[00:00:00] Speaker A: I've heard this saying, I've said it a few times.
They're not comparing it to the last lawyer they hired. They're comparing it to Uber Domino's with the app, the pizza tracker. Like, where's my damn pizza? I know where it's at. They're cooking it right now. So Sally's. Yeah, Sally's putting the toppings on right now. So you gotta think these people today are they're basing all this off of their other experiences.
Hey there, everyone. What's up? This is Kevin with the Managed partners podcast.
And I'm bringing to you today someone I met at Law De Gras. If you've not been to Law De Gras, this is a pitch for them. Bob Simon and his crew put on just a awesome event and I got to meet Matt and his company is Hona and really cool stuff that they're doing. Wanted him to come on and share. If you'll notice, with some of the episodes I have, there's so much technology out there changing the marketplace and advantages that attorneys should be taking advantage of to be more efficient.
And so like to have some of them like Kona, come on and share what they're doing and how you can use it, apply it to your firm or not. You know, it's your, your decision there. And so just trying to bring some value. And Matt's got some cool stuff to share today. And real quick, wanted to do a shout out to Answering Legal, a call service for law firms they specialize in. They are partnered up with us on the podcast here. They're great folks. We use them for our call answering service and they have just an awesome product. So check out answering
[email protected] array and you'll get a 400 minute free trial to check them out, no strings attached. So, Matt, welcome to the show, man.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Kevin. It's great to be here.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Cool. So Matt's actually you're in Salt Lake.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: City, Utah, just south of Salt Lake. We're headquartered out of Orem, Utah.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Orem, Utah. I love Orem, Utah. Never been there.
We're really cool. So we met at the conference.
They have some awesome hats, by the way. I'm a hat guy. I like hats.
And so I was walking by and I was like, damn, that's a freaking nice hat. This, this guy's half. And I sat there and talked with them and they told me all about their, their product and it's really cool. So I want to have Matt come on here and share his background. And. And more about. And how you can check that out. So, Matt, tell us more first about your journey and how you got into this, and we'll. Then we'll kind of talk about what services you guys offer.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool. So, once again, appreciate you having me on. Hona's been going about three and a half years now, which is cool. It's gone by really quickly. It's been a ton of fun. My co founder and I, we actually had a background in case management, and so we were working there for a couple years with a bigger case management company, and we just kept hearing a recurring theme about client communications and just like, kind of the gap between, you know, what a client needs and the expectations they have for the law firms they work with and then what is actually delivered by the. By the law firm. And it kept coming up as kind of a recurring theme. And so him and I, during our commute, started talking about it, and over time, it was like, okay, let's go do this. And so generally, that's kind of how we got going, and we've now just been obsessed with client experience and client communication ever since. And we're fully supporting only legal. So law firms are the only types of businesses we work with. And that's a really, I think, unique advantage that we have because we're able to just dive so deep with how law firms operate and what their clients are expecting out of the services they provide.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Awesome. A couple of things there that I'd like to add to. One, you know, you saw it firsthand. You saw the issues. You spun off and fixed that issue. So I love that you're not just coming out of thin air, hey, I'm going to make money because it's the legal industry. So you were in it, which is awesome. You have a deeper understanding. And then the other thing is similar to what I did, is we chose law specifically, stayed with it, and that's all we do. Because my whole company and my employees, my staff, need to understand how a law firm operates more and more every day. How do we get better at that? And this podcast obviously helps me do that too. So I love that that you stuck with that. I think it's easy for. I talked to a lot of other vendors at the conference that are doing all kinds of stuff for different kinds of companies. And so I think it's hard to stay niche and stay focused.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Totally. And I'll actually add an additional piece of the story that I totally missed out on. My co founder during all this while, we were already talking about it his wife and then fiance got in a car accident and hired a personal injury firm. And he was like constantly updating me with how the communication was going from the law firm. And it was kind of average. I think now knowing how law firms communicate, it was a pretty average experience. But to him and his wife, they were like, we're in the dark so frequently. We don't know what's going on. Haven't talked to him in a few weeks. When we do talk to them, it's not very informative. And so like all while we were thinking about it and knowing that there was you this underlying issue, it just happened to be that we had kind of first person experience with a personal injury firm. And that's what kind of was even more so the catalyst to jump ship and build something was the actual experience.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: That's awesome. I mean, I love it.
You had all those things working for it, which makes it even gives you more purpose there.
Huge problem with law firms across the board for the most part. I do know some that check the box, they do a freaking awesome job. There's not many though, because I have a lot of clients and we drive leads and after the lead, it's kind of like, you know, what happens from there. It's on them as far as communication, sales, all that stuff. But huge problem with firms. And you got to think about this. I've heard this saying, I've said it a few times.
You or your partner's wife, they're not comparing it to the last lawyer they hired. They're comparing it to Uber Domino's with the app, the pizza tracker. Like, where's my damn pizza? I know where it's at. They're cooking it right now.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: So yeah, John, put on the topping.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Yeah, Sally's putting the toppings on right now. So you gotta think these people today are. They're basing all this off of their other experiences.
And when you have something as traumatic as an accident or medical bills piling up, imagine these, the. You know how big that gets. Like, I just bought a real estate property, like a second rental property. And real estate's the same way you bought a house. You're waiting to hear back. They accepted the offer. Maybe. Where are we? When's the closing? And so I'm always 10 steps ahead of my real estate agent or my loan people, and I shouldn't be right.
I should be super clear. And that's just an example I just went through. But you know, I think the expectations have gone up, right? And especially if you've never hired a.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Law firm and you're dead on. Like I call it the consumerization of law firms. It's like of legal services. Like the consumer just expects so much out of businesses these days. And I think early on I almost was like vindictive about like how law firms are run and I'm like, oh, they just don't prioritize it. Like they just don't care about the client's experience. And that's not at all true. Like the general law firm really does care about the client's experience, but if they hired all the staff needed to manually do all the communication, it just wouldn't be that profitable of a business. It's kind of a catch 22 where it's like, you know, certainly in flat fee and contingency based law firms, they're not making extra money for having all those phone calls. Yeah, they are long term. I always emphasize that like long term you will make more money if you have a really good client experience. But kind of the short term, bottom line, it's like, no, no, you're spending more time than you need to. If you were to call every client every single day and give them an update, that's not the ideal client experience. But it's also just not going to happen. It's not reasonable. And there are times like setting up for litigation and when you're in like certain phases of the case, different communication cadences are necessary. But the general firm like does care about their client's experience. They just don't necessarily have the resources to meet the expectations of their.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I totally agree with you. I think, you know, backing up and I was actually, I just started the book Dale Carnegie, how to Win and influence People or whatever. But it's the digital version and so the book talks about, I just started it by the way back in the day, like 90s 80s or like companies told us what we were going to, what we wanted and what we were going to purchase.
It's totally flipped the other way now. It's the consumer is completely in control and what they think they're going to tell everyone about it and they have a platform to do it and they're going to get their feedback. So we have to, you know, we have to make sure that the consumer is taken care of and the client is taken care of and that we're looking at how they want to receive stuff, what their expectations are. So totally agree with you 100%. And it's a big problem I think out there for most firms.
I Mean, think about like, you know, I know, like lawyers back in the day, like no one meets with me, I'm locked off. Like, you know, just. It's almost like the opposite of a good experience. It's like, you know, put these walls up, don't tell the clients, don't, you know, we'll give them an update whenever we have one. You know, that kind of a mentality.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So yeah, and then they call in and they, they reach a receptionist or a gatekeeper, as a lot of people call it. And that gatekeeper's like, job is to protect the attorney's time. Cause they got so much work to do and they're so inundated with just legal work. Right. And hitting deadlines. But then they take a message and then hopefully the attorney calls back the next day or within the next few days when they buy, when they have the time. But like, it's just not the ideal experience. Like when people, we live in a world where when you want information, you're going to get it and you're going to get it quickly. But the average law firm definitely doesn't have it set up that way. When, like, the reality is when someone's calling in, when a client's calling into a law firm, it's probably the same 10 questions that are going to be asked. Like, it's not like they're, you know, earth shattering, it's a new question to them and information they don't know. But I mean, if you're an attorney listening to this, go ask your staff if they answer the same 10 questions every day, they're all going to laugh and say, yes, it's the same 10 questions. And you all know that as well. Like it's the same conversations over and over again. So like that's what kind of what we set out to build was a resource where the clients could know where their case is at. But beyond that, get a better understanding of, you know, why it's taking so long, what the next step is, why it's important in a personal injury situation. Why do I need to go to medical treatment? Well, it's super important if you miss, if there's gaps in medical treatment, one, the assumption is that you're not unwell, like you don't need to be going to medical appointments if you're not going to medical appointments. And so all this education is good for your firm, it's good for the client and just overall just kind of sets them up for success with their case.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah, Just, you know, why leave anything up to chance? Right. Or to question the client's going through buyer's remorse or all these anxieties of things like what's happening. I've never talked to a lawyer before, like what do I expect? So I want to kind of dive into the to Hona itself. So H O n a right.
Worcester.com Is it Hona.com it is, yeah. Good purchase. So you can go check out hona.com but tell me more about, you know, backing up a little bit like how Hoonah integrates in for a law firm and what it specifically is doing for you.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so with my co founder and I's background in case management that was like very early days. The thesis was if it doesn't integrate directly with their case management seamlessly, it's not going to have success, it's not going to get used and if it's not used then what's the point? And so from foundation we've built extremely tight integrations. And so that's where it all starts is we integrate deeply with case management. You name it, we probably integrate with them, especially all the main cloud based players. What happens is you can set up triggers essentially where it's like hey, if the phase or the stage of the case changes, automatically text the client with the update, hey, you're now in the treatment phase, check it out. And from there it actually pulls them into our web based app and we use a technology called Magic Links. Everyone's familiar with them. Essentially it's like a DocuSign. When you get a text message or an email with a link, that link authenticates that you are that person that was meant to sign this document. And so we use that same technology to reduce friction so that clients can easily get access and they don't have to remember a username, password, so on and so forth. And so they get pulled into this client portal of sorts that is essentially the pizza tracker for legal cases that allows them to see I'm here, this is the stage I'm at. Syncing once again with the integration with the case management system shows them where they're at, what's next in the process, Educational, embedded videos, frequently asked questions section, all that stuff's right there, right at their fingertips and it allows them to just get a better understanding, have that good experience and once again tying it back to that early thesis. It's so tightly integrated with your case management, it's just going to show where your case is actually at. So all that's necessary is the legal team doing their day to day in their Case management like they do every day. And our app takes care of all the redundant communication and gives this client this really, you know, positive consumer facing experience that they've grown to know and love with other businesses they interact with. But we allow it to be done at a very reasonable price for any size law firm.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: That's awesome. I love it. I like the magic links too because yeah, having a login or if your law firm wants its own app or you know, you have to log into one of these case management if they have an app. But love that if you're not familiar with the magic links. But yeah, I can just click on it. I don't have to go crap that I do. I have that in my one pass or did I write that down somewhere? So that's, that's super helpful. I think that's a problem, you know, getting reviews. Well, I gotta have a Google account, I gotta log into Google, I gotta leave a review and then people stop, you know. So I like that is. Does this have. So if I say I'm a small law firm and I'm like, oh this would be very helpful, I'm a solo. Does it something that, that they could use?
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I'll start with like how, how we've tried to take friction out of every step of hona and one of those is in the implementation. And so the average client goes live after three to four hours of zoom calls. Now that might sound like a lot, but that's two or three zoom calls right where we connect to your system, completely integrate with it. And usually the average client goes live in two to four weeks with using the software. And so a solo practitioner, if you can, if you can dedicate, you know, two to four hours to us over the course of three weeks, it'll be up and running. And the amount of time you're going to save within the first month will drastically be better than just that couple hours to implement. So I'll kind of start with that foundation that it doesn't take too much of a heavy lift to get it going. And part of that is because we have templates for every practice area you could imagine and even jurisdiction specifically. Like, you know, if you're a, if you're a workers compensation attorney in Georgia, we got a template that's for workers comp in Georgia because it works slightly different than maybe the California workers comp practice area. So we've invested really heavily in that because we think it's important to get things up and going. And so to your Point and question about a solo practitioner. Absolutely. It's not a ton of work. If you're using a cloud based case management software that we integrate with. It's going to be quite seamless to just keep doing your legal work and having this communication done kind of in the background.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: That's awesome. So I was going to be. One of my questions was I got to set this up, I got to add triggers, I got to add all the different communication and what I'm going to say. But you have a lot of templates, it sounds like, so I don't have to scratch. I can plug and play, make some adjustments if I want to.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Totally. And I think I mentioned it earlier, like a big piece of our application is embedded videos. So within our app you can embed videos of you or your legal team explaining it because like, you know, a big block of paragraphs explaining why, you know how the demand phase works or how a certain phase of an immigration case works. That's fine and dandy. But we have short attention spans. The consumer has a short attention span these days. You know, they spend two hours a day on TikTok and they just are scrolling along. If the video's not getting to the point quickly, they're going to move on to the next one. And so a big piece of it is video content that really makes for a great client experience. And so we do have like some really cool templated animated for like a few different practice areas that can be plug and play and we put your logo on it. But at the end of the day, like a lot of firms, we set them up with a template for say an immigration case and then they might record a few videos that they then embed in that kind of aid the client experience and, you know, help paint the client journey for those clients that are interacting with.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. Nvidia is huge. Not just, you know, so they can just watch it and hear you, but that, you know, that interaction, you know, watching a video, getting to know the team, getting to hear the attorney speak to them, the confidence that that raises and then the user experience, the client experience again, them leaving or ending as a referral source. Right. With a five star review, like all those things are going to help a lot.
And feeling. I send videos to class all the time, like, hey, I know you're probably busy and we can't meet today, so I sent you a video and I'll explain something in marketing or SEO or it's just such a better way to communicate and I love that. So how can someone like, if they record their own videos, put them on YouTube and then sync them up or can they load them right into the system?
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So whatever their hosting method is, we can and use that. So you just get the link from the YouTube video or the Vimeo or wherever it is that the video is hosted and then you just, you just put it into our system and it'll, it'll display to the client in the phase you want it to display in the faq. You want it to display it. It's fairly granular with where you put those videos and it's pretty cool. Kind of a side note, we, we want to, or I guess if you think about like Twitter, Instagram, all these really like social media platforms, their goal, and we all understand this because the algorithms are written this way, their goal is to keep people engaged for as long as possible and in their app for as many hours a day as possible because then they make ad revenue on your time and all that other stuff. We don't have ads obviously running on our app, but we track things for the same reason we track how long law firms clients stay within the app because we need to get a better understanding of like, you know, there's a direct correlation with how long they're in the app and the video content they watch with how educated they get about their case and their less likelihood to call in and ask for updates and ask additional questions. And so we track that pretty aggressively and like, I mean, obviously not as aggressively as these social media platforms, but like we want to know how many clients are reading FAQs. 60% is actually the answer to that one. 60% of people in there will read FAQs if there's a video link, if there's videos in somebody's HONA build out versus no videos in a HONA build out. Those clients will stay in two times as long if there's video content. And so we, you know, we're, we're a bit of geeks for data and we want people to feel educated and get an understanding of what's going on in their case. And so we've optimized our application not only to be frictionless to get in, but it's a place where they can feel comfortable and get to know your brand better and spend time understanding their case so that they're spending less time with your team and taking like those redundant manual conversations from your team. It's really a win, win situation and there's not a lot of those in life. But this is a win Win where the client's happier, you're meeting their expectations. Cause they're so used to this type of interactions with their business. And then also your staff's able to do more legal work and actually progress cases.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: I love it. I mean, it's a pretty cool platform. And I think again, I thought even as a solo, I mean, the bigger firms out there should do something like this for sure and have it. But if I was a solo man, my time's valuable, I'm running around, I'm doing a lot of things, wearing a lot of hats. This is not one that you probably have time to do. And it won't be that polished, I can tell you that. So even for my clients, we're not a high volume business. But having something like this to just fill in from client meetings, like just, here's where we're at, here's what this means.
Just on autopilot, man, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Here's something cool that speaks to what you're talking about with solo practitioners and just small firms in general. We have a client there in the south, and they've been with us almost since the beginning. It's been a couple years. And they've tripled their caseload in three years.
And they've added. So they were like a team of 10. They're only like a team of 20 now. So they've tripled their caseload and top line revenue essentially, but only doubled their team. And so I think a lot of people think, okay, as our cases grow, we need more bodies to throw at it. But I meet with firms, I'll just use a PI example. We have a client that has 800 active cases and two attorneys and then maybe like eight support staff.
That's like. Some people might be listening to that and think that is insane. Oh my gosh, they must be giving a terrible client experience. It's like, nope. They invest heavily in technology and their technology enables them to. They even get on the phone with every client once a month, which is crazy. But they're able to do that still because all the other stuff is so automated. They actually, their case managers actually do have the time to be proactive and give a good client experience. So there are firms out there doing crazy high volume with very few, few staff and still delivering and meeting client expectations. So that exists. It just takes the right technology stack to make it work.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: I would guess too that when they do have those client calls, they're shorter because they've been pretty educated. Like they know what's going on, they have less questions, probably a much quicker call.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. You're spot on with that. I talk to a lot of clients, so I use a lot of client experiences in my conversations about Hona. But one of our clients was like, I don't know if I get less calls. He's like, I don't have like the processes in place to know if I'm getting less calls now versus before. But what is happening on a. He's like, I know with a hundred percent certainty my calls are lasting way longer or way shorter. They're just not taking as much time because you're not answering 10 questions on a phone call. You're answering the one that maybe that wasn't quite clear, that they just wanted a little bit more expounded on. And so you're dead on. Like it's, it's greatly limiting the time on phone calls, whether that's in because way less clients are calling in or because the clients that are coming in calling in don't need to ask as many questions.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, so I mean, I've seen this in my business. We've, we've taken a lot of time to build out a new like client advocacy program and coaching and like teaching.
And so when we have client calls, they used to be like an hour long and the client would want to still go on. And all these people are involved. I mean, I got like 6, 7 staff on a call, like going over all this.
Over the last year or so, we've changed that to be like, any questions? Nope. Good. I'm good. See ya. You know, everything's good. So just putting that in the place up front versus like, well, I hope they don't have any questions. We gotta answer all these questions, like, get in front of it, like, give them the information they need. Sounds like, who knows, a really good job to allow you to do that. And in video format, I mean, you're sitting there verbally talking to them and sharing, you know, this information too. So again, that relationship, I think strengthens through video. Just a text or an email isn't going to do it. So I love it totally.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: And typically, like the attorney, the attorney is not the one texting or on the phone with them. Like that doesn't happen that often. But what an attorney can do is take a day to film, you know, 20 videos and then scatter them throughout the client's experience with their firm. And that's building the brand that's allowing them to feel like, okay, yeah, that is my attorney. He's the one that at the end of the day is running all of this and signing off on my case and doing things. He has this team to support him or her. But at the end of the day it feels a lot more personal and builds the brand. Like law firms brands are typically their name and so people want to work with that person who's named on the firm. And so the video content is a great way to do.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: No, I agree. I think, you know, they might have met that attorney for a minute or two. Like, hey, I'm your attorney. It's like the doctor walking in, you know, and then the. You never see him again. But if you had a video from that Dodger or from that attorney consistently, you know, you know, this, this is my lawyer. Like, this is, this is the person that's helping me. And so I think it just continues that versus like I've been passed off to someone else.
Yeah, accomplishes a lot of good things. So I love it. I can't use it, but my clients can. But so Hona.com what's the, you know, best way for people to, like, check you out? And I want to know how people can, you know, connect with you personally too if they have any questions and want to have an email.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Maybe we've all grasped that I'm a bit of a geek and I just like talking about law firm technology. So I'm always happy to field an email. If you want to email me directly, it's just matt mat hona.com but as far as like seeing a demo and looking deeper into the Hona platform right from our website, requesting a demo is the best way to do that. And that'll get you set up with someone from our team to check out a demo, understand how it integrates with your case management, how it would work with your processes, and then if you ever just want to like, pick my brain, like, if you're like, Matt, I know like, I get to hang out with a lot of tech people and I've probably seen majority of the technology on the market. There's more growing every, all the time. But I've like, I love seeing it all. So if you ever need a strong opinion about a decision you're making around technology in your firm, I'm also always here to bounce ideas and try to help out in that regard.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: No, I appreciate that and that's me too as I meet people like yourself and hopefully people listen and find value to say, hey, this is a new platform, this is a new technology. This is how you can leverage AI. Here's pros and cons do and don'ts. So it's just great to have people like you on here to kind of share what you're doing and you know. Well, I strongly believe helping attorneys for sure.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And the fact of the matter is we're odd, Kevin. Like not a lot of people talk to hundreds and thousands of law firms a year about what they do to grow their business and how they communicate with their clients and how they operationally function. And so I've got a very large sample size of firms that I get to talk to and so do you, where you can get an understanding of how they run their business. And as much as I'm not an expert, probably, and a lot of things I definitely am an expert in, like client communication and how the best firms and the fastest growing firms and firms that are making the most profits are communicating with their clients. And we've built the technology to support firms that are trying to stand out from the crowd and really give their clients the best experience possible.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, again, I think I've heard this a few times. Like the, the most, the largest number of bar complaints are like communication and not understanding what's going on or I've heard back. Yeah, it's a huge, it's a huge problem out there. So you have a lot more people to help.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: I don't think I'm legally allowed to market HONA as bar complaint insurance, but it kind of is because you know at the very, at the very baseline, you're going to be communicating with them at a certain cadence, whatever that is. But a real fact I know is that 42%, we did a sample size of 1,000 one star reviews for law firms and 42% of them directly mention poor communication in their review.
So if you want to cut 42% of your one star reviews, just do better at communicating and meet their expectations. It's not even a better. They're not, they're comparing you to what they're used to with other businesses. They're not comparing you to your competitor down the road because they don't know what that experience would be like. So just having a good baseline cadence of communication and structure for your communication goes a very long way for your, for your clients.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: I love that, love the stat. Appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. So everyone take it serious. Communication is a big problem. You might be running around trying to fix other things, but to me this is if you, you paid for marketing, you paid for advertising, you got the lead, you sign them up, you're not done yet. You had to deliver and make that all that time and money and energy. They have to refer you and they have to give you a five star review. That's your goal. So, yeah, big part of it. So, Matt, I appreciate you sharing what you guys are up to and what you're doing. I love it. I love hearing all this stuff that's out there. And then I've mentioned this in a few episodes recently and it might have been at the conference, but if you look in, you know, it states now that you law firms need to be using technology. They need to be leveraging technology.
Like, you know, ethically, like, need to be, you know, making your firm more efficient and helping more clients.
These are things we got to look at. You can't just run away from it.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. Totally agree. I echo that sentiment for sure.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: So, all right, everyone out there, thank you for listening and tuning in. Hope you're always working to improve your firm. Hope this podcast helps you in some way to do that. And Matt, thank you so much for sharing today. So everybody go check out Hona and we will see you on the next episode.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Thank you, everyone.
Bye.
