Robert Kopka: [00:00:00] One of our leaders told me recently that every time that he meets with his team, he also asks how are they doing, what’s going on in their lives. You know, that is a critical aspect of culture. It’s not just chitchat. It’s being sincerely interested in each other, the way you would be if you were together in the law firm or in an office having lunch together, going down to the coffee shop together, that kind of chitchat.

So you have to encourage that as well and make sure that leaders know that it’s part of their obligation to make those inquiries. I try, I keep everybody, all 80 lawyers are on my cell phone. And, on my way home from work about a half-hour drive, I try to call somebody just to check in, see how you’re doing. And one of the lawyers said to me recently, “At my old firm, when the boss called, I thought, what’d I do wrong?'” And she said, “But when you call, I’m always happy to take the call.” So that’s culture.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I imagine the first time some young associate [00:01:00] sees your name pop up on the phone, they’re probably.

Robert Kopka: I don’t.

Jonathan Hawkins: Scared to death.

Robert Kopka: I call them when they start.

Welcome to the Founding Partner podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins. As we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders, we’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: I wanna welcome Bob Kopka. He is the founder of Kopka Law Group, and his firm is in a bunch of places. So, first of all, Bob, welcome to the show, and why don’t you give us a little background of sort of who you are and what your firm is, and, and like I said, you’re in a bunch of locations, so you can explain that as well.

And, and how many lawyers do you guys have also?

Robert Kopka: Thank you, Jonathan. I’m privileged to be here. I really appreciate the [00:02:00] invitation to speak with you. I enjoy listening to your podcast. Kopka Law Group is an insurance defense litigation firm in five states: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky. We have about 80 attorneys and do insurance defense litigation and self-insured defense litigation.

So that would be people that are injured on the job, that’s workers’ compensation traffic accidents or trucking accidents or construction accidents or product liability accidents. We also have professional liability, so cases against, … We are defending always. So the insurance company retains our services to defend a doctor, a lawyer an economist errors and omissions against an insurance agent or a real estate agent, that kind of thing.

Governmental agencies as well, they typically have governmental liability insurance. Employers for employment practices liability. So a variety of different types of cases. I would say the majority are bodily injury defense cases. We try a significant number of [00:03:00] cases every year. In a given year, we would typically have about 40 jury trials to verdict.

But most cases settle, as you well know, and our firm has been around for over 30 years, so we’ve been doing it for quite a while. We know what we’re doing

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you came to my attention a little while back. You, you sent an email that really caught my attention, and I’ll tee it up, but we’re not gonna start there. We’re gonna, we’re gonna get to that later. But basically your firm, I assume, is mostly an hourly type practice. Maybe you have some other alternative fees.

But the whole topic of AI and what it’s doing to change the law and potentially business models, and I wanna talk about some of your thoughts on that. But, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna come back to that. So a little tease for the audience. Before we get there, I wanna go back, just talk a little bit about your firm and how you got there.

You know, you’re the, you’re the founder. You’ve got 80 lawyers. I assume you didn’t start with 80 lawyers. So just take me back to the early days, how it formed and maybe how it grew over time

Robert Kopka: [00:04:00] Well, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a good way to introduce the innovations that are coming to our practice because it’s worthwhile to think back 30 years ago when we would go to court with a big Redwell under our arm and files, you know, in the Redwell and dictation on a dictation machine and carbon copies really with carbon paper.

Where a lot of cases got resolved in the courthouse, in the, in the coffee shop on the elevator going up and down. So things have changed quite a bit. As a matter of fact, the practice of litigation defense has also changed. So, you know, 30 years ago I was an associate at a law firm and a junior partner, and another associate and I made the crazy idea that we’re gonna start our own practice, and frankly, it was successful right from the get-go.

And I’ll tell you that I had a mentor, a man by the name of John Ferguson, who I’m still in touch with long retired, but he really taught me the insurance [00:05:00] industry, what it is that clients are looking for. They’re looking for communication. Even the attorneys that, that I hire now they’re mistaken when they think that our clients are looking for wins, like to try a case and get a defense verdict or to settle a case and get a great resolution, a great settlement.

And that’s good. Don’t get me wrong. Clients do appreciate that. But really, if you think about it, what the insurance executives are looking for, what the corporate executives are looking for is some measure of certainty. So when they are defendants in a lawsuit or when an insurance company has an obligation to defend one of its policyholders in a lawsuit, they really wanna know what’s it gonna take to close and when can– how do we get there?

And how quickly can… and, and expeditiously and least expensively can we get there? And so that’s our job. Our job is to accurately evaluate the exposure, to communicate consistently, to have a game plan toward resolution, execute the game plan, resolve [00:06:00] the case. So nothing has changed in that regard, okay?

That’s what the clients expect of the law firms. What’s changed, frankly, is the nature of litigation business, the business of running the law firm 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, even 10 years ago, our job, my job, the rainmaker’s job, the shareholder’s job, the partner’s job was to bring in business.

To go out and sign up State Farm Insurance, Allstate Insurance, AIG, Zurich, CNA. You know, there’s more insurance companies than you can possibly imagine. And the idea was to get on their panels to seek their business, and we were very successful at it. You know, when you’re a successful firm and when you know what, you know what they’re looking for, which is consistent communication then you, you can deliver and get on their panels.

And then it was no problem hiring lawyers to do their job You know, a lot of the issue is how do you [00:07:00] train young lawyers? What if you bring in young lawyers? How much do you give to the young lawyers? How do you staff a file? How do you make sure that the clients are getting what they’re paying for? That has changed now. Thankfully, knock on wood, we’ve been successful, and so we have over six hundred different insurance company or self-insured clients sending us work on a regular basis. And the switch has flipped now that it’s very, very difficult to find good talent. It’s very… And, and, and I don’t mean you can find bad talent.

It’s, it’s difficult to find any talent, let alone the good talent. And so every law firm, and I’m very close friends with many of what you’d call my competitors, I don’t see them that way, they’re colleagues. The other law firm leaders are also in the same boat. We have work. In fact, we’re in a position now where we have to think about turning down work, and, you know, rates will determine which work we turn down and which ones we don’t turn down.

And not only actual rates, but effective rates, because we are [00:08:00] encountering bill cuts as an issue that really never occurred before, and it has diminished the sense of partnership in the relationship that we have with our clients. We’re losing good lawyers because they don’t feel appreciated enough by clients, and bill cuts contribute to that.

So the challenges that we’re facing now are new challenges, let alone AI, which you and I will get to, just the nature of the change in the, in the practice of law. So what hasn’t changed is the way to please clients is communicate. You can’t over-communicate. One thing that has never been cut off a bill, as far as I can recall, is a telephone call with a client, no matter how long it goes, or even a, a good status report, a good meaty status report to the client, so you’re reporting to them on a regular basis.

And what clients have repeated to me over the years has not changed either in terms of what they don’t like. What will a law firm do, you might ask a client thirty years ago or thirty days ago, [00:09:00] to get off, you know, to get fired, to get off your approved list? And the answer is always the same.

Not communicating, failure to communicate, not responding to email, not complying with their guidelines in terms of communicating every sixty days or ninety days or whatever their guidelines might say. And the other thing is asking for money on the courthouse steps or on the steps of a mediation. So in other words, not properly evaluating the exposure early on, or letting them know that the value has changed Because we got new records in or because we took a deposition or because they got an expert.

Some- sometimes that happens and you have to keep the client updated on your evaluation of the exposure. But if the client expects that the case might settle for about $25,000 and on the eve of mediation you reevaluate it at $225,000, that’s a good way to lose a client

Jonathan Hawkins: So it’s clear to me from listening to you that, you know, you had good mentors [00:10:00] along the way, and it sounds like you have switched, and maybe you’ve been this way all along, but you’re clearly in a mentor role now. But what, what is your specific role in your firm now? Is it managing attorney? Is it mentor in chief?

Do you, do you run cases? What’s, what’s a typical week or month like for you nowadays?

Robert Kopka: you know, that raises another issue which I think is very important for, for your listeners, which is succession planning. So my role in my firm has changed over the course of the last two years because I have developed my successor. And in an unusual move, my successor is Donna Marcus, who is not a lawyer.

She’s got an MBA, and a very, very great leader, a very great financial wizard but not a lawyer. And so, h- she has taken on many of the responsibilities of a managing partner. As managing partner, my caseload diminished over time until I was no longer handling cases. As a matter of [00:11:00] fact, last time I tried a case, Donna Marcus begged me, “Please make it your last one.”

But now, really she has taken over many of the responsibilities that kept me busy all the time. So to answer your question, I spend a good 50% of my time in, on Zoom meetings and Teams meetings or in person to person meetings with clients. We have a lot of different clients. I love to talk to them. I love to solicit feedback.

It’s always a good conversation because I don’t get complaints too much, and so I really have a lot of fun with it. We can explore ways that we can add value to the relationship. I would say the other 50% is focused internally. We have a Rising Stars class in our firm, which is a class that I teach all year long for lawyers that are either new to the practice or new to the insurance defense practice.

A lot of the attorneys that we hire are former prosecutors, or maybe they’re coming from another area that may have had some [00:12:00] tangential connection with litigation. It may be administrative, but now they’re handling civil litigation. And so twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays for half an hour, I teach the Rising Stars class.

I also am teaching trial techniques internally at the firm. And then I’m involved in what we call career reviews. So we don’t– We, we do performance reviews all year long, hopefully. We, we work in teams, and so if you’re an attorney at our firm, there’s always somebody that with whom you’re working that can provide feedback to you.

But we– our culture suggests that it makes sense to have career reviews in which really the talking is done by the, the, the, the attorney who’s being reviewed, and the idea is to find out whether or not their career aspirations are being met in the firm, and to look for ways that we can add value to that relationship. I’m a person that believes in the notion that the number one job of the managing, the management team [00:13:00] is to take care of the team, even before the clients, even before the customers. It was Richard Branson from Virgin Records and Virgin Airlines that said “The customer is not the most important person.

My emplo- employees are the most important person because my employees take care of the customer. And I adopt that philosophy. It makes a lot of sense. We’ve added a core value this year, happiness, and it makes sense, especially at this j- at this juncture in my career, I wish my other, my bosses had, had that as a career as, as a core value.

And e- even I r- wish that we had had that as a core value years ago. It, it makes a difference, especially, you know, today, when people are working remotely, a lot of people in my generation hate it. A lot of people in my generation think it, it, it squelches, you know, collaboration and camaraderie. But you have to understand that if you, as I have children that have children, is that when you’re a young parent, a father or a mother, and you can be home, and you [00:14:00] can watch them get off the bus at 3:30, or you can take them to the dentist, or you can go to the parent-teacher conference it makes you a happier person. And I realize also that many of our attorneys then put the kids to bed and turn on the computer and do a couple hours worth of work. It may sound horrible, but that’s the lifestyle today, and you have to embrace it. And the way that we embrace our culture is through intentionality, okay? We… I mean, it’s not as if we don’t have people in the office, but we don’t have a mandatory day in the office.

We, we let people come and go as they choose. And frankly, many of them choose to come into the office for the camaraderie

Jonathan Hawkins: So, I want to hear more about this Rising Stars class. That, that sounds interesting to me. So maybe put a little meat on that bone, like what is it and is, is everybody in it or is it just a few people? How did you come up with this? You know, h- tell

Robert Kopka: we had never– in the past, again, with y- as I described earlier, you know, in years past it wasn’t as difficult. We didn’t typically hire [00:15:00] first-year lawyers out of law school. We let them train a little bit somewhere else, and we hired laterals, and we’re still hiring laterals, but we also started to hire first-year lawyers.

And then, as I said, when you hire a lateral that’s never handled a case before, they really don’t know insurance. They don’t know the insurance company’s requirements and guidelines and sensibilities. And many of them may not have had civil, you know, litigation in the state in which we practice.

So I came up with the idea three years ago. To tell you the truth, I sat down with a piece of paper. I said, “If I, if I teach a class once a week, could I come up with 52 different topics, just a half hour each? Just 52 topics it’ll be once a week.” I had 110 topics before I stopped writing. I mean, if you, if you, if you break down what you do, you could easily come up with 100 different topics.

And so I fashioned that into a curriculum, and it starts with, you know, very simple, our philosophy of concierge service, how to service a [00:16:00] client. We gotta start with how to write down a billable hour, how to keep track of your time, how to do it contemporaneously. And it– and as you can tell, I can talk, so a half-hour class goes by in, in a minute, and without all that much preparation.

Then, you know, from the, from the general, I move to the specifics. So let’s start with a complaint. What is an answer? What goes into an answer? What do you have to do? Who you have to talk to? Where do you have to get the information? It’s helpful to get little tricks of the trade. Like, for example, just because they allege that XYZ Corporation is domiciled in this state doesn’t mean that it is.

I’m talking to younger attorneys. You’ve gotta find out because if it’s not, right away you can contest jurisdiction and maybe knock the case right out the, right out the back. So these are things that they don’t necessarily learn in law school, even, even though they learn jurisdiction, but it’s the practical application that I think is helpful.

And I took them all the way through discovery, through depositions, you know, through motion practice, ultimately through trials. And [00:17:00] other practical things like insurance coverage is very important in our practice. Sometimes your insurer, the policyholder that you’re defending, is also insured on a different policy, and you can tender the defense, transfer the risk to somebody else.

Each state has its own rules regarding comparative fault. Each state has its own rules regarding non-parties that may be added or third parties that can be added. So there’s a lot to talk about. So I– and it’s also been something that has attracted attorneys to our firm, and I can tell you that I can, I can see that the graduates, if you will, the second and third-year lawyers in our firm that have gone through that program are definitely better lawyers for it.

I can see that they have more confidence doing the things that they’re doing

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I was gonna say that you mentioned talent acquisition is more challenging nowadays. A program like this, I, I would imagine really could help in recruiting number one. And obviously it makes all your lawyers better once they go through [00:18:00] it, I’m sure. So, Have you seen it work in terms of talent acquisition?

Robert Kopka: I have because those that are going through it, and we also have a bonus for bringing in people, so that might help too. But they brought in… Our, our biggest– We’ve added over 30 attorneys in the firm in a year, so we are attracting talent, no doubt about it. And the number one way that we get talent is through internal referrals.

And we also have an internal recruiter who’s very good. Culture is our selling point. Let me tell you something. Insurance defense litigation lags all of the other types of, you know ways that you practice law in terms of the hourly rates. The competitive nature of what we do, the insurance companies, you know, traditionally paid less, and the trade-off was a volume of work.

And as I say, now things have changed a little bit. We have a lot of work, and all of the insurance defense firms that I’m familiar with have a lot of work. The rates are going up because the requirements of salaries has gone up, you know, just to [00:19:00] compete. But culture is ultimately the, the thing that… E-everyone that I know that joined our firm, and I, and I mean this sincerely, all 30 of them have told me how different the culture is here than where they previously worked, if they worked somewhere else. And I, I often ask, “What– Tell– Explain that to me.” I mean, you know, it’s like I’ve only worked here. I, I’m disadvantaged in that regard. And first thing that they say is that at every other place, they feel like their bosses are looking over their shoulder, and here they feel like their bosses are there to help them. So that’s just attitudinal. Obviously, I’m vigilant about looking for mistakes. I don’t want mistakes to go out the door.

But it’s just a question of how you approach people. You know, if they, if they show talent and they show an interest and you feel like you trust them, then you have to let them do the work that they do. Too, too many lawyers are too afraid, and I can understand that. You don’t want to make a mistake with a client.

But at the end of the day, we’re all [00:20:00] human beings. Sometimes mistakes are made. It’s all about the relationship with the client. And people that feel trusted are less likely actually to make mistakes than people that are looking over their shoulder all the time. So-

Jonathan Hawkins: So on, on the culture topic, you’ve got 80-plus lawyers across multiple states. What ways do you What things do you do to really get that culture across the states and among the different offices, and how do you bring everybody together? It, it seems like that’s, is a challenge for any, you know, multi-state firm

Robert Kopka: It is, it is. You know, w- w- the way you do it is to develop leaders in each of the offices. So we have managing partners in various, in the different offices. We have a management committee that those management, managing partners are a part of. We meet every week for half an hour on Tuesday mornings, and we talk about leadership.

I’m, I’m actually starting a book club too. We’re gonna have a book club among the [00:21:00] managing partners regarding leadership, and it’s not management. Management’s easy. Leadership is hard. Leadership is exactly what I’m saying. You know, nobody … Our culture already is that nobody should be yelled at or screamed at or, or treated rudely or disrespectfully or whatever.

But more than that, you know, we train them on, on what we mean by a career review and delegation and trust and building a team based on trust. So it’s … Listen, I mean, everybody has to get on board with the idea that leaders lead, and if we’re gonna … And we try to elevate the right people to those leadership positions.

And how else do we do it? We, we encourage people to turn their cameras on and to meet. So each of the attorneys meets with his or her team at least once a week on camera, and that team includes the attorney, the paralegal, and the administrative assistant. And that way they can divvy up responsibilities, check on each other, make sure things are getting moving [00:22:00] along, identify if anything that might be coming due or maybe overdue and, and just make sure things are going, but also to get together.

One of our leaders told me recently that every time that he meets with his team, he also asks how are they doing, what’s going on in their lives. You know, that is a critical aspect of culture. It’s not just chitchat. It’s being sincerely interested in each other, the way you would be if you were together in the law firm or in an office having lunch together, going down to the coffee shop together, that kind of chitchat.

So you have to encourage that as well and make sure that leaders know that it’s part of their obligation to make those inquiries. I try, I keep everybody, all 80 lawyers are on my cell phone. And, on my way home from work about a half-hour drive, I try to call somebody just to check in, see how you’re doing. And one of the lawyers said to me recently, “At my old firm, when the boss called, I thought, ‘Uh-oh, [00:23:00] what’d I do wrong?'” And she said, “But when you call, I’m always happy to take the call.” So that’s culture.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I imagine the first time some young associate sees your name pop up on the phone, they’re probably.

Robert Kopka: I don’t.

Jonathan Hawkins: Scared to death.

Robert Kopka: I call them when they start. I send a f- you know, you know how you share on Apple phone. So my face comes up. I have one of those things where my face comes up. So hopefully they’re not too upset even the first time

Jonathan Hawkins: So on the topic of leadership, for those listeners out there that what advice do you have for, really a two-part question, developing themselves as leaders, but then also developing their team to become future leaders?

Robert Kopka: Yeah, yeah, y- intentionality, recognizing that they don’t teach you leadership in law school, they don’t teach leadership pretty much in undergrad either, and that if you’re going to be in a leadership position, there’s a huge responsibility. You have all these people that are looking to you for prompts.

It’s not easy. You know? When, when, [00:24:00] you know, things happen that you’re don’t know how to deal with, that are crises, the leader has to stay calm. You know, the leader has to project confidence always, and it’s not easy constraining yourself when you’re upset about something. But the leader has to have emotional intelligence and appreciate the fact that you’re always being looked at.

I remember rec- I remember realizing that when I would stop in an office and I’d say hello to somebody or three people or four people, that the fifth person that I didn’t mean anything by not saying hello, it affected them. “Doesn’t he like me?” So when you realize that, then you understand the responsibility of being a leader, and I’m always l- reading and learning.

I, I work with a business coach, as does Donna Marcus. We’ve done that for nine or 10 years. I talk to her for an hour once every other week, and there’s never a time that I have hung up with her just on the phone that I didn’t say, “Thank you, Jennifer. This has been [00:25:00] so helpful.” So what she does is she helps me see things I don’t see, and it’s unbelievable how narrow is our vision if left to our own devices.

And in a sense, leadership’s help- leadership helps you see things from other people’s perspectives so that you can react accordingly and not judge that perspective. It is what it is. The leader has to try to get the most out of each person, the most that they, they’re capable of. It’s not just billable hours or revenue, it’s career development, so that if you’re in it for the long haul, your job is to develop other people in their careers, to develop new leaders to want to grow within the firm

Jonathan Hawkins: I really like that. I, my personal philosophy and, and some other folks that I respect, they feel it’s their job to pro- to create opportunities for their people to grow. They don’t… I mean, the people can choose whether they’re gonna grow or not, but you gotta at [00:26:00] least create some opportunities, and hopefully they’ll start to step up.

And I think that’s really what, not everybody, but most people I think want, especially lawyers. I mean, we’re strivers. We’ve always gotten that next trophy along the way. Good, great, you know, all, all through it. We want something to, to continue to grow, and if we stagnate, then we become unhappy and look for other places,

Robert Kopka: And not only, not only create opportunities, but challenge them to meet them. And when they don’t, find ways to challenge them, contin- you know, don’t com- look don’t give up on anybody is what I’m saying. Even sometimes they don’t make it, don’t give up on them

Real quick, if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, please check out my book, the Law Firm Lifecycle. It’s written for law firm owners and those who plan to be owners. In the book, I discuss various issues that come up as a law firm progresses through the stages of its growth from just before starting a firm to when it comes to an end.

The law firm lifecycle is available on Amazon. Now, back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, so I wanna pivot. So we’re [00:27:00] gonna, we’re going AI now. So going back to that initial thing that we teed up there. And so again AI is everywhere by… This– Everywhere you look, it’s AI, AI, AI. I have a lot of friends in the, in the contingency personal injury space where they don’t bill by the hour, so they’re using AI everywhere ’cause it really makes a lot of sense.

But then we, we go to the other side where you have hourly sort of business models, and it’s potentially people have been calling for the death of the billable hour for decades, you know, decades, decades. And maybe, I’m not sure, but maybe we’re finally there. I don’t know.

Robert Kopka: Finally here, I think it is

Jonathan Hawkins: I wanna, I wanna get your perspective.

And again, that was the email that really sparked my interest in wanting to talk to you because this is something that you are really looking at and, and taking steps to, to sort of address. So, what do you see coming and what are your ideas from a hourly business model firm perspective?

Robert Kopka: Okay, thanks. I’ll tell you what one thing [00:28:00] I am convinced about is that the billable hour has no relation whatsoever to value. Just think about that. It’s a method by which you can measure something to pay somebody, but it has no relation whatsoever to value. Also, if you recognize the fact that we have the ability to develop and maintain and look at and understand metrics, statistics, then we can really measure the things that we value.

I mentioned them earlier, right? Communication. How often is the lawyer communicating with you? It’s measurable. How accurately is the lawyer predicting the outcome of the case? Totally measurable, right? How well is the lawyer liked by the insurer, by the policy holder, or by the claim professional? You can even measure that in a survey. It’s easy.

So all of the things that you value that you can get from a lawyer that are measurable they have nothing to do with the billable hour. So the answer to your question is that we’re promoting a model we [00:29:00] call the partnership model to restore the sense of partnership between the law firm and our clients, and it’s a simple subscription model of per file per month.

Now, how do we value the monthly retainer? How do we know what we’re gonna charge in a month? People have said to me, “Some cases take a ton of work, some cases don’t. Some cases last 24 to 48 months. Some cases are closed in 6 months.” So how do you differentiate them?

Well, the answer is I keep metrics. I keep metrics anyway for all of our cases. We divide them by type of case, jurisdiction, we have five different, you know, states, but multiple counties, client, lawyer, even injury and plaintiff lawyer. So we keep track of very, very, you know, a lot of different metrics. So if you are a workers’ compensation insurance company, I have metrics on the workers’ compensation cases that I’ve handled for you.

There could be hundreds of [00:30:00] closed files by this time, and I can cut it off going back two years or three years or something like that, and I can see what the least expensive one, what the most expensive one, what the median was. And so there’s a, a measure of risk involved, but I will charge you per file per month to handle your workers’ compensation cases.

Thus far, over the course of these hundred cases, we have closed your files on average within twelve months of assignment. I’ll guarantee that we’ll beat that. We’ve kept our communication going. You know, we guarantee that we, we’ll communicate with you every thirty days as you require. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna ask you to do something too.

I’m gonna ask you for roundtables with your claims executives twice a year so that we can identify the toughest cases, the oldest cases, the, the cases that are coming up for trial and roundtable them to put, to put a fair resolution together and to make an offer to the plaintiff attorney and see if we can settle this case.

And if we can’t settle the case, [00:31:00] and you want us to try the case, which we, which you know our lawyers love to try cases Here’s something for the lawyers out there to contemplate. If I’m an attorney and I’m handling 40 files, civil files in Illinois, and I’m handling them aggressively and proactively, and one of them is going to trial so I spend a whole week before that trial getting ready, doing my motions to eliminate, preparing everything for trial, not only me, me and my paralegal, and then the following week I spend four full days at trial before I get a verdict, under the model that I’m referring to, the partnership model, I don’t have to charge anybody any more.

I’m still deriving revenue from the other 39 files that I have on my docket, and I’m gonna meet my metrics on those 39 as well. That week and a half to two weeks, I’m part of a team here. Nothing’s going by the wayside. Now, if I should have a four-week trial or a five-week trial, I’m internally gonna rearrange [00:32:00] those files, but the revenue continues to flow.

So I don’t even have to have an opt-out for trial. Now, you can … I, I did a … I was in a presentation on alternative billing models just last week, and I made the comment that the types of alternative billing models that are available is limited only by your imagination. So you wanna have an opt-out for trials?

I’m in. You wanna have a bonus for trial results? I’m in for that, too. And we have a deal now, a, a prescription model with one of our clients who asked us to reduce the monthly, the monthly retainer after 14 months to give us an incentive to move as many files earlier as possible. Okay. So, you know, if, if we feel like we need to modify this notion, it’s fine.

It’s totally modifiable We had this in place with a large trucking company. So this works with brain injury cases, with traumatic brain injury, with serious injury cases. It doesn’t really matter. I mean, the [00:33:00] amount of the monthly retainer was higher for the trucking cases than for the workers’ compensation cases.

And naturally, the monthly retainer is larger for general liability cases, professional liability cases. But still it’s quite reasonable in terms of what clients are currently paying with the understanding that most cases resolve on average within 12 months of assignment. And so if it’s $1,500 per month, that’s a total of $18,000.

If it’s $2,000 per month, it’s a total of $24,000 in a year. And if a case is $2,000 a month and it lasts two years, and it’s $48,000, that’s not an unreasonable amount of money for a case that’s been open for, for two years in any litigation firm. And there’s gotta be a reason why that case is open for 48 months, which is probably it’s targeted for trial, or maybe we’ve made our best offer and the plaintiff isn’t taking it, or there’s a variety of reasons why a case may not resolve.

Maybe on appeal. And either way, the idea that we’re changing the model will attract attorneys. I’ve had many attorneys [00:34:00] leave over the billable hour. I had an attorney tell me that it takes her .7 to vacuum her home. Now that’s sick, okay? When your, when your life is, is in six-minute increments we gotta get away from that.

And it really, again, has no relation to value. So if you’re an insurance company or a self-insured company or any company retaining a counsel, and this works by the way, not just in litigation. If you’re doing a deal, a real estate deal, a real estate transaction or anything like that, you have a good sense of how much goes into it as a lawyer.

Just put a number down and be done with it, okay? If it takes longer, it takes longer. And by the way, that one client that I mentioned that was a trucking company that we, that we had this model for, when we looked at it and said, “I think our retainer has to go up,” and explained to the client why, they readily agreed.

They readily agreed. So, as long as you have a trust with the clients and they understand it, and there’s visibility and transparency, I think this is [00:35:00] the way to go

Jonathan Hawkins: So what’s been the reception and the adoption on the client side? As you… Obviously, you have some clients who have said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” I, to be honest, over the years, I have pitched various sort of retainer subscription models to clients and, and my clients are lawyers, and they say, “No, no, no, I want hours.

I want you to just bill by the hour.” So, so I’ve seen pushback on mine. I’m curious what you’ve seen on, on your end.

Robert Kopka: So I’m, I’m… next article I’m gonna write is the obstacles to making change because what I get is, “That’s a fantastic idea. Let me know when other people are doing it.” And so, but it’s starting to change. We’re in talks with a number of different clients that are interested that, you know, the word has gotten out.

There’s a recognition that the hourly rates are going up substantially anyway, so it may be an appropriate time to look at change. I believe that the subscription model is a way to reduce legal spend because it aligns both parties toward [00:36:00] earlier resolution. Now, I, I’m calling it an alternative billing model because there’s a pejorative connotation to AFA, to alternative fee arrangement.

Because in the ’70s and ’90s, the, the ’90s an alternative fee arrangement was, “I’ll give you a bunch of files for a low-ball offer, and you pocket the money and do nothing with the cases.” It was a, it was a disaster. It was a disastrous idea. But the alternative billing model aligns us both with earlier resolution.

It, you’re, you’re, you’re evaluating how accurately we are predicting the outcome. The more accurately we predict the outcome, the more likely we are to resolve the case early, right? And when we’re goal, our goal is to move cases to earlier resolution, looking at hitting that 10-month or that 11-month, it’s gonna, it’s gonna save overall legal spend per file for the clients because of our attention to that one metric cycle time, how [00:37:00] quickly are you closing a file.

So the answer is I, I’ve been getting, you know, interest, but no, but signing on the dotted line is, is, is not happened yet for more than a half half a dozen clients out of, you know, 600, but we’re moving in that direction. I mean, I’m, I can’t wait for the time when it becomes more accepted, and we’ll move every client off of the billable hour.

And by the way, think of the savings in, in infrastructure. I think we have six or seven or eight billers. Clients have, you know, whole infrastructure built around bill cutting, bill review, bill cutting. I had a, I had a client ask me, “How am I gonna know what you’re doing in the case if you don’t send me a bill?”

And I thought, “Well, wait a minute. We send you the letters, okay?” Not just the bill. We do send you status letters. But here’s another innovation that I think is coming, and that is sharing our file with our clients, so that rather than sending an update by email, we update a certain area of our file, [00:38:00] and we just let the clients know to go and take a look.

Or anytime they want to, they have access. They go take a look, and we can watch the file progress together and communicate internally on, in, in our system So I mean that, again, clients would think that would be wonderful. And so I think as soon as we have those kinds of innovations, it’s gonna tip the tide and more and more clients will come on board

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s, you mentioned earlier the whole, there’s like a sub economy around billing, about legal billing. So you’ve got, you know, your people that you do, and then the insurance people have theirs, and then these third parties that evaluate the billing, and they got all this software. You got all this stuff.

It’d be interesting, I wonder what, if you can value that piece of the pie and just say that’s gonna go away under your model. I’d be curious what that looks like

Robert Kopka: I would too. I would too. I, I, you know, they’re reluctant to tell us what they’re, what they’re… And, you know, a lot of lawyers believe that those third-party [00:39:00] billing services get some kind of a bonus for cutting more time. I… They say they don’t, and I believe them, but there’s certainly a cost involved to that.

But that’s also the obstacle to change. It’s the, it’s the institutionalization of, of, you know, people that are, you know, in jobs where they don’t know what they would do if that went away, or these companies that are making good money on reviewing outside lawyer bills will have to just kind of be out of business.

Now, I will say this, all right? The biggest obstacle that I find when I’m talking to insurance companies in particular, but actually it’s the same is true for self-insurers, is they don’t have the metrics that I have. they have relied, they’ve outsourced to these billing companies the keeping of all their metrics, and right now the metrics that they ref- refer most to is what percentage of the bills that I send are cut.

Is it 2%? Is it 3%? Is it 4%? Recently we got a, a good result from one of our clients. We went [00:40:00] from 7% down to 3%. They were very happy with us. And I thought, “You’re the one making these cuts. Obviously, we figured out a way to bill you differently, but you haven’t even talked to us about the results that we obtained on your case.”

That’s the only thing he talked to us about was our bill cuts. So I think that they need– The, these companies, these third-party you know, bill review companies really should focus on selling the metrics, the information, the data that they have. I was recently approached also by a third-party administrator, the president of a very large company, who asked me to think about how they can monetize all of the data that they have.

So think about this. They, they’ve handled thousands and thousands of injury cases that are similar in jurisdictions. I mean, that g- that informs attorneys and insurance companies and self-insurers about what a value of, of any open case is. If I have an open case, it’s a slip and fall, it’s a comminuted fracture, [00:41:00] it’s got hardware in there.

They have information that will tell me in the last three years what the highest settlement, the lowest settlement, and the medium settlement was, even though they’re not published because they have that information. So I think we’re going to see, you know, the kind of the monetization of that data and, and being sold to companies.

And I have some of that data myself, so we can use that to evaluate claims that are open at our firm. And and I think that we’re moving toward a system where those things are more important than the billable hour

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so we’ve talked about the challenges of talent acquisition. We’ve talked about the changing of the billing model. So I wanna bring AI back into it and sort of see, you know, how do you see it being implemented in your type of firm, and do you see it maybe helping alleviate some of the talent acquisition issues?

Robert Kopka: Well, yes, because I do believe, I mean, I’ve seen already how the [00:42:00] efficiencies derived from AI will allow an attorney to be more productive, probably handle more files. We haven’t seen that yet, but there’s not enough use of AI yet. So first of all, let me say that every law firm, in my judgment, should have a written, published AI policy for the lawyers because there’s a lot of risk involved in not having it published and maintained and monitored and enforced.

At our firm we don’t allow the use of artificial intelligence in any manner by any of our employees on any of our cases unless it is specifically approved by our IT department. We currently have a number of approved AI features, among them Protege, which is LexisNexis’s, AI component for legal research, and Filevine, which is our case management software provider, has AI embedded in a program they call Lois, [00:43:00] and they also have depositions by Filevine.

And you started out by mentioning that the plaintiff attorneys are purchasing and using artificial intelligence with abandon here. We Donna Marcus and I are going to be at Lex, which is the kind of the convention for Filevine coming up in next month. And last year when Donna was a speaker, she was a speaker together with a very prominent plaintiff’s attorney who said, “I will spend any amount of money and you know, for any kind of AI that will assist me,” because it assists them in getting the value of their cases significantly higher, which earns them more money.

And Donna said, “We haven’t figured out yet a return on investment on these– on, on investing in AI, and so we have to move very, very cautiously.” So moving to a model that is prescription model per file, per month will provide us an incentive to invest in AI, and it will also provide a return on investment because [00:44:00] we’ll be able to handle more cases, so the per month fee will go up.

And I think it will continue to– like I said, it will save the clients money because we’ll move cases to earlier resolution. So it’s a win-win all around. H- what about how is the use of AI gonna change the practice of law? Frankly, you know, none of us really knows. I mean, it– we’re still in the very, very early stages of it.

But I can tell you that I hear a lot of differing opinions from, “I’ll never use AI. it’s gonna ruin it because they’ll be– we don’t need associates anymore, so how are we gonna train the next generation of lawyers, and how are we gonna train the next generation of trial lawyers?” But I don’t– I don’t agree with any of that.

I think that AI is a fabulous tool. I’ve been using Protégé, and I liken it to talking to an associate. So those that have found it to be unreliable, obviously, if you’re using an open source, something like ChatGPT you’re gonna get hallucinations. It’s [00:45:00] not reliable. And frankly, no matter what AI you’re using, you can’t rely on it to be reliable any more than you can rely on an associate to be reliable.

You, you have to question them. And so using AI is like talking to somebody. But think about having AI over all of our files, and that includes the medical records, the police report, the EMT report, the expert’s reports, our status reports, our thoughts about it, and now you can talk to it. It, it– Filevine, they call Lois.

“Lois, tell me, was there ever any Advil given? Was there any ever asp-aspirin you know, subsc- prescribed?” You can ask very specific questions, and when it comes back, you know, you can ask it again in a different way just to check and make sure and make sure. But it– So there is– there’s time in that.

But all told, it’s much less time than looking through every medical record every time. Depositions by Filevine, you can upload your objectives in the [00:46:00] deposition, and it will maintain on in real time a transcript of the deposition and let you know if you’ve met your objectio- objectives, and if you haven’t, it will recommend questions for you.

I mean, these things are real significant advantages in litigation. And so we should be moving to obtain them. It benefits our clients to obtain them, and the only obstacle right now is the billable model. It’s an obstacle to that kind of innovation. So I think it’s gonna change the practice of law. I think eventually it’s also gonna change the rules of evidence because of potential for deepfakes.

And so- Yeah … we have to all be on the lookout for fraud, but also even an honest lawyer can be defrauded by his or her client who hands them a photograph or, or, or, or a report, and it’s, it’s like you can’t rely on that anymore. There have to be some checks and balances

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ll tell you, the people that s- that say it’s going to [00:47:00] reduce the need for lawyers haven’t gotten the, the pro se and the client memos yet where it actually doubles or triples the amount of work you have to do.

Robert Kopka: That’s true. That’s true. I also have been lecturing, and I referred to there’s a very interesting development, which is bias in AI. And to think that… I- if you think about it, you know, w- the way AI works is that you ask it a probing question, and it will give you the answer that most likely answers that question, and it obtains that information from all the information it has access to, the worldwide information network, which itself contains bias.

And even if the, if the A- agent is programmed to recognize and try to avoid bias, it’s inevitable. And so human intervention, which by nature we’re biased as well, but human intervention in decision-makings is never gonna go away. So decisions from an insurance company on whether there’s [00:48:00] coverage, it’s gotta be made by a human.

You know, strategies choosing from among different strategies to achieve whatever goal you’re looking for, it’s gotta be a human that makes those decisions. And ultimately, the decision to settle or not settle or to try the case or not try the case, we can have information that AI tells us is the likely outcome, but it’s gonna have to be a human being that’s gonna make that decision.

And then trying a case is never gonna be done by, well, at least not in my lifetime, by an AI agent, and so probably not in anybody in my law firm’s lifetime either. So I think our jobs are secure. It’s just that the ability to use AI is going to become a significant ability that gives somebody a competitive advantage if they know how to use it

Jonathan Hawkins: And I think you’re right. It is too early to tell where this is all going. I mean, certainly change is coming, but it’s, it’s too, too early to tell. So I wanna shift. You sort of, we sort of glossed over the building of your law firm so we won’t go too deep in that. But it’s impressive. You [00:49:00] know, you start with a handful of you, you guys and gals, and now you’re up to 80-plus lawyers in multiple states.

And so for others out there that are thinking about or trying to grow firms what sort of advice would you have for them as they are going along in their journey?

Robert Kopka: Well, my first advice is you may not want to do it. It’s not easy. Look, let me tell you this. Well, I’ll, I’ll tell you that I was very young. I was 30 years old when I first started my first law firm. It was Landa, Holman & Copsey. And at the time I didn’t have children, and I thought to myself, “You know what?

If things go south, I’ll find a job.” I was a fifth-year lawyer. I had a couple of trials under my belt. I had a client or two. It’s like, you know, I can take the chance. What I would say is this: first of all, the people with whom you join are critically important, right? If you’re gonna have a partner, that partner has to be like a marriage partner.

It’s a partner for life. It’s a … And I didn’t have [00:50:00] that throughout my career, so these are lessons learned. But you want to really be aligned both in terms of your outlook on life, your values, and your commitment to the firm. And secondly, when you’re an employer, you get paid last. You may be asked to guarantee a lease.

You may be asked to guarantee a loan to the firm. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. It’s, it’s you have to have confidence in yourself that you’re going to succeed. And so you’re going to take a risk. It’s a risk. You have opportunities to join a firm and not have as much risk, so that’s why it takes a lot to start your own firm.

I’m not sure that, you know, if I realized everything that was in it, I probably would have done it because I have always been a risk-taker and I’ve always been an entrepreneur. But that’s the kind of mentality that, you know, you have to have to do this. There’s other opportunities to make a good living without having to, having gone out on a limb this way.

However, if you feel like doing it, [00:51:00] and if you feel like you have the willingness to take the risk and, and to put your money where your mouth is, as they say You’re the master of your own destiny. Now you’re not beholden to anybody for your success. And this is another thing I would say, it takes a lot of work, okay?

You cannot succeed without being on the road. Now, I recently asked my kids who are grown up, whether they thought I was out of town too much when they were growing up, and they didn’t even think anything of it. I wasn’t… Sensibilities have changed. I wasn’t at every ballgame. I was at every graduation, okay?

At what I thought were the important things, but I am a million-miler on United Airlines, okay? I was out of town a lot. You gotta go see clients, and for a cl- for a company like an insurance defense firm, the clients are all over the country. So, I’m still on a plane a lot. I enjoy it. It’s something that I enjoy doing, is interacting with people.

So you have to have leadership quality. [00:52:00] People have to follow you. The way that I’ve been successful, to be honest with you, Jonathan, is surrounding myself with excellent people, excellent lawyers, excellent support staff. And by the way, what that means, this is the hardest part of all, it means letting go people that need to be let go.

The, the, the firms that, that don’t have the culture we have, or that, that la- languish are, are afraid to fire the people that need to be fired. So the hardest part of leadership is knowing who you need to let go and doing it. It’s very difficult, but it’s critically necessary to elevate your organization to where you want it to be

Jonathan Hawkins: Bob, this has been real fun. Thank you. You’ve been gracious with your time. For anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you what’s the best way to find you?

Robert Kopka: Well, kopkalaw.com, www.kopkalaw.com is our web website. I’m rjkopka@kopkalaw.com. You can go on the website and just email me through that

Jonathan Hawkins: You did, Bob. [00:53:00] Thank you. Thanks for coming on

Robert Kopka: Great to see you, Jonathan. I enjoyed the hour. Appreciate it very much.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.