AmplifYou : Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10. Golden Rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Well, good morning, good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time you're listening to this podcast. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. We've got a great guest today, Michael Cooper Smith, from integrated technology systems. And today we're going to learn all about how to set up the tech in your law firms. And importantly, how to prevent from those Bitcoin ransom attacks and different technology, things that you got to be aware of. Michael, welcome to the tangled.

Thanks, Jay. Thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to this.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you guys started working and specializing in legal.

So what would you say? What, what percentage of your focus is just keeping the bad guys out?

mean, you were telling me some of the scary stories the other day, you know, just wanted to tell us a couple stories about firms that didn't have the right procedures in place. And how this whole, you know, Ransom attack Bitcoin thing happens?

Well, basically, in a lot of ways that all comes through from the endpoint, which means the end users PC, a lot of people think there's still a lot of belief out there, I put a firewall in and basically, and I put some anti virus in, and I'm safe. That world has changed. That's the old paradigm. Today, it all comes in on the endpoint and the endpoint, what we mean is the user's computer. So right. So we've seen Case in point where and this is where you got to be careful with people, you've got the corporate email locked down, you've got everything safe there. And you allow your employees to go get email on their Gmail account, or their Hotmail or their Yahoo account. And they open that email on their office computer. The office computers then got access to the drives, and the network has got access to Office 365 files, got access to all sorts of stuff, once it's on that computer. And if a ransomware is attacked, anything that that person has access to, is subject to being hit with ransomware at that point. So one of the key points when you look at this is only give your employees from a cyber perspective, access to the data they need to do their job. So right, if you turn

it on, they don't get every file, they don't get every HIPAA violation, risk piece of medical information. They only they only get their files. Correct.

Correct. Exactly. So, you know, HIPAA becomes a big issue. And that's because what happens when, if the firm takes ransomware and next, what they call, export the data out, and they've say, Hey, we're going to so ransomware shifted years ago. It used to be they would come in, they would ransomware your data, and they would say, Hey, pay us so many dollars in bitcoins, and we'll unlock your data. Now what they do is they take and they ransomware your data and they take your data out. And they say, Hey, if you don't pay us, we're gonna release this data. So now you've got different business issues than, hey, my files are locked. Now you've got possibly different state regulatory issues, because all sudden, the data has been out there, you've definitely got HIPAA, if you've got medical records, you've got all sorts of issues out there. And now you've got filing requirements with the FBI, because they're, the data is out there at that point.

So, you know, what are the top two or three things that like the small to medium firm needs to do to protect themselves, I mean, hopefully, the bigger firms have you're someone like yourself, on their on their team.

So the first thing that everybody needs to do is, which is non technical, has kept their team going through cyber training, and talk about what's happening. Cyber training, we can talk about all the technical team pieces, and they are the most important part. But cyber training is, is the most most important part. And I can give you an example, from a point of firm that we had dealing with. So we had a law firm, they were dealing with a transaction with somebody from two different sides, different law firm, and we had gone through a significant amount of cyber training, and all sudden, want the party who was secure, got a link to open a file in office 365. The file didn't go through, they hid their password, they hid their multi factor authentication multiple times, and didn't go through but they kept getting prompted, and they allowed it. Well, five minutes later, that kind of went in their head, you know, the training, training I went through, says this doesn't make sense. Maybe I should contact my IT company, which was us and let them know. Well, sure enough, we looked bad guys were in there. 15 minutes in, we had the whole thing closed down. Because the person was trained that something suspicious was happening. They made a mistake in allowing it. But they had the wherewithal to say, I've got a problem. Let me escalate this, let me fix it. We found out there was no data, we had a file with cyber carrier, cyber carrier went through the forensics, the forensics went back and came and said, there was no exfiltration of data, there was no reporting requirements. And this was a textbook case of how it was done, right? Because there was cyber training, and there was controls in place.

You know, we had another smart technical guy on our podcast couple weeks ago. And Dr. Kane, Elliot, the AI researcher futurist from file blind, and he had a great line. He said, If you're downloading some AI products and the products free, you are the product. Yes, I find that all the time that there's you know, even like the other day, I was trying to download a song from YouTube. And I downloaded this free software. And I knew immediately that like, you know, it started running all these ads and running all these things on my computer, I knew immediately I was in trouble. You know, what are the those kinds of things that they offer you this free software, this free product, but you know, obviously, if it's too good to be true, they're accessing your you know, they're giving you something great in return for access to your your computer, your data, or even just your click patterns? How do you look at things. So

we look at the fact that if we look at a law firm today, or we look at a organization, we prevent the download of that data. So I agree with you, the free stuff, and those three things. Basically, either they come with a package of advertisements that are stuck on your computer, or the caulk or there could be loaded with ransomware that you don't know about. That's not to say there aren't, you know, there isn't a world where some of the free stuff is, right, but you got to know what you're looking for. So when we look at stuff like this, we've locked down the computers at this point, when we're dealing with stuff your employees or your people that are working for you should not have free unfettered access to data and to install things on the machines, your policy and your procedure should really be around. These are the defined applications that you need for the firm. These are the to find pieces. And if you need something else, then we have to stop and think about why and what we need. And is it a sick? Is it safe to install it?

Awesome. So talk to me about you mentioned case management and getting those types of systems and what are some of the best practices these days for firms to have really run the business in the cloud instead of the old fashioned file systems.

So I'm all For the cloud, but there's a definite checklist missing. When you look at the cloud and I, we get into these conversations at times with clients, and they're not always and it's a hard one to understand. So when we look at data, you know, the biggest piece is when we look at the pie, the biggest piece that it Astra and other cyber company or law firm is trying to do is protect the data, right and the firm and protect their clients data that they have. So when you look at a package you want to make sure, do they are they following a regulation? Like do they have what they call a sock to audit, where they've gone through controls and security controls? What is their internal policies look like? And then another one is, and your employees go home, and open the software on their personal computer, and put your firm data on their on your personal computer, without your knowledge or your approval, right? Because you think about it, you then have a staff attorney or a lower end attorney, they've done all this work in the evenings in the firm, and you're like, Okay, that's great. And then they leave. And all your intellectual property is sitting on their computer. So when we were not cloud based, we didn't have the same worries that way, when we have cloud based uses, we have to at least ask the vendors, what their controls look like, how we can secure the data, what user approval or device approval processes are in place for this. And if and determine the risk factor on it like one firm, we determined that we deal with, we said, hey, there's a software tool like Dropbox that you can install that allows the firm to sync data. They made their decision to move forward knowing that, but they wrote a policy to go with it saying a this is in violation of the use of the software, this is in violation of your working for the firm. If we find out that you have done this, there's disciplinary issues coming around it.

Right? So can be a good basic setup, like what are some of the component parts of firm should have in terms of like, let's say a single incident firm like case management software. And like there's also some inner interstitials. I don't know what to call them, like lead docket, we'd like to see from a marketing perspective that track the leads as they come in and go into the case manager. And then like just basic communications things that a firm should have, like, what's the basic, you know, if you could say, you know, Hey, your we got a couple very bright attorneys who just left a firm and a couple of guys left a defense firm, and three, four attorneys in Louisiana for we're just speaking to this week, and they're setting up a new firm. So what are some of the great foundational pieces that they should have in place for all those parts? Well,

first of all, you know, you got to make the decision, are we is everything going to be cloud based, and we're looking at those options, right. But from every firm, every firm, in my opinion, most firms, especially the legal industry, should be in office 365, for their emails, and for their file structure. Now, that comes with a whole, there's some disjointed pieces around that when Microsoft sets that up, the canvas is very open and very easy to access. When we look at everything we look at it. And it's probably the theme of my conversation around containerize in the data, right? So we want to make sure that we're putting office 365 in place, we're putting policies in place that prevent them from sending emails with social security numbers, bank accounts or other stuff without sending encrypted emails, we want to make sure we have the proper licensing, that preventing employees from going and downloading the data onto their local computer, and having access to all that data on their local machine. Because again, we don't want data leakage. So then we look at

the way you like Office 365, because of this, that security piece, and containerization. Like if that was opposed to like the G meals and the Yahoos, etc. Well,

the auto, I'm not going to go with a free gmail account I'm not going to go with because when you look at yahoo, yahoo, you're looking@outlook.com you look@gmail.com You don't own your data. They own your data, and they have a right to inspect the metadata on all that data. When you buy a Google hate account or you buy an office 365 account. You own the data, you don't have any rights to inspect the data. So that is a big piece. When I get concerned if I get an email from a lawyer that's sending emails on the gym ally camp. He doesn't really own that account, he gets use of it. But Google owns that account and can do what they want. If you read the user agreement, it's free. Yeah. And

so at the very least the pay, I think our product is called Google workspace, and includes some of those security components to it.

Google workspace has the same platform as we do. And we do a lot of firms that have Google workspace. The reason we look at probably the office 365. Ash, is when you're looking at legal software, the integrations from third party software, whether it's a case management software, a document management software, our time and billing software, has a lot more integrations, especially into office 365 versus the G Suite. As far as the security aspect, we can put the same policies in place of data leak protection, preventing people from installing it on home computers, mobile device management, but from a overall integration point of view. I think the office 365 Is the better solution for a law firm, if they're looking to scale other applications into it.

Great. And how about some of the case management software's where there are some that you love and recommend and some that you prefer? firms don't go with?

I really don't want to say which we don't go with because you know, everybody's got their choices. As far as that goes, as I say. I think it's building out a vendor assessment sheet. Right? We look at it and kind of what are the questions that you have? Go through the firm's you want to? So if you're looking at a case management software, right, can we put Device Controls in it? How do you access the software? What? What is installed on the local computer? What is their security look like? Build a spreadsheet, and compare the software and get an apples to apples comparison of going along, then get some reference points along the way, and make sure you're asking the appropriate questions. We just had a firm use that was used went to my case, and they got a reference. And they were having a question about billing. So they went back to the reference firm and said, How do you deal with billing issues? Oh, we don't use it for billing. So they forgot to ask this, you know, they asked how did they like it, but they didn't ask the deep probing questions on how they operate their firm to get there. And then when you look at like case management software, and you look at it, it's like, even further, okay, do you use? Is your firm using QuickBooks do you need and you're using the desktop version? Do you have to migrate to the online version? What does that kind of look like for you? What changes in your firm from working from one version to another, I can tell you ourselves, are struggling with this because we have 20 years worth of reports and all the stuff that we use for our financial reporting that we have to rebuild, and some of them we can rebuild on the online version of it. So hit all I like to use a phrase slow down to go fast.

Some of the component parts of the tech stack, if you will, document storage, case management billing, are there any other big and then email and access, I guess, are there any other big chunks that are missing?

You know, you can get into forensics and stuff like that, depending on the firm and data discovery. But a lot of firms in the smaller size are generally using third party products for those pieces at this point. They're not bringing it in house. years ago, we used to see it but these days, most providers are so good. And they got the security and the tools. It just doesn't make sense.

down? Well, the Giants you know, at least the GM It's once every decade or so, come back and win one, the chats, we just keep hoping for one day for a, you know, Brightstar. But those people, you know, I don't still haven't seen it yet. And all the years?

And is there any software apps that you like for personal productivity or just use for fun that you recommend that we could check out?

You know, I'm a big proponent of a lot of the Microsoft stuff, I use the To Do app in the Microsoft suite, I use OneNote, extensively, I actually have shares with my family, and other pieces of that sort. So things like to do

lists, and, yeah, videos you want to watch and things like that.

Well, even you know, we get together we like we have a share to do. So I have a, you know, personal account. And like, even with my family, I have, we have a OneNote account where we keep track of all my traveling packing lists that we can all share to kids that are in their 20s and, or medical records, or when we were looking for schools, we could all collaborate on the same data very easily didn't have to email it. That's great packages are free. They're our attitude and said, there, they're included inside the Microsoft, either business or personal subscriptions. And they really make a difference in your ability to collaborate easily.

That's great. Yeah, I use Evernote. You know, similarly, to make lists like that, but I never thought of sharing my wife, that'd be great. Yeah,

that's why it's wonderful, my wife will turn around, we'll put a packing list together or some other to do list for the house. And we just add things together. And then I get to the store and I open it up and I got it to do list of things I gotta get.

The most people probably wouldn't think that the racecar driver, and the IT professional would come together. But tell us about your your recent hobby and passion.

That's awesome. Congrats. That sounds like a lot of fun. What are their few business books like the you know, the young people in your firm or people starting out a business? Do you have some go to recommendations?

My always go to recommendation that I always say that everybody is the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And basically, it's the subtitle why most small businesses don't work and some do. And one of the options. One of the reasons Mike, I really liked that book, is he talks about the fact that a plumber or lawyer or who or whoever gets into business, because they're good at a trade, not because they're good at being a business person. And I think the transition from being a one or two person company, and I got stuck there for 10 years myself, of learning how to be a business person and delegate and work through people and build process versus being the guy who can do it transforms you from having a job. You know, you're basically if you're one or two people, you've created a job for yourself. When you've got seven 810 People now you've got a business.

Yeah, I love E Myth. I was explaining it to people and I was lucky to someone recommended it, you know, my first year in business. And we started developing systems and basically writing down everything we do. And then you do it the same way. Every time. I always say like, you know, you get the same Big Mac in Boston or Bangkok. Because we don't have systems like they have systems for their potato growers and systems for the buttons and the buttons have to be identical and the meat has to meet the same criteria. Now some people would argue that's not a high enough criteria, but it's exactly the same in Boston and Bangkok. And then the, you know, the amount of Big Mac sauce is identical and comes out of the same squirter and it's made with the same recipe and the pickles have the same two taste profile, etc, etc, etc. So, you know, if a business has systems like that, you know, the, for me, I think the most valuable thing is when when a new person starts, and you assign them a task, and you give them a really good training, and a list of what to do to do that task. And then you can go course correct, like if they if they miss something, you can refer back to the system, and then they can learn. And it's like that Cisco Systems that we've developed at our firm, we've developed over 20 years and every time we find a better way to do it, we revise the systems. How can a law firm implement that like the actual systematization? We use the software project management software called clickup? Do you see anything best practices within the law? I

don't know if I do. Right now, I haven't really investigated that something really interesting to do. But you know, even when we started out, we had at least a directory of Word and Excel documents, okay? This is how an employee gets on board at this, the documents and ear for the process of it. This is the documents on how you do this. And I say this to law firms, and some of them do really well at this, I say to them, okay, let's get to when we get a case management software, let's look at the process. Software company turns your own train to now let's build our own document right? At how does the firm enter a case? What is it? What are the criteria? What are the fields? What are the pieces you want? What is this solution? This is almost more important than the software that you selected? Because now you will get consistency in the data that you're getting out of the software, and everything else? And as you were saying, you can course correct, right, you've got a guide on how to how, what went wrong? How did somebody not follow it? It's not on the job training.

Not really, I'm honestly, it's one area I'm really investigating right now, I haven't spent a lot of time on that. But it's something I'm really starting to look at that piece. I mean, you're you're, we're on video, but people are not hearing. But you can see there's a lot. There's a library of books behind me and stuff like that, you know, we've read everything from the Rockefeller habits and other pieces to we use in our own operation. Eos, which is basically an entrepreneur, operating system and framework. I haven't read a whole bunch of podcasts, but I'm always actively looking and listening to what is in the marketplace and how to be a better how to transform myself in the business of being a better CEO, versus being a better tech or being a better person hat. Our job. My job in the company is to lead the vision of the company. And anything from a podcast to a book that I can learn a little bit of nuggets from. Here's what I take off.

Yeah, we're going deep with Eos, the entrepreneur operating system. And, you know, the one tip I have for folks in you probably started hearing about traction, and EOS. And so many law firms like seems like every law firm conference now has a session on EOS and a couple of firms running EOS. And by the way, I find almost exclusively the best law firms, like the most successful the fastest growing the most revenue, have, you know, invest in these kinds of things. And, you know, EOS happens to be one of them. You don't have to be on us but like some of them, you know if you're in a room and there's 150 lawyers, top five to 10 guys have systems they measure everything they do and a lot of times they The US. So I like to tell people, if you tried to read the book traction, and you didn't get it, and that was me for like, I got it 10 years ago, tried to read it. And then I kept hearing Oh, it's the best business book of the last 10 years, got a retraction, tried to read it again, couldn't get through it. Then I got the book, get a grip, and CAC got me. Yeah, absolutely. For the visionary. And one thing I learned about EOS is that traction is really written for what they call the integrator, which is typically like the CEO position in a business. And and get a grip is written for the visionary, which is typically the CEO founder, the guy who goes out and finds the business relationships and finds most of the business deals. So you're hearing about us and you didn't get it, and he couldn't get through traction, read Get a grip. But Michael, you're gonna say something,

I actually said, I read Get a grip first. And it was enabled me to get through traction. And I would say to you, if you don't like details, and you're the guy who was like, hey, I want or woman, I'm the person who wants to kind of put this in place, but I want to walk away, I don't like to run the process, read Get a grip first, and figure out in your organization, who can help you implement EOS or hire an implementer. It's

amazing how different is anyway, so then read Get a grip, then I read rocket fuel. And now we're doing a book club, in our company. And every week, we're reading a chapter of what the heck is EOS

interesting. Thought I may I may implement that in my leadership team as well. So it's

interesting. So you mentioned E Myth. And one thing I really liked about Gina Whitman, who wrote traction, and the US books, the founder of us is he doesn't like take somebody else's management principle, and rename it something. He's very, very liberal and honest and giving like, he'll, he'll be like, Well, you gotta read the book enough. And these are the three or four things you have to do from email. And then he's like, he calls his quarterly goals, rocks, and he's like, this comes from Rockefeller habits, and it gives credit to the other business books. And what I loved about that is like, so many people try and take that core principle, and then rename it and make it different enough that they confuse you, instead of what I love about Workman, he's just like, look, this is great, you need quarterly rocks, you got to get the whole company on board with the top three to seven things that that the company's got to accomplish. And quarterly cycles are very good for managing your business, right? He didn't go to like, call it 90 Day boulders, just give it its own name. So highly, you know, obviously, we're a bit too big proponents of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or E O S, what are a couple of things that you guys do in terms of running EOS and implementing. So

we were on our way, so like, last Friday, we had our quarterly leadership meeting, basically, we pulled the whole leadership team in, which is four of us. And unfortunately, we couldn't do it in person we'd like to, but we had, basically our meeting every quarter. And then we have, we have a weekly leadership meeting at two o'clock this afternoon, we're spending an hour and a half, we go through the l 10. Meeting process. And we basically look at our where we're at on our rocks, which are the quarterly initiatives, and what issues we have in the company and which ones we're going to work on. And we work through those during the during that meeting and figuring out what homework has to be done. And then we're having our annual meeting, the end of this month, where you actually hired an outside facilitator to run the that meeting for us. So we don't get stuck in our own tangents and our own minutia from that point of view. So we're really trying to kind of change who not change who we are, but change the fundamentals of the company, and kind of build a framework around it. One of the goals that I think in any business is, I would like to be able to walk away for two weeks in the business and have a leadership team that the business is running. And basically it's free standing without me.

Yeah, that's the that's the dream and, and the promise of having any, you know, any good operating system. Right. But, and by the way that you mentioned the outside facilitator, the one thing that EOS got wrong, in my opinion is, is they have two different very important positions. So you and I, we believe were the visionary, which, you know, we are the obviously the founders of the firms, but the visionary is a role that like you're the person who goes to the conference and comes back with 10 Great ideas. And then you need the internal person who has to say okay, look, Mike, I agree with you. These are 10 Great Ideas. But we've already got our quarterly rocks, and everybody's really busy in there. They're working on their day job plus, implementing these new systems that we're going to get done by the end of the quarter. And I promise you, we'll get them done. And these 10 new ideas, we're going to bring them to the quarterly planning meeting next quarter, I promise you, and then they do bring it. So you're, you know, typically the visionary brings back these 10 ideas and wants everyone to do 10 new things every time they go to a conference. But here's the one thing they got wrong, okay. When you bring it back to the person internally, they're called the integrator. And external facilitator you hired is called the implementer. But they both start with AI. And they both are both the same length of words. And I could never differentiate between the integrator and the implementer. But you know, as everything else about EOS is awesome. So

there's one thing that you got to watch for, you ever hear the word seagoing? See. So you come back, and you come back with this idea whether it's a law firm or an IT firm, it doesn't make a difference, and you come back, and you're like, Oh, we got this great idea. I bought this new product. And you drop it down on the team and your walk out of the room and you say, okay, guys implement this. Yeah. And then you

hear he does like the visionary like, I'm always enthusiastic about the new ideas for like two or three weeks. And then you need that great integrator or CEO position to make it happen. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for this was really, really great and lots of fun. If folks want to get their IT program straightened out or, you know, take get that cyber training for their team to make sure they're not the next Bitcoin success story or Bitcoin disaster,

if anybody. I'll make it even further if anybody's got any questions. Now, you know, if anybody's got any clarifying questions, feel free to reach out to me. I can get my email address out on this or we can put out separately, but that's up to you, Jay. No, go

ahead. Give us your contact info and the best place to find you. And then look down below in the show notes if you're listening to this online.

Okay, so my websites WWW dot ITSS nyc.com. My email is m coopersmith at ITF and yc.com. And if you have questions about any of the stuff, actually, it's my pleasure, I'd love to teach I love to talk to people. I love to help people. I can guide you in the right direction. Some of its really simple free easy things to ask your internal IT external, internal people. And you know, we go from there. Awesome. Well,

Mike, lots of fun. Thanks for spending the time and thanks for being on the podcast today.

Thank you for having me. I really really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

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