I have to tell you about my hat. I see your hat with the ship with four masts as Calmar Nickel. It’s weird.

This, this, it’s. Yeah, Calmar nickel. You nailed it.

I was even saying it a little weird, and I shouldn’t be because I have a history with this name in the ship. But, yeah, I was quickly corrected when I was on this ship last week with my father in law up in. Up in, like, Shelter Island, Long Island.

There’s this little bay out there called Gardener’s Bay, which is named after an island, Gardener’s island, which has a very interesting history. It’s been owned by the Same family like 400 years. Was given to them by, I think, King Charles the First.

And it’s like the only real estate in the States that was gifted to somebody by the English crown. Oh, that is interesting. Yeah, very fun history.

This ship was there and it was like taking people out and. And Hailey and Zinnia and I were up there for like a family vacation. Zinnia’s great grandfather Bob, he turned 100.

So we were up for the 100th birthday party. All this family came together. Then we went into Connecticut, spent some time where my wife Hailey went to school.

Then we were going out to Shelter island where the family tends to get together at least once in the summer. Like the cousins come together. And now all the cousins and their kids are coming together.

It’s so cool to be a part of it. Saw this ship and I was like, haley, wouldn’t it be so cool if that was the Kalmer Nichol? Because I was mispronouncing it and she was like, yeah, it’d be cool because it was on my bucket list. And I walked over, sure enough, it was.

She bought me a ticket to go the next day. That was on your bucket list, huh? Yeah, because back in the 1600s, I had family members come over on this original ship. Well, it’s not the original, it’s a replica.

Now the original is like at the bottom of the North Sea. The English sink it. But yeah, the replica I had some family come over on was not the first Bankston, but his wife, she was a Rambo.

She came over and they landed over Wilmington area when it was a Swedish colony. The first Bankston came over later on a different ship and he had a different name. But when the English took it over from the Dutch who had taken it over for the Swedes, they like, he said his name and I can just imagine them being like, yeah, it sounds like Bankston to Me.

And that’s how the name got started. But, yeah, I wanted to be on that ship because I was like, oh, they made a replica. I’m a nerd for tall ships.

My father in law, he’s a nerd for tall ships. Or I guess he’s like, my father’s in law, Step law. I don’t know, because it’s like her stepdad.

But he’s my father in law, so that’s still just like dad, stepfather in law. Anyway, he’s my kind of nerd, so I’m like, hey, bim. That’s what Zinnia calls him.

Let’s go in this boat together. And we’re out there, and the guy that’s, like, working the lines to get the boat off the dock is like, is that Jim? I see? It was a guy. He worked with the company 10 years ago.

It was like, small world after small world. It was just so cool, so amazing when, like, things line up like that and life happens, and you’re just like, in the present moment, like, oh, my God, this is amazing. Well, I want to know what you learned, because the real estate attorney, Edney, has a burning question.

Please. How is this the only piece of real estate that the US didn’t take back from the English after the Revolutionary War? I’m a history nerd, but I don’t go that deep. That’s something I would have to ask a gardener or look it up at the library.

Who are these people who received this real estate that got to keep it? Tell me about it. Right. Revolutionary War.

Yeah, I know. Well, they did. I don’t know how they got to keep it post Revolutionary War, but I will certainly be on Wikipedia later seeing if I could find the answer.

That’s probably where I’ll start. Where do you start when you have a question like that? Hmm. You mean a random question that has nothing to do with my current circumstances or anything relevant to my life? Real estate, when it’s the real estate attorney in you, right? And you’re like, ooh, this.

This real estate has an interesting history. I want to know more. Well, I always start with the people and the relationships.

You know, we think about real estate laws being, you know, plots and lots and easements and boundaries, but, you know, every. As my dad would always say about a construction site, every job is the same. It’s the people that makes it interesting.

And that’s true for cases and deals as well, right? Yeah, it’s the people’s stories. So I always start with the client. And, you know, Trying to figure out what are all these relationships, what are the promises that were made and.

And where do we go from here? You have to figure out people’s intentions. That’s good. That’s good.

That’s fun. I always. I like collecting stories, and that’s what generally makes the story for me in memory.

Like, of course, I come away with lessons. I’m like, oh, I could, you know, take my next Six Sigma project and approach it from this perspective, having learned that lesson. But stories from the people is like, what I remember, you know.

Right. And the relationships certainly pay off. Or they should, hopefully, one way or another.

I guess they do. Oh, my God. I’m so glad you joined me today.

Thanks for having me and thanks for being here. Some listeners. Thank you for joining us here.

My name’s Ryan Bankster. I’m the founder of CIO Legal and a legal solutions architect at PSM Partners. I help attorneys like Starlet here manage technology as a paralegal, as a certified consultant, an administrator, a trainer on platforms like Microsoft 365, Clio, Net Documents, Logical, and some more besides.

I met my guest Starlet today through mutual friends connected to my daughter’s school. You remember that? I do. That was a fun night.

Was it the birthday party? Uh, I do not remember. It was not the birthday party. We met a time before that.

Yeah. He was playing and there was music. I was there with another friend that I’m connected with, and we were having a good time.

I remember you were angry as hell and you were ranting about stuff going on in our community, and that, like, kind of, like, drew me to you. I don’t know if ranting is the, you know, appropriate descriptor. I think I was informing the two of you about things you were unaware.

I remember I went back and I, like, looked stuff up. And then, like, when we came together again, I was like, let’s pick up that conversation because I learned something interesting. I was really impressed that you went and did your homework.

Not as impressed that you felt you had to fact check me, but I was impressed that you did it. Well, you were certainly dead right on another thing. And it did it.

It changed my perspective on the Green Bench and its story, which is, wow, that one’s. That one’s hard because, like, the city really latches onto it or, like, certain people in the city kind of latch onto it as, like, part of St. Pete’s identity. And it really is.

And I think that they miss out on just how much of a part of identity it is for so many people in our community where it connects to, like, you know, some pain. Some. Well, some significant pain.

I mean, just for those who might not be aware of the racist history of the green benches in St. Petersburg, you know, the issue was Central Avenue was lined with green benches meant to, you know, foster a sense of community and conversation. But guess what? Only white people were allowed to sit on them. So just south of Central was a predominantly black neighborhood, the Black sector of St. Pete.

And when black people would sit on the benches, they would be forcibly removed by law enforcement. So, yeah, you know, that was like. Like many things, kind of whitewashed over.

Right. But there’s been a lot of, I think, positive traction in St. Pete, even for, you know, different companies and brands that have really embraced green benches, you know, with or without knowledge of that history, to kind of rectify that and use that name to help bring awareness to the actual history and the impact it had on people who are still alive today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in no small part because of people like you that educate people like me across from a drink at a social event or out in the community at large. And that was certainly something that drew me to you as a friend, was how you engage with the community. Well, thank you.

What does community support mean to you in your professional, like, Persona? Well, the idealist in me, that was a big reason I wanted to start my own firm. You know, you see traditional law firms advertising with TV ads, you know, I don’t know, sealing an ambulance, as I’ve heard. Just kidding.

Different. Different ways that we can advertise. But for me, I always felt that marketing dollars should be put toward community education and connection.

And easily, for me, that kind of venue is art. And so using art and collaborating with different art galleries and nonprofits around town, I’ve been able to put together some really cool experiences that bring more awareness to different audiences about some of the, you know, racial and gender issues that, of course, have been here as well as everywhere else. Yeah.

And it’s been. It’s been a good way, I think, to serve the community. Yeah, yeah.

Which certainly has had an impact on me. The first event I went to that you hosted, like, that was like an art show. And some of the art was.

Well, I guess all the art was being sold. The money was going to a good cause. I came home with a really cool blue flamingo wearing pearls the Zinnia still plays with from time to time.

It’s predominantly displayed on a bookshelf. But that had an impression on me, and I was a Lot more active in the community after that event. And some of the activity that I took in the community was connected to that event when I did some phone banking and some volunteering and whatnot.

So thank you. Thank you. Tell me more about the art because I’ve been to your office not only that time, but several times since, and there is always really cool art on display.

And not too long ago we had some friends take in these descriptions of the art that I think you said, was it Jordan put those together or someone in the office put those together to hang up and describe each piece. Right. So I have recently hung my family’s collection of Hodgels.

And he was a satirist printmaker way ahead of his time from the 60s and 70s. And one of my interns, Samantha, actually did the research on Hodgel’s work. You know, created his bio, researched each of the pieces and then created the labels.

And I had a couple of younger attorney friends play a little game where we. They could find the paintings and match them with the labels and hang them up and then give me their opinion on which was their. Their favorite piece overall, which piece made them the most uncomfortable.

And it’s been kind of a fun way to introduce people who maybe haven’t had that much exposure to, you know, art galleries to really getting into a piece of art and experiencing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it too.

When you have artists that perform some function at an event that isn’t really about art, it’s about something else in the community. But then you have an artist producing some art. You had Ally at one last year and Ally Arnold.

Yeah, I have an Ally caricature. I’m holding my dog. Love it.

I even used that on like a piece of marketing material because I just wanted to show it off and show off Allie’s art and style. My sister in law immediately knew who it was. She was like, oh, that’s Allie.

I know her. So cool. Yeah.

And then that game, that was after the Pride Parade, right? That was. Yeah. When you were.

It was Pinellas Female association of Women Lawyers. Let me help you out there. Yeah.

The Pinellas county chapter of the Florida association for Women Lawyers. Thank you. Otherwise known as Pfall.

Right. Thank you so much. I’m the DEI chair for PFAL and one of my.

Probably my favorite event that I get to put on that was the second year is our participation in St. Pete’s Pride Parade. Yes. It was a lot of fun.

It was a lot of fun. You’re quite the dancer. Thank you for letting me Participate.

Thank you for dancing to support the effort. The float was a lot of fun. Everybody there was a lot of fun.

And yeah, I think it’s so important to show up for stuff like that in these days, especially. Agree. So, yeah, we’ve really got to stand up.

So if you don’t mind, I wanted to ask you a couple of things, Starlet. And I want to ask you why you spend so much of your time participating in things like pfall and participating in the bar and like the solo and small firm section previously. The.

What was it? The diversity. The Diversity and Inclusion Committee committee, which is no more. But it is no more.

Yeah. Why do you choose to spend so much time there? I enjoy the people, I think the. The best lawyers, the.

The lawyers that have a strong sense of community service, of service to the profession. And often the more talented lawyers are really involved, at least in the voluntary Bar association or vba, like PFAW or directly with the Florida Bar through a section or committee because we care about the direction our leadership is going in. We’re governed by the Florida Bar as licensed Florida attorneys.

So when you participate at that level, you’re participating in your own governance and that matters. That makes a lot of sense and that certainly has an impact on your ability to practice. Right? I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

I know when I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in any bar event, I’ve been struck by the sense of community that I’ve sensed among attorneys that participate. Folks that have known each other for years because they’ve been participating since Young Lawyers division or have been in solo, small firm or similar sections for their practice area. And I could really see where it seems like everybody really supports each other, like in their practice, not just in bar governance and their attention
to the agenda, but also as a network of professionals that want to serve the profession and the clients.

I love seeing the way everybody gives back that everyone who participates in the bar, the solo small firm section, where I was fortunate enough to attend an event in Orlando and meet a few folks to really see how everybody commits to the agenda, the business that is before the section and giving back to the community and really setting some standards when it comes to professionalism and material available in like the cles that are put together, the magazine and the articles that go into source and
the events that the section and certainly pfaw, like the Pride event, participate in and sponsor. It’s really admirable and I love connecting with the attorneys that sponsor things like that. You know, a firm that has Their logo on a.

On a float through a parade. It’s really admirable to see the work that’s done there. When it comes to leadership for young lawyers, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.

Why did you choose to go solo? Well, I’d spent the first 11 years of my practice with one firm, and I been fortunate enough to build my own department, which was really outside of the practice areas of that firm. And I wanted to be able to use the law firm model as a form of expression and community connection in a way that I wasn’t seeing being done by anybody else. So I kind of wanted to reinvent, at least for me, what law firm governance looks like.

You know, that’s one of the reasons I hired an office manager who’s obviously, you know, John Brandt. Much more than that, I wanted somebody who’d never worked in a law firm. I wanted to take the best leadership and guidance from the corporate world and small businesses to kind of recreate a team that would feel like home.

Obviously, everybody’s still getting paid and has pto, and I’m not under the illusion that, you know, we’re. We’re family. But at the same time, I think in large part because of, you know, having someone like John and HR and leadership and trying to come at running a business from a different perspective.

You know, we don’t have much turnover at all, and we’re able to stay together and be a really dynamic team because everybody has a lot of autonomy and ownership over the segment of the work that they do. And I find that the more empowered people are, the better their performance is. And quite frankly, I don’t want to do everything, so why not find the best people I can and give them opportunities to lead and grow? That’s awesome.

That’s awesome. So when you bring someone in, I mean, I imagine you have needs that you’re bringing them in to me, right. When you bring in John, you’re.

I mean, I can imagine a conversation, you’re like, I need you to take over kind of the business side of managing the office or the business so I can focus on the practice of law. And then I keep. I keep a firm grip on the business operations, for sure.

I mean, I am a business lawyer, and I provide guidance to people starting businesses and overhauling businesses. So I do a lot of that. But for John, for example, my office manager, I knew when I was taking a team of really about five attorneys and five paralegals and starting my own firm that I had to have somebody strong in administration.

And I knew my particular weaknesses were accounting and bookkeeping and HR got it. So I did a nationwide search for somebody who had never worked in a law firm and had those two particular skill sets. And it took, I think about 10 months to find him.

I flew in a couple of candidates from different states. They weren’t the perfect fit. And then finally John shows up and it was kismet.

I knew. That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful.

So you had a list of problems to solve and he came in and was able to take that over. But those problems or challenges, I guess really comes from you had a team and they all had needs when it comes to coordinating again, coming, you know, agreeing to expectations and getting the work done, serving the clients, moving the business forward. Right.

Well, I think it’s important when you’re running a business to have every individual functioning to the extent possible at their highest and best. So what are their best skills? Where are they going to expend the least energy to give, you know, the most productivity and benefit to the company? And how do you create a leadership structure where people are empowered with time and resources to do that? So knowing where my deficits were, I look to fill those so I could spend my time both on the
practice of law and developing, you know, paralegals and attorneys to meet the needs of our clients. Got it.

But I mean, an overarching philosophy for me as a business owner is making sure that people are functioning at their highest and best use. Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense.

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All without lifting a finger, let name and creative turn your content into a two way dialogue that connects with your audience. Visit naamancreative.com today and amplify your voice. When you brought him on, did you let him pick the technology and build the systems? No, because during his interview, which has not played out to be true, he said, I don’t do technology.

Oh, yeah. I said, well, I’m going to push back on that and make you a bet that you do and you will, and you’ll get to be just as proficient at it as the next person. Yeah, and he did.

He rose to the challenge. But I had very specific ideas on what kind of technology we would need. I was always very concerned about disaster, responsiveness, you know, redundant storage of data.

We never, you know, I wanted to be paperless. I never wanted to be, you know, the older attorney with the computer in the Closet is. There’s backup storage.

Like, that’s a recipe for disaster. And it really was helpful. We built out a system that gave our clients the security they needed.

And when Covid hit, we were able to shift from in office, in person, fully. We sent 12 people home with laptops, and we did not miss a beat. We lost maybe four hours in packing up, and we just moved home.

That’s awesome. So it really was a good test to the systems we had in place, and it worked. That’s great.

That’s awesome. Well, what systems are you built on? We have two primary providers. We have the cloud, the private cloud network environment.

Right. Call Marmont. And then we have the hardware component.

So because I have attorneys and paralegals working on our files literally all over the country, from Texas to California to New York, they can all access our data, but I can also access their computers that access the data. So in a situation, I could both turn off access and get a complete copy of their hard drive within hours. I’ll turn off access within seconds.

Right. But I would have all of the data they have and be able to shut off access. So it really gives you a sense of control and security over your data, because that’s your client’s data that you’ve been entrusted with.

They’re huge ethical considerations to having the right security measures. Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. When you have a team that large, you’re acquiring hardware for them to work on.

I mean, even for practices where everybody’s bringing their own device, but you’re having to manage that data that belongs to the practice. I think it’s really important to have those kind of things in place where even on a bring your own device, it’s encrypted in transit, and at rest, you can lock it. So even though it may be it doesn’t like delete on the hard drive right away, it’s still encrypted.

They’re locked out of it. They can’t access it. It’s backed up.

You have everything. Right. For like our contract attorneys, they’re bringing their own laptop.

And I don’t know if spyware is the right word, but our hardware company does put whatever spyware on their computer. So, like, part of their contract is, I’m going to put my things on your computer so that I will be able to control it and copy it. You have no privacy on this device.

Right, right. Because it accesses our cloud. Right, yeah, that makes sense.

And yeah. And then there’s software that can keep the two Very separate, where it’s very clear when you’re in, you’re operating on the company side versus the personal side. But yeah, even with bring your own device, that makes so much sense.

So you have a managed device policy, bring your own device policy. It sounds like you really put a lot of thought and hard work into all of this. Is a case management or practice management system important to your operation? I mean, obviously we have to track deadlines and action items and to do lists.

We have not found a case management system that we are in love with and have been able to integrate because our volume is so much that it’s never been worth it. We have some systems that have worked for a very long time for us, but we are about to shift to a new cloud environment that offers a new case management system that they say will, you know, more readily integrate itself. So we’ll see.

Interesting. That sounds very interesting. I’d love to hear stories about that as it unfolds if you ever can share.

Very cool. So you have so much volume you can’t integrate a system. So you’ve tried several out but just haven’t rolled them out practice wide.

Well, when they first came out, and this I think was before I even went off on my own and I was just a department within another firm, I tried to, you know, have a couple of paralegals put the data in, but then the, the systems had to be constructed and it was an astronomical price and didn’t seem to accomplish more than our internal systems already in place were going to accomplish. It was too much data entry to adopt it and make it work for us, especially when you have that kind of volume. So I
think that if this new system really works as planned, you know, where emails will automatically be added to files and deadlines can just be added with the check of a box because they’re already in your calendar, then it will work.

But it is hard to go from a busy practice to integrating a case management system when you have to put all of the existing data in on your own. That’s not, it’s not a good use of resources. But that, that, that kind of heavy lift is challenging and a lot of people face that.

And I’ve seen so many times where folks don’t really figure that into their light cost. You know, when they’re thinking about, oh, I’ve got this new system, I’m going to bring it on, it’s this much per month, but they’re not thinking about how much time it’s going to take to format their Data and move it. Right.

Especially if you have to transfer it. They’re not even thinking about, oh, I have 70 gigabytes that I’m going to have to like download or receive in some way and then upload it into a different system. And that’s not to say anything for the manual entry.

Right. If you have to do any manual entry. Well, in the manual entry, it’s garbage in, garbage out.

It has to be done by someone with knowledge. Right. And you know, it would be nice to like have some kind of basic algorithms on or formulas, maybe just algebra, I don’t know where you know how to compute time in certain deadlines.

And you can put something in. So you can put the date something was filed and then you’ll know the date something is due. Because a lot of times the court rules require us to look at calendar days.

So it’s like, okay, well, there was a national holiday here, there was a weekend here. So you have to manually do a lot of these things that we would presume are just automatic, but they’re not. You might get the wrong result.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s real challenging for a lot of, for a lot of product developers too, because of how those dates change jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Right.

And you’ll have like some products that are only available in Florida or like five or six other states or maybe only California. I see a lot, a lot of stuff that’s only available in California for those reasons because they’re like, oh, you know, we have all that in if you’re in California, you know. Right.

And like Florida just amended the civil rules of procedure January 1st of this year. So a lot of significant deadlines changed. And that if you had, if you were relying on a system to do any kind of automatic calendaring, somebody had to do a major overhaul.

Right. We did have notice that it was coming, but it’s just one more component to being familiar with and implementing a major rule change which happened from time to time. Yeah, certainly.

Now, of course, a lot of data, if it’s in there, you’re in your old system or a system, whether it’s on prem or in the cloud, and you’re moving to another system and you limit your work just to your active cases. You can map fields and have the stuff come over, but there’s still a chance that something goes wrong or the dates aren’t right. It all has to be checked.

So when you have a lot of volume, it still is a lot of work. Right. To not only map all the fields, to move everything over you know, to build the database and make sure it’s loading.

Right. But then to go through and check everything and make sure that, you know, a date’s wrong. Because if one dates off and the deadline’s missed, it could be huge.

Right. Are you trying to talk me out of my new case management plans? Because I think I’m officially there, basically. No.

You would have to put the data in and then double check it yourself to be sure. I think it’s important for anyone to think about this stuff, to think about the time and effort that goes into moving all of that material. Material to checking it all.

Making sure that something didn’t go wrong. And that, of course, there’s a fallback plan if it does go wrong. Right.

That if you, for instance, move from one system into another and it doesn’t go well, the system you just moved from didn’t like your license expired or expires on Friday. Right. You want an overlap for at least a couple of days.

So if it doesn’t go well, you can extend, you can keep running. Right. Personally, I would extend for a year.

Year. We’ve had to change our bookkeeping software and we basically ran double books for a year to ensure that we didn’t lose any data. Because you can’t, you just can’t function if you don’t have reliable data.

It doesn’t matter what your field is. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I know a lot of practices that run double books. Just like as a best practice, like they reconcile their QuickBooks, but they’ll use like Clio for practice management or my case or whatever.

You know, we have backup Excel spreadsheets on almost everything. Yeah, it’s like once a month you’re going to have to reconcile, but, you know, some people, I guess it’s once a quarter, but. Well, there.

I did want to ask you if you could share one operational change that you’ve made over the years that made a really big impact in your practice. I think the most significant operational change that I’ve made has probably been kind of segmenting out different areas of responsibility to different team members that I trust. So like we talked about, you know, having John Brandt focus on HR and working with the bookkeeper.

But I have certain paralegals who, you know, they. They really manage certain parts of the firm and they have so much ownership over it and knowledge around whatever their, you know, specific dut are that when we need to adapt to something which is basically weekly, they’re bringing it to me. Because the primary business owner, if there’s just One of you or even if there’s two partners, it’s impossible, I think, to be the best at everything that the business needs.

So it’s really important to empower and authorize people to own different parts of the duties. Right. So I have paralegals who will come to me and say, I think we need to restructure how we’re assigning things or who we’re copying on certain emails, because, you know, things might get lost in the shuffle.

If I hadn’t gone back and looked, this would have been missed. And so it’s constantly about having people own the portion that they’re responsible for. And I would expect to go to any team member and say, you know, what.

What parts of this firm’s practice are your responsibility? And get a very clear answer. So a lot of it is communication. You know, I want everybody to know exactly what their duties are, what their deadlines are.

You know, the who, what, how, when, where, why we have to know what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and when we’re doing it by. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense, of course.

And it’s also curious, like, it’s interesting to hear you say that about the paralegal, because I can imagine, like, the emails that come from the court that’s serving a notice of a hearing or a deposition or whatever documents that. It’s an email that’s telling you about a date and a time that you’ve got to do something, but it’s not actually in the email. It’s in the PDF that you have to click the link to download and then open and then read to get the date and time of the Zoom meeting.

And that can be pretty cumbersome. And certainly if somebody doesn’t go through those hoops and that date and time doesn’t get calendared, then that can be. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Yeah, that could be. And I’m not perfect. I have missed a hearing because of an error.

Things happen. But luckily, because I’m still with the same paralegals I’ve had since really I started practicing law. You know, we learn from our mistakes.

As John taught us, when we have a mistake happen, we celebrate it. That’s when you have the pizza party. Because we need to sit and appreciate what went wrong.

Own it, you know, not run from it. No excuses. Just figure it out and make the changes we need to make.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love celebrating the mistakes, because if you turn them into a lesson, you can hardly call them a mistake.

Right. It depends how much you pay for it, but yeah, definitely. Definitely.

That is awesome. On the note of good stories, are there any wins over this past year that make for a good story? That’s a really tough question, Ryan. I don’t want to sound full of myself, you know, but in all candor, I win 99.

9% of my litigation cases. And I’m trying to think, well, what makes a good story? And what makes a good story that I can ethically share. And that’s a little hard in my line of work.

Like, sometimes the reason a win is so valuable to the client or to the firm is for attorney client, privileged reasons. Right. A lot of times it means something emotional because we’re dealing with business and real estate issues, but again, we’re dealing with people’s lives, finances, needs, desires.

And sometimes a little win can have the biggest impact. I could tell you a story. You could tell me a story? Yeah, I can tell you about your win.

Yeah. Well, I think it’s one. At least in some way we share it, because it was one time that I was in your office in your wonderful conference room eating great food from in town.

I think that day we got food from Simply Delicious. I don’t know that we ever managed to get Simply Delicious. Did we? I feel like they were always closed.

Or did you? And then we had to get something else. We never actually got it. Sometimes.

So you have to go, if you like Simply Delicious, which we do very much go to the Facebook page. Like, that’s really kind of the only way to know what’s going on there sometimes. Like, are they going to open an hour late or not? I don’t know.

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve gotten in. I’ll be visiting you soon because I’m thinking about that Cuban right now. But we were sitting across from the conference room table eating who knows what good food in St. Pete.

And the whole reason we were there is because I was struggling with what I wanted to do. I was kind of in a career transition phase where I was at a firm for more than a decade, and I had worked a couple of different roles there, had a lot of career growth, but I was no longer at that firm. I thought maybe I may end up at a similar firm or a law firm doing similar work, and I was kind of struggling with figuring out what that next step was going to be.

And you said, let’s talk about it. And when you said, let’s talk about it, it was, let’s grab lunch Come to my office. Let’s sit at this conference room table, talk about it.

And you encouraged me to start my own business, which I did last year. And I consulted with you pretty closely on that business. You helped me with my service agreement, which was so very important to my ability to do business with attorneys advising on technology.

Certainly one of the first things we do when we’re talking business is get the agreement out and take a look for anything that might need to be changed. And you’ve helped me with that so many times. And it was.

It went from an uncertain, anxious, filled career path to one with purpose, one where I could see the impact of my talent on other people’s profession and stress level and ability to do good work. And I couldn’t thank you enough for what you did over this past year, helping me with my business. Thanks.

Well, it was easy to see when you explained to me what your skill sets were, how much our especially smaller and solo law firms in our community needed exactly the help you could offer. It’s just it. It’s not available.

I haven’t met another Ryan Bankston yet, and I’m, you know, we’re all looking. So I think you. I think you do work for many of my friends with solo and small firms now, which is wonderful because we all need tech help, but a lot of times we don’t know what we need.

And you just needed the support and guidance to take the leap and run your own operation. And you’ve done tremendously well. Thank you, Charlotte.

It’s been a journey. And yeah, there’s more of us out there. There’s folks out there, but it’s like Renee said, there’s not that many.

And Adriana pointed out there’s like a hundred something of us. I think may maybe a little more than that, but there are a lot of attorneys that could use some help when it comes to what’s the right technology. How do I make it work right? How do I migrate my data in my active cases and make sure that the calendar dates are correct? It’s a lot to juggle and trying to do it while also serving clients in, taking new clients, plus showing up for those hearings that are in those PDF files.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot. There’s some folks out there doing it by themselves and doing quite well, but woof.

That’s hard work. You know, while I admire it, I don’t really envy it because, like, it’s a hard job. Let some of us help.

We’re out here looking for you. Well, how can our listeners find you? We are at the collab at 3833 on Central Avenue. Masseylawgrouppa.com you know, I’m here to help with anything from a business transaction to a real estate dispute, whether we settle it before litigation or we take it all the way, you know, to the court for a decision.

And yeah, I like, I really enjoy helping people and small businesses in our community. I become, I think, friends with most of my clients. And it really means a lot when you can secure, you know, clean title to somebody’s home that they’ve lived in with, you know, for years with their children.

They didn’t know there was this issue out there. And you can give people real peace of mind. So I, you know, I’m, I’m here to help as needed.

That’s awesome. I’m really fortunate to know you. And the collab is amazing.

Tell me a little bit about the collab. So the collab is like my second, third baby, right. I bought the commercial building on Central with The idea that one, I didn’t want to pay $10,000 a month just in rent anymore myself, and two, that I could bring together smaller firms where we could.

And we’re under a blanket NDA, we could have people in different practice areas to consult with. So even though I think we’re seven different companies, we have, we all have access to one another and it’s really valuable for all of our practice areas. If I have a bankruptcy question, I can ask Christina.

If I have an estate planning question, I can ask Liz. You know, it’s a really nice group of people and we share the same values and it’s a really safe space for us to exist. You look forward to going to work.

And I think it’s really good for our team members also because they feel like they have a larger work family. We can celebrate holidays together. We have family lunches, we call them.

And you have a bigger group of people than you would have if you’re just a one, two, three person firm. You know, I’m a little larger, but most of my people don’t even live in Florida. So it’s nice to have that in person connection with like minded people.

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s amazing.

And an amazing group of people too, if you’re interested. Liz Moneymaker, who you just mentioned was on a previous episode of the Sun Leaders, so you could look for that in our list of podcast episodes. Christina will be a future guest.

We have a date to record, so hopefully in two months you can catch her here as well. We’ll talk a little bit about the collab then as well, I’m sure. And then next month if you want to listen back for my episode on Sun Leaders, I’ll be sitting with Paige Greenlee.

I am excited for that episode. If you’re a member of ALA Suncoast, our expo is coming up. I hope to see you there.

That is August 27th. And if you occasionally get notifications about cles from the Florida Bar Solo and Small Firm section or you’re a member of I have a CLE coming up with Renee Thompson. We’ll be comparing prompts from Clio Net Documents and Copilot365 so catch that.

It’ll be a fun CLE. That one’s in September. Look in source or go to the Florida Bar Solo and Small Firm section website to see the date for that CLE and sign up.

Thanks for joining us today. You can find me Ryan Bankston on LinkedIn. Sam.