What if embracing technology could transform the way lawyers work—and their clients' experience? Kellam Parks, founder of Parks Zeigler, shares how he built a tech-first law firm from scratch, embraced AI to revolutionize hiring and legal research, and why he believes lawyers who don’t adapt risk being left behind. Could the billable hour become a relic of the past? And is it possible that one day, not using AI might be deemed unethical? Dive into the future of law and innovation in this thought-provoking episode.

One of the things that I always preach is when you start, there's two main questions you have.

Well, Three, one is what's your, why, like, why are you doing this? But from a professional level is, do you enjoy practicing law? Do you enjoy running your law firm? Or do you enjoy both? There's no wrong answer, figure out what you like to do. And then you want to be a solo? Do you want to have other lawyers? Do you want to build an empire? What's your current goal? And if you can figure those three things out, let's start with that and then build up. Instead of just going and doing the work, because we're all grinders.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner Podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is going to be a great episode today. We've got Kellam Parks, who is an attorney, founded a firm up in Virginia. He's got three offices. We're going to talk all about the founding and the growth of the firm. But we're also going to dive into technology and, the use or non use of it in law firms. And also, I was lucky to see a presentation that Kellam gave on AI and the way he uses it and all things AI, and I thought it was just blew me away. I know AI is the rage but you know, it's, sort of intimidating, I got to say. There's so many options out there and you know, everybody knows ChatGPT, but you don't really know where to start.

Kellam knows where to start, so we're going to talk a little bit about that as well. So, Kellam, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us where you are, tell us about your firm, what kind of practice area is and how big it is, that kind of thing.

We have a firm parks Ziegler, which is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. We've got three offices, two across Virginia, one down in Eastern North Carolina. We've got 14 lawyers, about 38 people. We do most practice areas. We do the standard trust in estates, criminal family. I happen to do cyber security and data privacy work.

We adopted an EOS traction type model, which some of your listeners might be familiar with is Gina Wickman wrote a book called Traction. He created what's called the Entrepreneurial Organization System, which is just a very streamlined way of running a business and uh, it's a great way. And so we got an individual business coach to help us implement something very similar to that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, there's so much to unpack there. we're gonna go all the way back. But before we do, one thing I'll just know, you know, it's interesting, it sounds like, you know, your firm does all sorts of different practice areas that is becoming more and more rare nowadays, it seems like, where you've got, I assume, you've got, some family law, some business law, some trust in states. Nowadays, most people one or two, and that's it. So That's interesting. I want to hear about how that evolved as well.

But let's go way back. So You mentioned some tech and AI. I know that you've always been interested in tech even before uh, you got into law. I guess a couple questions. I guess why, or how did you get into the law, tech's really more of an interest for you?

So my dad had always run a business. He was a used car. He owned a used car lot. He owned an automotive repair shop. He did some other stuff. And I never knew I was an entrepreneur until I started my own law firm and, found that I really enjoyed the business of law more than the practice.

So I've always just enjoyed computer stuff and I saw the potential of the technology in the firm that I was at before I started my own firm. We had 30 lawyers, about 100 people. And they were pretty good for that size of a firm but you could only be so nimble and so tech heavy at a 30 person.

You know, If you're a really large firm, you have a lot of tech because they have all the money. And when you're in a really small firm, you can be agile. But when you're in that sort of mid sized, You know, we were still using older programs and people didn't want to adopt. And I just really saw the future was more automation.

and, you know, I couldn't have anticipated AI at that point being where it is, but that's really the ability to leverage technology and you can compete and punch so much higher above your weight when you smartly integrate technology.

This is before Windows. This was back in DOS type days. I mean, It was crazy stuff. And I, I got into computers a little bit and then I just completely upset. So I got into it for a little while and then I've lost all my tech uh, skills. So you said, you know, you grew up with your dad was an entrepreneur.

As you look back, are there any threads that you at an early age maybe showed some of that entrepreneurial streak, or is this something that just sort of came out later in life?

Kellam Parks: Yeah. You know, I think I've never been afraid of taking risks. I'm hardwired. I'm not a high anxiety person. I'm very logical, very calm, very reasonable, logical basis. Law school came pretty easy to me that way in that I I always thought like a lawyer and I read incredibly quickly, so it wasn't, that part of it wasn't very difficult for me.

So looking back, that was an interesting question, cause looking back, I think I had those traits. I never put them together and figured out that I really would have enjoyed it. I didn't really do sales as a kid. You know, I, I did wait, I mean, I was a waiter at a lot of high end restaurants and that's certainly a sales type deal. But yeah, once I started my firm, I just I got the bug and I really, I love figuring out systems, procedures, marketing and take sales. You know, A lot of lawyers hate the word sales, but that's what it is. You're selling your services, you're selling yourself. So, but yeah, My dad's always been in. So he was always in sales.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, You went to one or two firms and eventually went out of your own. So Take me back to that time. So, You mentioned that the firm you were at maybe did not want to lead with the technology like you did, what was it that pushed you over? That you said, all right, I'm gone.

And you said, I'm gone, whatever next week, what was the thing? What was the final straw that pushed you out the door?

But I wanted, at the time, I thought I wanted to do, I was doing credit, I wanted to do fair credit reporting at plaintiff work. So I was doing credit reporting errors and we were conflicted out of most of that because we represented a lot of businesses and, and banks and big credit companies.

So it was a practice area issue. It was, I really wanted to implement marketing. I wanted to implement, which is a large firm, you know, they were very traditional in that sense. I wanted to use technologies, and I just kind of wanted to do it my own way. And I, figured out, how much money am I bringing in my own, how much am I making on my own.

And he was very generous. He said, look, I, know, "I hope it's successful. I obviously am just one voice, but if it doesn't work out, you can always come you know, to me, you can come back. I wish you the best. You can have all your clients. We don't want them." And it was, fine. And we still you know, I have drinks with those guys and gals, and we still have a really good relationship. And You know, it was a good experience, for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's cool. So That was gonna be my next question was, when you went out, did you have clients? So it sounds like you did.

And family law is one of those practice areas that, if you do it well, it's an endless source of referrals because you have repeat business. I'm at the point now where I think I've divorced one client three times, and I've gotten one of their children divorced as they get older. But you get a lot of referrals and repeat business.

And so It wasn't difficult. Let me put it that way.

Jonathan Hawkins: Ou know, When you calculate the lifetime value of that client, right?

Kellam Parks: No, it's true. And that's, you know, you, that's what you talk about marketing, you know, you got to keep that list and keep top of mind on these people.

Jonathan Hawkins: So that's good. So, You started, you had clients that, you know, that some people start with no clients. So, that, That was good. So, you get out there and Then how did you start to figure out, you said you spent a year before. But how did you get out there? I mean, it's different, Theory is different than practice.

You get out there. and you're like, oh yeah, Now I got to start figuring it out. So, What did you do?

Well, I got to figure out marketing. I've never had to market before. You know, My market, I just I got business, how I got business. So I figured out SEO, website, SEO work. Okay, I have to have a website and I got to figure out how to grab those clients. Oh, I need intake. I need, somebody's going to answer the phones.

So you got to figure out sort of that out. And then it's the day to day tech part. Well, How do the phones work? And I was lucky at the time. My older sister I convinced moved back to the area and she was my right hand person and she was with us for almost a decade. And she started out as sort of my right hand office manager. And then as we grew, she took other roles, and so I had that support system. I wasn't alone.

But yeah, You just kind of figure it out. And back then, it I was sort of figuring it out on my own which is difficult. And now, you know, there's a lot of coaches and there's a lot of resources, and a lot of much easier to have a small or solo practice than it used to be because you could do a lot of this virtually and there's a lot of other ways to do it.

We used to do personal injury at one point. And I had a divorce client that loved us and we did a great job. And she fell off our radar right at the end. And then a month later, we get ahold of her and she was in this terrible accident.

And we were like, oh my gosh, that's so sad. And my paralegal was talking to her. and, she's like, well, you know, I need to ask, you know, did you talk to a lawyer? And she says, oh yeah, I've already hired one. I know you guys don't do personal injury work.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh man, you're like, no!

Kellam Parks: And even though we do a newsletter and we talk about it, but she just she knew me as her divorce lawyer, even though we were a larger firm. Think it was a multi million dollar case that we lost out on because she just didn't know me as that lawyer. right? So doing it over again, I probably would have focused a little more, and that's something I learned over time. And again, that's the sort of successful despite yourself.

Jonathan Hawkins: You start on your own, you, at some point, you add your partner, take me through sort of the evolution of the growth. Was it you and then the partner or had you added other attorneys before your partner joined?

And then he and I talked about him buying in and us being partners. And he's always been a big rainmaker and a big generator of business. And he brought a paralegal. It's really interesting. So We've developed now a three, what I call a three legged stool approach to growth. And two of these were organically, and one of these is purposeful.

So we started to get people that knew, cause both Brandon and I have practiced, we're both from this area. And we would encounter other lawyers that were unhappy where they were for whatever reason. Sometimes it's money, sometimes it's lack of tech, sometimes it's lack of respect, sometimes it's just whatever it is.

So in Virginia, they're appointed by the legislators. And she was tapped, and she had her own solo, and she said, Look, I don't really want to close my practice down in a month if I get tapped. So She rolled her firm into our firm, and that led to our second lawyer. geographic office. The second leg of approach is we try to find an area that we could expand into then we can find a an experienced attorney to run that office, which is what we did in North Carolina.

We haven't found one of those yet, but I think that's a great way for a win win scenario. And so we've been trying to be systematic about that, and that's how we've grown. And now that we're bigger, we now have summer associates, summer interns we'll hire.

We just hired two brand new attorneys that started, they're both just past the bar. We're doing a little more traditional that way. But traditionally, we've just lateraled in, found attorneys and expanded our offices and just sort of went along that way. And now we're fortunate. They come to us. We don't have to look very hard for laterals that a lot of times, they know that we have an open hiring policy that, hey, if you come with a book of business, We can, especially because we're paperless, we can bolt you on. And as long as you're a good attorney and have a good reputation and make money, we're happy for you to be part of us.

And so really the key or one of the challenges is finding it, which I'm sure you've seen and how do you get the word out there? But again, just keep getting out there. I've seen a lot of practices that have grown that way successfully. So, Big believer in that. I want to go back to the geographic expansion. so You were in Virginia, you crossed over into North Carolina, what was that like?

Adding a new office is probably complex enough, maybe not with your virtual. But then you cross into a different jurisdiction. You've got different regulations, you got to deal with, etc. How do you integrate that into your existing platform? I'm curious how you went through that.

And so from a technology and procedures perspective, it's easy. We have a practice manager system. We have all our tech stacks, that's not difficult. The difficult part is, especially in a small community is finding the right attorneys down there to do the work and to come up with the right marketing messages because what works for us here in Virginia Beach is not going to work down there at all.

It's more people oriented than it is service oriented. really. And so That's been sort of the challenge is figure out the marketplace, and figure out the nuts and bolts of the individual practice. But as far as integrating, it really isn't that difficult. Our, office manager goes down our COO, COO she rotates between our offices.

And then we've got a couple of staff people right now.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's really interesting to me, the crossing state lines because the more you do it, the better you get. Some of the other attorneys I've talked to that have done it lots of times. But, uh, so I want to shift, You mentioned your tech stack, so I want to shift to, tech discussion for a minute. And part of this is selfish because I've got some personal questions on it. Cause that's a question that I, ask every lawyer that I talk to a lot. You know, What do you use? And you know, what works for one doesn't work for another. What works for one practice area won't work for another. What works now may not work five years from now. And you know, I've been through a couple of practice management systems at my prior firms. I've had different ones there.

I haven't kept up with them, but they didn't have integrated accounting. They didn't have really good reporting. And so we really needed that. And so we, Then we switched to Litify, which is a Salesforce based product. That was extraordinarily overly complicated. And unfortunately, we had a third party implementation company that was horrific.

That's a six figure mistake. I mean, It literally cost us six figures to get in and get out of that. We ended up with something called CARET Legal, which used to be called Zola Suites. It has integrated accounting and it has integrated document management system. It's got some CRM capabilities, though we use a different solution, which I'll talk about.

They're a really good group of people. Yeah, But half are lawyers and half are tech people. approach is what I always recommend you do, whether you do it yourself or hire them or somebody else, is they basically said, okay, they did a survey of all our people to say, and they came up with a questionnaire to say, in the current system, what do you like, what do you don't like? And in a perfect world, what would you love to have?

There's no unicorn, is my first answer. is there's no, You're never going to find the perfect practice management solution. But it had everything that we absolutely needed. It had some things that we were looking for that was on the road map. It lacked a few things that we kind of wanted, but wasn't necessarily a deal breaker.

Customer service was high, which is super important. One of the reasons we went with them is they're the same company that owns hot talks, Which is the form generation solution. So their form generation solution integrates entirely with the practice management, which allows us for tremendous amount of automation and form generation. So that's sort of the processes.

We went live with them in September of 23. We were so confident we signed a five year contract with them. I mean, we really When all in and we've been very happy with them, but like you said, it's not the right solution for everybody. If I was personal injury, I'd probably be Neos or practice banter or something else.

But just that functional, be just very systematic about it. And I would absolutely hire a third party consulting company to help you with it because they're going to save you so much time and energy and money, for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love that. I got to tell you, most people just say, Hey, what do you use? Okay. I'll try it. you know,

Kellam Parks: Oh, I know.

Jonathan Hawkins: And then, with Litify, the switching costs, even if you stay with it, the switching costs is just a pain, I mean, the time, energy, all of it, the moving of data, training, all of it's just a pain.

We need something that can grow with us. And not every solution can. And I think, really good point that not many people think about is the viability of the company behind the solution. Are they going to run out of money and get bought out, get shut down or whatever in a few years? Do they have enough to go with you down the road?

I don't know how you answer that question. Maybe the consultant can answer that question.

Kellam Parks: Well, That was. When I was talking to Britt Lorish, she's one of the owners and she's actually at a Roanoke, Virginia across the state, but she's our person. She was part of the conversation she had with us is, hey, two comp. One is, here's the health of these companies, meaning, how much money they have behind them. you know, Are they going to be sold? Did they get bought by equity? What's going on?

So One of the things is in CARET does have a CRM, Content Relation Management, that's the marketing intake part. We went with Lawmatics, which is another well known product. And the owner of Lawmatics is the guy that created my case, and he sold that and developed Lawmatics. And Lawmatics is based on primarily intake in a CRM, and it's super robust, very powerful, I think they're doing more practice management and sort of integrations as they build, but it's been such a great solution for us, and the two of those together are fantastic.

When we were having issues with our data in Litify, the implementation company was pointing fingers at Litify. Litify was pointing fingers at us, we were pointing fingers at some, so there's like five people, but if you just have one company that does one thing, you've got one cook in the kitchen, so to speak.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, so That's the other series of questions or the topic I want to discuss on the technology is, there's no one solution that can do everything. We all know that. You got to make sure you pick something that allows the platforms to talk.

So You've got the CRM, you might have a document management, practice management, the document automation. Hopefully, you've got solutions that do a lot of those things, but let's say, you've got, you have to go with four different solutions. Any advice on deciding what to get terms of how they connect and talk to each other.

Kellam Parks: Where I think, for instance, give me the example I'm using, Lawmatics and CARET. Right now, they don't speak to each other. So right now We have Lawmatics handles all our intakes. When somebody books a consult, we have created a custom form, a custom output from Lawmatics that will give the 12 pieces of information we need to open and essentially an intake and CARET, because we're not using CARET for CRM, but we use CARET once a consult.

The attorneys all go to CARET. They don't go to Lawmatics. Our intake uses Lawmatics. So What happens is, we have to do that one piece of manual override. All the forms and all the data and when it comes time to convert them to a client, if they hire us, we can do that just with a button.

Now, is it as good as NetDocs, which is sort of the biggest guy in town. No, not at all. But NetDocs was more expensive per month than our entire practice management was. Do I need these extra 12 features? or whatever? You know, There are more than that. But do I need these extra features at this cost? And the answer is no. Do we at some point? Maybe. That's again where you have to figure out what your needs are.

And The other thing that I would advise, having gone through this a number of times is, look at what your current needs are, which is huge, look look ahead a little. Because you really don't want to grab something that just does what you need and then a year later, you find out you've outgrown it. Because then you have to move and that's a problem.

Jonathan Hawkins: I think that's huge. That's what I'm going through now. And I've talked to Affinity and I'll keep talking to him. I haven't made a decision yet.

But yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: So yeah, so Let's shift. So You mentioned a minute ago that you have a full time COO. I want to talk about that decision. So first of all, is that an attorney?

Kellam Parks: No, she's not. She's a CPA by education and training. She had her own accounting firm and then got roped into helping a couple of medical practices and then she did a medical device public traded company, took them public, and then we hired her away from that. This was her first legal oriented job.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, First of all, 100%, I think that's great Great decision. You don't need me to say that, but for the people out there, most lawyers should not be running the firms. It's good to get a professional, I think, that's not a lawyer. So, I guess the first thing is when did you make that hire?

Because, you know, A small firm probably can't justify it. You got to be big enough to be able do it. And then what pushed you to decide to do that?

so We hired a COO, gosh, I guess it's maybe three years now. I think April will be three years, if not four years. And we knew we needed help. And so we found, and it turns out, it's funny, we did a national search, did all these interviews, and then Jennifer Kopin, who's our COO, lives in Chesapeake.

it was, It was weird. It was great, and so she joined. And then we had planned on her. Obviously, and look, it took so long for her to get us straightened out, because again, we did okay, but we were a mess. And we were also at that point transitioning into Litify and then had to get out of Litify.

It's Bran and I are a great team because we're so opposite. He's big picture. I'd say, barely contain chaos in a lovingly and good way because he's a genius. I'm much more list, procedures, systems. And so I did that search and I have a whole spreadsheet and matrix and all this stuff. We narrowed it down and we ended up going with Stephanie Everett, who you might know, who runs The Lawyerist, which was bought by Affinity Consulting.

What helps is she's a lawyer, she ran her own law firm, she consults with law firms, and so that really was why we went with her instead of some more traditional business coach, general business coach. But the two of those are huge. And the last thing I'll say on it is, you have to be of a certain size to be able to afford a C level executive.

Once you get beyond a couple of people, and you're growing, and you have enough business, the growth is slowed because it's just you running things. That's where fractional COOs and fractional C level executives have really become a thing that I recommend people look into. There's a bunch of companies that do it, you know, how to manage as a big one that they sell C level executives, but there's also individuals and whether it's a You know a Chief Marketing Officer for marketing or CFO for finance or CEO for strategic growth. Those kind of roles you can hire on that fractional basis that can be affordable to really almost anybody.

Kellam Parks: Before we hired those people at the size we were and the amount of efforts we were doing, I would say that we were an old circus cart going down the mountain, fire on the back that we didn't realize. And then after, you know, it's a much more smooth ride. And so in real terms, we were growing, we didn't have any huge issue.

You know, It's not like we were losing money or we were, people were flocking, you know, we were losing people because of whatever. but it was, we weren't growing fast enough. We weren't growing in the right way. We were making missteps that cost us money. Bran and I were working too hard and losing opportunities.

And then where Stephanie comes in or as a business coach comes in, that's the part where it's, you need to think about it this way. You need to focus your energies on this. You need to track this metric. She's asking questions like what's your average case value.

We operated a firm for 11 years and didn't have average case values, which is ridiculous, because if you don't know the average case value, how are you possibly evaluating where to spend your marketing money? Stuff like that. Stuff that I knew, but we just, again, We just never got to it. I didn't have the data, you know, we transferred from Modify, and we didn't have the numbers.

Because lawyers, God knows, we're horrible for the shiny object syndrome, where we're just ready to spend money at something and then give it no time or attention and just move on. Those two pieces, if you want to grow your firm, you have to have both operations and you have to have some coach.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let's talk operations. One more question about a COO that, I hear from other lawyers that have hired or are thinking about hiring a COO that's not a lawyer. It's the pushback you get as well. The lawyers aren't going to listen to them. They're not going to have the authority to really make change or make decisions because the lawyers are all gonna say you're not a lawyer. What would you say to that?

And again, This is like an EOS process on how we run the meeting and what we pay attention to. But then, and they know, and we've established, that if it comes from Jennifer, it comes from us. She's the mouthpiece. When Jennifer says something, people know across the firm, whether it's staff all the way up to attorneys, up to partner level, that is Brandon and I, the two owners of the firm, that's you have to set that up to say, Hey, this is our mouthpiece. This is the person. She has authority or he has authority. And then you have to make sure obviously that they don't abuse that authority and that it's accurate. And that it just is what it is. And now, we have it though. Sometimes we get pushback. Hey, Jennifer said, so and so. What about it? Well, I just want to make sure that's yeah, that's 100%. If she said it, that's what we're doing. so It's just training people.

Jonathan Hawkins: I want to shift because I we did say, we're gonna talk about AI a little bit and we're gonna come back we have time and there's some other questions I want to ask about your firm, but so AI big question. Is it all hype or did do lawyers need to embrace it?

People roll their eyes when I say this because they don't believe me or they think that I'm hyper, you know, I'm just a tech geek and whatever. But AI is more, and already in some aspects, is more transformative than the internet, and I think even more than electricity because the amount of work you can do, an amount of automation that you can have it do is, astronomical.

To give you one quick example how we just recently used it. We recently had a we recently replaced our Marketing Manager. So we were looking for a Marketing Manager and we came up with a job ad and then we have to interview. I created a custom. I happen to use ChatGPT is the one that I mainly use, and you can create what's called custom GDTs, which is just sort of a customized utility use of it.

And when I did that, it would give me general questions, and it would give me very specific; like, even specific, like, Oh, you said in your resume that you worked at this firm and did this. And so what used to be, you know, now I don't have to read the customer letter, you know, I don't have to dive in, it saved me probably an hour for each.

And then once we got to our finalists, we wanted to do, when we have our higher level employees, we do a paid project, where we'll pay them for a certain number of hours of work, and then they do actual work that we're looking for so we can evaluate. And I needed to come up with a project, and so I fed everything in, and I said, create a project that does XYZ based on this and based on that, a bit.

Jonathan Hawkins: I'm a lawyer out there whose read the horror stories, the New York case, the whatever, I'm scared. I don't know where to start. Do you have any advice on how would a lawyer who's not really experimented, how do they get started? What's a good first, second, third step to go down the path?

Because obviously, you are really deep. You've used it, I mean, your presentation blew me away with all the stuff that you do with it. And it's intimidating. to me, to be honest. So how do you get going down the path?

And one of the things, this New York lawyer, which, on the one hand, I hated that story because it scared people away from AI use, but as somebody who wants to be ahead of my competition, I loved it because I know most lawyers are going to say, oh, I can't use AI. And I'm like, that's right, you should never use AI, right?

What that lawyer in New York did is he used ChatGPT to try to come up with a very specific answer. It's making things up because it's going to the whole world and it's trying to please you. That's what AI does. And then for his verification to make sure it's right, he asked the same program. He asked AI, Oh, are you telling me the truth? Basically, is so dumb. So the way you get around that is you, you use systems.

So Callludus is a specific program that does contract analysis and legal research and writing. And it was created by an M&A attorney and some tech people. And the same thing is they have it built to where they're only going to the sources, so they guarantee there's no hallucinations on cases.

As of right now, there's no hallucinations, even the holding of those cases. Are you going to do the legal research and let AI just do it and you just publish it? Of course not. But what I always say is, we have two brand new attorneys that just started practicing law, like I think I mentioned.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, lot of lawyers out there bill by the hour, they hear, they hear efficiency and time savings and they're like, wait a second, I'm not going to be able you need to make this thing work.

Kellam Parks: gotta, You gotta stop. And look, We do a lot by the hour. It's dumb, it's an outdated model. I'm very bullish on, and we do it. So do as I say, don't do as we do. But we're looking at doing that. So We do a lot of family law, for instance. We're trying to get away. We're trying to do more flat fee pricing, more scaled flat fee pricing. Because hourly work is inherently inefficient. The more efficient we are, the less money we make. That's bad, but it's also bad for the client to pay. They hate paying by the hour. They want to understand what the costs are.

And so with AI, we're able to do a better job of pricing for, they're happier, we're happier. Let's move on.

Kellam Parks: No, I think so. Look, I think AI is really going to make it a thing. I just rotated off as president of a local bar association and we have a, bench bar conference every year. One of our Supreme Court justices in Virginia did our keynote and he did a hour long presentation on AI.

And one of his points was, you have an ethical obligation to be up on modern technology. You also have an ethical obligation to reasonably price your services. And he said, one day, I think he goes. I don't know when he goes, but one day I'm the you may encounter where it's unethical not to use AI because if AI can do the work in an hour and you spend 12 hours doing it, is that ethical? We're not there now. We're not there tomorrow. But AI is that, and AI transforms so quickly that it's just mind blowing. And so get on board. Don't be afraid, you need to get on board.

Kellam Parks: No, I agree, that's absolutely, I don't disagree at all with that's a challenge for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: so That's cool. So definitely anybody out there, if you're wondering about his AI presentation, definitely reach out to Kellum at DM, we'll get his information, it'll be in the show notes too. Great presentation. Do you take that show on the road? Do you give webinars of that?

And I said, no, but I'm happy to do the presentation because you know, I love this stuff and you guys are amazing and help me get where I am. So that's sort of what I'm doing. So I'm putting it together because that's what I want to do is, I want to help other law firms and lawyers that maybe want to start their law firm.

Understand all the principles we talked about with an emphasis on tech and AI. Not that's the only thing, but that's the extra sauce I bring, other than other coaches probably. Because they don't teach you that stuff in law school. And the more tech and systems and procedures and integration of this AI type stuff, the faster you're able to grow, the more money you'll make and the less stress you'll have.

So, but

I'm happy to share all that information If, people contact me, I'm happy to share the presentation, anything else I can help with.

Kellam Parks: I would say, probably, 60/40 working on the business and 40% practice and it's dwindling as much as I can. So I was a litigator my entire career. I'm a trial lawyer. And now I limit my trial work to high asset divorces so I only have a couple of those because they're time intensive.

I do occasional complicated civil litigation. But most of my practice these days is cyber security data privacy, which is consulting, that my paralegal and associates could do most of the work and I can just have the client interaction so that doesn't take as much as my time and we flat fee that, by the way. So that's an easier way to do it.

And then I spend more of my time getting this coaching thing going and rainmaking and that kind of stuff because I I used to, you know, I used to just love trying cases, that's what juiced me. And now, I'm much more jazzed with the other stuff.

Jonathan Hawkins: I'm with you. I started out, I went to law school, wanted to be a trial lawyer, and early on, all that stuff, I loved it, and I just don't love it so much anymore, although. Like you said, if you get through it, you go to a hearing or whatever, and you're cross examined a witness, yeah, that felt good.

Kellam Parks: I did exactly, I walked out of court yesterday and I was like, I got a couple of zingers in. That was fun.

Jonathan Hawkins: I still got it, man. still got it.

Kellam Parks: I still got it, baby. Yeah, absolutely. I love it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Cool. I know, we've been going a while. I want to be respectful of your time. A couple things, So, you know, you've been at this for quite a while. And you've seen a lot. You've got a lot of good experience with the technology and all that. What sort of lessons, are there any lessons that you've learned along the way?

Maybe something that you wish you would have done sooner or maybe something you wish you'd never done at all.

Cause our foundation was weak. We had good people and we did good work and we had a good reputation and we were making money. but you know, Oh,

we didn't have, you know, this was leaking and this is missing and this is a pro. We didn't even know there was a fire in this corner.

And again, that's why I'm so passionate about trying to share my information because I think, almost what's more important than what I can tell you what to do is what not to do. So don't get rid of shiny object syndrome. Don't try to do it all.

One of the things that I always preach is when you start, there's two main questions you have.

For years, I was just a grinder. I was working 80 hours a week, doing good legal work, making money. You ask me what my plan is, it's make money, pay my bills, do good work. You gotta have a plan. And most lawyers don't, because we're lawyers, we're not business people.

Jonathan Hawkins: You can't charge anybody for all that time you spend planning, right?

Kellam Parks: Yeah, right. But that's what I try to say is look, I'm fortunate, I bill $500 an hour for my time. That's awesome. I could get a client and I can have somebody in my office bill $300 an hour, and I'm getting $200 of that $300 into my pocket. And I have 10 of those people, I'm making $2,000 an hour instead of $500 an hour and I don't have to do the work.

Jonathan Hawkins: I will say that time spent strategizing and planning is probably worth $2,000 an hour or more, right? I mean, if you really think about.

Kellam Parks: It is. Again, that just doesn't come natural to us, because we're doing the work and I get it. I mean, I was there and I still fall back on that sometimes. I could do it better. I could do it faster. Sure, but then you're doing it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Kellam Parks: Right now, okay.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, Kellam, so we're gonna wrap up here, but I, you're a tech guy, so I'm gonna ask you a question. It has nothing to do, I don't think with law firms, but you know, today or yesterday, Bitcoin crossed a hundred thousand a coin. Are you into crypto? Any thoughts on crypto?

Kellam Parks: Oh

Jonathan Hawkins: Is that another, another hour? We got another hour here.

Kellam Parks: now, No, no, no, no. I'm not so, I regretfully am not into crypto in the sense that I have a, buddy of mine who got into crypto early, and let me just say he retired in his 40s.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Kellam Parks: Because he got in early, like multi, he's a 10 figure multimillionaire based on crypto.

If you follow him, he's like an online Journalist and he specializes in scams and particularly crypto scams. He's just a really interesting guy. He's all over YouTube. He's got a Patreon. I just saw, And I didn't get into it, I just saw it today, so I haven't gotten into the details.

But apparently, the Hawk Tuah girl, you may have seen that big thing online. Apparently, she created some sort of Bitcoin type thing that apparently got hijacked by somebody, and it made a couple of millions, and this guy is saying, I think it's a scam.

Bitcoin's very interesting and, I think it's going to stay around, but as far as investing in it and all that sort of stuff, I just haven't. Um, I'm missing both.

Kellam Parks: Oh yeah. No, great. Well, And then you see the micro trends guy, you know, he absolutely got into. And I just remember, and again, I, I have pay attention to this stuff. So I remember at the time, he was all in. And then his company was looking at like he was going bankrupt and everyone's calling him a fool.

And now that it's hit a 100k, now he's making everyone's, like, wow, what a brilliant guy. And I'm like, all right, okay. exactly Hindsight, right?

Jonathan Hawkins: well That's going to be fun to watch, but uh, yeah, be careful, be careful.

Kellam Parks: Yeah. Best way to get in touch me, I'm, you know, as an old guy, I'm attached to the hip, the e email's best way. So just email me at K Parks K P A R K S @pzlaw.com. I know it'll be in the show notes. My website is PZLaw.com is our website. And then if you reach out to me, obviously, when I launch my Koji business and stuff, I'll be all over the place on that. But I'm always happy for free to share information. Like I said, my AI presentation or whatever, just reach out to me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Cool, Kellam, I appreciate it. It's been fun.

Kellam Parks: Sure. Thanks so much for having me. It was great.