Paul McCartney’s Perfect Album & the “Wheel of Justice” with Matt Spiegel

Jared Correia (00:00:00):
Hello everybody. We’ve got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. I’m your host, Jared Correia. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. For the monologue, I’ve got another perfect album for that ass. Yeah, we’re going back to the well, we’re back to the egg in this case. Then in a very special episode of Legal Late Night, we’ve combined the interview and counterprogram segments as Lawmatic’s CEO and founder of Matt Spiegel is subjected to the unforgiving Wheel of Justice. But first, why don’t we do it in the road?

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I just can’t quit the perfect albums segment. It’s just so good. I know we just did one with Larry Port a few weeks back, but I just have too many perfect albums and only so long to live and let die. Do you have enough hints yet? So we’ll get to my next selection in a moment, but first and as always, a recap. Here are the albums we’ve done so far that I consider it to be perfect. Who? Who’s next? From 1971? Billy Joel’s Street Life Serenade from 1974. Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown also from 1974. Billy Joel’s an innocent man from 1983. Paul Simon’s Graceland from 1986. Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever from 1988, our newest edition. Uncle Tupelo’s Anadine from 1993. Snoop Dogg’s Doggy Style, also from 1993. Cheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions from 1998 and entering the 21st century Cole plays Viva Lavida or Death and All His Friends from 2008 and Taylor Swift’s folklore from 2020.

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Our newest addition to the list is the earliest released album on my current list and it’s Paul McCartney’s second solo album, Ram. That’s a record you have maybe never heard of, but it’s worth a listen all the way through because it is functionally perfect. All right. Y’all know I’m a fan of The Beatles. I mean, how can you not be? They’re almost objectively the greatest musical group of all time. Post the Beatles breakup, which was inevitable, given the talents in the group. I often contemplated with myself which former Beatle had the best solo career. Ringo’s fun, but he’s kind of a novelty act, so he’s out. John got a little bit freaky and he was doing some primal scream therapy shit in song when he did his solo work. Plus his Post Beatles catalog is really uneven, so he’s a no for me. For a long time, I was in the George Harrison camp.

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All Things Must Pass is profound as he basically dumped all his suppressed songwriting ability into a triple album. He has a triple album, which was his first solo album Post Beatles. And his career is actually pretty remarkably solid from the Apple years to the dark horse years and even his last album called Rainwashed is pretty fantastic. And other than playing the sitar a lot, Harrison had far fewer musical proclivities than the Lennon McCartney team. Lennon with the aforementioned Yoko Ono-induced shrieking and McCartney with his granny songs like When I’m 64. But George Harrison died in 2001. Not his fault, of course. And I don’t think there should be a penalty for that, but McCartney now is 25 years more of music production under his belt. And the breadth and depth of his musical catalog as a solo artist is just insane, which is like five times as long as he was in the Beatles or something like that at this point.

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He is very experimental and continues to be so. And that’s a quality I love in a musician. I just started finishing. I just started and I just finished within three months watching The Americans, the TV show, which I never watched when it came out. And what hooked me was they’re used to the famously reviled experimental Fleetwood Mac song, Tusk in the pilot. I love Tusk, but people fucking hated Tusk when it came out. Now, the thing is, as I continue to listen to new Paul McCartney music into the late 2020s, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for his back catalog and all the crazy shit he’s tried. And I think Ram is a great encapsulation of my favorite McCartney. Now my favorite Solo Beatle. The version of him was basically tripping balls and throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. Ram is like a Jackson Pollock painting.

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And with it, McCartney achieved something that his former band never did in my opinion. He created a perfect album. Post Beatles McCartney is a lot of things. Yes, he’s Paul McCartney, the solo artist. He’s also the lead singer of Wings, which by the way, is the only band of note that a former Beatle ran for any extended period of time. The Traveling Wilbrees did two albums and were a super group more than a George Harrison project, really. And Ringo’s all- star band is a touring outfit with lots of regular cast changes built in. Paul’s also been Apollo Seavermouth as a producer. Don’t know where he came up with that. He’s even The Fireman producing electronic music as part of a duo with youth. He’s even Percy Thrillas Thrillington. That’s right. Percy Thrills Thrillington, I should say. A man with a Ram’s head who plays a violin.

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I told you this was going to get weird. More on that in a moment. But what’s interesting about Ram is that it’s the only album credited to a certain husband and wife, Duo, another Paul McCartney iteration, Paul and Linda McCartney. The former Linda Eastman was a photographer and divorced mother of one when she married Paul McCartney, then Still a Beatle. They would remain married for 30 years until she died of cancer. And while this was the only album they recorded as a duo, she would remain active as a member of Wings and as part of additional McCartney projects over time. One for one on perfect albums for Paul and Linda McCartney pretty gnarly. Now, if you think of Paul McCartney as a professional athlete, which I’m going to do right now, rather than as a professional musician, his prime years run from probably 1967 to 1971.

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Now, most athletes hit their prime at 27, but McCartney was a little early. His prime starts at 25 and goes through his age 30 season. At this point, he’s basically the Shohei Ohtani of The Beatles. He moves from being the cute one to the band leader, effectively pushing Lennon from that role who begins to recede, which is one of the reasons Fishers started being created in The Beatles that eventually led to the end of the band. And probably one of the reasons that McCartney was the only one who could pull off a band, like a real band after The Beatles, because he was just really organized. In 1967, The Beatles released Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Harst Club Band. You may have heard of that. Absolute banger of a record and an early concept album conceived by Paul McCartney. This is probably the Beatles best album, and McCartney’s writing The Intro and The Outro.

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He does Getting Better and the Criminally Underrated, Lovely Rita Meter Made, which is maybe my favorite Beatles song. Then the band goes in an entirely different direction with the eponymous The Beatles album, just a white cover with The Beatles name embossed over it so that it became known as The White Album. Four record sides, just a random collection of songs. George Harrison said this album effectively cleared out the group’s backlog of songs and it’s sort of a collection of solo pieces from the three main songwriters in the band and included some of Harrison’s and Lennon’s Strongest Beatles output. Paul’s doing Yeoman’s work here as well though with tunes like Back in the USSR, A Response to the Beach Boys California Girls, Rocky Raccoon. Jack Johnson is a great cover of this song, by the way. Martha MyDear, which is one of my favorite songs of his about his Sheepdog, Birthday, Helder Skelter, Blackbird, among others.

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But it’s crazy that The Beatles released both Sergeant Peppers and the White Album in the same year. Yellow Submarine is next from 1968, and that’s really more of a soundtrack album to an animated film with previous release stuff and orchestral suites. So that’s not a proper album. But Paul McCartney did write all together now for that album, which he described as a throwaway song, but which still appears in commercials and would probably be many artists’ biggest hit. For Abbey Road, recorded Last, released first and Let It Be Recorded First, released last with a movie tie-in. I think I have that right. I always fuck it up. So they’re both technically the Beatles last album. McCartney’s basically holding the band together at that point. Abbey wrote itself was a McCartney suggestion as he asked George Martin, the group’s producer, to record an album in the pre-Let It Be Get Back Sessions, fashion, which was more organized.

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The group played more like a band for this album and less like solo artists working together. The best part of Abby Road, in my opinion, is the Medley in the second half, which is a McCartney Martin creation based on Lennon’s request to separate his and McCartney songs. The You Never Give Me Your Money, and she came in through the bathroom window twofer or prime works from McCartney, and he did the whole Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, The End with its ripping guitar solos, Her Majesty, The Short Capper to the album. Those six songs are all is and in total are collectively the best part of the whole project. Let It Be was originally called Get Back. Those are both Paul McCartney songs. In fact, there’s this amazing scene in Peter Jackson’s lengthy documentary on The Beatles where McCartney just basically comes up with Get Back off the Dome while just snoodling around on his guitar.

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And yeah, it’s one of the greatest songs ever written, so there’s that. Let It Be is in a totally different vein, almost ecstatic, borderline religious, where McCartney dreams of meeting his late mother. This may not surprise you, but both the concept of Let It Be, a Back to Basics album and the famous rooftop concert were also McCartney ideas. So The Beatles break up in 1970 with McCartney at the height of his powers still. The Beatles officially announced their breakup in April of 1970, though Lennon had actually left the band in late 1969. McCartney was already finishing up his solo debut album though, which was called McCartney. One of a few uponist albums he would end up releasing. He recorded it in secret and played all the instruments himself. So not a high degree of difficulty there. He insisted on an April 17th, 1970 release date, which was previously agreed to with Neil Aspinall, the head of Apple Core.

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Even though that would mean the album would come out before Get Back, technically the Beatles last released album. This created a lot of tension between the band mates, even though Ringo Star’s sentimental journey, his kind of post Beatles solo album of standards released in March 1970. Fucking Ringo, man. McCartney was salty as fuck about all this. He booted Ringo out of his house when he came over to talk about the albums. Then publicly announced he would never play with The Beatles again and was stewing over what Phil Spector was doing in the edit booth to let it be. McCarney wanted a more stripped down version. But solo McCartney was now a thing. And even though critics pan the album, McCartney’s actually a monumental achievement. It’s got a couple of Beatles holdover songs, Junk and Teddy Boy. And while it’s not as good as Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, McCartney did not have years of frustration and pent-up songwriting ability that had been balled up without a release velvet to channel into his debut solo album.

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He effectively created McCartney from Whole Cloth and did the whole thing himself. Ram was next on McCartney’s release radar, and it was something of a response to the critics of McCartney. Now, I’m normally in the Fuck them if they don’t like it crowd, and that does not sound like a recipe for success, but Ram saw McCartney deliver a more polished sound, and he also added variety by inviting in other musicians, not just himself, including Linda McCartney and Denny Sewell, who would later be in wings on vocals and drums. He also brought on David Spinoza and Hugh McCracken on guitar. And the guitar playing on Ram is really good. So there are so many reasons. I love Ram. Primarily, I like that each song sounds very different from the other. It’s not really a thematic album like McCartney had done in the past. There are distinct segments in most of the songs, so it’s kind of like a selection of sweets, and I love sweets.

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Some songs feature heavy guitar, while others lean more on acoustic guitar. There are weird instruments in play too, like a fucking flugal horn like Dr. Seuss wrote this shit or something. There’s lots of gibberish, weird yelling, voice modulation in the McCartney tradition. As he displays his range, he’s actually a great blue-eyed soul singer. Plus, McCartney’s still so angry about the end of the Beatles that he’s got some amazing breakup songs on here with a particular focus on John Lennon. This is partly Paul McCartney’s Taylor Swift album, if you consider The Beatles his old boyfriend. This is just a stellar record. Let’s go through the tracks, shall we? The best song on Ram is just a hot jam. It’s called Eat at Home. It’s got a ripping lead guitar, funky little bassline, good drum pars, and backing vocals from Linda McCartney. It’s also about oral sex.

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Eat at home, get it. What an unhinged masterpiece. Seriously. This is some toe tapping shit. Too many people starts out with … It’s a lead track on the album, and it’s got some softer guitar parts and a little bit of the drums before continually ramping up over the course of the song. This is effectively McCartney’s most vicious take down of John Lennon. McCartney writes that he, Lennon, took his lucky break and broken in two in reference to The Beatles. Originally, the line was Yoko took your lucky break? Yikes. His line, “Too many people preaching practices is directly aimed at Lennon and Ono.” Lennon would respond with a song called How Do Y Sleep? On the 1971 Imagine album, which is less artful of a breakup song, in my opinion. And I suppose the answer to how Paul McCartney sleeps would be on Piles of Money.

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Three Legs is on the surface, a song about a dog with three legs, but there’s a lot under the surface. McCartney effectively alludes to the remaining Beatles that’s a three-legged dog that can’t run, that’s kind of savage. And alludes to the fact that he thought Lennon was his friend, but he let him down. Aside from the Beatles stuff, there’s even a reference to Thomas Hardy, the English author, as Linda McCartney sings Flying Above the Manning Crowd is a backing vocal in reference to Hardy’s 1874 book, Far From the Madding Crowd. I love Thomas Hardy. Like Too Many People, Three Legs gets progressively more aggressive as the song propels forward. The outro is phenomenal. Dear Boy is a song that has traditionally been thought to be about Lennon as well, but I think it’s pretty clearly about Linda McCartney’s ex- husband. If you listen to the lyrics, and McCartney’s pretty much said so directly himself.

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This is probably the most traditional McCartney song on the album, so it gives off some Beach Boys vibes also. Long Haired Lady is effectively a sweet with three segments. There’s a lot going on here and it’s a lengthy track checking in at six plus minutes. There’s a little bit of conversation here as Linda takes co-lead vocals effectively in parts of the song. It’s a little meandering at times, and then it picks up with the final Love is Long section, which include elements of another part of the suite, the Well, Well, Well part. This is just a finally crafted tune featuring lots of brass instruments, relatively unusual to pop music. While a lot of the songs on the album are relatively unknown, not hits, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey was a huge hit. I don’t think it’s one of the best three songs on the album, but it’s the most well known and it’s certainly a great solo McCartney joint.

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It’s got so many things working for it. McCartney’s doing all kinds of weird voices and even mimicking a phone ringing. It’s a two-part song reflecting British. That’s the Uncle Albert part who … Paul McCartney actually had an uncle named Albert and American Bull Halsey is the general that’s referenced here. Sensibilities underscored by the hands across the water, hands across the sky section. Remember Linda was American. There’s so many cool Parsona song, including the weird little outro at the end and the little gypsy part. McCartney is at his best when he’s being playful. Smile Away. Solid guitar focus song with a cool solo. It also includes the odd lyric, I can smell your teeth from a mile away. I didn’t realize that Teeth had a smell, but okay, those are apparently very smelly teeth. This is kind of a straight rock song that functions as a palate cleanser because it comes right after Uncle Elbert.

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But there’s a cool segment where he drops the volume out of the song. This is probably the simplest song on Ram, but McCartney’s still mixing things in. It’s suspected that this is about the Beatles breakup as well and McCartney smiling through his depression after the band broke down. Monkberry Moon Delight is a really strange song on a very strange album that emanates from the McCartney children calling Milk Monk. McCartney referred to this song as a fantasy milkshake. All right then. Lots of folks really liked the song and Rolling Stone even ranked at number 22 on a list of solo McCartney recordings in 2020. The lyrics are just off the wall. And McCartney said that with this song, he was trying to do something very different from his Beatles experience, which yeah, it’s tough to imagine this song on a proper Beatles album. The album’s also got Ram On and Ram On Reprize, which I suppose are the closest things you’re getting to a title track on a record as Off Kilter is Ram.

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Ramon is kind of like a little love song, not a lot of lyrical differentiation, but there’s a ukulele thrown in there. Some weird mouth noises, some clapping, nothing is straight out on this album. Heart of the Country is McCartney’s song about escaping the Beatles bullshit as he retreats to his Scottish estate. Must be nice. He tuned the strings of his guitar below standard pitch and had the drummer use brushes instead of sticks to create a super mellow vibe. The backseat of my car follows the Ramon reprise. It’s the last song on the album. It’s maybe the most normal pop contribution to the album, perhaps because it’s a holdover from The Beatles, the White album, where it was originally introduced as a track. It would’ve fit there for sure. Really good song. The melody’s very slick, particularly as McCartney closes out the first half of the song singing.

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When we finished driving, we can say we were late in arriving. The ending part, which goes, we believe that we can’t be wrong, that’s a whole segment that’s also excellent. McCarney’s just brilliant with melody. Lots of McCartney’s driving songs from the late ’60s and early ’70s were inspired by long drives you would take with Linda McCartney when he got frustrated by the other Beatles. The Backseat of the Car is also referenced because this song too is about fucking. Paul McCartney definitely fucked in case it was not clear. Then there’s a flourish at the end and that finishes off the canonical Ram songs, but wait, there’s more. Ram probably could have been a double album. Though I don’t know if it remains perfect if it is. I think Paul McCartney did a good job cutting it where he did. And the songs that weren’t included on the album are available in the archive collection version of the record.

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Dave would make up a really good album in their own right, honestly. I think there’s nine songs. One of which is another day, which was recorded during the Ram sessions and was released as a non-album single. Another day might’ve been the best song on Ram had it been included, honestly. It is one of these perfect slice of life songs from McCartney about nothing. This lonely woman just going throughout her day. It’s been featured in a lot of movies. It was in 51st dates, but critics hated this song as they’re often wrong. One guy compared it to a deodorant jingle, which is fucking savage, but also completely untrue. So don’t listen to any of this bullshit. It’s a great song. Backing another day is O Woman Oy, which would’ve fit actually really well on the original Ram record. Another day would’ve been kind of an outlier.

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It’s sort of a straight up bluesy rock tune and he has real gunshots in the song too, because it’s a murder ballad. A rare Paul McCartney murder ballad. So it’s got some country flavor. The My Hands are tied part, almost sounds like Prince, honestly. It’s also got this peppy outro, like a lot of the other Ram stuff.

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There’s also a song called A Love for You, which is kind of crazy in how progressive it is. It might actually be the most progressive song that came out of the Ram sessions. It was something that McCartney wrote in 1971, but it sounds like it should have been a number one hit in 1983. And it kind of resembles some of George Harrison’s late 1980s output. It’s insane to me that he wrote this song practically in the 1960s. It’s crazy visionary. One of the most amazing things he did in an amazing career. Little woman love and Hey Diddle are probably the best of the remaining outtakes, but listen to them all. They’re all worth it. Remember Percy Thrillington? Of course you do. That’s another Paul McCartney alias that he used to release an album called Appropriately Thrillington in 1977. Now, what the fuck is Sterlington? You might ask.

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It was recorded contemporaneously with Ram in 1971 by producer Richard Hugheson, but McCartney shelved the project when he founded Wings. It’s basically jazz infused instrumental covers of all the songs in the original Ram release. And it’s actually pretty fucking good. As I mentioned, he ended up releasing this six years later under the pseudonym, even though everybody knew it was Paul McCartney anyway, making his effort to find a random shepherd in England to put on a jacket and post for picture to become the Titcher band leader, effectively moot. But I appreciate the hustle. Good on you, Paul McCartney.

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Now, I do think that the fact that McCartney commissioned a project like this probably speaks to his love of Ram. So he’s clearly got really good taste in his own music. Well, I guess the only thing left to say is Ram on. Oh, and then there’s this. Next up, we’ve got Matt Spiegel, the founder and CEO of Lawmatics speaking on various and sundry topics. Normal legal stuff like what would he do during an apocalypse? That and more is next. Well, I’ve effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast. So I will pace back and forth in front of the camera for several minutes. Now I’m just fucking with you. We’ve got plenty to talk about because we’ve got an amazing guest today. That’s right. Here he is. It’s Matt Spiegel, who is the CEO and co-founder of Lawmatics.

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Matt, welcome to the show, man. How are you?

Matt Spiegel (00:24:23):
Jared, I’m great. It’s good to see you or hear you. I mean, depending on … It’s always weird to say see. I don’t know if people are going to be watching, but yeah, great to see you, great to hear you.

Jared Correia (00:24:32):
Oh, they will be.

Matt Spiegel (00:24:33):
Yeah. And as always, extremely happy to be here and is especially excited for this format, which I have no idea what is coming. The wheel of justice.

Jared Correia (00:24:45):
All right, let me tell you a little bit about the format. And for those who have not seen this before, I am bringing back a segment we do on the regular in the counter program, which is our game section. But we’re doing something a little bit different because we have the great Mass Spiegel here. We are combining our interview section with our Wheel of Justice segment. The Wheel of Justice is based on the wheel of drinks at Bacowski Tavern in Boston, where you spin the wheel and buy whatever drink the wheel dictates because the wheel is wise and the wheel is just. So Matt, we’re literally just going to spin the wheel and I’ll ask you questions based on whatever comes up. As I mentioned, I have no idea what I’ll actually be asking you about and in what order. Before we get started. Fantastic.

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You familiar with Bacowski in Boston? You ever been there?

Matt Spiegel (00:25:35):
Well, Jared, I will point out the fact that when I was in Boston for the only time I’ve ever been in Boston, which was just this past October, and I specifically sent you an email being like, “Hey, I’m looking for you to show me around Boston a little bit on one night, and I will remind you and all of our listeners and viewers that you stiffed me.

Jared Correia (00:25:55):
” Yeah, I’m an asshole. I suck.

Matt Spiegel (00:25:58):
I was probably some kids back.menters of shed. I should be familiar with said Barr, but I am not, thanks to you. So next time I’m in Boston, with or without you, I will visit.

Jared Correia (00:26:12):
Cleocon two in Boston. Coming up in October 2026. All right, let’s do it. Let’s spin the wheel. Evan, give us a spin. We got 16 categories. I don’t think we’re getting to all of them, but we’ll see what we do get to. Okay. So first category is Play 60. Play 60 is the first category. This is appropriate.

Matt Spiegel (00:26:35):
Isn’t then this whole thing?

Jared Correia (00:26:36):
As we’re recording this, the Super Bowl was last night. So let me ask you, who did you have in the Super Bowl and how did it go? You already alluded to this, but please go ahead. Give me your Patriots diatribe. I’ll sit quietly and listen.

Matt Spiegel (00:26:49):
Yeah. Yeah. I had anti-Patriots, so that’s what I had. It turned out that it was the Seahawks in this situation. I don’t care who it was. Seahawks were … Look, I have a lot of respect for Sam Darnold. I love that story. And so yeah, fully rooting against the Patriots. And so it was a great outcome in that. It was a God awful game, as we both alluded to. Terrible.

Jared Correia (00:27:21):
Terrible.

Matt Spiegel (00:27:22):
Yeah. Arguably the worst Super Bowl of all time. What’s up there? The outcome was good. And you were rooting for.

Jared Correia (00:27:32):
Yeah, this stings my soul a little bit, but also the game was so terrible. I’m basically like, they’re not scoring. This is over already in the first quarter. I got into it pretty quick. So I had Conrad Sam, who’s a mutual friend of ours from Mockingbird Marketing. We made a little bet, and now I have to wear a Seahawks jersey on a podcast.

Matt Spiegel (00:27:56):
Oh yeah, because Conrad’s from Washington and he’s from Seattle, right? Yeah.

Jared Correia (00:28:01):
I’m trying to negotiate for a Will Campbell jersey because I think he was the MVP of the game last night, actually, for the Seahawks, because he got blown up so hard by the defensive line. But we’ll see if I can get that going. Would you root for the Patriots? Are they your least favorite team? Would you root for any other team against the Patriots?

Matt Spiegel (00:28:21):
It’s a good question. So if it was the Eagles versus the Patriots, then I would probably be rooting for the Patriots. Really? Yeah. If it was the Eagles versus the Cowboys, or sorry, Cowboys versus the Patriots, I’d probably be rooting for the Patriots. I’m just thinking about teams in my division that we have right I’m a Giants fan. If it was the commanders against the Patriots, I’d probably be rooting for the commanders. But the Cowboys and the Eagles, I can’t see myself. I mean, honestly, if it was those two teams, I’d probably be rooting for more like a Dark Night Returns event. Right?

Jared Correia (00:28:56):
That’s great. For those who do not understand the reference, right? Dark night returns. No.

Matt Spiegel (00:29:02):
The Dark Night Rises.

Jared Correia (00:29:03):
Dark Night Rises. Yeah. When the football field collapses and everybody falls in, except for Heinz Ward. Okay. That’s fair. How are you feeling about Harbaugh?

Matt Spiegel (00:29:14):
I mean, so that’s the beauty of today. As we talk the day after the Super Bowl, the Giants Super Bowl run is officially underway.

Jared Correia (00:29:22):
It’s a new season.

Matt Spiegel (00:29:23):
Yeah, here we go.

Jared Correia (00:29:26):
I get into little Phil Sims. Little Stephen Baker action.

Matt Spiegel (00:29:33):
It is ready to go. You got Jackson Dart and Cam Scottibu and Leak Neighbors. I mean, we’re ready to go.

Jared Correia (00:29:38):
Malik Neighbors is really good. All right. We’ve done our football talk post Super Bowl. I mean, that wasn’t even planned. That’s just how the wheel worked. Let’s spin it again. What will the wheel give us this time around? Okay. Next topic is Luddite vibes. God,

Matt Spiegel (00:29:57):
Another appropriate topic because we’re in legal.

Jared Correia (00:30:00):
Okay. So what’s the biggest thing that holds attorneys back from being first order tech adopters? The biggest problem for lawyers? Oh man.

Matt Spiegel (00:30:11):
Well-

Jared Correia (00:30:13):
I know it’s a long

Matt Spiegel (00:30:13):
List. Well, the biggest problem is that they’re not tech adopters, but we’re putting that as table stakes. So we’re asking what is the biggest problem to making them tech adopters, right? Yes. Could they

Jared Correia (00:30:26):
Become tech adopters if appropriately motivated?

Matt Spiegel (00:30:29):
They can. I mean, I think most of them are at this point. It’s just they don’t adopt it fast enough and they quick. I mean, I think it’s fear, but I don’t think it’s fear of … I don’t necessarily think it’s fear of data or anything like that. I think it’s a different kind of fear maybe. I think it’s maybe an arrogance driven fear maybe. Oh, interesting.

Jared Correia (00:30:58):
Yeah.

Matt Spiegel (00:30:59):
What do you mean by that? I don’t know. Especially now, maybe it’s like, well, I’m fear that, well, I can do what I do better. I don’t want anyone else doing it or a system doing it. Or the way I’ve always done something is just, it’s the right way. It’s my way. And so I don’t want to change that. I mean, I was like that when I was practicing, I think a little bit, especially in the beginning. So I think it’s some type of fear. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, but maybe it’s fear of anything other than the status quo. Well,

Jared Correia (00:31:37):
Can I tell you about a conversation I had with a law firm this morning? I won’t mention any names, but we were talking about CRM stuff and they were like, okay, when we onboard a client, I send out a welcome letter and I send out an engagement agreement and I send out a payment request. And I like that to be high touch because we’re on boarding the clients. And we went through it and I’m like, okay. The engagement agreement, you’re literally just putting in the scope of work clause. The payment link is the same every time. And then the welcome letter, all you’re doing is identifying the team. And if you had like a little menu where you could fill out which team members were involved, the rest of the email’s the same, right? Like what if you could just click a button and have all that happen?

(00:32:19):
And they were like, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” So yeah, I think it’s interesting that you describe it as a fear related to arrogance because I think a lot of attorneys do do the thing where they’re like, “I can do this better than any tech and I don’t trust the tech to do it. ” But if you set it up correctly, it works. It’s easy.

(00:32:38):
So I’m right there with you.

Matt Spiegel (00:32:39):
That’s right.

Jared Correia (00:32:41):
Should we spin the wheel? I think we’ve covered like … I think we know attorneys. If you listen to this podcast cast and you’re an attorney, you probably know you’re a Luddite. So let’s go to the next thing.

Matt Spiegel (00:32:52):
Yeah. So we’re not hurting anybody’s feelings.

Jared Correia (00:32:54):
Yeah, exactly. Like you know. Evan, hit us up. As lawyers are like jostling the sticky nose on their desk as the wheel spins. Oh, this is a great one. Is it? All right. Have you seen the show The Last of Us on HBO? Yes. Okay. Do you like it? I love The Last of Us.

Matt Spiegel (00:33:12):
Oh, I love it. I was very sad. I didn’t really know. I didn’t play the games. I didn’t play the video games.

Jared Correia (00:33:18):
Me neither.

Matt Spiegel (00:33:19):
Yeah. Yeah. So apparently if you played the video games, you kind of knew what would happen. I want to spoil anything for people who might end up watching it, but kind of went off the rails in season two. I was like, oh shit, this is where we’re going now. And where do we go? It’s crazy.

Jared Correia (00:33:33):
Yeah, it’s crazy. Oh, so yeah, I have a sense of where we go because I have some friends of mine who played the game and spoiled some things for me, but I love that show. All right, so here’s a question related to the last of us, which is maybe my favorite question, so I’m glad it came up. Matt, if there was an extinction level event that you survived, what’s your first move? Oh, wow.

Matt Spiegel (00:33:55):
That’s awesome. What’s my first move? Or series of moves. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think it’s like … Look, obviously if I get over the shock of losing everybody that you love and … So I’m putting the morning and grieving period as table stakes.

Jared Correia (00:34:14):
You still love your family and friends. Yes. Let’s put that aside

Matt Spiegel (00:34:17):
For now. So all that’s gone.

Jared Correia (00:34:18):
Only for the

Matt Spiegel (00:34:19):
Sake of this

Jared Correia (00:34:19):
Question.

Matt Spiegel (00:34:21):
Honestly, I think my move, my first move is finding the biggest, sickest house. I’m going and grabbing amazing cars. I’m setting up shelter. I need shelter. And so I think the first thing I’m doing is going to just the coolest mansion, wherever it is, and just finding a few amazing vehicles, stocking the garage, and then setting up shop there. Got to go find food. So I’m probably going and stocking up quickly and hopefully being able to refrigerate some of the best food I can find. But I think that’s my move. I don’t know. You’ve thought about this. What’s yours?

Jared Correia (00:35:02):
So basically the apocalypse hits and you become iron, man, is where we go with this.

Matt Spiegel (00:35:07):
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s right. And then obviously from there, it’s like once you can set up a really good kind of layer, right? And then you can start tinkering and figuring out, all right, how am I bringing back humanity or how am I getting off this rock and finding another finding somewhere else?

Jared Correia (00:35:26):
Oh, you’re right to like SpaceX. I love it. What would I do? I got my head on a swivel at all times in case there is like an extinction level event. So I’ve thought about this. There’s an airport in the area where I live. So I go to the convenience store. I get all the non-perishable food I can find. I get as much gas as I can. I buy like a big ass truck and then I hole up in an airport hangar just in case there’s roving bands of like lunatics that I need to take out. That’s my plan. Okay.

Matt Spiegel (00:36:03):
See, I like that. But see, again, to me, the whole layer idea, the whole mansion layer idea is great because I’m also going to stock that thing, stock it with ammunition, whatever you need in order to fight off. Zombies. Yeah. The zombies, animals, whatever it might be. But I can do that from the comfort of a really awesome … The one. There’s a house in LA for sale. It’s called The One.

Jared Correia (00:36:26):
Really?

Matt Spiegel (00:36:26):
It’s like $200 million. That seems like it would be a cool layer. No way. I’ve never even heard of that. What makes it the one? I don’t know. It is a very weird name, but this house is insane. And it is very Iron Man-ish. Actually, the Iron Man house itself is here in San Diego, the razor house. Really? So maybe that’s an option. But I think a cool layer. A cool layer where I can set up shop, be comfortable, and defend myself from the elements would be good.

Jared Correia (00:36:57):
Animal predation, et cetera. I just looked at the one in LA. That’s pretty sweet compound. It’s a compound. Yeah. Your idea is better than mine. All right. Now I’m embarrassed. Let’s roll it again. Spin the wheel. My hanger idea is stupid. I’m so embarrassed. Okay. Let’s see what we got next. Sentimental value. Sentimental value is our next question. I don’t remember this one off the top of my head, so let me find it. Oh, okay. Here’s a good one. Sentimental value. What is your favorite piece of technology, hardware or software that no longer exists or is used regularly?

Matt Spiegel (00:37:35):
Ooh,

Jared Correia (00:37:36):
Really good question. That no longer exists yourself. I guess regularly. Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. My beeper’s going off. No, go ahead. No, I never liked the beepers. No? All right.

Matt Spiegel (00:37:50):
No. I didn’t

Jared Correia (00:37:51):
Either, actually.

Matt Spiegel (00:37:52):
I wasn’t really a big fan of beepers. It’s funny, I was thinking about this the other day. Now, the problem is this kind of exists in a different form, but in its purest form, it doesn’t really exist anymore and definitely people don’t use it. And I was thinking about it the other day, because I was thinking that, man, my kids don’t get to experience just the joy of having one of these and losing yourself endlessly in front of the screen. And that’s a Game Boy.

Jared Correia (00:38:24):
Oh, yes. That’s

Matt Spiegel (00:38:26):
A great one. I loved Game Boy. I think we all did growing up. And I think it was just so simple. And obviously this exists now. You have much, much better than a Game Boy. You can play a whole entire video game console with high definition and everything you want right there in front of you portable. But the Game Boy was just simple and I loved it. And I think along those lines, another thing I thought about was I loved the portable CD player, the Walkman.

Jared Correia (00:39:00):
The Sony Disc Man? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Spiegel (00:39:01):
Those are great.

Jared Correia (00:39:02):
The Disc

Matt Spiegel (00:39:02):
Man. Yeah. I loved that thing. There’s a lot of sentimental value in both those things.

Jared Correia (00:39:09):
Do you still have a Disc Man kicking around? I do not, unfortunately.

Matt Spiegel (00:39:13):
No, I don’t have a Disc Man. I did for the longest time, maybe up until a couple years ago, I had my very first radio that I had ever gotten. Oh, really?

Jared Correia (00:39:23):
God,

Matt Spiegel (00:39:23):
If anybody on the East Coast remembers crazy Eddies. I don’t know. It was a big … I don’t even know if it was outside of New York, New Jersey, but it was this crazy electronics guy in the 80s, crazy Eddies. I got my first stereo there. It was in 83 or 84, and I still had it up until a few years ago. It was a tape player. AMFM radio, but no, no disc man.

Jared Correia (00:39:50):
Do you remember the Sega game gear, which was the Sega competitor to the Game Boy? Totally. Yeah. I remember it was yesterday. I was at a friend of mine’s house and he wanted the game gear so badly. And his mom was like, “Okay, call around to see if one is available.” And we got this old man at Toys R Us and he didn’t know what the hell we were talking about. So he kept saying, “Rain gear is an aisle seven. We’re looking for raincoats.” And we were like, “Bro, it’s a video gaming system.” And he was like a thousand years old, so he had no clue what it was. Those are two good ones. Those are two good ones. All right. If you’ve never played a Game Boy before, you were really missing out, I’m afraid to say. All right. Evan, let’s spin it. I don’t think we can top that.

(00:40:37):
Next question. Let’s see what we got. Next question on the wheel is road trip. Part one. Part one. So fortunately, road trip part one came up before road trip part two, because this would be hard to explain. I got a legal related question for you. What’s the craziest legal tech conference story you can tell in a public forum?

(00:41:03):
God.

Matt Spiegel (00:41:06):
Oh, man. Dot, dot, dot in a public forum. Okay, because there are a couple that are really crazy that I definitely, definitely cannot tell in a public forum. Yes. Yes. Unfortunately.

Jared Correia (00:41:21):
That’ll be the unrated version of this podcast and never releases.

Matt Spiegel (00:41:25):
I think you know one of them at least.

Jared Correia (00:41:27):
Yes. I believe I

Matt Spiegel (00:41:29):
Do. Okay. So the craziest one … Oh man. So this is a pretty good one. It’s actually my very first … Because the people that I’ve met at these conferences over the years, you’re self included, just spending a lot of time with you guys really are like friendships that I think will endure the lifetime, regardless of whether I’m still in legal or not. And at my very first tech show in Chicago in 2011, I think it was, I met … A few months before I had met Christian Beck. Christian Beck is the guy who owns … He owns Leap and Smokeball and InfoTrack. He owns ATI out in Australia. And it was the first time I met him and we really hit it off. And so in Chicago- Chicago. … that year, 2011, at my case, we threw a little happy hour and I invited Christian.

(00:42:30):
He brought along Hunter, who’s a very, very dear friend of mine now, Hunter Steele, who’s the founder … Or not founder, but CEO and president of our CEO of- Smokeball? Yeah. Yeah. And one other gentleman from their kind of group. They were in Chicago and so we invited them and they came to our happy hour and we ended up going with them, me and my two co-founders in my case, my cousin and our CTO, Chris. We ended up going out with them after our happy hour. And these are some wild Australian guys and we’re some wild California guys. And I don’t really remember how we ended up getting, but we ended up at Benigan’s on Michigan Avenue at like one in the morning.

Jared Correia (00:43:21):
So

Matt Spiegel (00:43:21):
Great. And we sat down to eat at one in the morning and- As one does. We had had a bunch of drinks and we were all like … And at one point in the night, the banter got to the point where they were like, “Well, we want to invest in my case.” And my CTO said, “Well, we won’t accept your queen Victoria’s. We need American dollars.” So it was that kind of night. So we hadn’t seen the Chicago Bean. I had never been to Chicago actually. And some of us hadn’t. And they hadn’t. So the Benigans was very close to the beans, so we decided to go to the bean and we walked out of Benigan’s with our glasses. I don’t know why, but we did. We still had beer left and we’re like, “All right, well, we need to continue this beer, but we need to go to the Chicago Beans.” So we went to the Chicago

Jared Correia (00:44:16):
Bean. I mean, totally appropriate. Yeah.

Matt Spiegel (00:44:18):
And we’re the only ones there. And a couple people, I won’t say who, decide that they’re done with their glasses and it would be really great to shatter those glasses in the Chicago bean.

Jared Correia (00:44:32):
Yeah, naturally, of course.

Matt Spiegel (00:44:33):
Yeah. And so they did. So they shattered their glasses against and beneath the Chicago bean. Security very promptly was made aware of this and came to have a lengthy discussion with us. We avoided any severe penalties, but yeah, that was my first experience at my first really big legal conference.

Jared Correia (00:44:58):
That’s wild. To echo your point though, the legal tech conferences can be pretty fucking fun, honestly. I’ve done a lot of things and had a lot of experiences at legal tech conferences at this point, and hopefully into the future as well. All right, that was a really good one. And somewhat you rated as well. So thank you for that. The children listening, which are no children, will be thrilled. All right, let’s spin the wheel. What do we got next? Will it be a legal story? Will it be something totally out of the box? Four. All right, this is right up here, Alley. We were talking about this before the show started. What’s your handicap these days and what is your current favorite golf course?

Matt Spiegel (00:45:41):
Because you are a golfer. I am a golfer and this is not something … The thing about handicap that people don’t realize is you can’t lie about it. It’s public. You can go on to the Ginap, right? G-H-I-N. You can go on, you can look up anybody. So I have to give what my accurate handicap is. I believe at the very current moment, because it does change quite often, I think it’s a 2.4. Is that good? So

Jared Correia (00:46:07):
Just, I am not a golfer. It’s

Matt Spiegel (00:46:08):
Good. The

Jared Correia (00:46:08):
Only time I’ve really golfed, I have a terrible slice and I almost killed a cow one time at a mini golf course, but we won’t talk about that. Congratulations. Essentially on your good handicap.

Matt Spiegel (00:46:18):
Well, it’s a good handicap. I think it reflects someone who plays a lot of golf, so maybe that’s just a kind of issue there or concern. It’s a good thing. My favorite golf course, I will tell you I have two. So my favorite golf course is my own course, which I’m a member at is called The Farms. It’s an incredible place and I love it. It’s a very, very hard course. It makes our handicaps a little higher than they would be at a different course. So when I go to-

Jared Correia (00:46:43):
I like how you threaded that in where

Matt Spiegel (00:46:44):
You’re like,

Jared Correia (00:46:45):
“My handicap would

Matt Spiegel (00:46:45):
Be lower

(00:46:46):
If … ” It’s like just typically when you go to other courses, our handicap travels very well, but it’s also a course where there are exceptional players there. So while my handicap may look good compared to the averages of the country, I do not consider myself a good golfer, especially at the farms. Then my second favorite course, which I’m very fortunate to be able to play frequently right now, whenever I’m in Austin, I have a dear friend and an investor who is a member at Austin Country Club, otherwise known as ACC. It is an incredible place. And I think that’s probably my other favorite course to play these days.

Jared Correia (00:47:24):
Okay. Quick question for you. I have to go to a basketball tournament with my son in Augusta, Georgia in July. Can I view the masters? Of course. Should I go? I

Matt Spiegel (00:47:38):
Don’t know. I don’t think that you can do anything related to Augusta National whatsoever. I mean, you could drive down the street that you probably, the entrance to turn into is off of. That’s probably about as close as you’re going to get.

Jared Correia (00:47:52):
Interesting. Okay, good to know. I’ll scratch that off my list of things to do. So I’ll just be sweating my balls off in Georgia in

Matt Spiegel (00:47:58):
July. Of all people who might be able to figure out a way to get in there though, I would entrust that to you. And so I would please get me updated on any attempts. I

Jared Correia (00:48:07):
Have played football at Michigan Stadium legally, so I can get into places. All right, let’s spin the wheel before I get myself into trouble. Don’t want anyone checking my social media accounts or historical adventures. Okay. Oh, Captain KPI with a K, like Captain Cave man. Matt, what is the most important marketing KPI for a law firm?

Matt Spiegel (00:48:29):
Oh, it’s so easy.

Jared Correia (00:48:31):
All right, good.

Matt Spiegel (00:48:33):
Softball for me. Yeah. It’s the one that no one actually even pays attention to or thinks about. And it’s kind of technically two KPIs, but I’ll put it into one. Bonus KPI,

Jared Correia (00:48:46):
Everyone.

Matt Spiegel (00:48:47):
Cost per lead, cost per customer. That’s it, right? It’s like very simple because your business doesn’t work if those numbers are messed up, right? If you make $50,000 off your average customer, if you make $5,000 off your average customer, but your cost to acquire a customer is $6,000. Well, guess what? You’ve got a failing business, right?

Jared Correia (00:49:10):
Right.

Matt Spiegel (00:49:10):
And so too many people just, you spend all this money on marketing and you just see that you’re getting clients, but you’re not actually working the economics out here or understanding which channels are actually valuable. Because look, if all of your channels were costing you $1,000 more than what you actually make, then you would know because you would go out of business very quickly, right?

Jared Correia (00:49:32):
Yeah.

Matt Spiegel (00:49:32):
So the odds are that there are at least one or two channels that are performing well, but you just need to know which ones are. And you might have one that’s performing really poorly and coming in at an acquisition cost that is far greater than what your revenue is, but then you have a few that are providing customers that are far less than what your revenue is. So you have to have those two numbers dialed in, cost per lead, cost per customer. You need to do it on a channel by channel basis. And then I would even go deeper into the actual campaigns within those channels, if you can.

Jared Correia (00:50:05):
Interesting.

Matt Spiegel (00:50:05):
Yeah. But I think that’s the most important and overlooked metric when it comes to marketing. I

Jared Correia (00:50:10):
Don’t feel like the vast majority of lawyers even think of that at all.

Matt Spiegel (00:50:14):
No.

Jared Correia (00:50:14):
I don’t think I’ve ever had a lawyer bring it up to me without me bringing it up first. So that’s a good one. All right. Spin it. I think we can do maybe like two, three more if you’re a game for it. Ungame. We’re not going to get to all of them, unfortunately. Maybe we’ll have you come back for a part two and we’ll do the rest of them. All right. Eddington. Have you seen the movie Eddington? No. Okay. Ariaster movie. At the end of the movie, basically there’s a town in New Mexico and they bring in like an AI facility thing so they can use the Energy Institute to power AI. So this is the AI question, the obligatory AI question. What are your feelings on AI in the marketplace right now? Is it real and important as people think it is? Is it a bubble?

(00:51:05):
Is it all as cracked up to be? Just drop me your AI thoughts.

Matt Spiegel (00:51:10):
So first of all, yeah, it’s all of that. So it is right now a lot of horse shit in the market. It’s a lot of, right? There is. It’s a lot of hype in the market. It’s a lot of stuff. And you saw a little cover peel back on it just this past week where Anthropic launches puts this folder out there of like all these prompts and different- The

Jared Correia (00:51:34):
Claude legal plugin.

Matt Spiegel (00:51:35):
Yeah. The Cloud legal thing. And all of a sudden now it’s like, holy shit, all these companies that have built these very legal specific kind of task oriented AIs are like, “You’re done.” And so a lot of these, I think that it’s very, very real. AI is going to help lawyers a ton. It’s going to help consumers with legal issues a ton. It’s not going to eliminate lawyers altogether, but it will make them have to rethink their business model a little bit and rethink the service they provide. They’re going to need to become more service providers, more bedside manner, like customer service oriented folk, not just help you win your case or whatever. Well,

Jared Correia (00:52:21):
Right. That’s what you got to sell at that point that the AI doesn’t deliver. That makes complete

Matt Spiegel (00:52:25):
Sense.hat’s

Jared Correia (00:52:25):
Right. At

Matt Spiegel (00:52:25):
Leat right

Jared Correia (00:52:26):
Now.

Matt Spiegel (00:52:26):
But it is. But there is a lot of value. I think where the value is going to be in the platforms, the products that are much more than just AI that then can use AI to enhance what they do, the value to me is in layers of depth. So we’ve already gotten past the first layer, which very quickly became superficial and it very quickly everyone identified that that’s not where the value’s going to be. If I put a feature inside my software to help you write an email, that is superficial. That is really, really basic and not really going to get you very far. That was like the first iteration of what we saw in AI. You got to go layers deep. I’m a really big believer. It’s what we’re doing at Lomatics becoming more of an agentic platform. And I think that’s where the value is and that’s where there’s a lot of real things like an agent to … And not just an agent to actually go do things that the software does for you or could do for you, but an agent to actually just help you navigate the software

(00:53:27):
And just use the software more to its fullest. I think that’s where a huge part of the market is going to go. So I think we’re going to see all of this. I think it’s a bit of a bubble for certain products. I mean, the amount of AI products that are popping up in all the industries weekly is just astounding because you can build them very, very quickly. The problem is that some of them are just glorified ChatGPT wrappers. And so people are going to realize very quickly they can just do this on their own, but also the platforms that have a lot of eyeballs, a lot of customers that are already using them for the whole foundation of their law firm or their business, those platforms are just going to add those features and then those companies, while it will no longer really exist.

(00:54:10):
So I think you’re just going to see a lot of disappearance of companies, a lot of contraction, a lot of consolidation over the next year or two. And then you’ll see the real depth, the real value of AI extracted and start to become apparent. But it’s going to be a little bumpy along the way.

Jared Correia (00:54:27):
Great answer. I have nothing to add. Everything I was going to ask you in follow up you addressed. Let’s do two more. Evan. Evan, our bearded van of white, can we spin it again? Let’s see what we got coming up here. We have drive-in. Oh, this is a good one that you like, I think too. What is the best fast food restaurant?

Matt Spiegel (00:54:49):
Oh, man. A question I like to ask people, Jared, is if you’re on- You can ask me a question in return. If you were on death row and you had, it was your last meal, what would it be? And it can be different parts from any restaurant, but it could be like an appetizer, a main course, desserts, and a drink to go along with it. And so I won’t bore you with the whole table. Get deep. With the whole table that would be there. But what I tell you is that along with dinner, on death row, my last meal will be a large McDonald’s french fry. Oh, interesting. I mean, there is no one that comes close to the McDonald’s french fry. And so I do have to put that as my number one. I really

Jared Correia (00:55:43):
Do. That’s pretty good. I would have said burger joint, but I would have expected a burger because fries are like a side. That’s interesting.

Matt Spiegel (00:55:52):
I mean, I love the burger for McDonald’s.That’s what I’m saying. It’s a whole package thing, but just because the fries, which is one of my favorite things to eat, are just- They are good. The absolute golde. Standard to me. Yeah. And just perfect.

Jared Correia (00:56:07):
Now you mentioned you had a whole table for yourself. What else goes on the table? Let me know. Well,

Matt Spiegel (00:56:13):
There’s a lot. There’s a lot. There’s steak and lobster from a very particular restaurant in Mendom, New Jersey, an old- Oh,

Jared Correia (00:56:24):
What is it?

Matt Spiegel (00:56:25):
Yeah. Oh, can you talk

Jared Correia (00:56:26):
About it?

Matt Spiegel (00:56:27):
Yeah. Mafia restaurant. It’s an old mafia speakeasy restaurant called Sammy’s. Oh, that’s amazing. And so I would be lobster and steak from there. It would be a chocolate soup flee dessert coming from Fleming’s steakhouse. It would be McDonald’s french fries on the side. It would be a chocolate milkshake from this little place on the north shore of Kauai. That’s the best milkshakes I’ve ever had. So there’s a whole lot of things that go into this.

Jared Correia (00:56:57):
You’ve thought about this a lot, clearly.

Matt Spiegel (00:56:59):
I have. I mean, that throws out there for me at some point. I don’t know. Stuff catches up with me.

Jared Correia (00:57:08):
Prior to the extinction level event, I’ll come over and we could have the last meal together.

Matt Spiegel (00:57:14):
Yeah,

Jared Correia (00:57:14):
Exactly. All right. I kind of want to end on that note, but also I want to do one more. So let’s spin the wheel one last time. We’ll do one more question with Matt Spiegel and then we’ll finish up here. And there’ll be several unasked questions, but we can come back to that later. Uptick. Our next question is uptick. It’s a good one to end on. What’s your best tip for growing a law firm? Because that’s why everybody’s listening to the show, right?

Matt Spiegel (00:57:39):
Exactly. Man, the best tip for growing a law firm. Yeah. Honestly, I think, and this is still something that most law firms don’t do, and it’s like such a stupid cliche, but you got to spend money to make money. And so the best way-That’s a good point though. The best way to grow a law firm. So cheap. Yeah. Invest in marketing. Like that’s it. It’s that simple. I remember when I started my law firm and I was doing criminal defense in San Diego, the first thing I did, I didn’t have any money. I literally borrowed money. I borrowed 50,000. I took 25,000 of my own, everything I had. And I took $25,000 I borrowed from a family member and I’m starting my law firm. It’s like my entire livelihood. And I’m like, I am putting all this money into Google pay per click. And it was like, this was in 2009.

(00:58:35):
Lawyers barely even knew what that was. What are they like?

Jared Correia (00:58:38):
You’re insane.

Matt Spiegel (00:58:39):
Yeah. But it fucking worked. Right? And so I think that’s the problem is you got to realize that your business as a law firm is not different than every other business that’s out there. You might want it to be, and it might feel that way like, oh, we’re more professional, we’re lawyers, people are going to just come to us and things like that, but it just doesn’t work that way. You got to spend money, market yourself. I read a book called The E-Myth, which was a book basically about how to build your business as a franchise. What would you do if your business need to be repeated over and over and over again, like the process and things like that, like the customer experience? And I treated it that way. I treated it like a business. And I think you have to do that. And in order to do that, you got to spend money in marketing.

(00:59:25):
You got to spend money in a brand and getting creative. And I think you do that, it’ll grow. It becomes less about the outcome of your cases at that point than it does. It comes less about the lawyering and it does about just managing the business, running the business.

Jared Correia (00:59:43):
Man, I got to tell you, Yeoman’s work today. 10 questions on the Wheel of Justice, the most ever by any guest. Kudos to user.

Matt Spiegel (00:59:51):
I love it. Here’s my

Jared Correia (00:59:52):
Love cut. Please come back again sometime, but this is a blast. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Jared. Thank Thanks for our guest, Matt Spiegel, the CEO and founder of LawMatics. To learn more about Matt and Lawmattix, visit lawmattics.com, L-A-W-M-A-T ICS.com, lawmadix.com like automatics. Now, because I’ll always be a 90s kid who own lots of Flando shirts like a lot, but whose true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen, I’m now just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlists for every podcast that I record where the signs are tangentially related to an episode topic. For this week’s playlist, we’ve got good old Percy Thrillington himself. That’s right. It’s the solo and duo, Paul McCartney Symposium, and is sponsored by Apple Records. How about that? Don’t get too excited. It’s not actually sponsored by Apple Records. Even though Apple Records discovered James Taylor, they have not yet discovered us, sadly.

(01:00:56):
Join us next time when I ran so far away.