January 27, 2025 • 28 mins
Robert Scott is the Co-Founder of Monjur.
As a co-founder of Monjur, a cloud-based, AI powered legal solution providing contracts-as-service solutions for the IT industry, Robert leverages his expertise in technology and law to create innovative and efficient solutions for clients. As a managing partner of Scott & Scott, LLP, a leading law and technology services firm, he has over 27 years of experience in handling complex and high-stakes cases involving software disputes, brand protection, IT transactions, and federal court litigation.
Monjur is a cutting-edge platform that automates the drafting, review, and management of legal contracts, saving time and money for IT professionals and businesses.
Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjscott/
Visit Monjur: https://monjur.com/
On This Episode, We Discuss…
As a co-founder of Monjur, a cloud-based, AI powered legal solution providing contracts-as-service solutions for the IT industry, Robert leverages his expertise in technology and law to create innovative and efficient solutions for clients. As a managing partner of Scott & Scott, LLP, a leading law and technology services firm, he has over 27 years of experience in handling complex and high-stakes cases involving software disputes, brand protection, IT transactions, and federal court litigation.
Monjur is a cutting-edge platform that automates the drafting, review, and management of legal contracts, saving time and money for IT professionals and businesses.
Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertjscott/
Visit Monjur: https://monjur.com/
On This Episode, We Discuss…
- The Shift from Traditional Legal Service Models to Subscription-based Solutions
- AI-powered Contracts-as-a-Service
- How Intellectual Property Can be Monetized
- The importance of Client Development
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's different now is we used to send our deliverables
through an email with a word document. Today our deliverables
live on smart hyperlinks that provide one directional integration into
our clients CRM tools and quoting tools, so that we're
helping them collapse the sales and contracting steps into one
(00:22):
online process. Then we're delivering what is much more than
just a word document.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market, the go to podcasts for learning from the
experts in the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me the co founder of manjer
Rob Scott. Rob, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
So could you start off with a little history on
how you came to be one of the co founders
of manar.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Sure So, I started a boutique technology law firm in
nineteen ninety nine and I started representing IT managed services
firms and working in the software field at that time.
By twenty twenty two, I had hundreds of IT services
(01:20):
firms that had relied on our firm for council in
connection with developing their customer contracts for the service engagements
that they entered into, and so I envisioned a platform
where I would be able to dynamically push updates to
(01:41):
agreements that I had recommended to clients originally, and thus
the vision for the Mandra platform was launched. We went
live in March of twenty twenty two and we're now
approaching five hundred clients on the platform, which is a
(02:03):
cloud based contracts as a service offering where for a
subscription fee, a small business owner can sign up and
have their customer contracts not only developed initially, but proactively
managed through the cloud.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Now, was this an idea that was before its time
and it wasn't until recent technology that you were able
to do it exactly how you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah, I think that's a safe way to think about it.
I think that there was a time where we were
starting to recommend to clients that digital contracting and contracting
online was an option, and I think it wasn't that
far of elite to go from online contracting where maybe
(02:52):
a client has their agreements on their website to a
model like what Mondra does, which is we host those
agreements for our clients in the cloud, and because we're
hosting them, we're able to manage the updates and make
sure that they're the integrity of the agreements is maintained
and they're not edited by sales teams or something like that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So what is the biggest problem that Mondor solves.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, First and foremost, the underlying intellectual property of the
monitor platform are the agreements that we developed for clients
over five hundred engagements in two decades. Those are service
agreements that reflect the philosophy of IT services and SAZ
(03:39):
and AI. You know, we have a number of different libraries,
but all of them reflect our philosophy on what is
market when it comes to these types of solutions, and
so that's the underlying you know IP that has not
changed that much. What's different now is we used to
send our deliverables through an email with a word document.
(04:04):
Today our deliverables live on smart hyperlinks that provide one
directional integration into our clients CRM tools and quoting tools.
So they were helping them collapse the sales and contracting
steps into one online process. Then we're delivering what is
much more than just a word document we're developed. We're
(04:26):
delivering to them a platform that has things in it
like browser wrap that says that the provider can update
the terms and conditions and give the customer notice. So
now we're able to put all of the clients on
a single template, which then gets maintained over time, reduces risk,
(04:47):
makes you m and a ready you know, freely assignable
for example. But they're constantly evolving in particularly in the
IT field. We've seen the regulatory explosion at the international,
federal and state levels in the United States or privacy regulations,
and we're seeing three to five states, for example, passing
(05:10):
their own versions of consumer protection laws around privacy, and
every time one of those laws come out, our team
analyzes them and if appropriate, we'll push a data processing
terms update to all of our subscribers as those new
laws come out. So the need for dynamic updates both
(05:30):
to keep up with industry trends, to continuously improve the
legal protections and the documents, as well as to stay
current with the emerging landscape of new regulations or really
the things that as a service model would bring to
the table. Over the traditional deliverable of just say a word.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Document does this make the entire process more efficient, and
are we limiting people that we didn't need before Because
this software is doing so.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Much well, I think that there's no question that we're
able to handle a lot more clients with the same
amount of resources. And when you think about transitioning a
traditional legal service into a SAS business, which is what
we've done, it requires you to rethink a number of things,
(06:21):
one of which is who's touching this, why? How many
times right? And so you start to really ring out
a lot of the efficiencies. And what we have is
a templated based approach where we have one tier that
the subscribers are just subscribing to get our best practice
(06:41):
as templates, and we have another tier where we actually
will customize for each individual client. And so we've created
this lower level of service primarily for the reason that
you've offered what you've suggested, which is we want to
offer the most value for the lowest cost. And the
way to do that is you know, figure out where
(07:04):
in your delivery your delivering value, and which components of
that are relatively scalable, say based on documents or libraries
or methodologies, and which ones require legal You know professionals.
You know, legal time, partner time, associate time is another
(07:25):
way to think about it. And and so with this platform,
we have a hugely scalable way because we manage one
template that can then be pushed to hundreds of clients.
I mean, you know, automatically, with no intervention by the
client whatsoever. And so when you have that kind of scalability,
(07:47):
now you can offer the opportunity to bring the prices
down relatively and drive the volumes up. So, for example,
before I made the transition to a subscription based approach,
I was doing about four of these engagements a month.
I was doing about thirteen thousand roughly per engagement and
(08:08):
doing about fifty three thousand a month. You know, fast
forward to today, we now are approaching five hundred subscribers.
We're doing four times as much as we ever did
on the traditional model, and everybody signed up to three
year recurring revenue contracts. And there's no billing, there's no
(08:30):
hourly billing. Everything is managed through software. All the subscriptions
are no back office overhead at all. And so if
you think about a traditional sas offering, and you think
about all of the IP that's locked up with in
law firms that aren't even protecting it. They give it
(08:53):
away to get hourly fees. If you can reimagine your
law firm as a SAS platform is what we did,
then it opens a lot of opportunities for you to
really grow at a rate that law firms traditionally would
struggle to grow at.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So who is this ideal for? Is there a specific
practice area or a specific size firm that that this
is really an ideal fit.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I would say that I think the monitor platform will
help law firms that found themselves in a similar position
to where we were. They've become known for in a
particular niche. They have hundreds of clients that are legacy
clients for whom they offered the services in a traditional way.
(09:41):
Now they move to a SAS based approach, they offer
it first to all those legacy clients. As far as
firm sizes, I think you're going to need to be
in a firm that's fairly innovative because you are going
to give up profits and billing credits to use you know,
(10:01):
traditional legal you know terms as you transition. You know,
we went from making fifty thousand a month in April
of twenty twenty two and we made three hundred and
ninety nine dollars in March of twenty twenty two, So
there is a big transition and you as a law
(10:22):
firm would need to have supportive partners. So from that perspective,
I think smaller firms probably would would benefit from it
the most. But anytime you have a one to many
relationship of document templates, think M and A, think trusts
(10:43):
and the states, any contracting practice that result what's based
on templates or best practices, that Manitra platform would be
purpose built for those types of services. We offer that
we use Monitra platform for the expertise that we have
as a law firm, which is in tech law. So
(11:05):
our clients are it managed service providers typically with revenues
of one million to twenty five million, and software as
a service firms typically with five hundred thousand to five
million in annual recurring revenue.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So it sounds like there's two people that need to
buy into the software. You've got the person who's using it,
and then there's going to be the partners or the owners.
So how would you talk to the partner who's more
on the accounting side, and then how would you talk
about the efficiencies and how is it going to make
more sense to the person who's going to be using it.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah. So, so the way we envision addressing the first
concern is there is no cost to you. This is
a revenue share model. If we determine that your practice
is a good fit for the Monitor platform, we'll partner
with you and we'll come up with a split that
costs you nothing. So that's how we answer the question.
(12:05):
For the business guy, for the business development guy, we're
going to explain to them how when you get very
focused on offering a very specific solution, and you start
by offering it to your existing clients by calling them
and inviting them to a dema or a consultation. First
(12:26):
of all, a high percentage of your former clients will
say yes. Many of them will be receptive to a
new model that is more proactive, offers better services. It's predictable.
The clients love these models, and that's why every business
is really thinking hard about recurring revenue. And what Monitor
(12:49):
has proven is that legal services are as amenable to
recurring revenue models as streaming services on TV. So and
if that's true, then what is the opportunity for lawyers.
You know, to that same lawyer that's concerned about money,
I would say, how much intellectual property do you have
(13:11):
in your firm in terms of your forms, documents and
templates that is being unmonetized at the present time. How
much of it's unprotected from an IP perspective, And let's
start with an audit of what IP you have, what
value it has, and how we can deliver it through
(13:32):
a platform like Monitor to drastically change the economic position
of your firm, not only now but into the future.
Because the difference between a practice that's based on licensed
templates with services bundled and a law practice that's traditional
(13:54):
is a huge difference because you can sell to a
non lawyer that licensing business. So you got a lot
of IP that's in your current templates. If you are
a practice that has a deep and rich history of
serving clients and document intensive practices, and you want to
(14:15):
think about revolutionizing that service delivery for the next generations,
I'm gen X gen. The millennials are already, you know,
starting to take over and making buying decisions. And I
can tell you because I have two of them that
I raised, the gen Z kids, are not going to
(14:38):
be thinking about traditional law firm services where you go
in to a stuffy building with library books and you
sit down and you meet with a lawyer in their office,
and you know that's not how business is going to
get done, even for lawyers, even in very traditional practices.
(14:58):
So I think that there's a number of areas you
mentioned the associate, the worker bee, you know, the one
that's got to manage all the projects. Well. Monitor is
a project management platform. It allows you to visualize every
one of your engagements, to color code them to make
(15:19):
sure they're on track, to do full project management around
each one all the way down to the task level.
And the ability to have reporting against all of the
activity that you're responsible for is going to help you
give better customer service, be more proactive, less reactive, and
really deliver a solution and satisfaction. You know, lawyers as
(15:47):
a group have very high customer dissatisfaction rates. You know,
we don't as a group score extremely well on customer
satisfaction in art because we're so far behind the times.
And solutions like Monitor will allow traditional legal services to
(16:10):
transition to a SaaS based model based on recurring revenue
to capture what is now dormant intellectual property value within
the firm and develop a practice based on licensing revenue
that's easy to manage with no billing to worry about,
where your customers pay every month, and as long as
(16:32):
you're doing a good job on delivering the services, you
could have an existing base of subscribers and that you
can grow pretty dramatically on a monthly basis. And the
net economic impact of the practice that looks like that
is considerably more value than valuable than a traditional practice
without those components.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
What does that transition process look like and how involved
are you in that? Is it your team training them
or are their online tools.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Use it's a combination of both. We have an academy,
a Mandra Academy, which is an online resource that's continuing
to develop. But yes, we as I mentioned to you,
the vision for the Mondra platform is lawyers working together.
So we would look at this as co counseling with
other lawyers that want to access the platform. It's not
(17:22):
a it's not a here you go, you know, do
it yourself type of thing. And again, Mondra is more
than just a platform, it's also a business process, a
business model and it's a paradigm shift for lawyers. You know,
traditional hourly billing and fixed fee billing giving way to
(17:43):
long term recurrent revenue contracts using language that's similar to
what you'd see in the SAS or subscription based model.
And the biggest challenge is related to cash flow. So
think about my story where I was charging roughly thirteen
thousand upfront, and today my subscribers are paying anywhere from
(18:06):
one ninety nine to six ninety nine a month, and
so you got to sell a lot of those to
catch up to four thirteen thousands every month. But you
get to a point where your existing revenue is surpassed,
and then you're sort of in a really good spot.
(18:27):
And then as that continues to grow, you really can
see some transformative type numbers. But the transition is difficult
at first, particularly if you're practicing in a traditional law
firm partnership where partners are paid on net change in cash.
For example, there's going to be a period of time
(18:50):
where your cash flow will be negatively impacted because you're
foregoing current hourly billing or current fixed fee billing in
exchange for a long term recurring revenue contract. Now, for
the businesses of the right fit, that have the right offerings.
You know, we're now adding thirty five new logos a month.
(19:14):
I had never been able to do that before, and
now approaching five hundred customers where it took me two
decades to get to two hundred. So you could see
that it gives you the ability to accelerate your growth.
It requires you to really get efficient and really understand
(19:37):
where that value is coming from and what you do,
and to really get good at delivering that to client
sufficiently because all the risk is on you. But what
we've seen is there's some time in the beginning and
you lose a little, but over a three year period,
you know in year three you're going to have a
(19:58):
lot of those customers pay and not needing a lot
of services, and you could deliver a great deal of
value just by managing your contracts or your wills or
whatever your paperwork is for that industry. What Mondra does
is it allows you to deliver it in ways that
(20:18):
empower the digital transformation by delivering those agreements into the
CRM tools, into the quoting tools, and into the e
commerce platforms of the end user customer.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
The thing that I'm thinking about from a potential client
side is three years. What does that period look like?
Is there some type of a hybrid. Do they have
to transfer everything to this monthly recurring model or can
they do a little bit of the old school a
little bit of the new school to kind of bridge
the gap between that three year process.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
You could, you could do a hybrid. What I have
found is, if you do it right, you're so convinced
that your subscription service is the best for the client
that you'll want to move away from the old model.
I find myself people ask me all the time, would
(21:07):
you just look at my contracts and you know, let
me know what you think of them. And what I
have to ask myself is am I doing the best
job for the client? I know they're asking for that.
I know I can take their money for that. But
as over time, if you're doing it well, you'll you'll
lean away from the traditional it's after you see the
(21:31):
impact of the recurring revenue, once you start learning about
the exit possibilities that are created by monetizing your IP
and thinking of your legal service as a subscription service,
not just hourly or fixed price, and over time, what
(21:56):
you'll see as a transformative effect if you establish a
product market fit for whatever your solution is and whatever
the need is. And what's beautiful about law being the
second oldest profession known demand is product market fit for
a lot of these services has long been established, right,
(22:17):
It's not great for people who don't have an established
niche already. So, as I mentioned, part of why we
were successful is we had a base of hundreds of
clients that when people called and said, hey, attorney Rob
Scott wants to visit with you about this new solution
we have for your industry, they almost all said, yes,
(22:38):
I'll go to that call, and as long as you
have something compelling to share with them during that call.
And that's what we help, you know, council with is
it's not just it's not just about a technology platform.
It's a called go to market strategy that goes along
(23:01):
with migrating from a traditional legal service to as as
enabled an AI powered service. And so that's why we
don't that's why we think of it as a true
partnership model where we will partner with each of the
other firms that bring specific expertise and over time, the
(23:24):
monitor platform will be a collection of various attorneys with
different expertise, all contributing their content to the platform, where
for example, over time, my current subscribers may want to
subscribe to an other partner's service on the platform.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
As we are running out of time here, i'd love
to hear your opinion on where we're going, whether that's
with your company, your technology, or other things you're seeing
in the next five years.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So I would say the biggest impact will be generative AI,
and I also think that that you're going to see
a lot of law firms looking to move to more
of a cloud based offering. So think in terms of
(24:13):
cloud based and AI powered are going to be the
words that I think will fuel the subscription era for
legal and what it means is rethinking the lawyer's role
because the lawyer doesn't have to take a first stab
(24:33):
at anything anymore. From a drafting perspective, the AI tools
are at a level or beyond what an associate could
be expected to produce, and therefore associates are going to
(24:54):
have to get very good at prompt engineering and leveraging
AI solutions and knowing when to dig in and investigate
and knowing when to rely on the output. But you know,
think of associates roles as being more QA and prompt
engineers for AI tools, and think of partners able to
(25:16):
spend more time talking to clients. You know, if you're
not balked down in the paperwork and the reviews, which
is what AI really helps you with, you know, digesting
tremendous amounts of information in a short period of time
and then writing things very quickly. Those are the two
areas where traditionally lawyers are spending a lot of time. Well,
(25:37):
now you're not doing as much of that because it's
automated in some ways, and now you've got more time
to ask those probing questions to clients, to reach out
to a client and schedule a call. Maybe you've got
a prepared set of PowerPoint slides to make sure that
the client gets good value from the call. But the
idea now is spending more time client interacting. You know,
(26:02):
how much of your day to day life is with clients,
and you know on zooms with clients or in person
with clients, and how much is with your team internally
or with adversaries or others. And what technology should do
if it's helping the industry is building a stronger personal
(26:23):
relationship between the partners and the clients. And I think
that that's what we're going to see. Lawyers are going
to become more and more specialized, so the trend toward
specialization will continue, and we're all going to be looking
for ways to scale. How do we bring on sixty
(26:46):
new clients a month for a particular practice? Things you
know are our growth goals with technology are going to
require us to be come more of a sales led
field and less of a services led field, and AI
(27:11):
is going to give us the time to spend on
client development, being with clients, going to conferences where clients go,
organizing events for clients, participating in client charity events. Those
things that are true relationship building activities will always be
(27:35):
important and a SAS based approach is not going to
make that different. What it's going to do is give
you more time to do those things.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So, Rob, I can't thank you enough for joining me.
If there's people listening to this that want to learn more,
can you point them in a direction on how to
reach you.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
One hundred percent. We're on the web at m O
n ju R dot com. You can find us there
and all my contact information and a link to book
a meeting or all right there on the site. You
could also reach me at Rob Rob s is In,
Sam at Mondra dot com, m O n jur dot
(28:15):
com would love to hear your feedback and engage with
you over email.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
We'll put all that information in the show notes to
make it as easy as possible.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Thank you, Ron, appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by
market My market. If you can check out additional episodes
and recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
What's different now is we used to send our deliverables
through an email with a word document. Today our deliverables
live on smart hyperlinks that provide one directional integration into
our clients CRM tools and quoting tools, so that we're
helping them collapse the sales and contracting steps into one
(00:22):
online process. Then we're delivering what is much more than
just a word document.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You're listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by Market
My Market, the go to podcasts for learning from the
experts in the legal community about effective ways to grow
and manage your law firm.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Mastermind podcast.
Today I have with me the co founder of manjer
Rob Scott. Rob, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
So could you start off with a little history on
how you came to be one of the co founders
of manar.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Sure So, I started a boutique technology law firm in
nineteen ninety nine and I started representing IT managed services
firms and working in the software field at that time.
By twenty twenty two, I had hundreds of IT services
(01:20):
firms that had relied on our firm for council in
connection with developing their customer contracts for the service engagements
that they entered into, and so I envisioned a platform
where I would be able to dynamically push updates to
(01:41):
agreements that I had recommended to clients originally, and thus
the vision for the Mandra platform was launched. We went
live in March of twenty twenty two and we're now
approaching five hundred clients on the platform, which is a
(02:03):
cloud based contracts as a service offering where for a
subscription fee, a small business owner can sign up and
have their customer contracts not only developed initially, but proactively
managed through the cloud.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Now, was this an idea that was before its time
and it wasn't until recent technology that you were able
to do it exactly how you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah, I think that's a safe way to think about it.
I think that there was a time where we were
starting to recommend to clients that digital contracting and contracting
online was an option, and I think it wasn't that
far of elite to go from online contracting where maybe
(02:52):
a client has their agreements on their website to a
model like what Mondra does, which is we host those
agreements for our clients in the cloud, and because we're
hosting them, we're able to manage the updates and make
sure that they're the integrity of the agreements is maintained
and they're not edited by sales teams or something like that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
So what is the biggest problem that Mondor solves.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, First and foremost, the underlying intellectual property of the
monitor platform are the agreements that we developed for clients
over five hundred engagements in two decades. Those are service
agreements that reflect the philosophy of IT services and SAZ
(03:39):
and AI. You know, we have a number of different libraries,
but all of them reflect our philosophy on what is
market when it comes to these types of solutions, and
so that's the underlying you know IP that has not
changed that much. What's different now is we used to
send our deliverables through an email with a word document.
(04:04):
Today our deliverables live on smart hyperlinks that provide one
directional integration into our clients CRM tools and quoting tools.
So they were helping them collapse the sales and contracting
steps into one online process. Then we're delivering what is
much more than just a word document we're developed. We're
(04:26):
delivering to them a platform that has things in it
like browser wrap that says that the provider can update
the terms and conditions and give the customer notice. So
now we're able to put all of the clients on
a single template, which then gets maintained over time, reduces risk,
(04:47):
makes you m and a ready you know, freely assignable
for example. But they're constantly evolving in particularly in the
IT field. We've seen the regulatory explosion at the international,
federal and state levels in the United States or privacy regulations,
and we're seeing three to five states, for example, passing
(05:10):
their own versions of consumer protection laws around privacy, and
every time one of those laws come out, our team
analyzes them and if appropriate, we'll push a data processing
terms update to all of our subscribers as those new
laws come out. So the need for dynamic updates both
(05:30):
to keep up with industry trends, to continuously improve the
legal protections and the documents, as well as to stay
current with the emerging landscape of new regulations or really
the things that as a service model would bring to
the table. Over the traditional deliverable of just say a word.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Document does this make the entire process more efficient, and
are we limiting people that we didn't need before Because
this software is doing so.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Much well, I think that there's no question that we're
able to handle a lot more clients with the same
amount of resources. And when you think about transitioning a
traditional legal service into a SAS business, which is what
we've done, it requires you to rethink a number of things,
(06:21):
one of which is who's touching this, why? How many
times right? And so you start to really ring out
a lot of the efficiencies. And what we have is
a templated based approach where we have one tier that
the subscribers are just subscribing to get our best practice
(06:41):
as templates, and we have another tier where we actually
will customize for each individual client. And so we've created
this lower level of service primarily for the reason that
you've offered what you've suggested, which is we want to
offer the most value for the lowest cost. And the
way to do that is you know, figure out where
(07:04):
in your delivery your delivering value, and which components of
that are relatively scalable, say based on documents or libraries
or methodologies, and which ones require legal You know professionals.
You know, legal time, partner time, associate time is another
(07:25):
way to think about it. And and so with this platform,
we have a hugely scalable way because we manage one
template that can then be pushed to hundreds of clients.
I mean, you know, automatically, with no intervention by the
client whatsoever. And so when you have that kind of scalability,
(07:47):
now you can offer the opportunity to bring the prices
down relatively and drive the volumes up. So, for example,
before I made the transition to a subscription based approach,
I was doing about four of these engagements a month.
I was doing about thirteen thousand roughly per engagement and
(08:08):
doing about fifty three thousand a month. You know, fast
forward to today, we now are approaching five hundred subscribers.
We're doing four times as much as we ever did
on the traditional model, and everybody signed up to three
year recurring revenue contracts. And there's no billing, there's no
(08:30):
hourly billing. Everything is managed through software. All the subscriptions
are no back office overhead at all. And so if
you think about a traditional sas offering, and you think
about all of the IP that's locked up with in
law firms that aren't even protecting it. They give it
(08:53):
away to get hourly fees. If you can reimagine your
law firm as a SAS platform is what we did,
then it opens a lot of opportunities for you to
really grow at a rate that law firms traditionally would
struggle to grow at.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
So who is this ideal for? Is there a specific
practice area or a specific size firm that that this
is really an ideal fit.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I would say that I think the monitor platform will
help law firms that found themselves in a similar position
to where we were. They've become known for in a
particular niche. They have hundreds of clients that are legacy
clients for whom they offered the services in a traditional way.
(09:41):
Now they move to a SAS based approach, they offer
it first to all those legacy clients. As far as
firm sizes, I think you're going to need to be
in a firm that's fairly innovative because you are going
to give up profits and billing credits to use you know,
(10:01):
traditional legal you know terms as you transition. You know,
we went from making fifty thousand a month in April
of twenty twenty two and we made three hundred and
ninety nine dollars in March of twenty twenty two, So
there is a big transition and you as a law
(10:22):
firm would need to have supportive partners. So from that perspective,
I think smaller firms probably would would benefit from it
the most. But anytime you have a one to many
relationship of document templates, think M and A, think trusts
(10:43):
and the states, any contracting practice that result what's based
on templates or best practices, that Manitra platform would be
purpose built for those types of services. We offer that
we use Monitra platform for the expertise that we have
as a law firm, which is in tech law. So
(11:05):
our clients are it managed service providers typically with revenues
of one million to twenty five million, and software as
a service firms typically with five hundred thousand to five
million in annual recurring revenue.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So it sounds like there's two people that need to
buy into the software. You've got the person who's using it,
and then there's going to be the partners or the owners.
So how would you talk to the partner who's more
on the accounting side, and then how would you talk
about the efficiencies and how is it going to make
more sense to the person who's going to be using it.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah. So, so the way we envision addressing the first
concern is there is no cost to you. This is
a revenue share model. If we determine that your practice
is a good fit for the Monitor platform, we'll partner
with you and we'll come up with a split that
costs you nothing. So that's how we answer the question.
(12:05):
For the business guy, for the business development guy, we're
going to explain to them how when you get very
focused on offering a very specific solution, and you start
by offering it to your existing clients by calling them
and inviting them to a dema or a consultation. First
(12:26):
of all, a high percentage of your former clients will
say yes. Many of them will be receptive to a
new model that is more proactive, offers better services. It's predictable.
The clients love these models, and that's why every business
is really thinking hard about recurring revenue. And what Monitor
(12:49):
has proven is that legal services are as amenable to
recurring revenue models as streaming services on TV. So and
if that's true, then what is the opportunity for lawyers.
You know, to that same lawyer that's concerned about money,
I would say, how much intellectual property do you have
(13:11):
in your firm in terms of your forms, documents and
templates that is being unmonetized at the present time. How
much of it's unprotected from an IP perspective, And let's
start with an audit of what IP you have, what
value it has, and how we can deliver it through
(13:32):
a platform like Monitor to drastically change the economic position
of your firm, not only now but into the future.
Because the difference between a practice that's based on licensed
templates with services bundled and a law practice that's traditional
(13:54):
is a huge difference because you can sell to a
non lawyer that licensing business. So you got a lot
of IP that's in your current templates. If you are
a practice that has a deep and rich history of
serving clients and document intensive practices, and you want to
(14:15):
think about revolutionizing that service delivery for the next generations,
I'm gen X gen. The millennials are already, you know,
starting to take over and making buying decisions. And I
can tell you because I have two of them that
I raised, the gen Z kids, are not going to
(14:38):
be thinking about traditional law firm services where you go
in to a stuffy building with library books and you
sit down and you meet with a lawyer in their office,
and you know that's not how business is going to
get done, even for lawyers, even in very traditional practices.
(14:58):
So I think that there's a number of areas you
mentioned the associate, the worker bee, you know, the one
that's got to manage all the projects. Well. Monitor is
a project management platform. It allows you to visualize every
one of your engagements, to color code them to make
(15:19):
sure they're on track, to do full project management around
each one all the way down to the task level.
And the ability to have reporting against all of the
activity that you're responsible for is going to help you
give better customer service, be more proactive, less reactive, and
really deliver a solution and satisfaction. You know, lawyers as
(15:47):
a group have very high customer dissatisfaction rates. You know,
we don't as a group score extremely well on customer
satisfaction in art because we're so far behind the times.
And solutions like Monitor will allow traditional legal services to
(16:10):
transition to a SaaS based model based on recurring revenue
to capture what is now dormant intellectual property value within
the firm and develop a practice based on licensing revenue
that's easy to manage with no billing to worry about,
where your customers pay every month, and as long as
(16:32):
you're doing a good job on delivering the services, you
could have an existing base of subscribers and that you
can grow pretty dramatically on a monthly basis. And the
net economic impact of the practice that looks like that
is considerably more value than valuable than a traditional practice
without those components.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
What does that transition process look like and how involved
are you in that? Is it your team training them
or are their online tools.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Use it's a combination of both. We have an academy,
a Mandra Academy, which is an online resource that's continuing
to develop. But yes, we as I mentioned to you,
the vision for the Mondra platform is lawyers working together.
So we would look at this as co counseling with
other lawyers that want to access the platform. It's not
(17:22):
a it's not a here you go, you know, do
it yourself type of thing. And again, Mondra is more
than just a platform, it's also a business process, a
business model and it's a paradigm shift for lawyers. You know,
traditional hourly billing and fixed fee billing giving way to
(17:43):
long term recurrent revenue contracts using language that's similar to
what you'd see in the SAS or subscription based model.
And the biggest challenge is related to cash flow. So
think about my story where I was charging roughly thirteen
thousand upfront, and today my subscribers are paying anywhere from
(18:06):
one ninety nine to six ninety nine a month, and
so you got to sell a lot of those to
catch up to four thirteen thousands every month. But you
get to a point where your existing revenue is surpassed,
and then you're sort of in a really good spot.
(18:27):
And then as that continues to grow, you really can
see some transformative type numbers. But the transition is difficult
at first, particularly if you're practicing in a traditional law
firm partnership where partners are paid on net change in cash.
For example, there's going to be a period of time
(18:50):
where your cash flow will be negatively impacted because you're
foregoing current hourly billing or current fixed fee billing in
exchange for a long term recurring revenue contract. Now, for
the businesses of the right fit, that have the right offerings.
You know, we're now adding thirty five new logos a month.
(19:14):
I had never been able to do that before, and
now approaching five hundred customers where it took me two
decades to get to two hundred. So you could see
that it gives you the ability to accelerate your growth.
It requires you to really get efficient and really understand
(19:37):
where that value is coming from and what you do,
and to really get good at delivering that to client
sufficiently because all the risk is on you. But what
we've seen is there's some time in the beginning and
you lose a little, but over a three year period,
you know in year three you're going to have a
(19:58):
lot of those customers pay and not needing a lot
of services, and you could deliver a great deal of
value just by managing your contracts or your wills or
whatever your paperwork is for that industry. What Mondra does
is it allows you to deliver it in ways that
(20:18):
empower the digital transformation by delivering those agreements into the
CRM tools, into the quoting tools, and into the e
commerce platforms of the end user customer.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
The thing that I'm thinking about from a potential client
side is three years. What does that period look like?
Is there some type of a hybrid. Do they have
to transfer everything to this monthly recurring model or can
they do a little bit of the old school a
little bit of the new school to kind of bridge
the gap between that three year process.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
You could, you could do a hybrid. What I have
found is, if you do it right, you're so convinced
that your subscription service is the best for the client
that you'll want to move away from the old model.
I find myself people ask me all the time, would
(21:07):
you just look at my contracts and you know, let
me know what you think of them. And what I
have to ask myself is am I doing the best
job for the client? I know they're asking for that.
I know I can take their money for that. But
as over time, if you're doing it well, you'll you'll
lean away from the traditional it's after you see the
(21:31):
impact of the recurring revenue, once you start learning about
the exit possibilities that are created by monetizing your IP
and thinking of your legal service as a subscription service,
not just hourly or fixed price, and over time, what
(21:56):
you'll see as a transformative effect if you establish a
product market fit for whatever your solution is and whatever
the need is. And what's beautiful about law being the
second oldest profession known demand is product market fit for
a lot of these services has long been established, right,
(22:17):
It's not great for people who don't have an established
niche already. So, as I mentioned, part of why we
were successful is we had a base of hundreds of
clients that when people called and said, hey, attorney Rob
Scott wants to visit with you about this new solution
we have for your industry, they almost all said, yes,
(22:38):
I'll go to that call, and as long as you
have something compelling to share with them during that call.
And that's what we help, you know, council with is
it's not just it's not just about a technology platform.
It's a called go to market strategy that goes along
(23:01):
with migrating from a traditional legal service to as as
enabled an AI powered service. And so that's why we
don't that's why we think of it as a true
partnership model where we will partner with each of the
other firms that bring specific expertise and over time, the
(23:24):
monitor platform will be a collection of various attorneys with
different expertise, all contributing their content to the platform, where
for example, over time, my current subscribers may want to
subscribe to an other partner's service on the platform.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
As we are running out of time here, i'd love
to hear your opinion on where we're going, whether that's
with your company, your technology, or other things you're seeing
in the next five years.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So I would say the biggest impact will be generative AI,
and I also think that that you're going to see
a lot of law firms looking to move to more
of a cloud based offering. So think in terms of
(24:13):
cloud based and AI powered are going to be the
words that I think will fuel the subscription era for
legal and what it means is rethinking the lawyer's role
because the lawyer doesn't have to take a first stab
(24:33):
at anything anymore. From a drafting perspective, the AI tools
are at a level or beyond what an associate could
be expected to produce, and therefore associates are going to
(24:54):
have to get very good at prompt engineering and leveraging
AI solutions and knowing when to dig in and investigate
and knowing when to rely on the output. But you know,
think of associates roles as being more QA and prompt
engineers for AI tools, and think of partners able to
(25:16):
spend more time talking to clients. You know, if you're
not balked down in the paperwork and the reviews, which
is what AI really helps you with, you know, digesting
tremendous amounts of information in a short period of time
and then writing things very quickly. Those are the two
areas where traditionally lawyers are spending a lot of time. Well,
(25:37):
now you're not doing as much of that because it's
automated in some ways, and now you've got more time
to ask those probing questions to clients, to reach out
to a client and schedule a call. Maybe you've got
a prepared set of PowerPoint slides to make sure that
the client gets good value from the call. But the
idea now is spending more time client interacting. You know,
(26:02):
how much of your day to day life is with clients,
and you know on zooms with clients or in person
with clients, and how much is with your team internally
or with adversaries or others. And what technology should do
if it's helping the industry is building a stronger personal
(26:23):
relationship between the partners and the clients. And I think
that that's what we're going to see. Lawyers are going
to become more and more specialized, so the trend toward
specialization will continue, and we're all going to be looking
for ways to scale. How do we bring on sixty
(26:46):
new clients a month for a particular practice? Things you
know are our growth goals with technology are going to
require us to be come more of a sales led
field and less of a services led field, and AI
(27:11):
is going to give us the time to spend on
client development, being with clients, going to conferences where clients go,
organizing events for clients, participating in client charity events. Those
things that are true relationship building activities will always be
(27:35):
important and a SAS based approach is not going to
make that different. What it's going to do is give
you more time to do those things.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
So, Rob, I can't thank you enough for joining me.
If there's people listening to this that want to learn more,
can you point them in a direction on how to
reach you.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
One hundred percent. We're on the web at m O
n ju R dot com. You can find us there
and all my contact information and a link to book
a meeting or all right there on the site. You
could also reach me at Rob Rob s is In,
Sam at Mondra dot com, m O n jur dot
(28:15):
com would love to hear your feedback and engage with
you over email.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
We'll put all that information in the show notes to
make it as easy as possible.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Thank you, Ron, appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Thanks for listening to the Legal Mastermind podcast presented by
market My market. If you can check out additional episodes
and recaps at Legalmastermind podcast dot com.
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