Hello sun listeners. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Ryan Bankston, founder of CIO Legal and and Legal Solutions Architect at PSM Partners.

I help attorneys manage their firm technology as a paralegal, certified consultant, administrator, and trainer on platforms like Microsoft 365, Clio, NetDocuments, Logical, and more. I connected with my guest today about a year ago through a mutual friend that saw her plea for help with legal technology on a private Facebook group. We’ve worked closely together since, collaborating on hardware procurement, technology, document management, practice management, and ediscovery solutions.

She went to Emory Law before she was an AmLaw 100 associate and then a shareholder at another large firm before launching her own solo practice almost 11 years ago. She’s been an active member of the Florida Bar Board of Governors almost as long, starting out as a volunteer in the Young Lawyers Division. Around the same time I got into legal technology.

Paige, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Ryan. I am so excited that you’re here and that we get to talk about some things.

I’ve always just like respected you. The work you do. You’re not afraid of technology, and you just have so much to offer and you’re so generous.

Well, thank you. That’s very kind of you. Why do you give so much of your time to the Florida Bar? So the Florida Bar is a really important part of my life.

It’s a really big part of my life, and I think a large part of that is because I’m not from Florida. I didn’t go to law school in Florida. I moved here for a job 23 years ago and I landed in Tampa and I guess naively didn’t really think that through the whole way.

No one in my family is a lawyer. So I didn’t really think about the fact that working at a law firm, you know, your trajectory depends almost completely on your connections and bringing in work. So I realized I better do something to get to know some people in Florida.

So I initially got involved in the local bar and then got involved in the Florida Bar. And I have made some of the best friends in my life personally through the bar and have had great professional relationships, worked with other attorneys, worked against other attorneys in a way that makes sense and is amicable. So it’s been really meaningful to me in that regard.

And I think that my diverse background allows me to give a lot to the bar because, as you said, I’ve been at big law firms. I was a government lawyer. I’ve been a solo practitioner for 11 years.

So I know what it’s like to be in the shoes of so many of Florida’s lawyers. That’s wonderful. Well, I know all that’s true because I recently got involved with the bar, and you certainly had a big part of that.

You know, I met you and then started getting more familiar with the volunteer work that you do and was encouraged by a friend to start working more closely with the solo and small firm section of the Florida bar. And when I had the privilege of going to one of the events in Orlando, when the executive committee came together, I was just so impressed by how so many of the people in the room were like, friends and had all this history and were so very happy to see each other. And then when it was
time to get to work, everybody got very serious because, like, the mission is so important and everybody is so passionate about why they’re there.

And it’s been just so encouraging. So thank you. Well, thank you.

It does really provide a good opportunity for you to strike a balance between professional and personal relationships. I met one of the women from the solo and small firm section for a drink last night. She happened to be in town doing some work, and so we caught up last night, so.

Oh, that’s awesome. Definitely something that carries through. That is awesome.

Well, I. Of course, it’s interesting we’re recording this. I have not yet done the CLE with another attorney in the solo and small firm section, but by the time you’re listening to this episode Listener, I will have just concluded last week a CLE with Renee Thompson, where we compared the results of prompts from indie max and netdocuments, duo and clio and copilot and 365. Essentially, you take the same docs, same prompts, put them in there.

How are the results different? And it was very exciting. And being able to do that type of work where we’re contributing to those CLE credits, helping everybody work a little better, a little easier, and improve the practice of law and close that justice gap a little bit. I love it.

So passionate about that work. But instead of just talking about the Florida bar the entire time, I would like to ask you about a couple of other things. One, why did you decide to leap from such very big firms to your own solo practice? So it had always been something that was in the back of my head.

I really enjoy the business part of the law practice. And of course, at big law firms, as a young lawyer, I didn’t have those opportunities to really participate in the business side of the practice of Law. But it was always something I knew I would like to do.

And I thought if I stayed at a big law firm, I would have made my way up and certainly would have expressed interest, at least in being involved in the management side of a firm. I love practicing law, but I like to strike a balance between the business and the actual practice. So I was, you know, trained really well by those big firms.

I was at work with some really great lawyers and had an opportunity. I knew I had a little book of clients that I was fairly certain were going to come with me. The rules of regulating the bar prohibit you from kind of vetting that out before you decide to leave your firm.

But I felt pretty confident about that, saw a window and just decided to take that opportunity and, you know, didn’t burn any bridges, made sure that I kept good relationships and still have good relationships at all. This firm’s big referral sources, resources for me, actually. And I gave myself, I’ll do do this for a year.

If I can’t keep things going in the right direction, then we’ll reevaluate and, you know, it’s been smooth sailing for pretty much most of the time anyways, for almost 11 years. That’s wonderful. Does the business side of your practice still.

Is it still as rewarding as it was early on on any given day? I guess it’s like anything, you know, there’s some days when it just seems like, you know, you’re tied up in minutia or admin. But I like being able to make the decisions about how much can we pay for rent, which products I’m using in my firm. You know, technology and big firms, you know, have a very volatile relationship.

Yeah. It seems like anytime a firm wants to implement a new technology program or, you know, a new doc management system, some of the, you know, partners don’t want to, others do. You end up sometimes to appease them, operating on two different systems or using multiple different things.

And that makes it really hard, especially when you’re a young lawyer, to do it. So in that part of it, I really enjoy having the freedom to make those decisions, decisions myself. And, you know, if I try something and it doesn’t work, being able to rapidly change away from it, as you know.

Yeah, absolutely. We could go on about that. We could make an entire episode just talking about that.

And so many battle stories from over the years, from my experiences in large firms, seeing that where maybe some practice group has a technology and nobody else at the firm even knows it exists, or most, if not all of the attorneys, including the managing attorneys are like, we want this new software, but then maybe accounting and the C suite and the CFO are like, no, it’s, you know, that’s not, that’s not how we do things. We have to stick with elite or what have you, whatever the system may be.
But then solo, how do you keep the business side of running your firm from interfering with your practice of law and the law side, it’s really the biggest challenge because I was surprised early on and this has stayed consistent.

It takes about 50% of my time in the office or wherever I’m working from. I say in the office, but, you know, when I’m working, about 50% of my time goes to non billable firm admin, business side of the firm. And the other 50% goes to, you know, actually practicing law for clients.

I try to do all of my billing on the first day of the month, for example. I just, you know, preserve days and times and blocks of time to do the business side of the practice. Of course, sometimes you preserve that and a client has an emergency and so you have to quickly, you know, change pages and move back to the client work.

And then, you know, maybe I send my bills out on the 2nd this month, that kind of thing. But it’s just, you know, it’s just time management. It’s like anything else and just being really conscious of the time you have and how long it’s going to take for you to do the business part and how long you need to dedicate today to the client part to meet deadlines and expectations.

That makes sense. When you’re evaluating a client and considering bringing them on. Are you evaluating how much time you’re going to have to spend on the business side or elsewise, like with that client, like, oh, this one is going to take too much time on, on the business side that I won’t be able to, like, you know, not really.

With very few exceptions, most clients, I mean, you bring it, you bring the case in. It’s, you know, it’s a matter of the routine things. Opening a file, physical and electronic to the extent that I keep physical files any longer, you know, getting them an engagement letter, dealing with processing a ret and you know, getting all their documents and getting those organized.

I mean, that’s what I consider the business side of it. I don’t, you know, bill my clients for that type of administrative thing. But, you know, certainly when I’m talking about potential new clients, I’m thinking about, you know, how much, how much time that client is going to take in terms of my daily workload and how much business side I have going on, because, you know, get.

Sometimes get to a tipping point where as a solo, I have a lot of cases that are really active right now. I probably shouldn’t be taking on another big case. Not necessarily because of the business side of it, but, you know, because of the fact that you have a lot of client work going on.

Yeah. On that. As your solo practice has matured, how have the cases you bring on, how have they changed over the years? I’ve gotten a lot more picky about what I bring in.

Yeah, absolutely. I ask a lot more questions on the. On the front end and not so much.

I have clients who say, oh, you don’t want to take my case because it’s a loser. Well, you know, that’s. That doesn’t make any sense.

I mean, I like winning. Everybody likes to win. But, you know, sometimes people come to you because they have a legal problem or they made a mistake and they’re just trying to mitigate the damages of the fallout from that.

And I have no problem, like, saying, if we go to trial, you’re probably going to lose, but, like, let’s do the best we can to get you either settled or get you the best result we can at trial. So that’s not something that I. I factor in. What I do factor in is clients who are easier to work with.

You know, personalities. Sometimes people just don’t get along. And I know it’s the same for me, too.

There’s clients that I’ve worked with who said, this just isn’t working out. No offense. It’s you.

It’s. It’s not you, it’s me, that kind of thing. So, I mean, I definitely do that.

And then I want, at this point in my career and in my practice, being out on my own for 11 years, I want the. The bigger, commercial, complex cases. I enjoy that kind of work.

Not everybody does. Some people don’t want to dig into the big media cases. I love a good, interesting, factually intricate, legally complex case.

So I prefer those over the, you know, quick turnaround. Yeah, you know, I can identify with that. You know, when it comes to technology challenges, I get same thing.

You know, the more complicated. It’s like, oh, now this is where I actually. It’s not just same thing, different day.

Right. You know, Exactly. I actually might get to learn something or try something or.

Yeah, that’s what keeps me interested in practicing law. That is awesome. When you have a client and it’s clear that it’s not a fit for whatever reason, it’s not working out, it’s impacting other work, what have you.

How quick are you to make that decision that, that they need to find more other representation that you need to withdraw. So because of the nature of my work, I do litigation sometimes there’s court deadlines that kind of keep me from being able to make that decision as quickly as I would like to. Because you can’t do anything that’s going to jeopardize your CL their case.

Right. I know it’s as a professional regulation, can’t make those decisions sometimes as quickly as you want. So I have to look at that.

But other than that, if I don’t have any impending hearing deadline, upcoming hearings, any case deadlines, I’ll make the decision as quickly as I can because I’m going to continue working on that file. I’m not going to drop the client hard. I’m going to try to transition them to another firm, give them some other names of people to look at that, that type of thing.

But you know, it’s like anything when you realize something isn’t working, any kind of relationship in life isn’t working. The sooner you out, the better. Yeah, yeah.

And I’m sure you have clients that are happy to hear that because when you make those decisions, you’re protecting your other clients. Right? Correct. A lot of the decision making goes into that consideration.

Correct. Well, to move to a different topic, I wanted to ask if a practice management system or case management system plays an important role in your solo practice. It does.

And I was very hesitant to spend that money early on. And early on, frankly, you don’t need it because you can just use, you know, OneDrive. Well, you know, whatever, whatever Dropbox, whatever you’re using, you could just use that.

But as you know, I transitioned to netdocs almost a year ago now, I guess actually exactly a year ago, I think. And once you get 11 years of client doc, client documents, your file, you know, other opposing parties, production, when you start having that volume of documents, it just becomes untenable to have it outside of a doc management system. So, yeah, certainly agree.

I know a lot of times folks like me that are the legal tech side and when we talk about document management, we talk about the importance of client matter centricity, you know, having those documents filed in a way where they’re, you know, if it’s this matter, then these documents are in this location, you know, because, yeah, when it’s all together, it can can be hard to sort out when. And then when you have a reason to sort something out, it takes a lot of time. You can’t just like go into that
folder or location and pull those documents out.

Instead you have to like figure out which one among the 500 belong in this. Yeah, right. And it becomes even more difficult.

It’s one thing for me to go in and I know how I name things, I know what nomenclature I use, even if it isn’t, you know, formulaic or systematic. But when you try to bring other people in, you know, an assistant, a paralegal, a contract attorney, an associate, whatever it is, or co counsel or my IT person and needs to go find something and you’re like, figure out what I said, you know what I saved this as. It’s not fair and it does not the most efficient way to work for sure.

Yeah, yeah. You said when you’re starting out you don’t necessarily need these systems. But I think as your practice, you get more cases, you’re collecting more documents, and then you finally make a decision to move into a system like NetDocuments.

And maybe you’re going from not being client matter centric in your document management to go into client matter. And that can be a lot of work. Yes, it’s a lot of work.

It’s been a lot of work, lots of growing pains. It’s a lot of work to get the system up and running, get it configured. It’s a lot of work to start moving documents in.

That takes a lot of time. It can sometimes be very expensive. There’s a lot of thought that goes into that design.

Then also there’s learning new systems, the new work habits, you know, and it takes a lot of time. Do you think that it’s, do you think it’s taking more time than what you thought it was going to take when you set out on that journey? It’s definitely taking more time than I thought it would take. And it’s one of those things where I knew a long time before I made the transition that I needed to and I just kept dragging my feet on it.

I didn’t have an IT person, so I didn’t have any good guidance on how to do that. And I didn’t really feel comfortable undertaking that big of a task myself. But yes, it’s taking a lot more time than I anticipated or that I had kind of blocked out for it and you know, learning the new system and you know, I think now I realize that’s really what the problem is at big law because the IT departments and management at a firm is listening to 100, 200 attorneys complain about the fact that they now
have to learn this new documented system.

And it does slow down your practice. You know, the things you used to do in, you know, half an hour might take you an hour to do it because you’re not, you’re not just going in and attaching the same way. You have to learn the new processes.

That being said, in the long run, I think it’s, it’s much going to be a much better result. Yeah, but yeah, steep learning curve for sure. If there’s an attorney listening to our podcast today and they’re in a similar situation where they know they need to modernize their document management, they’re considering going climate matter centric kind of organizing their system of record.

What advice would you give them based on your experience? You know, just to be prepared for the, for the time commitment associated with it. In hindsight, I think maybe I should have only imported Active Matters into the new system or maybe I shouldn’t. I should have kind of straddled the road, so to speak, for a while and started opening new matters in netdocs and still using.

And then it would have forced me to learn. But I still have the safety net on the old documents. I think that that might have been a better use of time.

As, you know, we had a big import process and delay and then getting things properly filed took some time and that was all. It made it seem more frustrating to me for sure. And so I think maybe, you know, people always tell you when you do something, just start doing it going forward.

Don’t try to go back 10 years and start with your first file and implement this new, you know, for something that you maybe are never going to touch again. So that’s some advice that I think I wish I would have had or I wish have thought of it on my own. Yeah, yeah, that’s great advice.

So I hope you’re taking notes solo attorney listening today. If you don’t mind, I would like to pass a suggestion on that same topic, please. It’s sometimes helpful to get some help kind of mapping out your process before you start engaging the vendors that you’re going to in the end go with for your new system or for your migration.

You know, type of work I do or Adrian or Debbie or so many of us in legal technology, we can often help you think about the, the time commitment, the hidden cost, the training, the migration, some of that stuff that doesn’t necessarily come up on a Sales call with whatever vendor. Right. And then by the time you’ve demoed and then you’ve subscribed and then it comes time to do it, and then you realize, wait, oh, we’re not ready.

That can be kind of frustrating when you’re paying for something you’re not using yet. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you know, I learned that lesson the hard way.

And, you know, you said a key term. They’re salespeople, the people that you talk to on the phone, they’re like, this works great. Everything is perfect.

It’s gonna be really easy. It’s gonna be seamless for you. They’re salespeople.

Absolutely. And getting an IT person’s advice and input in that process would have been helpful. Yeah.

These Systems, though, and NetDocuments, I’ll talk about just for a second. I’m a NetDocuments partner and certified on NetDocuments. There’s so much that they can offer you if you’re using them for your document storage.

There’s lots of really cool search features. Like one of the search features in netdocuments that I try to point out to folks is proximity searching, where you could, for instance, type in Sun Leaders and then look for it within five words of Page Greenly. And then you’ll pull up all of your documents where SunLeaders and Page Greenly are within five words of each other.

And that’s some pretty neat search capabilities. It can be really helpful when you have a lot of documents to look through. It also enables collaboration where you can do that search, you can save that search, and then you can share that search with other members of your team.

And when you pull up those 30 documents but you don’t have the time to read them, and you want to pass that off. Right. It’s really, really cool systems.

And then of course, the intake on netdocuments, if it’s configured correctly, when you upload documents there, it’s going to OCR images and it’s going to store that as a text layer and index it and make it pop up in those searches. So you get some really cool efficiencies and capabilities from this system. But I would say it is not easy implementing them, getting them designed, getting used to using them.

It’s going to take a little bit of time. Yes. But I want to talk about another system, if you don’t mind talking about Clio for a minute.

Sure. So how long have you been using Clio? Since I started, so almost 11 years. Yes.

That’s awesome. I did all the research, and that by far seemed to be the number one billing system. And that’s really what I use it for, is almost exclusively billing.

And, you know, it’s my trust accounting backup, I guess. Yeah. But I. I’ve been using Clio for the whole time that Greenlee Law has been.

It been. That’s wonderful. And you like it? Absolutely.

You still use it? Yes, absolutely. That’s awesome. It’s awesome.

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And we’re back. Back. I’ve enjoyed since we’ve come together and worked together, and you were.

Trusted me enough to look into Clio and give some suggestions. And we kind of discovered some things along the way, too, just from the nature of the work. Co counsel.

That seems like that’s a little new. The power of co counseling. Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about what we’ve discovered through Co Counsel? Yeah.

It’s a great way to work with contract attorneys. I have attorneys who are not Greenlee Law employees. They come in on specific matters, and we can have them go in and be assigned to a particular matter, given access to a particular matter, and then they can go in and bill their time.

Before, I was collecting time and time descriptions and then copying and pasting from an email. And again, it’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, but we’re all of our time is valuable. And as a lawyer who bills by the hour, your time is very literally money.

So I’ve been able to be a lot more efficient with that, using contract lawyers and getting their time input and billed to the client by using the Co counsel feature. That’s awesome. And then when you go generate your bill, their time pops in there.

Right. You have your approval process, your own little process where you’re checking, making sure your time’s in. Right.

Showing up. Right. And theirs is just showing up right there.

Exactly. So it just kind of fits right into your existing process. Exactly, exactly.

And if I need to run their time for a month, I can run a report in CLIO to pull all of attorney X’s time for the month on a matter. Whatever I want to do, which is a great feature, too. Yeah, that is awesome.

One of my favorite things about co counsel that we’ve discovered this past year is we didn’t have to pay anything for it. Right. It’s just a part of Clio manage.

Don’t tell them. It’s just sitting there. If you’re using Clio solo attorney and you’re not using co counsel, spend a little time, test it out.

Reach out to me if you want me to show it to you. Reach out to Paige if you want her to share her stories. But it is.

It could make your life so much easier if you’re working with co counsel, if you’re working with contract attorneys. If you’re a contract attorney for another firm that has Clio and they’re not using it, you should have them look at it because it would make your life easier. Because, of course, I’ve always been hesitant to get another license.

If I don’t need a full license on clia, why would I pay for a license for. And it doesn’t work work. You know, you can’t have multiple attorneys assigned to one license.

That doesn’t work. So the. The co counsel feature is a very nice included perk of.

Of your monthly subscription for your annual subscription for you to Clio. That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s awesome.

I feel like that’s a big takeaway for folks, you know, the things that they may already have access to that they’re not using that they don’t have to go and pay for. Because Clio so many other systems, they come out with something new. It’s an upgrade, it’s an upcharge.

Well, this one’s there, and it’s included. And I have to thank you for that, Ryan, because you advised me about that. I didn’t know it was on there.

CLIO does a lot of things that I don’t know what it does. I use it, like I said, primarily for billing. I’m not using all of its features to their fullest capability, for sure, but that’s something that you were able to help me with, so I appreciate that.

Yeah, absolutely. I use Clio for my own practice. And even though I’m not an attorney, I’m a legal technology specialist that helps attorneys.

But I decided to use CLIO for my own practice. And since being in day in, day out, not just taking certification class, helping other people, but actually isn’t it for my work, I’ve discovered little things here and there, and sometimes it’s the little things that make the big difference. Another one that we’ve talked about a little bit, but we haven’t, I feel like really gotten the full use out of.

But we will. Is the task management in Clio and how the task in Clio grows, groups your time where if you, if you create a task and then you go to that task and you add your time to that task, it’s like groups your time in that task. It doesn’t change how it shows up on the bill, but it does change how you can view it in Clio.

So if you want to see how much time you spent on a particular research or document or what have you, one particular task where it’s broken up over a couple of days, you have it all grouped, it’s all told right there. It makes it very easy. Yeah, absolutely.

And it’s also helpful for me because you can attach reminders to it. Of course I tend to get a little bit behind and I have to practice the 4DS almost every single day. Which if, if you’re not familiar, the 4Ds are, let’s see, the last one’s due and that one’s awesome.

But you start with what can I delete? You got your list of items. What do I just not need to do? I’m never going to do it doesn’t matter if I wrote it down, it could have been cool, but ultimately I’m never going to have the time. It’s never going to make impact.

If I, I’m just going to delete it, it’s not on the list anymore. Then there’s defer. What do I just not have to do today? Because I’ve only got so much time and I’ll get to it maybe eventually.

And then what can I delegate? What can I hand off to someone else? And then the last D is what you’re left with, what am I doing? I have to practice that every day because the deadlines, they don’t always like dictate what I’m actually doing today. Right. You know, exactly.

Sometimes that is other people playing Tetris on my calendar. Calendar have to be flexible. Another technology I was hoping we could talk about is logical.

Sure. You introduced me to this one too. And this is something that even as a young lawyer I resisted using any kind of discovery management tool like logical because I learned how to deal with documents by printing them out, touching them, you know, highlighting them, putting flags on them, putting them into piles, produce privileged, non responsive, whatever.

It was like all those things then categorizing them by subject matter related to the litigation, different witnesses, those kinds of things by literal post it notes. And so, you know, then I was at Big Law, we were forced to use different document management systems and I realized, okay, they have some real, you know, capabilities and create some real efficiencies. And then, you know, I hadn’t used, used a real Doc management tool for a number of years until this past year when you introduced me
to Logical.

And that’s pretty amazing. Yeah, it’s, it’s worth the bang for the buck for sure. And for your clients, it’s an easy sell.

It’s a cost I pass on to my clients, but it’s an easy sell for the fee that you pay for Logical because like you said, instead of me going back to those piles and then creating subpiles or, you know, whatever you, you, you go when you run the searches or like you said, you can save the searches. You’ve done this for me. And so it’s a great way to electronically manage and now older, more mature page and with technology making advances too, I feel more confident when I do a search, I’ve got things
or when I put a tag on something that’s really going to produce all those documents that I tagged as, you know, hot docs or whatever.

Yeah. So we’ve used Logical a couple of times now. What’s your favorite, favorite part about it? I love tagging because again, oh, I love it.

I could create a hundred tags, which sometimes doesn’t make sense, but also in my brain, sometimes it does. Because if I’m going to take a dozen depositions in a case, I have my, you know, documents with each of my 12 people’s names on them. Right.

Because I want to tag them so I can pull them quickly for that particular witness’s deposition and then the subject areas or the claims or defenses, whatever it is I’m doing. So anything legal related and then, you know, just you can sort them and, you know, put the person’s name and the subject or this person’s name in the defense and things like that that just make it a lot easier than, you know, emails. If you have emails.

It’s a great way to deal with your emails instead of, you know, printing them out on paper and reading them backwards like we used to back in the day. Yeah. I love how when it’s analyzing the data, it applies so many auto tags.

So of course you can create your own tags, you can manually apply those tags as you’re going through review. You can be doing your redactions at the same time. Yes.

But Those auto tags really help you drill down where you may have a couple thousand records pages, but those auto tags can help you focus. Down to now you’re only looking at like a hundred, right? You know, instead of having to go through all couple of thousand and tagging them to then look at the tag that has your hundred. Seems like that’s a pretty big efficiency gain.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And then the productions coming out looks pretty good too. Right.

And then you also have a very good easy log of what you produced as opposed to. I mean we used to literally either initially we printed and then we saved them on CDs and then thumb drives. But you know, documents produced to opposing counsel pursuant in response to the first request to produce and the date they were produced.

And so then you would have that in your file and like that’s how you knew that that was what was produced that day. And now it’s like written on the C, right? Yeah. And then it’s like, well, where’s the cd? So it’s nice having it all in logical.

That nice little log in there and the history of production. Where the heck did this thing come from? Oh, this is where it came from. It was Ryan imported on this date because we got documents from this party on this date in response to this request.

It’s also pretty, it’s. I like it’s not that intimidating when you get into. I mean it can be a little bit intimidating, but if you’ve seen Ediscovery software before, it’s.

It’s not that intimidating. And even having been in everything from Concordance to Summation, sometimes jumping into other systems, it’s just I’m like immediately like, oh my God, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.

It’s. Why are they making it overly complicated? But with logical, I just feel like it’s just, it’s like riding a bike. It’s so easy.

It’s got that. I don’t know what they call it, the carousel I think. But like it’s just, just, it’s very user friendly and you know, I’m not technologically stupid, but I’m not, you know, I’m not you either.

So I need something that makes sense to me. Yeah. And that was my, one of my things with, with Concordance back in the day.

I mean this is 20 years ago now I’m talking about. So I don’t know what it looks like today or if it even exists today, but when I was at Big Law, you would go through and do these tags and then it was, you know, it’s just kind of like you’re almost like code. And then you’d have to get a paralegal to actually process.

Like if you wanted those tags pulled, like I couldn’t do it. A paralegal had to do it. And then it was always this.

Did they really do it right? Are they, you know, did they pull everything I asked them to pull? Is this really every. Did their printer have enough paper? Did the print job that I got, does it have everything? There’s this level of uncertainty. This is all very easy and I can see what’s going on there.

You know, definitely have a comfort level with using it. And then like how it was like different softwares, I just like using, used like one software to do the tags and then to view the documents, you would use a different software and then to view like the images, it would be like a different. So it was just.

Yeah, and then those integrations could break down or you’re using the wrong browser and. Yeah, right. It’s a lot easier now.

It’s much easier. Well, I again could talk about just technology the whole time because I am a big technology nerd, as you well know. But I do want to talk about a couple of other things before I jump to another topic though.

If you were speaking with a new solo attorney, someone that has just finished law school and they are going to start their own new solo practice instead of going the in house or big firm route, what advice would you give them? When it comes to tech like this, I would say talk to as many other solo attorneys as you can. And by that I don’t mean your classmates that are graduating with you and don’t know anything more about the actual everyday practice. But people have been doing it for a while.

Talk to them, see what works, what doesn’t work, what they wish they knew when they started. But use technology. Don’t be afraid to do it and don’t.

I mean, I told you this, I think the first call that we had, I don’t need the best technology that’s out there. My practice and the size of my firm doesn’t justify that. But you also don’t want, you know, the three legged dog technology either.

You know, you don’t want the, the generic thing that barely gets the, oh, it’s cheap but it kind of does things right. But you have to take 17 steps to actually get it output in a manner that you can use it in. Don’t do that.

There’s, there’s always A middle ground for, for things is what I’ve found. But really just talking to other attorn and IT people and get an IT person, my goodness, get somebody who you have, you know, a relationship with, you know, get them engaged. Because you just never know when something is going to go wrong with your technology.

Right. And it can shut down your practice. And you know, I say for a day and that is panicky, but I mean, if you can’t get it fixed yourself, you’re not going to go to Geek Squad or something like that and get them to get.

Deal with it in a prompt manner. If your system is down and you don’t know what deadlines you can’t file things, you have a filing deadline. You need to have somebody, you know, at your fingertips to be able to help you with that stuff.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I’m passionate about serving that role and I’ve got a lot of colleagues that do the same work and we all support each other. In the Sun Leaders group, we’d like to call it cooperation.

I think that was one Eric came up with. So shout out to Eric Nutting for being clever. Paige, I’m curious.

Why do you choose to rent your office instead of buying an office space? I own my house and that’s all the home maintenance I want to be dealing with. Yeah. I just don’t want to take on the obligation of financial and otherwise of maintaining, you know, dealing with any problems.

Dealing with utilities, that’s another, that’s obviously another office. This non billable task of me doing my utility bills, making sure that they’re, they’ve come in, things like that. Yeah.

I also always want to be open about whether I really need a full time office or, you know, where that office needs to be located for that matter. I mean, you know, as lawyers, sometimes if you get a big case in another part of the state and you’re never going to be in the Tampa Bay area for the next nine months or a year, I’m gonna, I’m gonna rent space to keep my furniture in. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to, you know, wedded to a, you know, whether it’s a, an office condo or an actual
house.

But you know, in South Tampa, where my office is, there’s a lot of old houses down there and I live in an old house. I don’t need an old house. That’s always going to have something coming up that’s like a money pit.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. That’s. Thank you for that answer.

Because you pointed a couple of things out that I just hadn’t thought about before. And I’ve talked to other people about this before, but I just hadn’t considered the time commitment that would just, again, eat into that share of admin time that you’re not spending actually, you know, practicing law. And then I hadn’t thought enough about the needs of different areas.

Different practice areas. Right. Where.

Yeah, like you said, you might get a case, you’re on the other side of the state, but family law maybe has more of a reason to have, like that brick and mortar location. I have very few clients coming into my office, actually. I mean, they do sometimes, but because of the nature of my work, I’ve always said I like to go to their office because they have things I need, and if I ask them to bring it to my office, they’re probably not going to bring all of those things.

And so when I go to their office and I’m like, okay, someone needs to go. I’m not leaving until I have that box of documents that we have to produce that I need to, you know, prosecute or defend this case. You know, I’m in their space where their stuff is.

And that makes more sense in most instances for. For corporate clients, because they’re in their office. That’s where their stuff is.

They’re not real excited to lug bankers boxes into mine. So. Yeah, no, that makes complete sense.

I hardly believe this, but we’re already starting to run out of time, Paige. We’re just having so much fun. Yeah.

It’s flying by. It’s flying by. Paige, before we run out of time, is there anything coming up that you’re excited about? Well, I’m doing a thing, Ryan.

Yeah, just a little thing. A little thing started in January. Running for president of the Florida Bar.

Yeah. Vote for Paige. So that’s consuming some of my time, too.

That has to factor into the business side of the law practice and the practicing law. Now I have a third component, which is traveling this lovely large state and speaking to lawyers all around and trying to find out what the bar can do better for them and for them to learn what they can about me. What are most folks saying that you think you’ll take into this new role and.

And have an impact? So by far. And you’ll enjoy this. The number one thing that people are concerned about is AI.

It’s the number one thing that people are talking about, and people’s viewpoints on that are all over the board. Some of them think it’s great. It’s you know, going to be a tremendous help to the legal industry.

And in our practice, younger lawyers are worried about getting phased out because of it. A lot of people completely distrust it, don’t want to know anything about it. I think those people are, you know, putting their head in the sand and not really recognizing that, you know, it’s here to stay.

It’s, you know, it’s the Google of 25 years ago, I think. So that’s what folks talk about a lot when you’re talking to attorneys across the state about running for bar president. They want to talk about AI.

They want to talk about what the bar is going to do with AI. Oh, wow. Wow.

Well, what. When you are Florida bar president a year from now, like, what focus would you bring into AI, you know, in that. In that role? Because I’m just used to.

It’s always like it’s a committee. Right. Or a board.

It’s a group that comes up with, collaborates and comes up with guidelines. That’s right. And the bar has an AI committee that has been in place now for a year and a half, I believe 18 months, maybe 24 months.

So if I’m president, I wouldn’t be president until June of 2027. Oh, wow. So I don’t know what we’ll be talking about in terms of AI in June of 2027.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll have all the world’s problems with AI solved by then. But it’s too hard to predict at this point in terms of AI what we will be talking about. I feel like we’re doing a pretty good job of keeping up with it, though.

Right? I agree. I know we have. We still want to dive offer that Revill is doing where they have their Generative AI product that they’re making free for everybody through the end of the year because of their mission.

And I really want to dive into that and see how we might get some efficiency. It’s the same company that owns logical. They own iPro, some of the other names in ediscovery.

You may be familiar with Listener, but we’ve been playing with a lot of really neat tools like clear, brief. Right. You know, so.

Oh, boy. Well, I’m excited to help contribute to your preparation for 2027. Thank you.

Playing with some AI tools and looking at some of the considerations. I mean, there’s so many. One of the things I do in my spare time is hdi.

I’m a president of a local chapter of HDI, which has to do with service management in the support of it. And last year we had an attorney on talking to us about AI and privacy considerations and some of the things that we have to take into consideration when it comes to like call handling and AI listening in on phone calls. And my God, I came away from that like with such respect for just how complicated it is.

Right. And this attorney was in particular talking about how in Illinois there’s a law that’s very different from a law in any other state. State where if you have AI listening in on a phone call, then it can be eavesdropping.

And the way that in Illinois people are supposed to give permission for this is like in actual writing, like in a handwritten, like wet signature. You can’t just be like, this call is being recorded and monitored by AI for quality and training purposes. No, doesn’t cut it.

There’s there because of the compliance it requires different things. And that’s gotten real messy for some folks. Yeah, I guess so I’ve been wondering about that from a Florida perspective because, you know, Florida is a two party recording consent state and I have clients all the time now that they have AI taking notes on calls.

And it makes me nervous because I don’t know how they’re storing that. That’s attorney client privileged information. Some of it’s work product information and you know, it’s theirs to wave, I guess.

But it makes me nervous, nervous participating in that without raising the issue with them so that they at least know that it’s out there and they’re. Where are you saving this in a secure location? Because you can just save that like, you know, like it’s your Social Security number or like it’s any other communication you would have from me, not just, oh, we have that on our OneDrive and our whole team gets to look at that if they want to. Yeah, you know, so it does.

It’s something that’s. Yeah. You know, I don’t think, I don’t think Florida has addressed it yet in terms of AI listening in and taking notes.

But it’s the same as a recording to me making an audio recording. Have you ever seen AI on these Same kind of matters come up in like stipulations with the other side when it comes to, you know, like litigation, discovery, as far as, like don’t use AI? No, I haven’t had any opposing counsel address that yet. You know, various judges have entered all kinds of orders in different places saying, you know, if you use AI, you have to disclose to the court that you’ve used AI.

If you’ve used AI. AI. You certify that you’ve checked all of AI’s work to make sure that this wasn’t just something that was written by AI and the case law doesn’t exist and the cases actually say what AI can tons that they say it is that, you know, those kinds of things.

I’ve not had opposing counsel in anything and I’ve not raised it in anything either. Because at the end of the day, you know, what they’re doing or not doing is not my problem. Right.

It’s, you know, unless and until it is. And it’s something we have to take to the court, unfortunately. Right, right.

That makes sense. Like, is it really contributing to the goal? Right. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Thank you for being so generous with your time today. And I am so excited about this election.

Thank you. I’m so disappointed now knowing that you’re not going to be able to take over until 2027. So it’s a long road.

It’s a long road. How can listeners find you? My law firm website is greenleelawtampa.com and my campaign site is Vote for Paige. Paige with an I V O T E F O R P A I. You can also follow me on Social Media Age for President FL on both Facebook and Instagram.

And the election will take place in March of 2026. So it’s a ways away. Not even this year.

Oh my gosh, you’re working so hard. But I would love to hear from anybody out there who has any interest or thoughts or questions for me. Definitely reach out because Paige is working really hard to get in front of you and all of us that believe in her.

Know that she’s going to make a big impact in in this line of work and for Florida. If you want to talk to a tech geek like me, you can find me on my website, CIO Legal. I also have past podcast episodes posted there.

You can find me on LinkedIn. Ryan Bankston B A N K S T O N sunleaders is a co hosted podcast. There are other hosts of this podcast that talk about different topics.

Entrepreneurship Community, St. Petersburg Centric. You can find other episodes on sunleaderspodcast.com Our group is sunleaders.org we do some community outreach and collaborating to build the community here in St. Pete.

We also do some business networking workshops on leadership. Come check us out. We meet twice a month, couple Fridays a month.

I can’t remember which ones but you can go on the website where we have a calendar and find out. And just about anybody’s welcome. We’ll let you know.

If you’re not come find us. Have a good time, and I hope you have a great day. Sa.