Benjamin:

And everything's Meaningful. And Meg was saying the time with my kids and my teens, that's making me a better attorney because I'm a more fully engaged human. Yeah.

Leah Gooley:

Yep.

Abigail Benjamin:

Yeah.

Leah Gooley:

Beautiful. That's so great. Let's see. Those are the questions in general we had wanted to wrestle with. Is there anything else that you wanted to add just in your experience in this, again, really inspiring journey to attorneys now or just in general to the community?

Abigail Benjamin:

Well, I just want to give a shout-out. My bar association has free Zoom meeting. It's for mental wellness. It's really about health and it's run by a therapist. I was initially kind of nervous to join, but it has been amazing. And one of the nicest thing is we have a judge on there, which was kind of very nervous. You're not used to seeing the guys in the robe as you're like, "Yeah, I'm struggling with my teen today," or whatever. But it was really humanizing to see people of different ages, different backgrounds, vastly different sections of law. I mean, I think I'm a little guilty of really talking mostly to other attorneys that are in my same skillset, but it's so amazing to see people struggling with this idea of how can I practice law, do good to my clients, but also in a way that's sustainable, that's healthy for me?

And I would say 90% of all lawyers that I practice with, and COVID has really helped. I think we're pretty human. We're in a small state. I think people are pretty gracious about giving extensions or helping a client really find a good fit between... I might have somebody that has a case, but I'm not the right lawyer for them, so I'm going to reach out and find a referral to them, kind of that humanness. But I would say there is 10% that is kind of jerks and that has that sort of adverse priority relationship even when we're not in court. But this wellness group has helped me have confidence where I'm like, "Dude, you're just not on my team."

I'm going to keep my armor up in the velvet glove and the professionalism. But it's allowed me, I think, to feel more confident, again, as that human being. The other thing I would say, again, just call-out to ALPS. It's amazing as a solo to put a team together. So even though I'm alone, I have Meg and ALPS. And ALPS is great because, for me, I have ADHD, ALPS is like, "Get your records together, girl." I mean, there's these firm, always write the engagement letter, always say when you're off the case. And these kind of, it's almost like a managing attorney role, so that helps me. My interest is obviously talking to people and solving the law. It's not necessarily administration, but ALPS is that person that's helping me make sure that I hit the things I need to do to stay protected and it gives me confidence.

Leah Gooley:

Awesome to hear that.

Abigail Benjamin:

And I have a team. I have financial advisors, really helpful with therapists. I have a lot of friends that are therapists because a lot of what we're doing in law, it's very emotional. I might know what to do, but trying to handle those clients that are... I mean, they come in with property law issues and I mean, they're crying. I mean, it can be really traumatic. And so that's what I like. I might be alone, but I have a team of people that I can look to for my clients, but also I can look to for myself. And I'm always interested in learning how to do things better.

The one thing I would say for attorneys that I think I found because I took this little detour, I think it's very, very important to stay intellectually curious and not just go to CLEs, but watch PBS documentaries and go to theater plays and act. My husband and I right now, we're taking an adult tap class on Wednesday nights, and our kids are dancers and we suck. I mean, we are like [inaudible 00:32:54]. But we're out there learning the shuffle step and doing our little things. And I mean, it is so healthy. I'm almost 49, he's 51. It is so healthy to be in something that is not your skill level.

And I think attorneys, we're interested, curious bunches, and it's sad if we get burnt out or tired or always having to be the leader, the one with the answer. Again, I think mental health is important. Exercise, diet is important, but keeping that curious, playful kid, the person you were before you sat through contracts law as a 1L, keep that person alive because that's really who people respond to. And then I think they trust me in my community to have answers for complex things because they see me as a human being and I'm out in the community, so that's my-

Leah Gooley:

Awesome.

Abigail Benjamin:

[inaudible 00:33:59].

Meg Ratzburg:

Great.

Leah Gooley:

Well, to wrap things up, we have a couple of lightning round type questions, if you're game.

Abigail Benjamin:

Okay.

Leah Gooley:

Are you a dog or a cat person?

Abigail Benjamin:

Cats. I'm a cat person. Yes.

Leah Gooley:

A cat person. And what are you reading right now?

Abigail Benjamin:

Oh gosh, so much. Actually, with all my different interests, we have a family bookstore that's kind of like our family farm, but this is a West Virginia, I swear I didn't know this question was coming. This is just on my... I use books like I use law. I have my other stuff too. But Pearl S. Buck is a West Virginian who actually wrote very sympathetically about the Chinese, and The Exile is actually a portrait about her mother.

I lost my mom. My mom died after a two-year battle with cancer in January. And it's been really helpful not just to take time off my practice to go to grief group. That's good, too. But it's been really helpful for me to read a lot of books where people are reflecting about their mom. I feel a lot more connected just hearing about other people's stories.

Leah Gooley:

That's beautiful. Thank you.

Abigail Benjamin:

Thanks.

Leah Gooley:

Last question. Do you see any of your seven kids going to law school?

Abigail Benjamin:

Here's the thing. My husband is a digital artist and art professor. And so they really had no... I mean, Mom's job was boring compared to Dad's job of making animation and stuff. But my 16-year-old has just really fallen in love with history, and it was like the first time she told me she had opinions about President Andrew Jackson. I was like, "What?"

Leah Gooley:

What you doing, girl?

Abigail Benjamin:

Yeah, yeah. And her... they're all ballet dancers. It turns out that one of her good friends is really excited to become a criminal defense attorney, AKA Perry Mason. So that has been adorable. So she secretly, I think after I joke that her ballet career, either when she's 40 and she retires from ballet or she gets injured, she's in line now to take over my firm, so that was okay.

Leah Gooley:

Succession planing, starting early. Okay.

Abigail Benjamin:

[inaudible 00:36:27]. I love it.

Leah Gooley:

Well, I couldn't be more grateful for your time with us today-

Abigail Benjamin:

Oh, thank you.

Leah Gooley:

... for sharing your stories and such great advice. Wonderful to talk with you today. Just a huge thank you to you.

Meg Ratzburg:

Yeah, such a delight, Abigail.

Abigail Benjamin:

Oh, thank you.

Meg Ratzburg:

Thank you. Thank you very much. And good luck to everyone out there.

Leah Gooley:

Great, thank you. I'll just say to our listeners, just if you have any questions for ALPS, if you're insured with us, please reach out to your account manager, like Meg.

Meg Ratzburg:

West Virginia or Georgia.

Leah Gooley:

Absolutely. I'm happy to answer any questions. As Abigail had mentioned, there are some serious risk management, How to Run a Solo Practice resources on our website. It's alpsinsurance.com. There's some great blog posts, videos, articles written by our claims attorneys who are on staff to handle claims that come in from our insureds. So really great resources. If you have any questions or want to know more, please check that out at alpsinsurance.com. Thank you again from beautiful, cold Missoula, and we will see you next time.

Meg Ratzburg:

Thanks. Thanks, Abigail.

Leah Gooley:

Thanks, Abigail.

Abigail Benjamin:

Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.

Leah Gooley:

Bye.

 

ALPS In Brief - Episode 75: What is the Corporate Transparency Act

In this latest episode of ALPS In Brief, ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte shares some vital information about the Corporate Transparency Act as it relates to the practice of law ... as well as some other spooky insights. 

A Brief Statement of Correction from Mark: “During this podcast I stated that under the Corporate Transparency Act, BOI reports were to be filed annually. That statement was incorrect. The correct requirement is that reporting companies have 30 days to report changes to the information in their previously filed BOI reports and must correct inaccurate information in previously filed reports within 30 days of when the reporting company becomes aware or has reason to know of the inaccuracy of information in earlier BOI reports.” 

—

Transcript: 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Hello, I am Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS. And welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. 

I was just out in Missoula just a couple of weeks ago and visiting the home office, I had a wonderful time. And I will have to say now that winter's kind of moving in here and it's nice to be back in Florida. But it's always good to get back to the old stomping grounds, if you will. 

It's November now, and I have been trying to think about, okay, what would I like to share with all of you this month in November? And I got thinking, well, it's November and they're also... I just felt that there are two topics that I'd like to talk about, two that I think a lot of lawyers don't know that they need to know a bit more about these two topics. And so given that it's the month of November, the theme is what two things that you don't know that you need to know... get the play here? No, I'm just having a little fun. 

So anyway, let's get to it. The first, we've just had October pass, and that is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. And I'm sure some of you're probably just dog-tired of hearing about cybersecurity, and it's just one of these topics that, man. I know, I know, I really get it. But I wanted to follow up. So one of these topics is going to be sort of cybersecurity related and just explore another topic here that I just think is very, very important. And it really deals with backups in light of ransomware. And I'm sure we've heard all kinds of things about ransomware. If you follow any of these stories going on and education going on in October. 

And for those of you that don't know, maybe I should stop very quickly. Ransomware, just as a reminder, it's these rogue programs that can be downloaded unintentionally by anybody in your office, your staff, another associate, partner, anyone, just being tricked into doing something that wasn't in their best interest. Clicking on a link they shouldn't have, downloading a document or opening a document that they were tricked into opening. And it may look legit. There's some stuff here. But it also comes with this payload of malicious software. And it will encrypt all of your data, sooner or later. It can sit at times. But it will again encrypt everything and then eventually you get this little ransom note that says, if you'd like access to your data, again, you need to pay this amount in cryptocurrency by such and such a deadline. And if you don't, you're not going to get your data back. 

As an aside, I would encourage you never to pay this because even if you get the decryption key, sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it only decrypts part of it and you need to pay more. Sometimes you can get some of your data back and then they'll say, "Oh, by the way, we want another ransom because if you don't pay us, we still have all your data. We upload it and we're going to sell it or we're going to post it online." 

It's just a heck of a mess. Well, one of the best ways to avoid having to pay ransom if you get hit with something like this is to have a good backup. And for quite some time, I've been talking about backups and I will share what I've been saying. But there's a change, if you will, in play, in terms of recommendations, in terms of what best practices are with your backup process. So I'd like to get us there to what this new change is and just to create some awareness. 

So initially, what I've been talking about and many others that do these kinds of things that I do in terms of trying to educate on cybersecurity, we talk about a backup process. And this has been sort of state-of-the-art for a while now. It's three, two, one. And I kind of have this little spin on it. I call it three, two, one plus archive. Well, what does that mean? And it means three copies of your backup in two separate media, one of which should be offsite, preferentially in the cloud. Okay, three, two, one. As an example, you might be backing up to an external hard drive and then also having a set of backups on Google Drive or IDrive or whatever your cloud backup provider might be. So you got it. You got the three, two, one. Now, one quick side note, if you are doing something like external hard drives, once you're done with the backup, please make sure that you disconnect. You pull that USB cord out. 

Because if you leave this always connected, the ransomware, should you ever get hit, and let's knock on woodier and hope that that never happens. But I assure you there are a number of firms that have been hit over the years and it's getting worse and worse. But the ransomware is going to scan the network. And if it's sees that we have a backup drive here, it's going to encrypt the backup drive too. So it's not good. The goal is to have a good backup so that you can recover and restore data that's encrypted because IT will come in and just delete all this stuff and rebuild from the backup, and we get off to a fresh start. So that's the ultimate goal. 

Now, I sort of add this archive spin, which is okay, so I may have some... let's say I have one, two, three month backups and just sort of rotate if you will, and that frequency might work. Sometimes you want it to be a little more, sometimes it's daily, weekly, whatever your process. But you have these rotations. Well, I would suggest keeping occasionally one, if you will, pull it out of the rotation and keep it as an archive. 

So let's say you have month one, two, and three, but then periodically take one and just sit it out there and it'll eventually become 6, 9, 12 months old. And you can sort of rotate those a little bit too. Now, why do I like an idea like that? Well, some of these programs are designed very intentionally to sort of sit and they will infect backups and whatnot. Again, because they're trying to make sure you have nothing to rebuild from. So if you have some archives out there that are a little bit older, the thinking is, okay, if your current backups are all destroyed because again, are not available because it's encrypted and just useless, you may have something that's six months old, but at least you got everything, you can restore everything up to six months. You see, I'd rather lose six months worth of information than everything. So I sort of like that as an extra little sort of precaution. 

Okay, so that's the three, two, one plus archive. The new thinking is now three, two, one, one, and I'll explain that in a minute. I still might put an archive out there, but I'm going to make what the second one is sort of these archives. So let me explain. We have three backups, two media, one should be offsite, preferentially, in the cloud. The second one is what we call an immutable backup, I-M-M-U-T-A-B-L-E. Immutable backup. 

Now, what is an immutable backup? Well, it's interesting, and I'm going to have some notes here as we go through some of these things. But an immutable backup, it's basically a copy of your data that cannot be altered. It cannot be deleted or changed in any way, even by a system administrator, users, applications or systems that created the data. This is really locked down. And when you create this backup, you're going to put a clock on it, a time. And so it will remain if you will, locked for whatever time period you set. Now, can you appreciate what's happening here? So if you can't alter the data, you can't delete the data. Ransomware programs, wiper ware programs and things will be unable to affect that at all. 

So it's locked. And now you have the ability to make certain you're doing as much as you possibly can, in other words, to make sure you have a good viable backup. Now, one of the things that I like about this is, again, it could even prevent an accidental deletion by somebody doing something silly or some employee that you've had a falling out with and he or she wants to do a little damage and start delete things. It's not just ransomware, but I love this idea. So when you lock it too, we talk about it, and I just love this phrase, I guess. We talk about these backups as being worm protected now. An immutable backup is worm protected, and I just love that word. What does that mean? Well, it means... I got to look here for a second, I'm so excited. Write once, read many times, write... WORM. Write once, but you can read it as much as you want. The data is there, you just can't delete it, you can't change it, you can't encrypt it, you can't do anything with it as long as that lock is there. 

Now, eventually you want to... I would not set these locks if you go indefinitely because sooner or later, I assume you want to replace them with more current versions. And if you just keep building, so you have some cloud storage, but these backups can be fairly significant in size. And if you have these things out there year after year after year, so I would not block them up forever. I might think about six months, nine months, because that can become your archive. And so just maybe setting it maybe every year and just hold them for a year and let them sort of, once the lock expires, that clock expires, you can delete it. But I think that is an outstanding idea. I'm a big fan of immutable backups. 

Now, one thing to think about here, again, the temptation can be, well, if we take this step, we can start to relax a little more because we're always going to have a good backup. This is our guarantee, our insurance policy, if we ever get hit, we can recover. That's not necessarily the case, okay? There's no such thing as 100% guarantee. 

Just as an example, you heard me talk earlier about how ransomware can sit sometimes for extended periods of time, just infecting things. So your immutable backup, if the network has the infection already, so when you back it up, you're backing up the software that's going to encrypt everything. So there's just one example of how this isn't 100% perfect. But boy, it is as close as we can get, based on me. But in terms of what the IT world can do to try to help you recover and keep you from being taken out by some ransomware, this is as good as it gets right now. So I strongly encourage you to think about immutable backups. I will share, I have not had any real time to really dig into these programs in terms of making any type of recommendation. All I can say is these are separate providers. 

You can't just work with your regular whatever cloud backup program you typically have and say, I want to make this immutable. Now, that may change at some point, but right now, the companies that are doing this, as far as I'm aware, are all companies are specifically selling or offering this service. I would encourage you, if you want to look at this, just to speak with it because she, they will know your systems and can make some recommendations about what service or product might work best for you. But I really truly believe that immutable backups really are the way to go. And I see them, and I'll just be very honest here folks, in terms of what is happening in the world today, geopolitically, things are getting crazier and crazier. 

And there are things happening in the cyberspace. So I think the risk that we are talking about here are going to go up, and that is already supporting that. It's going up very, very rapidly. So I think this is why I want to talk about it right now. I think having some knowledge of is there something else I can yet do that really may help protect me as things just get wild here for a while that it might be worth doing? And you can't do that without knowledge. So that's number one. 

The second issue that we need to talk about is the Corporate Transparency Act. I don't know how many of you're familiar with the Act or not. And boy, this is not going to be a primer on on all the things that you need to know about the CTA. But let me just share a little bit because more of us as lawyers need to know about the CTA than realize, and I'll explain why here. But the Corporate Transparency Act was passed in 2021, and basically, it requires the disclosure of identifying information of people operating certain US-based business entities. And a key reporting requirement coming, in beginning of 2024, is unfortunately going to affect many small businesses. And it's my understanding that's somewhat unintentional, but it's where we're at. 

There's law firms, particularly the solo and small firm space are going to be caught up in this. That's just the way it is. Now, the ACT is really in response to just, a lot of things have been going on with money laundering, tax evasion, financing of terrorist organizations, et cetera. And so this act is one of the things done in response to try to cut down and get some additional information. So here's the interesting thing. Who needs to comply with this act? And it's a domestic reporting company, which is this term [inaudible 00:17:18] in the act. But basically, it's any company that is created by the filing of a document with a state Secretary of State, or similar office under the law of the state or even an Indian tribe. So it includes corporations, LLCs, LLPs, and the list goes on. 

There's some deadlines here. If the reporting company existed prior, so if you're firm, and obviously if you're in a firm now it's existed prior to 2024, you have until January 1st, 2025 to file your first... what do we call these BOIs. And it's just a beneficial ownership information report. And in terms of what's required to be reported and how you report this, it's fairly straightforward. But I first off want you to hear that a lot of you that are in the solo and small firm space are not exempt from this. The act actually has, I think 23, 20... let me look here. Yeah, 23 specific types of entities that are excluded from reporting. None of them are small law firms and other types of small businesses. Now, the one thing that could get some of you out this reporting requirement is if you happen to qualify as a large operating company. 

Now, what does that mean? You need to employ more than 20 employees who are working in the United States for more than 30 hours per week. So you have to have 20 employees that are all US-based and work 38 plus hours a week. That your office or your firm is physically here in the United States, and that you report more than five million in gross income and federal income taxes each year. So if you meet those three requirements, you're considered a large corporation. A lot of law firms aren't going to meet that. But you know what your operation looks like, so there may be a possibility of not having to comply. 

Again, the first thing I need you or want you to be aware of is that you yourself may be subject to this act. If you happen to be formed, and I've actually been talking with some lawyers who are in the process of forming law firms, and if they form their law firm after January 1st, '24, any business has just 30 days to do this report, and it'll be an annual report. So some awareness there. 

Why do I bring it up? I bring it up, one, again, so you don't naively miss an obligation to report because there can be some significant or serious consequences for not reporting. But I also want to talk to any or all of you who are out there that may have clients. You've set up some businesses or you will be setting up businesses. You need to understand the Corporate Transparency Act, who needs to report, what needs to be reported, when does the report need to be made. 

I guess if you really want to go in this direction, you certainly could... it's a new service that you could add and help all these clients that would be subject to the act to follow through on the reporting. And if you want to go there, hey, great, that's awesome. Obviously, don't dabble here, come up to speed. I'm just giving you the lightest stuff. I have not done major research onto this, and I'm still coming up to speed myself. But I've learned enough that we need to be aware. 

But I could also see similar saying, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to be responsible for this. Because think about there's an ethics opinion the ABA put out. I think it's a Formal Opinion when a 491 came out, I believe, about two years ago. And again, it talks about that as lawyers, we cannot allow our clients to use our services in furtherance of a crime or fraud. There's some language and rules too, RPC 1.2 has some language along those lines. The opinion made it clear that we can't even turn a blind eye here. We have to have some responsibility, we have to be asking questions. 

So if you want to dig down in the CTA and then also look in terms of managing risk, I encourage you to take a look at the Formal Opinion 491, and then think about the rules. 1.1, competency. If we are going to be competent, we have to know what questions to ask to make sure that we're not helping someone launder money. 1.2 is in play. We just talked about that, we can't allow our services to be used to commit or furtherance of crime or fraud. 1.3, diligence is going to be in play. 1.4, we have an obligation to communicate. Hey, this is not okay, explain the legal ramifications of the things that you're doing, if they refuse to follow your advice and want to continue on with some type of fraud or crime, 1.16 is going to be in play, withdraw and get out. 1.13 is going to be in play in terms of just representing the entity. 8.4, misconduct is going to be in play. 

So there are a lot of rules here that we need to be aware of so that we're making informed decisions. Do we want the responsibility to assist all these clients in filing this, the BOI, the business ownership information, report? Because there's all kinds of identifying information and it needs to be accurate. Then if you are lied to or something's incorrect, that can create some exposure for you. So I would want to be a little concerned about that. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm good. Hey, if you really want to come up to speed and you feel very competent in helping all your clients do this year in and year out, God bless, go for it. If not, I would want to at least make sure that clients, particularly current clients, are made aware of the act, and then I would want to document that you are not going to take on that responsibility to help them comply with the requirements under the act. 

I would just not want to leave this sitting out there unaddressed because particularly, if we have some ongoing relationships with any of these clients, and that's fairly common, and they're harmed at some point by not filing this document, they're going to turn to you and say, "What the heck? You're the lawyer. This is your fault. I had no idea. I thought you're looking out for me and my best interest or our company's." You see where this can go. And a claim like that's going to have some legs, folks. It really could. So I strongly encourage you. Let's think about, be intentional about what we want to do. Do we want to advise, not advise, help with these forms, don't help with these forms? And then document that the client has been informed and that we either are or we are not. So those are the two things that are the November knows. 

So I hope you found something useful from today's just ramblings of a risk guy. And as always, if you have any questions or concerns about either of these topics or anything else that I might be able to assist you with, please don't hesitate to reach out. My email address is MBass@ALPSInsurance. ALPSInsurance.com. And you don't need to be an ALPS insurer to visit with me. There's no cost and visit with me. Again, I'm not a risk manager for ALPS. I'm hired by ALPS to be your risk manager. So that's it, folks. Bye-bye. Have a good one. 

 

ALPS In Brief - Episode 74: Why Cyber Liability Insurance is Essential

Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS, and welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. 

Okay, today it's just me, and we're going to talk about managing cyber crime risks and really looking at the whys behind what it does in terms of obtaining cyber liability insurance. And I really want to dig into this a little deeper. I still get a lot of questions about insurance, what it does, what it doesn't do, and is it necessary, and the list goes on and on and on. So let's hit that topic. 

Before we jump into some of the specifics of using insurance to manage your risk, I want to set the stage again, I always start my cyber programs with some information. Let's look at headlines from 2022. 

In 2022, 255 million phishing attacks occurred in just six months. Now this is a report done by SlashNext, and they analyzed billions of link based URLs, attachments, natural language messages in email, mobile, and browser channels over six months and that's what they found. And that's a 61% increase in phishing attacks compared to 2021. That's pretty significant. They also recorded a 50% increase in attacks on mobile devices. And I really ask that you pay attention and try to appreciate the significance of that. Cyber criminals really are moving their attacks to mobile and personal communication channels to reach employees. The big attacks right now are scams and credential theft. They're the top of the list or the desired outcome with these mobile attacks. And a lot of this will be a phishing and smishing, using SMS text messaging as the attack avenue for a phishing attack, if you will. Smishing is combining SMS and the word phishing, so that's how you get to that. 

The FBI has reported that cyber criminals are tampering with QR codes in an attempt to steal victim funds. A lot of people will say, "Well, I'm not going to be that exposed to this stuff, and how frequently is this all this going on?" I got to tell you, it's getting a little crazy out there. Remember QR codes, for instance during the pandemic, particularly as things started to open back up and you go out to restaurants. And instead of handing you a menu, they'd have that little QR code, that little box that has all the dots and dashes and little squares and things in it. And you would scan that and it would take you to the menu or a webpage. Well, a lot of these can be faked. People will just create a QR code sticker and put it over. 

Think at a parking lot and you go to scan something to pay your bill, your parking fee, and if you're misdirected to a site that looks like the site that you would expect to pay your parking bill for the evening, but it's not, you've just turned over your account information to somebody that doesn't have your best interest in mind. We've seen it in parking tickets, creating fake parking tickets. And again, it'll have the local parking authority logo and the little yellow envelope and they stick it on your windshield. And again, ah, good lord, I got a parking ticket. They make it very convenient to scan the code. It's not real. So we got to be careful. 

We're even seeing QR codes being sent via email pretending to be a multifactor authentication process. And the emails may even mimic corporate logos, law firm logos, it could be anything. And people are falling prey to this. So it's just another crazy unusual attack vector that a lot of folks out there really aren't aware of. 

There's also a report that 79 million malicious domains were flagged in the first half of 2022. Please understand what that means. 79 million fake websites. Banks, could be anything, anything at all. And again, they're going to look very, very similar to the real thing. That's 79 million opportunities for anyone at your firm, you or any other employee or attorney practicing at your firm. It's just an opportunity for them to do something innocently, naively, but it's just getting scammed, getting taken advantage of. 

The final thing I'll throw at you here in 2022, the A Legal Technology Survey results reported that 27% of participating law firms reported experiencing a data breach of some kind. 

So I try to share all this to get your attention, because we need to always remember that IT support isn't the last line of defense. You and whoever else has access to your office network is the last line of defense. And this has consequences, and it really does. The consequences, you really need to care because as a lawyer, you are a valuable target, particularly those of you who practice in the solo and small firm space. I know a lot of lawyers don't believe that. They just think we're not going to be on anybody's radar. It's a rural practice, as an example. Well, come on, there is no such thing as rural on the internet. 

And you're considered in the so small firm space sort of the low hanging fruit because the cyber criminals know that you don't have typically the financial wherewithal and oftentimes the deep understanding of everything that could be done. I think the financial wherewithal piece is probably the bigger piece because you just can't throw the same kind of money that a company like Microsoft does around their cloud, protecting your data there as an example. So you're sort of viewed as the low hanging fruit. 

And you really need to care because I got to tell you, it's only a matter of time. Robert Mueller, if you remember, the former director of the FBI, famously said, "There are only two types of companies, those that have been hacked and those that will be hacked." But almost actually at the time he said that, that kind of statement was out of date. It really should be something more like there are only two types of companies, those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. I mean, I'm not trying to be melodramatic about it, I'm just sharing. It's not if, it really is when. 

Now this presentation really isn't about all the things that you can do to prevent becoming a victim. I have lots of other materials, podcasts, CLEs, webinar, all sorts of stuff that can go there. I will share that there is a checklist, a cybersecurity checklist available, if you have any interest, on our website. Just go to the homepage and under resources, scroll down a little bit, you'll see sample forms of checklist. Check there and you'll go in and there'll be another link to checklist and the cybersecurity checklist is there, and that might be useful to you. 

But I do want to discuss the risk associated with not being proactive with your cybersecurity efforts. And just as an aside, this really in terms of cybersecurity, proactive efforts, that really does need to include social engineering awareness training, even if you're just a true solo and it's you. You need to stay abreast of what's happening. So I'll just throw that out there. 

Okay. Some of the risks your firm faces by someone, anyone at your firm, not doing their part. This really is an all hands on deck kind of situation. Well, let me just read some of the things that can go wrong in terms of the types of risk. I mean, we're sort of talking about the legal and financial risks, but there's legal liability to others, employees, clients, third parties, for loss, theft, or unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable information. And there may be legal liability for the theft of client funds. Think wire fraud or business email compromise, being tricked and scammed into sending typically larger sums of money to the wrong bank and just a cyber criminal. Legal liability for the theft or loss of third party corporate information. Being subject to regulatory action for the failure to comply with state breach notification laws. Having to cover the costs of responding to and recovering from a breach. Damage to your reputation. Loss of revenue due to a breach. These are things to take pretty seriously. I mean, this can get crazy fairly quickly. 

I would encourage you to pay attention to this. The typical costs of a network breach for small businesses is currently around 200,000. And I will share the device theft, think of smartphone, jump drives, laptops, et cetera. So device theft of these mobile types of things. Wire fraud and ransomware are really common problems we see for law firms in terms of the lawyers and the firms that we insure. 

So as an aside, and just again keep your attention in play here, there could be a coverage problem. Think about, a lot of lawyers have fallen prey to various types of financial fraud. But let's just talk about this in the context of wire fraud, being tricked into sending money to the wrong bank because a routing number has been changed and you weren't aware that that change occurred and didn't do anything to try to catch it. And the lawyers will immediately call in and say, "This is malpractice. I got to file a claim." Well, I'm not so sure that that's the case. Theft of funds is a property loss, and malpractice actually doesn't cover property losses. 

So wire fraud, theft of funds, can be in many instances an uncovered loss if the only way you're trying to ensure for that is through a malpractice policy. Read your policy. This is not unique to ALPS. These policies weren't intended or designed to cover cyber crime. Now, we'll explore that a little bit more here in a bit, but generally, I mean, that's not the purpose behind it. It's really to cover you for professional negligence in the practice of law. 

Okay. Now, let's talk about the fallout. So let's assume, I'm not going to look at this never happens, but we'll see, that there is some type of breach. And I'm not talking about wire fraud here, I'm talking about a data breach so that someone really is in the system. What does that mean? How does this play? Well, you need to understand, we're going to start, if you will, with the response and system recovery. So someone needs to come in, typically a forensic team, IT forensic team, that typically is not your IT support. These folks typically know a great deal about how to protect you, but often don't have the skillset to do the forensic piece once there is a breach. That's a different group. 

So they're going to come in and they need to understand the breach, try to figure out what happened and terminate it if it's still going on. There may be programs that have encrypted your system and as you try to clean that up may still be there and that can encrypt again. So they have to terminate, try to clean up. This team is going to try to figure out the who, the what, the when, the where, the how. Really understand. 

Well, while all this is going on, you don't have access to your network. They need to image typically the entire network. And that's something that doesn't happen... The preserving the evidence of the crime, and it helps them evaluate and understand, and that doesn't happen in half an hour. So you're not going to have access to your systems and your data while this is going on. Now, how long can that take? It depends on the type of breach and what's going on. If it's just a lost laptop that has some passwords on it, they could probably do a remote kill and try to evaluate was that laptop and any passwords used to access the network? So that may be relatively brief. But if there is a major ransomware attack, as an example, and everything's encrypted, it could be days to even several weeks. It just depends.But we need to think through that, and how would that impact your practice? Some it may not be too bad, others, it could really be a pretty devastating event. 

So once all that's done, you understand, okay, man, they're starting to build the system back. Phew, we're going to get through this. It's still not over. Every jurisdiction in the United States has their own unique breach notification law and you need to comply with these. And you need to understand too what states are in play. It's not about, well, I practice here in Florida and that's it. If in your database there's information from clients and third parties, and just the list goes on and on, of people in multiple surrounding states, you may have to comply with those state breach notification laws as well. Typically, there's some cost of notifying all the people that have been impacted by this. The cost of compliance. Do you want to pay for credit monitoring? The list just goes on and on. Reputation management, et cetera. This can get expensive. So that can be managed obviously, but I want you to hear and understand, a breach can be significant. It's not just the loss of money, whether that's a ransomware payment or wire fraud, there's lots of other things that can go on. 

And you need to think about, there's all kinds of information in your files. There's just gobs of information out there. So again, don't minimize the consequences of a data breach. 

Now the good news of course, and where I said I'd go with this was, that you can manage this risk with the purchase of a cyber liability insurance policy. And of course, I would always couple that with following through on cybersecurity best practices. You don't get a reference to a lot of things in that checklist. There are other proactive things you can do, making sure that there's robust security software running on all the mobile devices at work or anything that used for work. So work from home folks, if they're using personal devices, we need to protect these things. But let's focused on this insurance piece. 

At the outset, I do want to share that the purchase of cyber insurance, depending on how much coverage you'd like, the type of coverage you're looking for, how big your firm is, this discussion, sort of tangential discussion on security best practices, getting back to that checklist, is important because an insurer may make it a requirement that you do certain things. You may have to have multifactor authentication in play. They're just going to be looking and asking questions about, what is your security posture? What steps have you taken? What processes are in play? Do you use out-of-band communications as an example to verify the accuracy of all wiring instructions prior to wiring funds? So there are a variety of things that can be important here. 

So the accuracy of the information you provide in terms of the application going through the process is going to be very, very important. You don't mislead. Don't lie. Say, "Well, I know this is what they want to hear, this is what they want us to do, and we try, but this is our intent." If post breach an insurer learns that you in fact weren't doing all that you said you were doing on the prevention front, you may have a serious, serious coverage problem. So I do want to focus here just a side moment on these security best practices. That can be very, very significant. 

But what basically does cyber liability insurance provide? What do you get for your premium dollar? It's really looking at providing coverage for the type of losses I had talked about a bit. Commonly, you're going to see these policies cover business interruption, as an example. So that would be covering the loss of income and forensic expenses sustained during the period of restoration after the breach. Now, that coverage may be contingent upon a short waiting period. Media liability. So that's things like copyright or trademark infringement, malicious defacement of a website, and liable. 

Data recovery. So we're talking about the reasonable and necessary costs incurred in order to regain access to, replace, or restore data, or the reasonable and necessary costs incurred in order to determine that the data cannot be accessed, replaced, or restored. So I think ransomware as an example. And then sometimes you might even pay for a decryption key that don't do much, or you might've been impacted with wiperware and your data's just been erased and destroyed. So there's some costs in terms of trying to figure out, what can we get back and is it doable? 

Privacy breach response. So that's the expenses associated with complying with relevant breach notification laws. We had talked about that. Look for a policy that includes coverage for the cost of privacy counsel, forensic investigators, and notification and credit monitoring services. 

It will also provide typically, again, data and network liability. Now, these are the damages and expenses related to claims resulting from a breach of data in your control or a third party, and damages and expenses resulting from a security breach. Examples of a security breach would include unauthorized access or use of network resources, a denial-of-service attack, an insertion of malicious code, if somebody downloads something and it's maybe a key log or just tracking what's going on your network, and the transmission of malicious code from your network, so someone's using your network to harm somebody else. 

Crisis management. This is the expense associated with bringing in outside experts to investigate the incident and fix the problem. And with some policies can include the cost of a public relations consultant. 

Cyber extortion. This is the expense associated with investigations and paying for the return of or gaining back access to data. Now, one thing to be aware with cyber extortion, it is pretty common in the cyber insurance space that you need permission in advance from the insurer to make that ransom payment. It has to do with regulations that monies can't be paid to nation states. You don't want to pay the Iraqis, as an example, their military. And they're very involved in ransomware. So there's some issues there. But I'm just making you aware of that little side note, but typically money is available in terms of reimbursement. 

Fraudulent instruction. This is a loss resulting from the transfer of funds after relying in good faith on an instruction that was a misrepresentation of a material fact. Now again, coverage may be contingent upon an out-of-band communication taking place. Again, if you're not familiar, an out-of-band communication is, let's say that the wire fraud instructions come via fax. So that's the inbound communication channel. An out-of-band communication channel means we changed the communication channel for an outbound communication in an attempt to verify the accuracy of the information that was received in the inbound communication. So incoming fax, wire instructions. I pick up the phone with a previously verified number from whoever sent the fax, and I will read the information, Hey, Sue. I just want to verify, thanks for sending over the fax, got everything. Is this information correct?" 

Because these things can and have been and will continue to be intercepted and changed. So if a call comes in, it could be a deepfake audio. And I'm telling you folks, this has happened. You're not talking to who you think you're talking to so you have the information. So use a different communication channel to reach back out and confirm. That's an out-of-band communication. That's what we mean by that. 

Some other benefits from cyber liability insurance. It can cover regulatory defense and penalties. These are the expenses and penalties that an insurer is obligated to pay as a result of a regulatory proceeding that arose due to a data or security... My tongue is getting twisted today. A security breach. 

And finally, payment card liabilities. So it might be PCI fines, the payment card industry PCI fines, costs, expenses. An insurer is legally obligated to pay as a result of a data or security breach. 

So these are some of the common coverages you will typically find in a cyber liability policy. And again, that's some pretty thorough stuff and can really help you manage the risks and get through this, in again, the event that there is a significant data breach of some type. 

Now, a few things to keep in mind and just be aware of. There are going to be exclusions for war and state sponsored attacks. I would think that wouldn't be much of a surprise. But the current Russia-Ukraine war is one obvious example as to why. NotPetya, which was... It looked like ransomware. Russia released it into the wild prior to the onset of the war, but leading up to it, in an attempt to really do some serious damage in Ukraine. But it just spread and went global. And that NotPetya was what we call wiperware. It looks like ransomware, acts like ransomware, but the intent is not to hold your data ransom for some payment, the intent is to wipe your data, just get rid of everything. That's not good. And it is nasty, nasty stuff. 

Also be aware that these policies cover data. They don't cover hardware. If you have a lightning strike and your server's just toast, a cyber liability policy isn't going to respond. That would be something you'd cover under your general insurance, your business owner's policy or your commercial package, whatever that might be. 

Some common exclusions just to be aware of, breaches that occurred prior to the effective date of the policy. Now there's a growing move in this space to kind of be a little more liberal with that in terms of this insurance space because it just just very difficult to try to figure out when these things occurred. 

But if you are breached and you know it, and you come and buy a cyber liability policy, the house is already on fire, that's not going to work. You would have to have absolutely no idea that a breach occurred. Because sometimes these people can be in your system for months and sometimes even a year or more. That's just the way it is. 

Insider attacks. If somebody in your employer, another attorney in the firm, just makes bad decisions for whatever reason and does a lot of damage, again, insider attack, that's not going to be covered. 

And some policies, think about what I'm about to share here, phishing scams are often not covered or maybe subject to a sublimit. And really what that's talking about and getting to is yet again, wire fraud business email compromise. It's the loss of funds. Other examples might be someone who stripped it and buying a bunch of gift cards to pay something. Turning over credit card information. 

You might ask if there's a social engineering endorsement available that might pull some of this back in. And again, if there is coverage under the policy, typically it's a sublimit and it's not going to be as high as the general limits of the overall cyber liability coverage that you might purchase. So for example, let's say you buy $250,000 in coverage, the sublimit on these kinds of theft of funds might be just 10% of that, so 25 grand. You could also look at getting some coverage under a crime policy, and that's probably the most effective way to try to get this covered. But every carrier is going to be different. I'll come back to that here in a moment. 

Also, an attack resulting from a failure to correct a known vulnerability. So if you are continuing to use outdated systems because hey, Windows 8 still works wonderfully, even though you know that it's no longer supported and there's no security patches and up where, as a result of that, you're not keeping systems current and patched and there's a breach. If you're using unpatched systems, outdated systems, that may void coverage for anything. So you need to just be aware. 

There are different types, different ways I guess to say, to get into this. A lot of malpractice carriers have what I would say an add-on. It's sort of in part.... Maybe the best way to say is it's some type of cyber endorsement to a malpractice policy. And that's not bad, don't get me wrong. It's better than nothing. But understand these endorsements, these add-ons, often come with lower limits and less broad coverage. And part of the reason that that's the case is due to limited, and at times even no, underwriting being involved in that cyber insurance piece. You can opt in. Sometimes it just is automatically there depending on the carrier. So again, it's important to have some type of cyber coverage, but I need you to understand if you're not really reading these policies, these endorsements, and really understanding what they do and don't do, you might be running with some assumptions. I really prefer to see a freestanding cyber policy. 

And just as a aside real quick. I shared that this add-on and the automatic, if you will, endorsement is in some malpractice policies. You'll also see that at times in some business owner package policies as well. But again, the same issue is in play. It's not as austere. Just not as broad. Limits aren't going to be as high. So I would encourage you to look at standalone coverage. 

How much? Boy, that is a tough one. I would say in the solo and small firm space, I would want to at a minimum be looking at a quarter to half a million, and understanding that we're talking about the expenses and consequences of a data breach as opposed to theft of funds. I'm going to look at theft of funds perhaps at a higher amount separately, just depending on how much money you're moving through your accounts. 

And also, just as an aside, some of the cyber policies, even the standalone policies, will cover theft of your funds, but not theft of client funds. So if money is accidentally wired, firm money wired to a wrong vendor making a payment or some sort out of the operating account, okay, cyber will cover that. You wire 850,000 of client funds out, the cyber policy may not cover that at all. So you really need to ask and look into this. Because it's again another reason to look at a crime policy or a crime endorsement and see what you can do there. You may need to have several different policies in play even to get to this total that whatever you're looking at. 

If you can get to a million, even better. But again, I don't know enough about your individual practices and firms in terms of how valuable is the data. How much do we have here? That's something you're going to have to maybe talk with an underwriter or a marketing person with, business development person, with your insurer, to really gets a better ideas of what to do there. 

The final thing I want to throw at you is just know that these policies differ, at times substantially, between insurers. So it's worth at times shopping the market a little bit. Prices can be quite variable as well. A lot of the variability goes with just what coverage is being offered. If you have a policy that's going to cover your money and client money as an example, that's going to be more expensive than a policy that doesn't cover any loss of funds in terms of wire fraud and these phishing scams. So again, you have to make sure you're comparing apples to apples. 

But know that this is a very dynamic market relative to life insurance and lots of other... They've been around for decades and decades. This is new stuff. And the risks are changing almost daily. It's very difficult for an insurer to really understand what their exposure's going to look like two or three years down the road, based on what the risk analysis is today. Who knows? AI as an example. How is this going to change things? How significant will deepfakes become? They are already in play, so please... But I'm just trying to share, can you appreciate how challenging it is? An insurer has to set premium on an unknown risk. It's changing and evolving very quickly. So that's why you will experience and see great differences perhaps in coverage, differences in premium, et cetera. So it's really worth sitting down and talking with someone about how to move forward and what might be best for your situation. 

So that's really all I have on cyber liability. I hope you found something of value. And I like at times to go back and say, "What are the takeaways here?" And the biggest takeaway for me, if I'm sitting in your shoes, if you already have not done so, I strongly encourage you to consider adding cyber liability insurance to your insurance portfolio. In my mind, I just honestly have seen too much. And I truthfully can say I've been involved post breach with a number of firms in a number of different situations, and more than a few really never recovered. The financial hit was just too much, and that was that. So I want to make sure, my hope is that you hear, that there's some learning that we can obtain from the experiences of others. So I'll leave it at that. 

Again, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte. If you ever have a need, desire, concern that you want to talk about, please don't hesitate to reach out. My email is mbass@alpsinsurance.com. You do not need to be an insured to visit with me. There's no cost. I'm hired to be a risk manager for the bar at large. I'm hired to be your risk manager. So if there's ever anything I can do on cybersecurity, explaining insurance, and a lot of lawyers have questions about legal malpractice insurance and other types of coverage, happy to talk. Ethics, malpractice avoidance, [inaudible 00:41:54], whatever, I'm here. That's it. Bye-bye all. 

ALPS In Brief - Episode 73: The Ethical Obligation of Succession Planning

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Hello. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS, and welcome to ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. 

I'm delighted to have, as my guest today, Bill Harvit, and Bill is the chairman of the Succession Planning Committee at the West Virginia State Bar. And I'll tell you, as a risk guy, succession planning is a huge issue, and it seems to me, in recent years, more and more states are starting to move a little bit on this topic, and for good reason. 

Bill and I are going to have a chat about succession planning, and I thought it'd be fun to have Bill not only because of his involvement with the committee and all this going on in West Virginia, but I think, folks, it's important, too, to hear from another practitioner, from somebody that's out there. I've been in this risk management space for 25 years, and I'm sure some of you are tired of hearing just from me, and I like to have different types of thoughts. Before we jump into this, Bill, may I have you take just a moment and introduce yourself. What do listeners need to know about you? 

Bill Harvit: 

Oh, probably not a lot. No, I'm teasing. I've been practicing law for ... this is my 37th year, coming up on 37th year. I've represented both plaintiffs and defendants through the years, but principally, I've been involved in toxic torts, mass tort litigation, through the years. And, unfortunately, I had a situation, back in 2017, that thrusted me into this succession planning situation, and Mark, it's not because I didn't prepare. We thought we were prepared and we were not. It's a very important topic. I thank you and ALPS for focusing on it. And, listen, to the extent I can help anybody not go through what I went through, I'm happy to do so. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Are you able to share a little bit about what happened and what brought you into this? 

Bill Harvit: 

Sure. I had been practicing, in fact, I had a firm for 25 years, and my partner and I, as I said, did a lot of mass tort litigation. And literally, one day, I'm not kidding, in April of 2017, I knew he was having some issues, but he walked in and literally said, "I'm done," and walked out, and we had about 5,000 files that were open, again, because we did mass tort litigation. They weren't all 100% open. Some were just waiting on settlements and bankruptcy defendants and things of that nature. It took me two and a half years to wind down that firm and deal with all of the issues that, hopefully, we're not going to get to all of them, but hopefully at least touch on a number of the issues. I lived it, and I will tell you it's probably one of the most stressful times in my life. 

And, just in this same vein, that happened to me as a lawyer, but it also happened to me as a non-lawyer. When my father passed away, he and my mother operated a small women's clothing store in southern West Virginia, and not unlike a small law firm, they each had their own duties and responsibilities. And, when he passed away, of course, they had no succession plan, and I had to step into that. I've learned it both as a lawyer and as a non-lawyer. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Well, what I appreciate about this story is there's this temptation, as I see it, among the bar at large, is succession planning really is an issue that we need to focus on in terms of solo lawyers and the rest of us don't really need to worry about that. And you are so right. I've seen problems in firms of five, eight, 10 lawyers where we have these unexpected, unplanned for transitions, whether it's an untimely death or somebody just saying, "I'm done." All kinds of things can come up here that create some problems. 

I was also interested, as we were talking a little bit via email, you had mentioned that West Virginia is in the process of considering some rule changes, and specifically, as I understand it, really making it clear that the obligations to plan for one's succession, it does go beyond the solo space. Am I correct in that? 

Bill Harvit: 

Yes. Yes. And the reason, let me just cite a couple of statistics, Mark, and you probably know these, but I was a little surprised by them. But, according to the ABA profile of the legal profession in 2022, 40% of lawyers are over the age of 45 and the median age is over 46. The other interesting fact to me, from Thomson Reuters, was that 85% of lawyers are in firms of 10 or fewer and 60% are in firms of three or fewer. And what happens in those situations, I lived it, is when there's a triggering event that disrupts one of the lawyers, then it falls on the others. And I can tell you, I was unable to take new cases, I was barely able to finish the ongoing cases I had because of all the issues that I had to immediately address. 

And, listen, these are not isolated events. People think, and when they think of triggering events, they think of death or maybe disability, but triggering events can even include technological disruptions. There's a lot of talk about AI and generative AI, and there is going to be disruption in many areas of our field. There are a vast number of triggering events that can affect the operation of small firms. 

But, yes, you are correct. West Virginia is looking to expand the rule to five or fewer because, let's be honest, the economics of the practice of law often dictates, in small firms, that each lawyer practice in a separate area, and that was the case in our firm. But, if you've got one lawyer that's doing domestic relations and another that's doing personal injury, another doing bankruptcy, and then you have a lawyer that's doing something else, say, securities work, well, none of those other lawyers are going to be, I think, competent to handle those files. That's why it really does affect small law firms as well. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

I love the term triggering event. I think that is an outstanding term. But you're so right, and folks, I just want to underscore coming at this from a risk perspective, again, "Well, we're a family here. We've got four or five lawyers and good staff and all, and there really isn't ..." But what does happen if we're a firm and I'm the divorce lawyer and I'm out for whatever the triggering event is and I'm out permanently, can you appreciate the challenges that this puts everybody else in? We really do, I should say I really do, and outside the group, believe this, we really do, as a profession, need to take this issue very seriously and do something. 

But, now then, the question becomes, Bill, what does that mean? Where do we start? I'm sure you get some calls and some conversations, I hear this a lot too, and is there a difference, I should say, between what a solo needs to do or what a small firm needs to do in terms of where to begin? What are your thoughts? 

Bill Harvit: 

Well, before I address that, let me tell you what happens if you don't begin the process. In West Virginia in particular, Rule 3.9, administrative rules, is going to require the Supreme Court to appoint someone. As we sit here today, we all have the privilege of making these very difficult decisions while we're in what I call business mode. While things aren't normal, nothing's normal in the practice of law, but while things are basically normal in our lives and we can devote the time to it, if we don't do that, then either we or someone else appointed is going to make those decisions when we're in what I call crisis mode. 

And, when you're in crisis mode and you're making decisions, or someone else is making decisions, about whether you need an extended reporting endorsement, for instance, and I'm not plugging ALPS here, but it's a very important issue, and we can talk about that. It's hugely important. But, if you're in crisis mode, or some third party's making that decision for you, then you're in trouble. Now's the time to seriously get started doing that, and it's not easy because this is more of a process than it is an event. And I try to break up succession planning into basically two stages, what I call short-term succession planning, where you're going to get in place the people you need, you're going to do what's necessary to protect your clients, your heirs, your staff, your co-counsel, your partners, and we can talk about that and focus on that, and I think we should immediately. 

But there's also a long-term component to this where, and again, it takes time, but where you preserve and enhance the value of your firm, which, a lot of times, is one of the most important assets a lawyer has, in order to transition that firm to new people, whether it's from retirement or whether it's because of a triggering event. We'll never get to the issues on the second part because it just takes so much more time to talk about. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Well, let's talk about these short-term, more immediate things. What comes to mind? I'm reaching out to you and saying, "Hey, there are two of us here, and we understand, but I have no clue what to do." Where do we start? 

Bill Harvit: 

Well, there's quite a bit of literature out there. In fact, I just did this, in fact, I wrote it down, I wanted to look, if you ever use Google Scholar on the peer-reviewed literature, well, I had to do this before our podcast, I entered in Google Scholar, I entered succession planning and limited it just to the last 10 years. There were 84,000 articles on succession planning. Then I thought, "Well, okay, those include just general business, so let's limit it to law practice succession planning." Well, there were 28,100 peer-reviewed articles out there. 

There's plenty of literature just that's available, but also I would encourage people to contact their bar associations. We're, I think, pretty progressive about moving this issue forward. Oregon, the Oregon State Bar has some wonderful documents online. Again, I think West Virginia has good documents. We're still working on some of ours. Virginia has some really interesting documents on how to incorporate the successor into your will, durable power of attorney, things of that nature. Really, the first step is appointing a successor, and I think you got to give that a lot of consideration. And that's going to, I think, depend upon the type of practice you have, how many partners you have, how many cases you have, and that sort of thing, because you want to appoint someone who's competent in the area of the cases that you handle. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Exactly, and that's an obligation. That's an ethical obligation. You can't just go out and find anybody. I want to underscore, folks, again, we are talking about small firms. If we could go back to I'm the divorce guy and nobody else in the firm does divorce, I know who in the area we could reach out to, and I should take on that responsibility, here are a couple of names, and perhaps I agree to do this for another colleague, another divorce attorney in another firm. It can be reciprocal in other words, but don't leave this, don't leave this. It can create all kinds of unexpected headaches. 

The other thing that I want to underscore for all of you is I've had lots of conversations over the years with particularly solo attorneys in all the consulting work that I've done, and even in a lot of the lecturing around the country, but it's awfully hard to find somebody. And let me share a couple of thoughts, because I think part of the problem is there's a misunderstanding about what the ask is. There's this fear, and I'll just make this as a solo because that's the most obvious or clear example, there's this fear, if I pass and Bill is going to be my backup, my successor, that, well, that means that Bill's going to come into my practice, take it over and run the practice, and he's already got his own full-time practice. That's not what the ask is. The ask is to administer the winding up or the transition of my practice. Sometimes this could also be solos agreeing to do this for each other. 

You have backup attorney possibilities that can come into this as well. But here's another thought. There's no rule that says I just have to find some guy like Bill to agree to do this. I've been involved in situations where four or five solo attorneys get together as a group and just say, "We'll share these responsibilities." Turned out there was a situation a number of years ago where a lawyer was a member of a five ... group of solos that agreed to be the successors and backup for each other. And one of the younger guys, was early fifties at the time, was involved in a deadly climbing accident, and the other four guys stepped in and divvied up the duties. And it was a very smooth transition, was very emotionally hard for them all, they were all great friends, but the process worked. 

I'll just share some thoughts there. Please don't hesitate to say yes, really understand what your obligations are. I want to be clear about that. Bill ... 

Bill Harvit: 

Well, let me just add something there- 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yes, please. 

Bill Harvit: 

... because when I said and mentioned finding someone competent to handle your files or to transfer your files, that's not my requirement. That's the rules of ethics requirement. If you look at Rule 1.3 under diligence, comment five, it specifically says, "In the event of death or disability, the duty of diligence may require a plan that designates another competent lawyer to review client files, notify each client of the lawyer's death or disability, and determine whether there's a need for immediate protective action." I'd love to take credit for it, but that's not my original thought. 

But let me talk a little bit about some of the things that a successor is going to need to do. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay. Please. 

Bill Harvit: 

Yeah. I have a good buddy up in the northern part of the state, he and I went to law school together, and years ago, if he would've called me and said, "Would you be my successor?," I would have, knee-jerk reaction, absolutely would've said yes. He's more than two hours away from me. I never would've given thought to some of these issues, and now that I have, it just wouldn't be reasonable for me to do it. 

The duties of a successor, number one, are to review the files as soon as possible and triage those files to determine if any clients need assistance immediately. They're going to have to notify those clients immediately because, under the rules of ethics, the client has to approve of the lawyer who's going to handle the file. Triaging those files, extremely important, and talking with the client. What if the client says, "No, no, no, I've got another lawyer that I want to handle it?" Well, that succession lawyer is going to have to prepare that file and get it to that client as soon as possible, probably going to have to notify the court if there's an ongoing matter. All of this is not going to be done in a day. It's just not going to happen. 

If there's property that the attorney has, and I'm not talking about closed files, I'm talking about open files, that needs to be returned, whether it's money, whether it's original documents, those are going to have to be returned to the clients. And then later, obviously, there's going to have to be an audit of the client trust account. You would hope your successor is going to collect any outstanding fees and expenses in cases, but they're going to have to know where to look to find that information. They're going to have to do an accounting, a final accounting, probably prepare tax documents, close bank accounts, and here's a big one. They're going to have to review your files to determine which files have to be retained, for how long they have to be retained, and in what form they need to be retained, and this is huge. And I'd like to talk more about that, but there also may be other things specific to your particular practice that a successor's going to have to do. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Okay, and thank you for sharing all that. My response, as a risk guy, folks, understand what Bill is sharing, in my mind, creates another proactive step that we need to take. Not only do you need to name a backup attorney, it really becomes, I think, a responsibility to develop some type of informational manual, some type of procedure. It's like, "Here are the passwords to get into the key systems. Here are the key systems. This is how the office works." What I would encourage you to do is ask yourself, say, "If I had to walk into my practice today not knowing ... what do I need to know?" You see what I'm trying to go? You know what your practice looks like. 

You really need to set forth just an instruction manual, for lack of a better term, on everything the next guy coming in will need to know to do the things that Bill just set forth. Absent those kinds of instructions, it can be far messier than it needs to be. I've been involved in situations where they absolutely had no idea what the passwords were to get into anything, and you're spending time and money, precious time and money. There may be a fire, in other words, in a client file, but if you can't get into this, they're trying to pay somebody to hack in and break it, see what we can do, and that's just crazy. What- 

Bill Harvit: 

Well, Mark, not to interrupt you, I'm sorry, but I have a list- 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Please. 

Bill Harvit: 

... I have a half a page list here of things, but I won't read them all, but you're exactly right. If your successor doesn't know where the information is that they're going to need, then you're just slowing the process down. And let me just mention- 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Please. 

Bill Harvit: 

... something about funding, because this, to me, is huge because people don't think about this, but during a transition from a triggering event or even retirement, you are going to have to have money to operate that firm. In my case, it was two and a half years, and we were fortunate enough that we had money coming in on cases that I could afford to do it the right way. But let me talk about some of those expenses if I may, because, when that triggering event happens, that office has to continue to run. Your key personnel have to continue to be paid salary and benefits, mortgage has to be paid, all of the operating expenses, who's going to pay for that? If you buy life insurance or disability insurance, most of the time, the lawyer is buying that to protect him or her and their families. They're not thinking about using those funds to transition their office. Those are huge, but let me point out some of the other expenses that I learned about. 

Our firm, as I said, was 25 years old. We had taken over from some older lawyers that had retired. As a result, we literally had thousands of files that were in paper form. And it's not because we didn't periodically review them, it's because we had files where we represented infants, we had estate files, my predecessors did a lot of estate planning, so we had to keep those files, proprietary business information that was in files where we had represented businesses. And let me mention something again, you and I haven't talked about this, I have no stock in ALPS, if there is even stock, I'd have no interest, but if you don't maintain a file that you have a potential claim on, then you're likely to run afoul of the insurance company, because if you go out or your successor destroys a file that you got a bunch of notes in that you need to defend yourself for a claim of negligence or other malpractice, you're in trouble. 

It's not only the infant files and settlement documents, estate, somebody's got to go through those files and determine what you're going to keep. Now maybe I'm talking too much, but I want to get this out. We had so much paper that I wanted to convert it to digital because I didn't want to pay to store it anywhere. The cost of converting it to digital shocked me. It was $35,000. Well, if you don't have a sinking fund or some way to pay for this, don't expect your successor to pay for it. Your heirs are going to end up paying for it. There are different mechanisms that can be utilized to set up a sinking fund or provide funding to do that. But these expenses are huge. 

And one more I'm going to mention because it was another huge one, and that was the extended reporting endorsement. And, again, I have no connection to ALPS, but because of the type of practice we had, it was important for us to purchase an extended reporting endorsement, and it was quite expensive. And the other point I'll mention about that is I think we had maybe 30 days to make that decision. Some of the policies, I've been told, you have to make the decision when you cancel the insurance. That's right. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

That's right. 

Bill Harvit: 

Is your successor going to know that? These are huge issues that affect not only you, but your family and others. Anyway, I'll let you talk now. Sorry about [inaudible 00:27:13]. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Well, it underscores, and when we talk about the extended reporting endorsement, that's tails, a tail policy is what the vernacular is, but there is no such thing. It's not a policy. It's extended reporting endorsement to the final policy that's enforced. But, again, my takeaway from what you're sharing, Bill, is these expenses, instructions, letting people know about the insurance company, and timing and all these things, if you don't do this, particularly, again, in the solo space, but it's not limited to the solo space, zero planning, what ends up happening, you dump this on the lap of an unsuspecting spouse. And I have talked, more than a few times, these unsuspecting spouses that are just grieving and so angry, so angry, "How dare my spouse leave me with this mess?" And you know what they end up doing? They end up getting a truck and just throwing everything away, files, everything. 

Heaven forbid a claim comes up and there's no file and nobody thought to call the carrier and get a tail. Now what you've left your spouse may not be what you think it is or had hoped it would be if there's a viable claim here. I am not making things up. Again, I just want to underscore the importance of being proactive about succession planning. 

Now, Bill, we're coming up here on the end of what we have time for today. Is there a final comment you have before I jump with a final comment? 

Bill Harvit: 

Yeah. You mentioned the spouses, and I just want to not make it about me, but I do want people to understand, as a [inaudible 00:29:14]-year-old kid just out of college and my father passed away, here I was in crisis mode trying to deal with that store, the most stressful time in my entire life. Think about that for your spouse and your family when you're not planning for what's going here. The two important points are get started on the process now, not today, yesterday, get started on the process, and the other important piece is think about how you're going to fund it, because that's huge. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Yeah. Yeah. I absolutely agree, absolutely agree. Well, thank you. My final thought is just to say, Bill and I could sit here and chat for easily another hour, there are just so many things to talk about, but I want to underscore Bill's comment. There's a lot of resources available on the ALPS website, alpsinsurance.com. Look under resources, we have a succession planning page. Many state bars have followed suit with what Oregon did a number of years ago, and there are some guides out there that are outstanding. I think most of the guides come under this heading of succession planning, planning for your death or disability, and are available through state bar websites. 

And, if your own bar doesn't have anything available, don't hesitate to look at other bar websites. These resources are easily usable in your own jurisdiction. You may need to change some language a little bit from South Carolina to West Virginia or something like that, but that's an easy ... 

Folks, I hope you found something of value today. I do appreciate your listening. Bill, it is a pleasure to have you join me. Thank you for taking a little time out of your day. Maybe we can do this again at some point. I'd like to continue the conversation. There's so many things- 

Bill Harvit: 

Mark, I would love to, I would. It's so important, and I really appreciate ALPS focusing on this. 

Mark Bassingthwaighte: 

Well, we're trying to do what we can. After all these years, I've seen too many situations where just being a little proactive in planning could have changed some things. 

That's all we have time for today. Folks, thanks for listening. Appreciate your coming. Bye-Bye. 

 

ALPS InBrief - Episode 72: Do Legal Subscription Services Really Work?

Transcript:

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS, and welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Today, I thought I'd talk about subscription and legal practices. They've been around for a number of years. I would not describe them as just this massive rush of lawyers moving into this subscription practice space, but in my experience in recent years, there's been a lot more interest in it, and it seems to me there's a movement, a growing movement toward this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fallout and all the experiences in terms of hybrid work and working from home and things that happened as a result of the pandemic. We're more and more open to, as lawyers, more and more open to really saying, "Can we do something different here?," because different has worked in other spaces, again, going home, and doing virtual practices for a while, and all these changes that occurred.

I also think there's a recognition that a move toward more client-centric practices is beneficial financially, and I think a good thing, and this, in terms of the subscription legal practice model, is one way that I think you can create a client-centric practice. It's certainly not the only way. I mean, even traditional practices can be far more client-centric, but I like this model surprisingly, I think some folks, I think a risk guy, or a malpractice insurer speaking to a representative, a malpractice insurer. Malpractice insurers may not like these kinds of things for a variety of reasons, and no, I've got to say, I do. I really do.

We need to understand, however, some of the risks and some of the ethical issues, which is really driving my interest in talking about this today, but let's start off by really just sort of defining what a subscription practice is, for those of you that really haven't dug into this or looked at it a whole lot. It really is what it sounds like, and so many of us in today's world are users or consumers of subscription services of a variety of types. Netflix, as an example, would be a great one. Some of these food companies, they send you all the ingredients to make your meals once a week or once a month, these subscription services. There's lots of things.

So the market's very used to this, and as it relates to law, we're really just talking about a lawyer or a firm, offering clients certain legal services on a recurring monthly fee. It's a subscription. Now, what would be included in this subscription? Well, all kinds of things. I think it's, lawyers, we can be a creative bunch, and so I can't limit it to this, but generally, you're going to see some things. There may be availability, so for whatever the subscription fee is each month.

If I'm a prospective subscriber here, I might be thinking, "Okay, you're describing I'm going to get two hours of consultation with you a month. I might get two additional hours of a document review of some sort. I might get access to online forms, access to you for some drafting.' Again, we can say a document or two and describe what that is, or a certain number of hours toward drafting." Again, we can say a document or two and describe what that is, or a certain number of hours toward drafting. You could offer, I'm sorry, prerecorded videos on relevant topics, in other words, some type of library of educational resources.

It could be articles, and just the list just goes on and on. The point is you're trying to create some type of value for the subscriber, and in terms of what it does to you, I mean, think about it. You start to have a little bit more reliability in terms of a steady income stream. I think the model is an excellent model. I also think it can work particularly well in something like the nonprofit space.

I mean, a lot of nonprofits out there that really can't afford to hire full-time, in-house council or even full-time outside counsel, and then honestly, they may not need somebody full-time, but the legal services they need can be expensive. Well, hey, if you have six, eight, 10 nonprofits all subscribing to your services, and you're creating a model to meet the needs of small nonprofits, now, here's something I think can work. So that gives you sort of a quick overview to get a sense of what subscription practices are all about. The first thing we need to kind of look at, though, or think through is just identifying, "Are there ethical issues here, particularly issues that would get in the way that would make this problematic to say the least?" Now, there certainly are some ethical issues, and we're going to discuss them here, but I don't see them as problematic in the sense of preventing anyone from moving in this direction, but what do we really need to think about?

Well, I think at the outset, if you have multiple clients, and that's the whole purpose here of subscription services, we have a potential for conflicts, and we can talk about how to deal with that, so with the conflict rules are going to be in play. We also have the fee issue. Is it going to be reasonable, and how do we determine what's reasonable? What about advanced payments? Rule 1.15 is going to be in play.

So what do we do with these funds when they come in, and how about if... How do we end this? I could, as a subscriber say... After a while, I'm kind of done. I'm just not interested anymore, and you could say, "Boy, Bassingthwaighte has been a subscriber that has just tried to take all kinds of advantage of me and is just so high-maintenance, and I'm not getting anything out of this."

You're just, "I'm costing your money than it's worth." So there may be reasons and times where you want to end a subscription. You might find that the whole model has been mispriced and you need to kind of shut this down, and rethink, and relaunch in a different type of model. So how do we conclude all of this stuff? So those are some of the ethical issues. 1.16, declining or terminating representation, 1.15, safekeeping funds, 1.5, setting fees, reasonable fees, and the conflict rules.

I think those are the biggest ones that we need to deal with, but, okay, so let's start to kind of get into this a little bit and figure out. I think it's worth starting with 1.5, and that's talk about, "How do we price?" There's not a standard formula here. I think you're going to need to look at the specific language of the rules in the jurisdiction where you are going to offer these services and are licensed to practice, and figure out what is reasonable, but I think it's very doable. You need to... I don't want to say, there's going to be a difference between, "Okay, if I am on the standard hourly billing model, I don't think pricing and thinking through is going to work in the subscription model, because why offer the subscription if your billing is going to be the same as the hourly kind of analysis?"

What you sort of have to do is sit down and figure out, "Okay, how much of my time is available?," so if I'm going to offer two hours of consultation, a couple hours of contract review, and my availability. So in other words, I may, as the subscriber, may use or not use these services that you're going to offer, but in terms of the two hours every month, I may just not need that, but I'm also, I have availability to you if I do. So you start to factor in, okay, so the value that you're offering is access to you, some limited services, and perhaps these educational things, whether it's the forms, the access to some type of documents, or some DIY kinds of things, whatever it might be, and you kind of have to look at all that and try to hit a number that works, so you're going to have work through that. Again, I can't give you a standard formula, but I think it's worth making, valuing yourself or valuing your subscription based upon access, and I would try, I think honestly, to do a little discount here. You're exchanging, if you will, the full service hourly billing kind of cost model to ongoing, consistent, regular monthly income, so it has to make financial sense to me as a subscriber. So there's just some things to think about.

I can't give you the magic number here, again, a magic formula. I've seen some situations where it might be 100, $200 a month, and in other situations I've seen lawyers charging several thousand, five, 8,000 a month for services, but what the subscribers are getting for that five to 8,000 is, really, some pretty significant work, but it's still going to be less expensive to the subscriber then, and typically, these are going to be businesses at this tier, I think in most situations, but the business is still saving money by going on this subscription practice. So you need to find that magic number that's sort of a win-win for both of you. The more interesting question is ethically the safekeeping of funds, when, in other words, if you start to get a subscriber and these monthly fees are coming in, what do you do with them? Do they need to be put in a trust account?

Can they be earned upon receipt? Can you make them non-refundable? There are a lot of ideas out there, and you certainly want to get the steady income and make it easy for you and easy for your subscribers. The problem here is the ethical rules really don't address specifically this model. The one thing, and again, you're always going to have to check your local jurisdiction in terms of the RPCs here, I would strongly advise never to use words like non-refundable in... I don't care what your model is.

To me, it's more of an issue, "Are we going to put it in trust or not?" I think I sort of like this hybrid approach. I would argue that the funds that you charge monthly are earned upon receipt because there's this retainer component to it. It's not a true retainer, because a true retainer is just a client paying you to be available, and then any work that they ask you to do, subsequent to putting you on retainer, you charge whatever your rates are, so a true retainer is solely for availability. That's kind of what we have here, but it's a hybrid thing, because in addition to getting access to you, whether I use it or not, in a lot of these situations, I'm going to have access to this library, to these other resources on day one, and so if you describe what I get as the subscriber for the subscription, in a way, clearly saying, "I get access to you, I get access to this library of resources," or whatever other perks are out there on the side, and you have access to me on day one, and you have access to library on day one, well, I would consider that earned upon receipt.

Now, there still could be some arguments that ... Ethically, some jurisdictions may not like that. Well, I see two workarounds with that. The first would be you can charge at the end of the month, so then, it's earned upon receipt because they got what they are paying for by the end of the month. They've had their month of access.

Some say, "Wow, I'm giving away a month for free." Well, yeah, I get that. You could take the payment upfront, put it in trust, and then take it out of trust at the end of each month. You might take the first payment only and keep it in trust, and then, so they pay at the start. On day one, they pay.

You just hold that in trust, and then at the end of each month, or at the first of every next month, that keeps moving into your account and you sort of just keep that first payment out there, I guess for a while, 'cause I don't want to keep the hassle of moving money twice every month, sort of maybe let something sit. Again, you'd have to check with your local ethics council in whatever jurisdiction to, again, talk through that, but I think there's a strong argument for having it earned upon receipt if it is described like this in terms of clearly identifying what you get. Okay, there are some other ethical issues that we can talk about, but before I sort of... Instead of hitting them directly, I first want to let you know that there's an interesting ethics opinion that came out of Maryland, and it happens, if you're interested in this opinion, it's docket number 2020-01, so issued in January of 2020. It's worth taking a look at, but it's the only opinion that I'm aware of that really sort of dug into subscription practices and try to address some of these issues, and I think the advice set forth in that opinion is well worth looking at.

So I'm going to share sort of the key things that clients must be made aware of, or potential subscribers must be made aware of before they sign on the dotted line, okay? I'm sharing this because I think this addresses reasonably well, the issues that arise ethically. So there are nine items that this opinion talks about. The first, the specific services to be provided in exchange for the subscription fee must be disclosed and any limitations on the client's use of these services within a particular service period, so we need to set forth that information in an agreement. The client, or potential subscriber here, I keep saying client, needs to understand the method by which a subscribing client may request such services and the timeframe within which such services are to be provided, "Is this monthly?," "Is this quarterly?," that kind of thing, okay?

The benefits of a subscription, which would reserve your availability for representation, but which would also compensate you for providing the specified services upon request and without additional charge. So really saying, "What do I get for my subscription fee?" You need to detail that. The risks associated with this form of representation. Now, and they go on and say, "It may be hard to predict all the risks associated," but you have to inform them of some minimum type of things, conflicts of interest as an example, and other legal issues may later arise, which could preclude you from rendering some or all of the services.

Conflicts, let's talk about that. You can't represent two clients that are directly adverse. An example might be you represent some corporations and you help register a trademark for one of the companies, and then later on, one of the other companies, it's a client. A subscriber asks you to register a competing mark. Well, you can't do that, okay?

So we can describe what happens here. If a conflict arises, perhaps you disclose it, you'll refer we're able, the client, the second client, to another attorney to handle certain specific matters. Depending what's going on, you may not be able to stay with the second client at all, and so you need to withdraw entirely and end that subscription. So the details, the specifics are going to matter here in terms of what's creating the conflict and how you can resolve it, but I think it is resolvable, and we can get around, if you will, the hot potato drop, where particularly, when you're having joint representation... That's where it comes up most in terms of the hot potato drop.

If you're out for one, you're out for all. Well, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case when we're talking about situations like this, because we're disclosing upfront. View it as informed consent. This is one of the ramifications. There may be situations that you can't control because clients self-subscribe, and if you identify down the road a conflict, they agree in advance that they understand you may refer or you may have to withdraw.

So I view this as informed consent, and so there are different approaches here in terms of how you describe this and what clients are going to be asked to waive, but again, practice areas, et cetera are going to dictate some of this, but I think it's doable. I really do. Some other things that the Maryland Opinion talked about, you need to describe situations in which additional charges would apply for any of the services listed and whether additional retainer agreements would be required for more extensive work. The way I see that is, and I see this as a beneficial thing to do upfront, so I'm a subscriber and I see that I get these two hours of consultations or last-minute touch base if needed, I get contract review, document review, whatever it might be, but I know that there are going to be times where I'm going to need more work, but that's not going to be enough, and so you should describe and detail, "These are the limitations. This is specifically what you get and what you don't get for the subscription price, the subscription fee."

"If you need additional services along these lines," and you're going to know what most clients are going to need, "Here is the list. If you need additional hours, if you need additional documents drafted, whatever it might be, here are the rates." I would suggest sort of offering and letting people know so they can see some of the benefits, in other words. "Here's the friend and family/subscriber discount. Our subscribers get that special price."

"If you weren't a subscriber, having this service provided by me would normally cost you this," and it's another way to demonstrate value add of the subscription. So I think there's real value in doing that to help both in the sales piece, but also in the risk management piece so that we don't get into these arguments about, "Well, I thought I'd get more ..." Let's just make it very clear so this subscriber can make an informed decision, about whether or not to even do this. Since these fees... So going back to what the Maryland bar is recommending, additional things, setting forth that since these fees will be earned, irrespective of whether the client actually requests such service, you want to advise subscribers that the plan may not work to their advantage if they do not use available services, at least on a somewhat regular basis.

Help them understand the risks, the benefits, the pros and cons, okay? Then, you should also describe the circumstances under which subscription fees will be refunded to the client, including a provision that fees would, at a minimum, be refunded if the attorney fails, if you fail to render some or all of the services requested, okay? I would couple that with notices of the clients, right to cancel the subscription at any time subject to the refund policy that you come up with, okay? So let's talk about that a little bit. You will see in some models, and I'm just making numbers up here obviously, but let's say the subscription is $100 a month.

If I sign up for a year, my subscription's going to be discounted even more and maybe it'll cost me $1,000 for the year, as opposed to $1,200, and I'm in for six months, and then I'm not using this in the way I thought, or you decide, "Bassingthwaighte's using it way, way too much," and this subscription is going to be terminated before the year's out. So you haven't earned the full year, right? I've only been in six months, so you would want to refund half because I didn't get the benefit of the full year subscription. So that's an example of why I don't like these non-refundable kinds of things because bars are very consistent on this one. If you haven't earned it, you can't keep it, and even calling it non-refundable doesn't change that.

It's just an example of just what we need to think through. Then, if you're going to deposit into your operating account, in other words, treating the subscription fee at the beginning of the month as fully earned upon payment, if that is permissible in your jurisdictions, some jurisdictions, it should be, and in others, it's not going to be because it's not going to be viewed as earned, they don't see things quite the way I and a few others do, but just disclose what's going to happen to the fund, that the fees will be deposited into your operating account upon receipt subject, of course, to a refund of the entire subscription fee if you're not available or unable to provide the specified services. I could see, "Well, what that..." Could be anything. You get infected with ransomware and you're out for a while, and you couldn't follow through on any of this stuff.

You have an unforeseen illness of some sort. I mean, life happens, in other words, and there can be times where you can't follow through, but again, you're just disclosing. You're being very direct and upfront, transparent, that's a word of the day, about the money situation here. I like that opinion because it really does give us a sense of how to navigate these waters. What it doesn't really get into a great deal, other than to say the client has a right to cancel the subscription, I think it's also worth setting forth that you can cancel the subscription.

You might talk about why, whether the difficulties with a particular client, you're changing the focus of your practice, you might even need to reevaluate the terms, but I think it's important to let people know that you also, like they, have a right to cancel. You have a right to cancel too, and let's talk about what happens there, and particularly again, with the money, and my suspicion is the same policy, refund policy, et cetera, is going to be in play regardless of who terminates, but I think it's worth addressing because it's too easy to focus on all the things that might happen with a client and taking care and making sure they're fully informed, but then not thinking about, "Well, wait. What happens if I don't like this either?," speaking on the lawyer side of this. So that's sort of the gist of subscription practices and some of the ethical concerns and how I might think through the ethical issues and resolve them. I really do find the Maryland Opinion helpful.

I just want to keep underscoring because I think it's a worthwhile process to go through in advance, to really sit down and think through these issues and write an agreement that really discloses all of these things. It helps us, as lawyers, get a handle on, really, "What are we doing? What are we offering?" I think it's also then, just going to prevent disagreements and misunderstandings, perhaps is a better word, from arising with subscribers down the road. The one other little thing we could talk about briefly, and my apologies here, I wish I could give you a black and white answer, a very clear answer, and I can't, but I can give you something to think about.

The interesting issue here is, "Is malpractice coverage going to be in play with a subscription practice?" The answer isn't as clear as I'd like it to be or I would hope it would be. I think in general, yes. When you are in an attorney-client relationship, which you would be, but let's make sure that your subscription model is structured that way, because they have time with you, availability and all that, you are going to be delivering professional services using the skillset that you have as a lawyer to these clients, and they are all clients of your practice, so the subscription practice has to be part of... Sometimes it's all, and that's okay, but more often, it tends to be part of a practice, but don't break this off into a separate company.

I mean, you can, and we could talk about that in a minute, but if you want your malpractice policy that you have with your firm, these subscribers need to be clients of the firm, and they can be subscription practice clients. So I think if we've got all that, I think we're pretty good. Here's the rub, you need to look at sort of the definition of professional services, and is offering, as an example, do-it-yourself forms, that any subscriber can just come in and pick and use on their own without any involvement, review, advice from you about, "Does this fit the need or not?," some are going to argue that's not the practice of law, that's not professional services, and policies aren't going to respond. That's more of exposure. You're sort of a publisher's exposure, something along those lines.

You're making written materials available, and that's using your own risk kind of stuff. So there's not going to be a bright line on that when, in my mind, there's a bit of a difference between offering some forms, but advising clients to meet with you for, even if it's just a 15-minute discussion, to make sure that this form accurately addresses the legal concern the client is hoping the form will resolve, take care of. So that, to me, is very much down the middle of the road of practicing law, and if it's just freestanding forms, and they may not even get access ... So I'm really trying to draw a line here that's a little clearer on explaining or demonstrating the risk, but if we have just this site, where solely forms are made available, and that's all they get for their subscription, and they can just get in and have access and you're never really involved, you could say, "Well, I could be involved, and here's the subscribers discount for legal services," but the subscription doesn't include that at all. And so as a subscriber, I start using these forms.

I never get involved with you, and I sue you, at some point, because I don't know what I'm doing with these forms and made all kinds of mistakes. That malpractice policy isn't going to come into play there. Now, you certainly can ensure for that type of risk, and it's probably easier, in a situation like this, to split things out and have sort of a separate company that is just doing this exclusive DIY model without any attorney involvement there. You can get insurance on both sides and I think be pretty good, or both pieces of that, but it's when we start to blend this in various ways, we can get a little muddy. The best I can do is to say, as you work through looking at the model, and should you want to go in this direction, reach out to your carrier and have some discussions, and look at policy language, and try to identify and work through any coverage issues that might come up.

I just hate to see you run with an assumption, that because this is done at the banner of a law firm, that coverage is automatically there. Lawyers are not insured for everything they do under the banner of a law firm. Look at exclusions and policies. Financial advice is an example, obligations that arise under contract. There's all kinds of things that can come up.

A wrongful disbursement of funds, that's a property loss, that's not a professional negligence problem. So there are all kinds of things, and this is just another example of something that isn't necessarily covered. I just don't want to see you run with an assumption. So we've been at it here far longer than I thought we would. I hope you found something of value with this podcast. As always, if you have questions, concerns on this, or any other topic, please do not hesitate to reach out.

My email address is mbass, B-A-S-S at alpsinsurance, one word,  dot com. mbass@alpsinsurance.com. Hey, folks, it's been a pleasure. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

 

ALPS In Brief - Episode 71: Meet Rio!

We have extremely exciting news for you all — Rio Peterson, who you may already know from Clio — has joined ALPS as our Bar & Affinity Partnership Strategist! Mark sits down with Rio to welcome her to ALPS and hear about her new role! 

Transcript:

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte. I'm the risk manager here at ALPS, and welcome to our first video podcast recording of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. You'll notice I'm sitting here with our guest, Rio, and more about her in a moment. Now that we're on video, a couple of things. For those of you that listen you finally get to see a little bit of what the remote office in Florida looks like. Maybe I'll have to do a little camera spin at some point. But I'm also thinking we need to maybe post some videos or a short video of the beautiful historic Florence building in downtown Missoula, Montana. People keep hearing about this.

I do have as my guest today Rio Peterson. Rio is someone I've worked with on and off through the years when she was at Clio, and she is now a very valued new member of the ALPS Corporation here. We're going to be talking a bit about that. As we were talking, Rio, I'm based in Florida, as many of you know. Rio is based in Vancouver, BC, which makes us... This is a unique podcast. We are the two employees, I think, the farthest apart. Here we are.

Rio Peterson:

I think so too.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Kind of an odd little thing. Really, folks, what I wanted to talk about today, I do some presentation, I've been doing it for a lot of years, on the basics of lawyers' professional liability insurance, and some programs on how to buy, really explaining what coverage does and doesn't do. Really digging into the ins and outs because so many lawyers, I think, really don't even know what their coverage is until all of a sudden a claim arises. That's the first time they pick it up and oh my gosh, oh my gosh. It's worthwhile knowing what your policy covers.

But I also talk about value adds, and when you're thinking about purchasing insurance, looking at or asking the question, what are you getting for your premium dollars? There really should be a bit more than just the peace of mind that the policy can bring. Companies are doing all kinds of things and today we are going to talk about some of the value adds that ALPS has. So before we jump into this a little bit, Rio, could you just give us a little bit of brief background, a verbal bio, and I'll share a little bit more about myself, but I'd love for you to start.

Rio Peterson:

Yes, absolutely. Thank you first of all for having me. It's very exciting to get to span the Continental Divide with you today. I came to ALPS by way of Clio, which is a Canadian-based legal practice management software tech company. I was at Clio for about five and a half years where I managed Clio's Bar Association Partnership Program. Clio and lots of other companies just like ALPS partner with bar associations across North America to really provide value to their members in the form of lots of different ways, which we'll talk about shortly. But as part of that role I did a lot of public speaking, a lot of education about best practices for running a law firm, and just kind of a lot of event attendance, different things. But ultimately it was my job to make sure that the relationships we had with these bar associations were mutually beneficial, that everybody was winning when we partnered together.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Folks, I don't know how often or how far we've really driven down. I'm the risk manager here at ALPS. I've been with ALPS now... It's been over 25 years and always been in the role of risk manager of some sort. What that term means or has meant over the years has changed a bit, but I have done a tremendous amount of consulting with firms of all shapes and sizes all over the country. Do a lot of content creation, a lot of CLE development and lecturing, a lot of writing, some podcasting, those kinds of things. I really view myself as a content guy and I've had a lot of fun. One of the things that we do is a major CLE tour every year in Virginia, and it's up to 14. I think the highest we got to was 18 events, three-hour events in one tour.

But the unique thing about this is I get to write movie scripts, and actually go up to the Virginia, and we hire a professional crew and actors and all this. I just never thought. I've written now I think 20 separate films and that's just been a lot of fun. I share that because again this risk side has been supporting bar associations as well. We do that in conjunction with Virginia State Bar and it's been a very, very successful program.

Okay, Rio, let's get back to you and what you're doing. If my memory serves, I love your position title. You are, and make sure I'm right on this, the bar affinity partnership strategist.

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

That's just awesome. It sounds very dignified and very just this special thing. Can you explain really practically, day to day, what does that mean? I guess I'd like to know two things. One, what is your interest in this, and then why is this important? What is the value add for any insured? So let's just kind of explore all this.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah, fantastic question. So it's interesting, I sort of fell face first accidentally into this role and this line of work. Something that really, really appeals to me about it is I'm very passionate about relationships, building relationships. I am also a big fan of helping people succeed. There's a lot of, I think, gaps that lawyers experience in their knowledge when they come out of law school and they're looking to run a practice. My role really allows me to be hands-on with helping to provide some guidance, and extra resources and support to help those legal professionals thrive. The way that that kind of comes about is, well, I mean, as we all know, bar associations tend to hold a level of authority and a level of guidance, and lawyers tend to look to them for those things. So it's very obviously advantageous for any partner or any company to partner with a bar association and get their stamp of approval.

That's the ideal because if the bar says you're good to go then very risk-averse lawyers are much more likely to give you a second look and give you the time of day. But it really is about a lot more than just getting that stamp of approval. I mean, that's only a small part of it. When I think about partnerships, I mean, they are just that. They have to be a mutually beneficial experience for everyone. If we were just to go to the bars and say, "Hey, just give us your stamp of approval and then you'll never hear from us again," well that's not really the greatest experience for really anybody. I mean, what is the bar getting in exchange for that stamp of approval? So my role as a strategist is to really come up with a strategy, a way, a plan to maximize those relationships in order to provide additional value to our partners that they can then pass on to their members.

So for example, with content, I mean, we're talking about content and how you provided a lot of risk management content. I mean, a lot is an understatement I feel like, but that's kind of a strategy, I guess, or a way forward that I would consider to be adding value to our partnership. A lot of bars have... They're running on a small staff. They don't have the resources to create extensive amounts of content for their users. They often don't have a staff member who specializes in something like risk management. So it's for me to identify those opportunities to then say, "Hey, my partner, I can provide you with this. I can give you these resources, I can give you this support so that we are both flourishing as part of this arrangement."

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

So what I'm hearing is is there's two pieces to this. We're looking at providing resources that are going to be beneficial to members of the bars that we partnership with, but we are also, am I hearing correctly, really trying to support the bar associations themselves so that there's a value add to the bar. I'd really be curious, what are your thoughts? I hear some discussions at times traveling around the country and just talking to lawyers in all sorts of settings. There are some that will say, "I just don't see the value of a bar association," and there's some complaints. "I'm paying the dues," and all these kinds of things. I truly would be curious, what are your thoughts? Do you see bar associations as serving a purpose? Do we really... I'm not sure how to say it. Does this make sense for a company like ALPS to do this? I don't know. What are your thoughts?

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. Oh, I love this question. I love this question because it really is, I don't know, a topic that a lot of bars and a lot of legal professionals have been wrestling with in recent years. I mean, we've seen so many changes with bars like the California Bar becoming... Is ununified the right... Deunified?

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Yeah.

Rio Peterson:

Yeah, right?

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Yeah, that works for me.

Rio Peterson:

You know what I'm trying to say, right? Well, we see a change in bars and really, just as you said, their role and their level of importance is being questioned. So my personal opinion is that yes, the bars are very important. They provide professional guidance. They ideally should be providing support to solo and small lawyers who are running their own law firms who are not sure what they're doing, who are trying to make a go of things. I do think they have a very important role to play, but something that I see frequently is that the way in which the bars view themselves hasn't really changed. A lot of, say, the mandatory. If you can count on members having to join, why would you change the way that you are delivering value and service to your members because they don't have a choice to be there?

So I'm not shocked that a lot of lawyers and legal professionals are questioning whether or not the bars need to be, or whether or not they should be as involved as they are. But really I do think it comes down to those bars needing to evolve with their membership, needing to connect better with members, and see really what post-COVID legal practice looks like and how they can better meet those members' needs.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. Again, in a lot of the programming that we do in terms of CLEs and really pushing some of the ethical boundaries in terms of exploring them and looking at just business models and all kinds of things, I have always been one that says it's more important than ever. And I think about even the evolution of ChatGPT and where AI is going. There's a lot of folks out there saying, "This is going to be the end of lawyers and the end of legal professionals, paralegals," and all this stuff. I'm not sure I go that far, but it is important. Where I'm going with this is that I think lawyers too have been... Lawyers at large, there are going to be exceptions to all of this, but as a profession, we tend to be slow in terms of adopting and changing business models. You keep saying, "The billable hours got to die," and it just doesn't seem to die, just as an example.

Rio Peterson:

Just slow down.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

But we do need to continue to evolve with the changing needs of the marketplace. And I think bar associations struggle with that too, because their marketplace is the bar at large, but they have struggled with trying to reinvent themselves and trying to figure out where to go. And I hear you saying, and I really think this is... I'm 100% behind what I hear you saying is one of the things that a company like ALPS can do is be a partner in helping work that conundrum, work that problem. Let's figure out how because I think too carriers need to continue to evolve and change. How ALPS did business 25 years ago and a little longer, it's very, very different from how we do it today. Making online applications. We have this, "Give us 20 minutes, we'll give you a quote," kind of thing. That's unheard of 20 years ago in this space. It's just absolutely. So exploring the relationships and trying to figure out what we could do with bar associations is a value add to the bar and I think is a value add to us. I mean-

Rio Peterson:

Yeah. So-

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Yeah, please.

Rio Peterson:

I hope you don't mind if I just...

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

No, no, no.

Rio Peterson:

I really do think that kind of helping bars navigate the need to update, and adjust, and change is really an excellent kind of place for ALPS and companies like us to really come into play and be a part of that. Bars, they're like snowflakes, just like legal professionals. They're all different and they all have different challenges and different changes in modernization that they need to make. The great thing about ALPS and about other companies is that we're out in the world and we get exposed to a lot of really different experiences, lots of different kind of content, just a whole galaxy of different opportunities and knowledge that we have that we can then pass on to our partners and really help them navigate these divides.

For example, with reinventing events post-COVID, I mean, we have so many partners who are struggling with this. And as a company who attends a lot of events, as a company who hosts its own events, we have a lot of knowledge and information that we can share with our partners in order to really help them reinvigorate that, and increase their engagement and bring members back into the fold.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

One of the things, folks, that I shared earlier, I'm very excited to have Rio join ALPS. As I see it, man, when I think what Clio loss and what ALPS gained is just... This is a win, big time. There's a lot of excitement, a lot of energy. Trust me, folks, excitement, energy is just... Rio's all about that. It's just such a joy and a lot of fun. Do you have some just, how do I want to say this, kind of off the cuff, off just rapid fire even kinds of things? What ideas, what thoughts, what direction, where do you want to go with this position, let's say, in the next two to three years? Let's take, well, certain realities. There's sometimes some fiscal realities, whether they're corporate or whether they're bar side, but if you could flash this wand and make the changes, where do the bars need to go? We talk about reinventing themselves. What are your thoughts about how does this value add come back?

Rio Peterson:

Yes, yes. Well, I mean, ultimately I would love for ALPS to be kind of the authority on a lot of different topics and obviously the first choice for bars to turn to when they have questions. I think I could address this question in two different ways. First of all, for the program in terms of ALPS, right now we've got 19 partners. I would love to see all 50 states at some point. That would be my big dream. If I could just wave my wand, I would love to see that happen. I feel that there are a number of different levers that can really be used to grow the program and really increase the impact that we have through advertising. Obviously content creation and sharing is central to that. Also fiscal incentivization, financial incentivization, some kind of maybe revenue sharing. We'll see. Who knows? There's some interesting ideas we could play with, but lots of different options. Oh, I see the wheels turning.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Do you see tech leadership coming into play at all here? Is there a place for that?

Rio Peterson:

Oh, absolutely. I think ALPS is kind of perfectly primed to partner with tech companies. I think really in a similar way that we partner with the bars too. If you think about it, having coverage and having insurance is a central part of running a firm. But when you partner that with say legal practice management software or something that's going to help you stay on top of your communications and reduce ultimately the risk that you have for claims, that to me is like a match, just a perfect match. Then you've got this kind of unstoppable partnership of two, three, maybe even multiple companies who provide excellent content, provide kind of a holistic view of a law firm. Really, yes, I think that's a fantastic opportunity and exciting frontier I would love us to explore more.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Yes. You know me. I can get a little crazy and wild at times.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, me too.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

One of the things that I've been playing around with of late. Folks, some of you, if you hear me over the years, I'm not a high risk-taker and I'm also very private. I'm not one actively involved, at least in my personal life, on all sorts of social medias. Our kids always say, "Well we have nothing to hide, Dad," and I said, "Well, it's not about hiding. When you put everything out there people can take advantage of this information." But the point of all this-

Rio Peterson:

I think we could-

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Well, I-

Rio Peterson:

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

I made a jump. I decided because I keep... We're State Farm people and our agent is a good guy. "Mark, you got to start using this drive safe app." And I'm thinking, I don't want them tracking me all over. I just don't think so. I finally have been convinced, so I'm playing around with this-

Rio Peterson:

Oh, you hopped on board.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

... This drive safe and just exploring and all that. What about the equivalent of a drive safe app in the malpractice space?

Rio Peterson:

Oh, yes.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Wouldn't that be interesting?

Rio Peterson:

Yes.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Could you tie that in with the bars? I don't know, but I just thought... I'm sitting here going like, okay, my head just starts popping. I get all these crazy ideas, but why not?

Rio Peterson:

Yes. And I find that idea really, really interesting because I think it also ties in really well to working with tech companies as well, being more of an integration partner as opposed to just an affinity partnership. Then that's also an incredible value add to provide to bar associations. Kind of back to our point about where I see the program going and with bars, I think the really the biggest thing that the bars need to hop on board with is opening their minds to the ideas of those types of possibilities. Thinking completely outside the box, what is something different and new that we haven't even thought of? Really also starting to see vendors, to see companies as a resource for that type of thinking and for those types of ideas. Not to toot our own horn, but we've got some great ideas as you just mentioned.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

We do like to think around here, and it's one of the things I really love about ALPS, just as an aside. I don't stay at a company for 25-plus years just because. There's a lot of good things going on in this company, but one of the things that I really like is there's strong encouragement to think "outside of the box". But it's for real. We're not checking off a box. Let's everybody think outside the box and now we'll go back and do exactly what every other-

Rio Peterson:

And then we're done and we don't have to do anything.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

No, no. You're not going to stay relevant in the market. Change is... So what we're talking about and hoping and trying to help bars do, we also live by the mantra. We really do. We're-

Rio Peterson:

Yes. And I-

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Yes, please go ahead.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, sorry. I was just going to say along those lines, I mean, I was at Clio for five and a half years and it was a really incredible experience, but I considered very, very deeply about joining ALPS. It was a decision I took very seriously, and that was something that was really, really appealing to me, is this embracing moving forward. And not just change for the sake of change, but intentional, encouraging people to think bigger and think about how we can implement those ideas and actually moving forward with them. That was just a really big draw and selling point to me. That's been my experience thus far in my two months at ALPS. That's absolutely been the experience.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Very good. I want to share just a little bit about myself and start to wrap here, but then I want to come back to you because I think you're going to be good with this. Folks, one of the things I want to share, and I need to be better about getting this message out. You have heard me say for a long time that I am a risk manager here at ALPS, and I really want to let you... What does that mean? I am not a traditional, if you will, CRO, chief risk officer. I am not hired to manage the risk of this corporation. I am hired to be your risk manager. I am hired to be a risk manager, if you will, for the bar at large. You do not need to be on the opposite shore to visit with me. You can reach out anytime via email or our phone.

There's no cost involved. If you have a question or concern on ethics, risk management, practice management, cybersecurity, on and on, I will do the best I can to help. If I don't have the answer on the top of my head I will try to do what I can to get it for you. So that said, let me just share what our phone number is. It's (800) 367-2577. You can just call in and ask to speak to that risk guy because Bassingthwaighte can be a hard name to remember, but Mark. B16 is another good one. You may also reach out to me at mbass@ALPSinsurance.com. Feel free anytime.

Now to kind of tie this back to what we've been talking about here, again, folks, Rio is just a rockstar in my head. This is such a good point of evolution, continuing evolution for the corporation, for ALPS and where we're going to go. When she says, "I'd like to see 50 bars," I don't know if we get the 50, but I'm not going to bet against her. But I would invite you, and Rio, I think you're going to be open to this, if any of you folks... We are talking about value adds and I agree with Rio. I think bar associations still can be very, very relevant, and I think serve a great purpose, but do need, and some struggle with this more than others, but [inaudible 00:27:13] how do they remain relevant? What does that mean? What is the value add?

We are in a position where we can help. Let us help you. If you have some thoughts or ideas, "I would love to see ALPS do this with our local bar," how can we help? I invite you and encourage you to reach out to Rio, and Rio if you would share your... I assume you're good with this. If you would share your email address as well, and any closing thoughts that you have, and then we'll wrap.

Rio Peterson:

Yes. Yes. So to your point, it is literally my job to help our partners be successful, and by extension their members and legal professionals be successful. This is something that I have quite a bit of experience in, and frankly, I just really love helping people succeed and helping organizations succeed. So yes, please reach out. Absolutely. I've got lots of great ideas. We have a fantastic team here that is just ready and willing to offer any support that we can. So please email me at rpeterson@ALPSinsurance.com. Yes, I would love to hear from you. I am more than happy to answer questions. You want us to come out, want Mark to do a fantastic CLE. They are incredibly interesting and hilariously well done.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Well, thank you.

Rio Peterson:

Yes, so if you're looking for speaker, sponsorships, anything please reach out. Yeah. Happy to help.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Well, Rio, it's been a pleasure as always.

Rio Peterson:

As always.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

And we're going to be seeing each other multiple times on Teams and all the other things we do. But I look forward, we're going to be getting together on the road here in a, I don't know, another six, eight weeks. But I look forward to seeing you in Virginia. Actually, we may be in Denver. I'm going to see you in Denver next week.

Rio Peterson:

Oh, oh yes. That's right, that's right.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

There we go, so.

Rio Peterson:

We'll see each other in Denver.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Sounds good. All right. It's been a pleasure.

Rio Peterson:

All right.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

Thanks all.

Rio Peterson:

Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark Bassingthwaighte:

We'll see you later. Bye-bye.

Rio Peterson:

Bye everyone.