Ditching the Billable Hour: Law Firm Math, AI, and Subscriptions with Mathew Kerbis

Jared Correia (00:00):
Hello everybody. We’ve got to show the 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’m talking about some of the more important math you need to know as a law firm owner. For our interview, we’ve got Mathew Kerbis of the subscription attorney and now Practi.ai. In the counter program, it’s time for our first ever double feature in which we have Mathew quizzing me and me quizzing Mathew. And now, more on real important law firm mathematics for which John Nash or Will Hunting would merely scoff at. Ha.

(00:45):
If you remember that old Saturday Night Live sketch in which Chevy Chase’s, Gerald Ford objects to a presidential debate question on the grounds of, I was told there would be no math, then you know how lawyers feel about mathematics. You may even be a lawyer yourself. Most attorneys went to law school specifically to avoid math. I did as well. However, in a modern law practice, attorneys need to have a grasp of some very specific mathematical operations to better run their business and service their clients. Since we’re talking about math here, let’s address one plus one plus one ways in which attorneys need to better understand math to be better lawyers. That’s three. If you’re scoring at home or even if you’re alone. First, business math. Some math isn’t complicated in business. How many children does this decedent have? Usually that’s pretty easy to figure out.

(01:51):
Some business math is more complicated. How many shares does large company X retain following this merger? And that’s when I tap out. All business math requires a scratch pad, even if that scratch pad is an electronic one. AI is maybe not the best place for mathematical calculations, by the way. It’s sort of winging it. So if you’re a lawyer dealing with complicated M&A transactions, not only do you need to be able to conceptualize and understand the math problems at hand, you’ll also need to be able to display and edit the right numbers, perhaps via a formula rich Excel spreadsheet. So while it’s tempting to offload the understanding of law firm technology to staff and associates, it’s dangerous if you don’t actually understand what you’re doing or what they’re doing, especially given the latest technology-based comments to the competency ethics rules and with respect to your existing oversight obligations.

(02:53):
So even if you’re assigning stuff to people, you have to understand and grasp it yourself, the process. Not only that, but it’s important to be sure that you can evince a similar knowledge and facility with numbers that your clients do. At least we can have a conversation. If your startup clients, for example, are slaving away over financial models and calculations, you should be able to at least understand their pain and then reduce it down to something you understand. For estate planning, you need to understand and to explain to your clients the mathematical implications of what they’re doing. After all, this isn’t just smart stuffs that practice. It’s the sales prop. Two. Second, data analytics. Lawyers live in the ad hoc and know that is not a village outside of Peoria. Essentially, every business decision a law firm makes for the most part is based on gut feelings.

(03:50):
The problem is, of course, that these gut feelings are not always accurate. Lawyers who rely on data, on the other hand, can make better strategic decisions about the direction of their law practices. And what is data analytics, if not simply covert math. You can look at data and render KPIs across all aspects of your law practice from intake to disposition. And this is not necessarily even about big data, a term that has sort of fallen off in usage since everyone is now obsessed with AI. It’s more about accessing the internal data, the small data, as it were, about your own law practice and leveraging it in a more effective manner or at all. Third, budgeting and its relationship to revenue projection. Most law firms operate without a budget or with a dodgy one. That may be inaccurate, missing line items and specificity or is altogether a dumpster fire.

(04:49):
At the same time, law firms have a problem with overhead. They tend to overpay for products and services while under collecting revenue. There is a lawyer tax on software built for lawyers. As you can imagine and may understand intimately, that’s a big problem. So understanding and laying out an effective projected law firm budget that you then compare the actual budget as the first step to cutting costs and becoming more profitable. I mean, think about it. If the first step is knowing how much you need to collect, then you need to know how much you have to pay out to cover that. In essence, your budget becomes the building block for any future revenue projections that you might need to make. Once you have a fundamental understanding of your overhead, you’ll know where your profit line begins. Then you can reverse engineer your products and service offerings to set revenue goals year after year after year and get more accurate over time.

(05:45):
Want to make $50,000 this year? Well, if you have a budget of 25,000 and you charge $1,000 per estate plan, then you need to bring in 50 estate plans this year to reach your revenue goals. That’s pretty easy math, right? Although maybe do more than 50K. Inflation’s kind of on. But like I said, make more than that if you can. Much derided in legal services, math may be the prime number for developing a more lucrative law firm. It’s the rule of three, the one from American Pie, obviously. After all that, we’ve got Mathew Kerbis of Practi up next. Will you subscribe to his theories on law firm value billing? See what I did there? Now, see what we do coming up. Well, I’ve effectively run out of things to say, which is awkward because this is a podcast, so I’m just going to silently stare into the abyss for the next several hours and contemplate my existence.

(06:48):
Nevermind. I probably won’t like what I find anyway. Let’s go ahead and interview our guest. How about that? That guest is Mathew Kerbis, the founding attorney of Subscription Attorney LLC, and now co-founder and CEO of Practi. Welcome to the show, Kurb Dog. How you doing?

Mathew Kerbis (07:11):
Hey. Hey, dear dog. It’s great to be here. Speaking of dogs, remember the hotdog has a sandwich question where you were on my show like two and a half years ago. Thanks for the

(07:19):
Pod-swap two and a half years and a new podcast later. I appreciate it.

Jared Correia (07:22):
That’s all it took. We’ll have to have you on a second time. Now you’re making me feel bad. Let’s keep that in mind though, Hotdog as a Sanders, because I may have more coming up on that. While we’re at it, what is your answer to that question? Is a hotdog sandwich?

Mathew Kerbis (07:36):
Yeah. So folks could go watch one of my three 45 minute each long compilation videos as answers to that question. I suggest the law subscribed YouTube page versions. You can see everyone’s crazy reactions, but mine is I’m in the firm hotdog is a sandwich category because it’s an open faced sandwich. An open face sandwich is by definition a sandwich. And yeah, there’s not a layer on top. And yes, if you logically extend that, a pizza is an open faced sandwich. So yes. You still gave one of the best answers, by the way, which is hot.

Jared Correia (08:10):
I forget what I said.

Mathew Kerbis (08:11):
Hot dog, not a sandwich, but you cut a hotdog in half and put it on between two slices of bread, that is a hotdog sandwich. That one always stood out to me.

Jared Correia (08:18):
Well, I wanted to ask you another non-related question before we start. I may have done this before. I can’t even remember, but I’m always intrigued by the Mathew with one T. What is that all about? What happened to the other T?

Mathew Kerbis (08:31):
Yeah. Yeah. And it took my fraternity brothers in college until senior year before they realized they could nickname me math.

Jared Correia (08:39):
Oh, that’s great. I didn’t even think about that. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (08:42):
I know. Like I said, it took them all to college. So parents, mothers especially want their kids to be special. They want them to be different. I think I was born in 1988 and Mathew Broderick was all the rage and my mom loved the name Mathew and my dad agreed, but she

Jared Correia (08:57):
Wanted

Mathew Kerbis (08:57):
Me to be different and special. And so she named me Mathew with one T. So thanks, mom. I feel so special. I have to correct everybody how to spell my name my whole life. I feel so special. Oh, that’s funny. And to make it even more complicated, Jared, is when you’re in first grade and people start calling you Matt and you’re like, “Oh, I guess I’m Matt now.” And I don’t know how to spell that because I barely know how to spell and read. I asked the teacher, “Hey, how do you spell Matt?” And she spells it M-A-T-T. And so I add a T for Matt.

Jared Correia (09:26):
Oh, man.

Mathew Kerbis (09:27):
So just to make it confusing for people. And

Jared Correia (09:30):
Then your parents are like, “What the fuck is this? You’re supposed to be

Mathew Kerbis (09:34):
Special.” And yet true to Chris Pratt as Starlord Forum, I started calling myself the subscription attorney and at least I have a brand that goes beyond the name. So there you go.

Jared Correia (09:45):
Thank God for that. Shout out to your mom, by the way, if she listens to this.

Mathew Kerbis (09:49):
Shout out to my mom.

(09:50):
Mom. My dad does listen to my … He has a Google alert I think set up, so he’ll-

Jared Correia (09:55):
Shout out to your dad.

Mathew Kerbis (09:55):
Right.

Jared Correia (09:56):
Great. Shout out to the entire Kerbis family. Now that you’re a tech founder, which we’ll get into more in a second, I do a lot of interviews with tech founders because I think it’s interesting that it’s not easy starting a software company and building it. But before we get to that, I kind of want to know, because I don’t think I’ve asked you this before. How did you get into the legal field in the first place? What did you do before? What made you decide you wanted to go to law school? So this is your opportunity to give me your origin story.

Mathew Kerbis (10:32):
Yeah. Yeah. So shout out to Bencher Boga, That Lawyer Life or This Legal Life or something, he does these. He does these stories and I’m coming up on an episode out there, but- Stole it

Jared Correia (10:42):
For me.

Mathew Kerbis (10:45):
I’ll give you something I didn’t give him, Jared. You get an exclusive.

Jared Correia (10:47):
Oh. Yes.

Mathew Kerbis (10:48):
All right. All right. Junior year of high school, I’m taking some cool hybrid class that I can’t even remember what it’s called, but it was real chill and we got to do mock trials. And I was just killing it as defense counsel, doing a really good job. Turns out I became defense counsel in a couple of different ways as a litigator early in my career. But that sort of, I think, really planted the seed for me and my best friend at the time. How weird

Jared Correia (11:15):
Was this? Was this inorganic chemistry? They’re rolling out a mock trial and you’re like, “What’s going on here?”

Mathew Kerbis (11:21):
No, it was something like social studies or historical something or other.That makes some sense. It was like a double class with two teachers. It was a cool, different type of scholastic environment.

Jared Correia (11:32):
Yes. Okay, go on.

Mathew Kerbis (11:34):
Yeah. So my best friend was actually in that class, but he was president of law club junior and senior year of high school. And so he was like, “Hey, there’s free food. You should tag along with me to law club.” And I was like, “Okay, that sounds like a good idea.” So I went to college and that was in my subconscious, that experience. And in college, I didn’t know what I wanted to study. I was an undecided major. I would’ve loved to major in philosophy, but I didn’t think you’d get a job with that. That was before content creator was a job, Jared. Okay. And I became one of those anyway. All right.

Jared Correia (12:01):
It’s funny. I feel like everybody’s got content creator in their job description somewhere.

Mathew Kerbis (12:06):
And philosophy really helps with that, right?

Jared Correia (12:09):
It does. It totally does.

Mathew Kerbis (12:10):
Yeah. And it helps you use these augmented intelligence tools, shall we say, of the modern era, because you think about things a little bit at a deeper level and it really helps you get better results. So then-

Jared Correia (12:23):
Anything that has critical thinking involved, I’m very down with in the current environment.

Mathew Kerbis (12:28):
100%. So I was taking a philosophy class because I really wanted to major in it. And the instructor who’s getting his PhD in philosophy, I’ll never forget, his name was Guaki Han.

Jared Correia (12:38):
Oh, that’s great.

Mathew Kerbis (12:39):
Yeah, it was great.

Jared Correia (12:39):
That’s how I check into hotels.

Mathew Kerbis (12:43):
Yeah, but he said, “Hey, if you like symbolic logic, you can major in philosophy where you require to study more logic. And by the way, that counts as a math class and then you can go to law.You could take the LSAT, do well, go to law school. It’s like, gosh, I could make money and major in philosophy. Who would’ve thought?” And I didn’t think about the student loan debt. I didn’t think about … It was 2007 at the time. So 2008 was right around the corner. But yeah, I

Jared Correia (13:10):
Think you go in great.

Mathew Kerbis (13:13):
Yeah. Yeah, back in 07. So yeah, I mean, long story short, I ended up working at other firms and billing by the hour and absolutely hating my life and thought there had to be another way. Yeah.

Jared Correia (13:27):
Oh, perfect segue. You’ve clearly done this before. So then you go out and you find your subscription-based law firm. Talk to me about that decision and why you came to it.

Mathew Kerbis (13:39):
Yeah, I distinctly remember a moment where I was getting off the phone with my dad working, I think I might’ve been in my fourth or fifth year practice, and I would start my own firm eight years after being in practice. And I was working at a billable hour insurance defense firm and I was like, okay, that was 0.3, talking to my dad. I’m like, “What the heck am I doing? What has my life become?” It’s

Jared Correia (14:06):
Fucked up way to think about your life. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (14:09):
Right? And I’ve come a long way since then and nowadays, and somebody was just giving me crap for this at ABA Tech Show, but I was like, if I actually had to assign a dollar value to my time that I spend with my family, a million dollars an hour.

Jared Correia (14:21):
You

Mathew Kerbis (14:22):
Can’t put a price on that.

Jared Correia (14:23):
That’s beautiful. Can I ask you, how was tech show?

Mathew Kerbis (14:27):
I got a little sick because that’s going to happen, right? But look, pros and cons, I would say I had perhaps my least most attended CLE that I gave there because it was lawyering in the G-verse all about Google Workspace at a conference where most lawyers are using Microsoft.

Jared Correia (14:46):
That was your first mistake.

Mathew Kerbis (14:50):
Well, shout out to the committee and the team over there, because I will say that I missed applications for being a speaker this year. And I just reached out to them and said, “Hey, I’m available to talk about whatever you want. I’ll be there anyway.” And so they were like, “Oh, we need somebody who is actually deep in Google Workspace and using Gemini, and I’m all about Notebook LM.”

Jared Correia (15:10):
I love Notebook LM. Yes. I’ve

Mathew Kerbis (15:12):
Done some really cool stuff with that that we might be able to talk about and is related to Practice, but they were like, “Yeah, we need somebody to talk about this if you’re willing to do it. ” I was like, “Sure.” I already knew going into it. I was only going to get 20 or 30 people there. And the new setup, you could have a hundred people. So I did. I had 30 people in the room, and that’s not bad, but I’ve had 300 to 400 people when I’m giving a CLE before on subscriptions or AI or legal tech or something.

Jared Correia (15:38):
Now, are you an all- in workspace person or do you use … Because I have both. I have Microsoft and Google, and I think a lot of attorneys find it hard not to get by without Word.

Mathew Kerbis (15:51):
I buy the one-time license whenever they update it for Mac for the Microsoft for business. So I’m not using the most up-to-date version. And I’ve gone back and forth, or should I just pay the six or 12 bucks a month or whatever it is, just so I could have it more easily accessible on the go on my iPad or in the cloud or in my browser, that would be nice. So I’ve thought about that because it’s kind of like you have to at least be able to open Docs and Word before I could convert them to Google Docs. Yes. But Google Workspace has come a really long way with PDFs and with Word docs just right inside of Google Workspace if you’re signed into it on a Chrome account inside of Chrome browser, I should say. And so I’m even thinking, gosh, if it wasn’t for OCRing and doing some things I do in Adobe that I do that maybe other law firms don’t do, you don’t even need an Adobe or PDF editor anymore because you got eSignature, you got a bunch of other PDF things that you could do right inside of your Google Workspace account inside of a Chrome browser.

(16:49):
So it’s gotten really, really good. Google Workspace

Jared Correia (16:53):
Is a great product. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (16:56):
And I prefer Calendly. And one of the first subscriptions that we got when we started Practi was a Calendly subscription so we could have feature rich scheduling even though we’re in Google Workspace. But if you’re just getting started as a law firm owner, Google Workspace has kind of everything you need. It’s got Google appointments. It’s not as good, but it’s their version of Calendly, right?

Jared Correia (17:14):
Yep, yep. All right. So you practice, you’re a Google user, so you do subscriptions, so already lawyers are probably ostracizing you. And then after that, you’re like, let me start a software company. Why would you do that to yourself?

Mathew Kerbis (17:35):
So when I gave my first CLE at ABA Tech Show about subscriptions over four years ago,

(17:41):
Lawyers came up to me afterwards, Jared, and I had just barely had my firm for a year doing subscriptions and they were like, “We will pay you money to teach us how to do this thing.” And I said, “I did not realize that was an option.” And to be fair, ChatGPT had just come out. It was like February of 23. So even back then, it was a packed room on alternative fees and subscription billing. So lawyers were all about learning how to do this. And so not long after that, I actually got my first sponsors from my podcast law subscribed where I was interviewing lawyers and talking about it because I started the podcast before I had my own firm because I just was interviewing lawyers about how do I do this alternative billing thing. And they were being super generous with their time. I was like, “Hey, could I record this?

(18:28):
And can I publish it? ” And back then I was using GarageBand to edit it and now I use Descript and it’s a totally different ballgame in the production space, man. So then I started this thing called subscription seminar and it’s still out there, but it was like one-on-one coaching for lawyers and how to do it and practice

Jared Correia (18:43):
Law. So you’re running the firm and then you’re also consulting with other lawyers about how to start similar firms.

Mathew Kerbis (18:49):
Yeah. And frankly, I could have made an exclusive business of it and probably done pretty well. I ended up with a pretty big wait list because I’m still practicing law. I’ve got the podcast, which actually doesn’t take as much time as it used to. But then I’m doing this one-on-one coaching. And really looking back over four years, I only had a handful of clients doing it because it’s actually, it’s a lot of time and effort to get somebody to have a subscription-based law firm. So last summer at LegalGeek in Chicago, there was a venture arm of a very large legal tech company there that asked to have a meeting with me and said, “Hey, we love what you’re doing with subscriptions. Can you productize that? ” Because we love the idea of Shopify for S&B firms. And I was like, “Oh, it’s funny you mentioned that.

(19:27):
” Yeah, it’s

Jared Correia (19:27):
Funny. So had you been thinking about it earlier?

Mathew Kerbis (19:30):
So I have been thinking about like, “Hey, how do I do instead of one-to-one, one to many?” And so when they reached out to me, I was like, “Actually, I do have some ideas. Could I show you a very early deck?” And they were like, “Yeah, we like this. The logo sucks.” I use Gemini to make the logo. They’re like, “The logo sucks, but it’s a really good idea. Hey, by the way, we only invest in series A, so come let us know after you’ve

Jared Correia (19:49):
Proven

Mathew Kerbis (19:50):
That it could

Jared Correia (19:50):
Work.

Mathew Kerbis (19:50):
So good luck.”

Jared Correia (19:51):
I’m a logo guy too though, honestly. A logo means a lot. So you’ve changed this since then?

Mathew Kerbis (19:56):
We’ve changed the logo. Okay. Yes. Oh yeah, my gosh, yes, right away.

Jared Correia (20:00):
I’m curious about, what was the first logo? Was it really terrible or were you like, “Fuck you guys, this is great.”

Mathew Kerbis (20:06):
So I definitely liked it, but I was not attached to it. And even now we just have been playing around with an inverse colors.

Jared Correia (20:15):
It’s

Mathew Kerbis (20:15):
Like pink and purple and practice because I love alliterations, but now we have just a white version of it that we’re starting to use and some marketing stuff. And I actually really love the white version of it. And so we might just be going white. Oh,

Jared Correia (20:27):
That’s cool. Yeah, I’m very into logos. Anyway, go ahead, continue your story. So you meet with these guys, they’re like, “Actually, we’re not going to look at you for several years, but you do you. ”

Mathew Kerbis (20:38):
Yeah. And what really got the gears turning is like, I’ve been teaching all these COEs and I was thinking about it and I’m vibing with AI. And so it was like early in February, I was trying to vibe code something, Jared, like in February of last

Jared Correia (20:50):
Year. Yes, one does.

Mathew Kerbis (20:51):
So a whole year ago.

Jared Correia (20:52):
Our first AI mentioned.

Mathew Kerbis (20:54):
It was terrible. And I tried different tools and I got okay results with vzero. Back then it was. Devannounce.app. But I was like, okay, I need a technical co-founder. So I joined Y Combinator co-founder matching. It’s like

Jared Correia (21:08):
Tinder versus- This is a super interesting story. I was hoping you would bring this up. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (21:13):
Yeah. And so I interviewed six technologists through the platform. And I talked to two or three others just so I knew through other connections that I had just being in legal tech and stuff. And at one point I was like, “Ooh, if I have all lawyers on the cap table, we could take a percentage of fees and we can do what Overture does at overture.law.” Now of course they’ve changed their business model. They’re just doing a membership model now. But back then they were like, “Wait, we’re going to incorporate it as a law firm and we can take a percentage of fees.” So I thought about doing that. But then Shomari, my technical co-founder, former Google software developer, he actually reached out to me on Y Combinator co-founder matching. And my profile’s like, “I have deep domain expertise. I’ve got an existing audience. I have ton of ideas.

(21:53):
I just don’t have anything technical.” And he’s like, “I’m highly, highly, highly technical, and I’m just looking for somebody with a good idea.” And I was like, “Okay, this is going to work. We’re both in Chicago.” And we just got together for a three-hour jam session using cursor and AI. He vibe coded in three hours a proof of concept that got us into a pre-accelerator program and we were off to the races.

Jared Correia (22:12):
How was the accelerator program?

Mathew Kerbis (22:14):
It was great. We went through Founder University, which is Jason Calicanis’ this week in startups guy. His pre-accelerator, he has launch, which is his accelerator program. That’s for startups that are further along their journey. The pre-accelerators for companies that haven’t even incorporated yet. But after we got into the program, we quickly incorporated shout out to Stripe Atlas, helped us do that for 500 bucks, which was awesome. Yeah,

Jared Correia (22:40):
That’s great.

Mathew Kerbis (22:41):
Delaware Corp, 83B election. I mean, as a startup founder who you haven’t raised any money yet, that’s a great deal in startup tech. And then the program was great. I mean, it taught us everything we needed to know. And I really liked their business model because Jared, there’s this thing, I’m really interested in pricing. I don’t know if you knew that, but I really like pricing.

Jared Correia (23:00):
Are you? Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (23:01):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (23:01):
Go ahead. This is news to me, but go ahead.

Mathew Kerbis (23:04):
So here’s how they do it. They charge you $500 to go through the pre-accelerator program, but if you show up to 11 out of 12 things, they refund your money. 11 out of 12 of these requirements.

Jared Correia (23:13):
Oh, that’s cool. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. So we’ve talked about you founding a software company, but what does it do? Let’s talk about the product.

Mathew Kerbis (23:25):
Yeah. Sort of living up to that dream of what this legal tech venture firm said to me, it’s Shopify for solo and small law firms. We help law firms have an e-commerce-

Jared Correia (23:36):
So if people don’t know, what is Shopify? I don’t think everybody maybe knows what Shopify is.

Mathew Kerbis (23:42):
Yeah. If you’ve ever bought something online or even from a brick and mortar store, but you could go to their website and buy something and there’s a purple shop button that you check out with, it lets any sort of brick and mortar or e-commerce store give them a storefront and a way to purchase and check out e-commerce services or products. Thank you. And so I even met an attorney at MaxLawCon who was trying to hack Shopify to offer subscription and flat fees for his firm, but he was running into the fee splitting problem, right? Because for certain things, it’ll take a percentage and you just can’t do that with law firms. And so we help law firms get subscription revenue really easily and also offer fixed fees to existing subscribers. And yes, you could charge as low as $1 a month or even do $0 a month if you want freemium.

(24:30):
And we have one lawyer on the platform charging a dollar a month and then they’re primarily a fixed fee shop firm. Interesting.

(24:37):
But it lets you have that e-commerce experience and offer that to your clients that no other platform really provides you. And what we definitely are the only tool in the market that you can do, at least today, is we put the client in the driver’s seat. So the client and their dashboard, they could choose to buy more legal services from you. And they could just go and check out in a cart just like any other e-commerce experience. And I had two clients do it over the weekend, subscribe and check out in a cart for the one-off product they want using Practice.

Jared Correia (25:06):
I can tell you, it’s a great feeling when you get paid and you’re just sitting there watching a basketball game on TV or something. If you’ve never

Mathew Kerbis (25:13):
Experienced it. Or at ABA tech show or whatever.

Jared Correia (25:15):
Exactly.

Mathew Kerbis (25:16):
Right? Or at a kid’s birthday party.

Jared Correia (25:19):
Right, right. I think it’s sort of like it’s undercovered, I think, how hard it is to pay law firms. And I’m not trying to trash law firms. I don’t think it’s just law firms like service businesses in general, like my accountant, it’s hard for me to pay my accountant. She’s great. She’s just an older lady and I’m like, “Can I make an electronic payment?” And she’s like, “No.” And I got to haul my ass over there and bring a check. Nobody wants to do that. So the convenience factor sounds like it’s really high, which is great. So I can see why that’s appealing for lawyers.

Mathew Kerbis (25:53):
And then the client could also change their own subscription level. And so if I’m helping small business owner and they’re like, “We have three contract renewals coming up next month and we’re on the seven contract plan, but we’ve only got three.” Well, hey, instead of just unsubscribing or not using my lawyer or paying, I could go in and change from the platinum package to the bronze package. And so that way the law firm doesn’t lose a client and the client doesn’t feel like they’re taken advantage of by the firm. And so letting the client be in the driver’s seat with stuff like that, I think is really important.

Jared Correia (26:26):
Do you think lawyers who would want to do subscriptions are not doing it because of trying to figure out the technical complexity, because of trying to figure out how to build a subscription when they’ve been billing hourly forever? What do you think the biggest barriers are to attorneys who are thinking about doing this but don’t?

Mathew Kerbis (26:44):
Yeah. So it’s a combination of, or it’s one or the other of mindset and then practicality of like, okay, how do I go and do the thing? And so my podcast, that’s going to help you get in the mindset. I still get lawyers on LinkedIn who message me and say, “I just binged all 200 of your episodes.” And thank you so much because now I know this is the way.

Jared Correia (27:06):
People love to binge. It’s amazing.

Mathew Kerbis (27:09):
And now I’m like, “Hey, just go into Notebook LM and put in your favorite episodes and create a podcast of a few of my podcasts so you don’t have to listen to all of

Jared Correia (27:18):
Them.” The audio overview feature in Google Notebook LM is amazing.

Mathew Kerbis (27:23):
And I built this tool at notebook.practy.ai, which redirects to my notebook that has 269 sources, most of them podcast episodes where either I’ve interviewed someone or I’ve been a guest, my CLE materials, all that stuff, where you could ask all of your subscription questions and get answers only based on my content. And I really think that’s also the future of the practice of law as well, is curated content with taste.

Jared Correia (27:46):
Jesus. Okay. You want to spin that out a little bit?That’s an interesting idea. Because people are being productive, they’re binging your podcast, trying to learn how to do subscriptions. I’m over here watching two seasons of Beast Games this weekend. I’m pretty embarrassed at this point. So why don’t you talk a little bit about the future of law?

Mathew Kerbis (28:08):
So because this has been a popular product and right now it is totally free. You just go to notebook.peracti.ai, you need to have it signed into your Gmail account or Google Workspace to use it

Jared Correia (28:17):
Because

Mathew Kerbis (28:18):
It does have a memory of you talking to these sources, which you could delete. And we had to create a consumer version. So I had to create a Gmail account and pay $20 a month, but a Practice Gmail account, because that way I could share it. So I don’t actually see the interactions, Jared, that’s one of the downsides of this tool. I could just see activity and we’re getting a lot of activity because we’ve been sharing this

Jared Correia (28:40):
And it’s

Mathew Kerbis (28:40):
Free. Now in the future, we’re going to make it so you have to request access and we’re going to verify against a spreadsheet of Practi users who have at least they’ve signed up for a free Practi account. But at the time this publishes, maybe that’s the case, but either way, you’d still get access for free. You just have to have a Practi account. We’re going to gate it in the future. But because it’s been so popular, my technical co-founder Shomari is building out things on Google Cloud and trying to leverage the same tools so that Practice users in the future can generate their own shareable notebooks in the same way to their clients. And so we’re going to hopefully make that a feature of Practi that that could be a subscriber benefit to your clients if you’re a Practi user is your curated knowledge base.

Jared Correia (29:19):
I mean, if you’re listening to this and you’re not using notebook software, AI notebook software, they’re fucking revelatory. The best thing about AI, in my opinion. And I know Google Notebook LM is my favorite too, but if you’re a Microsoft user, you got Microsoft Copilot notebooks, which I don’t think are as good, but they do a decent job also.

Mathew Kerbis (29:38):
I’ve got law firm clients who are business owners and they now have an additional $20 a month Google subscription to AI so they could leverage Notebook because you put all your internal company documents in there, all your SOPs-

Jared Correia (29:52):
For 20 bucks a month, it’s a no brainer. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (29:55):
Yeah.

Jared Correia (29:57):
Okay. So let’s talk about this from the other side The coin, which is I think a lot of lawyers are feeling pressured to not do hourly billing because of AI. Are you seeing that as well?

Mathew Kerbis (30:09):
Yeah. And I mean, I’ve been talking about it for four years.

Jared Correia (30:13):
I know I’m talking to the OG here.

Mathew Kerbis (30:16):
Look, pressure’s building though, Jared, right? Because if you’re a layperson, first of all, I know that you’re using AI because for my intake, I’m getting, how did you hear about this firm? ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI. And yesterday I got my first Claude. I heard about you because of Claude. That’s

Jared Correia (30:34):
Awesome.

Mathew Kerbis (30:35):
So cheers to podcast or to podcasting and content marketing because I think that’s how AI is suggesting me because I’m doing podcasting like

Jared Correia (30:42):
Crazy. Yeah, I’m getting the same thing and I think initially it’s because of the content marketing stuff.

Mathew Kerbis (30:47):
Yeah. And content marketing done the right way. Your podcast is irreverent and hilarious and awesome and educational. So

Jared Correia (30:55):
It’s not two AIs talking to each other.

Mathew Kerbis (30:58):
Right. Yeah.

Jared Correia (30:59):
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (31:00):
As much as I don’t mind an audio overview for Notebook out loud, but you’re right. Yes. And so we know laypeople are using AI. And so they’re going to put that contract into AI, which by the way, there’s no privilege there if they’re hiring you to better advise them accordingly, right?

Jared Correia (31:15):
I know.

Mathew Kerbis (31:16):
Right. But before you’ve advised them that they’re … Anyway, they’re thinking, well, why did you build two hours for that when Claude did it in two minutes? And so now we know that the AI’s output is not going to be as high quality maybe, maybe as the lawyer’s output. But the point is, is that they don’t understand why that took two hours when they think AI did it fast. But the in- house attorneys who are using AI, they know because they’re subject matter experts that, hey, AI could do this 10-hour task in one hour. So law firms are screwed if they don’t adapt, which is why Practi is here.

Jared Correia (31:58):
So I want to ask you kind of a twofold question about clients because we haven’t really … We’ve started now to talk a little bit about legal consumers. Are clients asking you as a practicing attorney about the use of AI? Do they want you to use it? Do you have to convince them to use it? And then how do you have that conversation like you just talked about, which is like, I think one of the potential problems for lawyers with AI is it becomes a slippery slope. Everybody’s like, “Well, shouldn’t it be faster? Shouldn’t it be faster? Shouldn’t it be

Mathew Kerbis (32:30):
Faster?” Yeah, and it should be. And for my clients who are intelligently and strategically using enterprise grade AI with security settings on and all that stuff, who have historical knowledge and what I like to call the curse of knowledge because they’ve dealt with lawyers for a long time, they’re giving examples of legal documents when they’re drafting up a new document set for a new deal or a new business or a new something, and they’re sending it to me. And actually, it’s really good. In the last six months,

(33:03):
The AI has gotten so much better that when somebody who’s actually sophisticated and knows what they’re doing, even if they’re not a lawyer with legal docs, it’s like, “Okay, you and your enterprise version of ChatGPT or Claude got to 95% of the way.” And I use Paxton AI. I mean, there’s a lot of legal AI tools out there, but I use Paxton. And my clients expect me to use AI. In fact, this one example of a client who’s actually really good with AI already, he’s like, “Hey, could you run this through Paxton for me? ”

Jared Correia (33:28):
If you’re a savvy business owner who knows and understands technology, and you had a lawyer draft an NDA for you, I’m just playing it out here, devil’s advocate, why would I go back to my lawyer to draft another NDA for me? Why wouldn’t I just take that NDA and feed it into my own version of AI?

Mathew Kerbis (33:48):
It all comes down to pricing, Jared. If your lawyer’s charging you a reasonable monthly price and you’re not in a meter, you absolutely will send it to a lawyer in addition to doing that, like my clients currently are, because they know what their monthly or annual legal spend is and they’re like, “Well, I still want that lawyer brain and judgment even if they’re using legal specific AI tools.” Because again, I could download Adobe Photoshop. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing with Photoshop. If I want a good graphic designer, and I could do okay in Canva, but I could do much better in Canva, but I’m still like, if something’s high end and we need to spend a lot of money on it, we will go hire that graphic designer. So it depends on the level of threshold of the deal and how much is actually at stake here.

(34:29):
And then do I want my lawyer to look at it with their law license on the line and their professional liability insurance with given advice. And there is value to that, but the thing is my highest subscription is $2,000 a month. And so for a small business owner, that’s less than a full-time minimum wage

Jared Correia (34:45):
Employer. Yeah, that’s totally reasonable. All right. Last question for you before we get into what promises to be a really fun game segment. Do you find that you need to convince some clients to come in on a subscription model? Because I do think that most legal consumers still understand lawyers to bill on an hourly basis or does it kind of sell itself?

Mathew Kerbis (35:06):
Well, you say most, but how are you slicing that pie? Because if you look at the current market of existing consumers of legal services that have paid lawyers, you’re talking about 23% or fewer for

Jared Correia (35:19):
Those pay. Right. That’s a relatively small number. Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (35:21):
Right. And I think the numbers have come out now. I think maybe it was 500 billion was spent on the US legal market in 2025. So you’re looking at a greater than trillion dollar market opportunity of potential. And even if we disagree about who could afford to pay what, okay, cut it in half, you’re still talking about a greater than the existing market of people paying for legal

Jared Correia (35:39):
Service.

Mathew Kerbis (35:39):
Oh,

Jared Correia (35:40):
It’s huge. So right, to your point, you’re convincing people who would otherwise not use a lawyer and then that group of people who already would be willing to and have paid for lawyers. So well said.

Mathew Kerbis (35:52):
Yeah. Yeah. And look, part of our startup land go- to-market strategy, our go- to-market strategy is we’re actually not just going to be … Because we only make money when lawyers subscribe their second client is when in these early access phase we’re charging $20 a month after they subscribe their second client and it’ll go up to $100 a month later this year. But since we only make money when the law firms are actually subscribing clients, we want to help them get more clients. So we have a two-pronged approach or like a two-birds, one-stone type strategy that I think is going to help this. We’re going to be advertising to clients of legal services in the same way that pharmaceutical companies target users of drugs for their doctor. Ask your doctor about such and such drug. It’s like, “Hey, are you suffering from unpredictable legal fees?” It doesn’t have to be that way, right?

(36:37):
Find pricing transparency with Practi. Ask your lawyer about Practi. So we’re going to try to educate the clients of law firms to go and demand their transparency from those law firms, but then we’re also just going to educate the public at large like, “Hey, it doesn’t have to be opaque pricing with legal services.” You could go find lawyers and we don’t have a directory or a marketplace today, but in the future, it’s natural that we want to help lawyers get those clients who are looking for affordably priced or transparently priced legal services. Because look, we have a lawyer or we have a consultants actually on our platform that one of their packages is 50K, but in light of what they’re doing, it’s actually a great deal. So it’s not necessarily about affordability, it’s about price transparency.

Jared Correia (37:21):
Fair. This is great. That thus ends the formal interview section.

(37:33):
Welcome back everybody. That’s right. It’s The Counter Program. It’s a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Mathew, as a seasoned veteran of the podcasting world, we’re going to do something fun today. First time I’ve ever done this on the show, we’re going to do a double feature. You got trivia from me. I got trivia for you. I don’t even know what you’re going to ask me about. So let’s start with you and then we’ll move on to my segment. It’s going to be-

Mathew Kerbis (38:09):
All right. Well, we’re going to do it and thanks to the magic of perplexity. I actually have this incredible slide deck here.

Jared Correia (38:18):
Oh my God. Look at this.

Mathew Kerbis (38:21):
What I did is I told it basically how, “Hey, I’m coming on Jared’s podcast and he’s irreverent. He asked ridiculous trivia questions. So I want to ask him about the origins of the billableled subscription. So help me come up with some questions.” Oh, and give it multiple

Jared Correia (38:37):
Choice.

Mathew Kerbis (38:37):
I’m

Jared Correia (38:38):
Going to suck at this.

Mathew Kerbis (38:39):
And it’s okay to make up completely factually made up answers because that’s how Jared likes to roll. And so then you’ll get a kick out of this, Jared. I said, “Okay, great. I love these. Make the slide deck.” So it made the slide deck and I’m like, “Hey, this isn’t complete. You only made 12 of all the 30 possible questions. Now there’s only 10 questions I have for you. ” But I was like, “Hey, no, I need you to go finish the rest of the deck. Try harder this time.” And then it made it, then it made it. So all I did was delete some slides. It did a really good job. So here, let’s go. Billable hour trivia. Time to flip the table on Jared. Legal late night, 2026. Here we go.

Jared Correia (39:13):
Let’s do it.

Mathew Kerbis (39:15):
And just like you, if you know the answer, you could give the answer or I have multiple choice if you need it. So who invested- Do

Jared Correia (39:22):
You think I know the answer to this? I don’t know. Who led to the billable hour? No, I need multiple choice. Hit me up.

Mathew Kerbis (39:27):
All right. Who invented the billable hour? Was it A, Reginald Herbert Smith, B Atticus Finch, or C Lionel Huts?

Jared Correia (39:34):
Oh, I think you’re doing the thing where you go easy on the first one. It’s going to be A, right?

Mathew Kerbis (39:40):
It’s A. It’s Reginald Herbert Smith

Jared Correia (39:42):
Invented

Mathew Kerbis (39:42):
The

Jared Correia (39:42):
Billable

Mathew Kerbis (39:43):
Hour.

Jared Correia (39:43):
Don’t go too easy on me. Hopefully these ones are all right.

Mathew Kerbis (39:46):
We’re having fun here, Jared. I’m not as brutal as you. Let’s just put it that way.

Jared Correia (39:51):
I’m an asshole. I know.

Mathew Kerbis (39:54):
All right. So some of these you might actually know the answer to. What was the original

Jared Correia (39:57):
Purpose

Mathew Kerbis (39:58):
Of time sheets?

Jared Correia (39:59):
No, I don’t know the answer to this.

Mathew Kerbis (40:01):
Was it A, internal management and budgeting? B, deciding who got the corner office, or C, fantasy league trial win standings.

Jared Correia (40:11):
I wanted to be C badly. I really wanted to be C. My fantasy team has asked this year. I got to go with A. I got to go with A.

Mathew Kerbis (40:22):
Yeah. I mean, that was the original purpose way back when. Internal management and budgeting. And to the lawyers listening out there, when you are switching from hourly to subscription or value-based billing, it’s not about, oh, that task took us two hours, that cost us two hours? It’s like, no, the client is willing to pay two hours. How do we productize it and automated and make it take one hour, 30 minutes, 10 minutes automated, and the client’s still willing to pay for value? So see, I also want to educate as we do this, Jared.That’s why this might be easier.

Jared Correia (40:51):
This is great. Okay, good.

Mathew Kerbis (40:53):
So this one, this is a real question. When did hourly billing take over big law? Do you need multiple choice?

Jared Correia (41:00):
I think it was the 60s, but let’s get the multiple choice going.

Mathew Kerbis (41:03):
All right. So the 40s, the 70s or the 2000s? 70s. Ding, ding, ding. 1970s. You almost knew this one without the multiple choice. See?

Jared Correia (41:13):
Almost. I was close. I was close.

Mathew Kerbis (41:14):
All right. We’re halfway there. This is moving fast. What 1975 case

Jared Correia (41:20):
Killed

Mathew Kerbis (41:20):
Minimum fee schedules? I

Jared Correia (41:22):
Definitely don’t know this. I need multiple choice for this one.

Mathew Kerbis (41:25):
All right.This one, I will say, was one of the easier ones with multiple choice, but I didn’t feel like updating it. So was it A, Marbury versus Madison? B, Gold Bar versus Virginia State Bar, or C, Brown versus Board of Education.

Jared Correia (41:39):
This is why the AI, you’re right. Sometimes you got to get the AI whipped up to put some more effort into it.

Mathew Kerbis (41:46):
I told it to be funny too, because you’re funny. So I think that’s where it went with this.

Jared Correia (41:51):
It’s going to be Gold Farm versus Virginia, right?

Mathew Kerbis (41:53):
Gold Farm versus Virginia State Bar, right? It was an antitrust case. It was unethical fee setting. Yeah, it was all

Jared Correia (42:04):
About- It’s so interesting that you bring this up because even now, bar associations are very reluctant to do any kind of discussion of fees based on this case.

Mathew Kerbis (42:15):
Yeah. So in 1958-

Jared Correia (42:17):
This is too educational for me. My stuff is going to be completely unrelated. Okay, this is good. Go ahead.

Mathew Kerbis (42:24):
I want you to give an answer before you see the multiple choice. In

Jared Correia (42:26):
1958,

Mathew Kerbis (42:27):
How many billable hours did the ABA suggest you should do?

Jared Correia (42:31):
Are we talking a yearly basis?

Mathew Kerbis (42:33):
Yearly basis, yearly, annual. Annual hours, 1958.

Jared Correia (42:37):
1958. God, 2,200.

Mathew Kerbis (42:41):
So we don’t even have that as an option. So

Jared Correia (42:43):
Guess again- Oh, I overshot.

Mathew Kerbis (42:45):
You overshot.

Jared Correia (42:46):
I was like, what are people doing? They don’t have smartphones. I’m going to say B, 1700.

Mathew Kerbis (42:52):
Ours is actually 1300 back in 1950.

Jared Correia (42:55):
God, what a time to be alive, man. It’s amazing.

Mathew Kerbis (42:57):
Technology wasn’t what it used to be back then. Just say.

Jared Correia (43:01):
Imagine that though. 1958, you’re listening to the radio, maybe watching a little bit of early Twilight Zone, just billing 1300 hours. Damn. I’m jealous.

Mathew Kerbis (43:12):
Right, right. Moving from hourly to subscriptions, who pioneered subscriptions in the 17th century? Was it book and periodical publishers, A, B, gym memberships, or C sport tournaments?

Jared Correia (43:26):
I’m going to have to guess on this one, but it’s a fifty fifty shot, I think, because I don’t believe that there were a lot of gems happening in the 17th century. I could be wrong. I’m going to say book publishers.

Mathew Kerbis (43:41):
Ding, ding, ding. All right. I’m an easy trivia host. What could I say? I

Jared Correia (43:45):
Don’t know. Sports stuff would be tough to put subscriptions on, I think, outside of streaming. But anyway, go ahead. I know you got more.

Mathew Kerbis (43:52):
Yeah. So what pre software as a service subscriptions existed? What was an actual pre-SaaS? Was it milk and magazines, boxes of artisanal quills or deliveries of fresh parchment?

Jared Correia (44:06):
I only wish it was B, but I think it’s A. It’s

Mathew Kerbis (44:09):
A, it’s A.

Jared Correia (44:09):
The Milk Man.

Mathew Kerbis (44:11):
The Milk Man was one of the OG subscriptions. How about that, right? Yes.

Jared Correia (44:14):
Yes.

Mathew Kerbis (44:15):
Bring it back, I say. Bring it back. Get me my milk in my glass instead of my plastic. That’d be great. Why do in- house councils push alternative fee agreements? Is it because they enjoy making three letter acronyms? A, B, they want budget certainty and better incentives, or C to put timekeepers out of business or all of the above.

Jared Correia (44:34):
It’s B, but potentially all of the above.

Mathew Kerbis (44:39):
All right. So we know that 1300 hours was it in 1958. Now it’s 2000 plus hours. So what does that say about our profession? Is it A, expectations are inflated and burnout has skyrocketed. B, lawyers have evolved to no longer require sleep. Or C, time is a flat circle of pre-bills.

Jared Correia (44:58):
Oh, it’s got to be C. Yeah. Oh.

Mathew Kerbis (45:03):
Burnout, baby. Burnout. We practiced

Jared Correia (45:06):
Seven. McConaughey would have wanted it to be C.

Mathew Kerbis (45:09):
And I actually predict, and we’ve seen some early users. Lawyers leaving Big Law, getting off that hamster wheel, starting their own alternative fee-based practice.

Jared Correia (45:19):
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (45:20):
That’s cool. One more real question kind of and then one fun one. Who was the original subscription king? Was it the Milkman in the newspaper publisher, the SaaS founder and a Patagonia vest or a guy who invented gyms hoping no one should show up?

Jared Correia (45:35):
I was going to say Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, but instead I will say the Milkman. See my Mathew Broderick throwback? You see what I did there?

Mathew Kerbis (45:45):
I love it. I love it. I love it. You’re the king. You’re the king of podcasting, of late night podcasting, Jared.

Jared Correia (45:51):
Oh, you’re too kind.

Mathew Kerbis (45:53):
Who is the modern

Jared Correia (45:54):
Subscription

Mathew Kerbis (45:54):
King?

Jared Correia (45:55):
This one’s easy. One, Mathew Kurvis with one tea.

Mathew Kerbis (46:00):
Hey,

Jared Correia (46:00):
This is Chris. We don’t even need a second answer for that one. All

Mathew Kerbis (46:03):
Right. Time’s up. Time’s up.

Jared Correia (46:05):
Thank you for playing,

Mathew Kerbis (46:06):
Jared.

Jared Correia (46:07):
All right. My turn. Are you ready?

Mathew Kerbis (46:08):
Yeah. Oh, I am not ready, but we’ll see how I do. Let’s do it.

Jared Correia (46:13):
Based on your Hotdog and Sandwich thing, I created a game called Unknowable Insatiable Cravings. Things that don’t really have an answer, but wish I’d like your opinion on.

Mathew Kerbis (46:25):
Okay. All right. Maybe I’m going to do better than I thought I would. Okay, let’s go. Well,

Jared Correia (46:29):
There’s no wrong answer, so you’re guaranteed to get all these right.

Mathew Kerbis (46:33):
Okay.

Jared Correia (46:34):
Is a thumb a finger?

Mathew Kerbis (46:37):
Yes.

Jared Correia (46:38):
Why?

Mathew Kerbis (46:41):
So I have a five and a half year old. And when she forgot the name of a hot dog, when she was three, she forgot what it was called. She’s like, “Daddy, did you already eat your sandwich?” And so I put it through the lens of a child and to a child-

Jared Correia (46:55):
Okay, this is great. Yes.

Mathew Kerbis (46:57):
A thumb is a finger, yes.

Jared Correia (46:59):
Interesting. Okay. I ran this through AI also and AI told me that there’s no real answer, but it ultimately decided that it’s the finger plus anatomically distinct, but socially a member of the finger class. It’s interesting. I think this gives some insight into the singularity.

Mathew Kerbis (47:22):
The broad finger category. The thumb isn’t part of the broad finger.

Jared Correia (47:26):
Here’s another one that I thought was interesting and controversial. Is cereal soup.

Mathew Kerbis (47:32):
Ooh, this is not one that I’ve thought of before.

Jared Correia (47:36):
Thank you, Google Gemini.

Mathew Kerbis (47:39):
For me, soup, the intended purpose of soup has to be hot. So if we’re talking milk in cereal, no. If you’re talking cereal in the oatmeal cereal sense, yes.

Jared Correia (47:51):
Wither gespacho. What if cereal is just a cold, grain-based gespacho?

Mathew Kerbis (48:00):
Again, putting it through the kids’ lens, no way, man. My kid is like, “That’s not soup, daddy, that cereal.”

Jared Correia (48:06):
All right, this is good. Okay. I got another similarly controversial one, which stretches the bounds of normal human understanding. Is a pop-tart a ravioli? Breakfast pasta? Anyone?

Mathew Kerbis (48:23):
I mean, if it were square, perfectly square, I would lean towards yes. But its rectangular shape puts it-

Jared Correia (48:33):
Good point.

Mathew Kerbis (48:34):
More in the no category for me. Yeah.

Jared Correia (48:37):
Cold

Mathew Kerbis (48:37):
Ravioli though. If it were square, I’d call it cold ravioli. Yeah.

Jared Correia (48:41):
Is a cold potart a ravioli. I don’t know. Well, I don’t know. We’ve done a lot of gradations here between hot and cold.

Mathew Kerbis (48:49):
Do you spend the time warming up a pop-tart? I don’t think I’ve ever done that. I’ve actually warmed up a pop-tart.

Jared Correia (48:55):
I know. It was weird. My daughter was having a pop-tart the other day and she put it in a microwave and started eating it with a fork. I’m like, “Are you an alien? What are you doing right now?” It’s a toasted strudel for God’s sake. All right. I got a few more for you. Does a straw have one hole or two? Ooh.

Mathew Kerbis (49:16):
Oh.

Jared Correia (49:17):
You were talking about philosophy before, so let’s get into it.

Mathew Kerbis (49:20):
That’s good. That’s good. Again, putting this through the mind of a child, I think they’re going to say two holes, right?

Jared Correia (49:27):
Yes. Because I think so two.

Mathew Kerbis (49:28):
A pipe, right? Does a pipe have two holes? Yeah, you could enter from either side. I think, yeah.

Jared Correia (49:33):
Topologically, the AI tells me it’s one, and it describes a straw as just a very long, skinny donut, which just means that AI needs a little bit more work to be more human.

Mathew Kerbis (49:45):
Does a hula hoop have one or two holes, right?

Jared Correia (49:48):
Yeah. I think human natural intelligence says it’s two. Although if anyone is a math expert out there, feel free to write in and harass me about this.

Mathew Kerbis (49:59):
I

Jared Correia (49:59):
Go

Mathew Kerbis (50:00):
Back to Drew Carey on whose line is in any way. Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. Baby, we’re just living in AI’s world today. So who knows?

Jared Correia (50:08):
It’s funny. I had one that you anticipated. Is pizza an open face sandwich? You’re on the yes train, I think.

Mathew Kerbis (50:16):
Absolutely. Yes. Pizza is the most delicious of open face sandwiches.

Jared Correia (50:21):
Let me ask you an alternative question as my last question for you, which is similar. Is a muffin just a bald cupcake?

Mathew Kerbis (50:31):
Hey, hey, is that a bald joke, Darish?e because I’m bald.

Jared Correia (50:36):
It was not.

Mathew Kerbis (50:39):
I don’t care. So at tech show was Comic-Con. It was happening at the same time as tech show. Oh

Jared Correia (50:45):
Yeah. And weren’t they doing AI-based superhero shit,

Mathew Kerbis (50:51):
Right?

Jared Correia (50:51):
Yeah.

Mathew Kerbis (50:51):
It was all superhero theme stuff. And so my go- to cosplay is Agent 47 from the Hitman games. All I got to do is put it on a black suit and a red tie.

Jared Correia (50:59):
I don’t even know what that is. Who’s that?

Mathew Kerbis (51:01):
Look it up. You’ll see. There were a couple of movies that weren’t very successful that were made from this video game.

Jared Correia (51:05):
Okay.

Mathew Kerbis (51:06):
But no, I would say no because the nature of the shape of the muffin is as though the muffin top is the frosting, but a cupcake doesn’t really have as much of a muffin top. It’s just a little bit that then the frosting places over. So I’d say no.

Jared Correia (51:23):
The muffin top is the frosting. Insane. Okay. Do you want to hear what AI said about this? I thought the answer was pretty clever.

Mathew Kerbis (51:31):
Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Jared Correia (51:32):
A muffin is just a cupcake that lacks the social ambition to wear frosting for breakfast, which to me, that’s the same reason I don’t wear pants.

Mathew Kerbis (51:43):
Could you end a podcast better than that?

Jared Correia (51:46):
I think we’re done.

Mathew Kerbis (51:48):
Practice.ai, go get your free account at practice.ai if you’re a lawyer listening. And if you’re a technologist and you’re having trouble selling your AI to law firms because it’s reducing their billable hours, we help those law firms be profitable in the age of AI.

Jared Correia (52:02):
Thank you. And don’t forget your pants, everybody. Thanks to our guest, Mathew Kerbis. He’s the subscription attorney still and the CEO of Prati. To learn more about Mathew and Practi, visit subscriptionatorney.com. That’s subscriptionatorney.com and/or I should say, look at both practi.ai. That’s P-R-A-C-T-I, Practi.ai. Now, because I’ll always be a 90s kid who still retains a scar on my chin from using a roller racer improperly, it’s right there. I’m not sure if you can see it. Air doesn’t grow there, 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 episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. Or perhaps not. For this week’s playlist, we’ve got a totally unrelated musical selection because I just wanted to create the cross genre covers playlist.

(53:05):
This is one of my favorite things, one of the simple joys in life. Think you can’t turn a rap song into a bluegrass song or a rock tune into a side deco smash. Think again. And it’s all brought to you by Lifesavers gummies, collisions. There are also two flavors in one, but they haven’t sponsored a goddamn thing. I told the lifesavers people I was drowning, but they would not lend a hand. It’s tragic, really. Join us next time when I’m probably going to spill hot soup on my crotch again.