AI Lawyers + What Didn't You Tell Us?

Business Brain Episode 462 for Casual Friday, June 30, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we tune our business brains together. That means we take a topic or a couple of things. We, we run them through the filter that is our collective business brains. We're not the business brains. We're trying to learn how to use our business brains better. And we're doing that together with you so that we can all learn a little bit and keep on living that charmed life. Sponsors for this episode include FactorMeals.com brain50. Use code brain50 to get 50%. That's 50% off your first box of America's number one ready to eat meal kit and miro@miro.com podcast where you can get your first three miro boards for free. These are these whiteboards you do online. They're collaborative. We'll talk more in depth about those in a little bit. For now, here at the end of a week on Casual Friday in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm.

Still out in California. Shannon Jean, how are you, man?

Still on Planet Earth as well, my friend.

I am, I am still on planet Earth. Stars, you know, as far as I know.

Yeah, cool.

It's, I, I, I do believe we're living in the simulation anyway, so I'm not really sure where I'm at.

Same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's enough evidence to support it. I might as well go. Absolutely. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. You know, I wanted to bring up this, I, I found this article that I thought was fascinating. We've been talking about AI and ChatGPT and Google, Bard and Bing and all this stuff a lot in the last few months and, and we even talked about using it for some of our own legal services that we had.

And successfully, I will, I will add successfully.

And I. This article is perfect for us. Basically, this firm Law for Small Business has announced an innovative offering aimed at helping small businesses, business owners and leaders. The services specifically tailored to guide those who are tempted to seek legal advice from AI systems like ChatGPT. Basically, it says while these AI systems can be cost saving and convenient, they can't replicate the nuanced understanding and analysis offered by trained attorneys. These systems simply don't think, understand or analyze complex situations, said one of the attorneys there. So basically they say, you know, there's a gap between AI advice and the human expertise, so they're going to fill this gap and they're offering A new service to evaluate online or AI generated legal advice or contracts. And you submit this to them and they'll do a consultation or a flat rate, they'll review per page. Um, and it, it's fascinating, you know, kind of. I, I heard a phrase recently, it said AI is not going to replace your job. Someone that's using AI is going to replace your job. And it's kind of an example like that. You know, I thought, I thought I'd bring it up and get your take on it. Dave?

Yeah, I, I think certainly what this firm is offering is good. I, I think it's valuable. I think it's missing a step. Now I'm going based on what this article and the Firm's website, this L4SB law for small business website sort of shows they might be doing exactly what I'm about to describe. And if they are, great. But I can talk about how I've had success getting, using these, you know, generative AIs like ChatGPT for legal stuff. Right. And the first thing we say it all the time, the most important thing you can do with, with Chat GPT and the skill that you want to learn and really hone down on is creating good prompts. So it, you know, the more you give it, the better the results are going to be. And so it sounds like L4SB is coming in after you've given it a prompt and had it generate some output and then they're going to review that and tweak it for you, which super valuable like that part of things. Great. But what I've done is I've had the pre consultation with an attorney when possible and gotten them to guide me of like, oh, hey, well, with this thing, an approach to take would be to really focus in on this angle of things and it's like, ah, great. So then I take that idea and tell Chat GPT to write me the, you know, legal brief or whatever it is I need, you know, the response or whatever it is I need drafted using that in the prompt, like guiding it and saying, make sure you use this or if there's some statute that the attorney that I've talked with in advance says, oh yeah, there was this, you know, case law or something and tell it, tell ChatGPT and use this case law or this, reference this case or whatever. And then it comes out and I'll look, I'll read through it, maybe I'll have a couple of things to get. The nice part about, you know, the GPT is that it is transformative not just generative. And so that's the G and the T, by the way. You get to transform the response by like giving it a, a secondary prompt or a tertiary prompt. And you can kind of go, right. And so I'll do that a little bit and then I'll take the result of that and give it, you know, back to the attorney and have them review it and either have them make tweaks on their own or again, to be more efficient, have them say, ah, this is great, change this, this and this and maybe add in something about that, you know, and it's like, okay, great. And I can tell ChatGPT to do that and, and have it generated. And so essentially we're using Chat GPT to do the grunt work of pulling all these things together that we're telling it and formulating it, but not actually doing the thinking, because there's no thinking for it to do. And I think that's it is an extent. Currently. I don't know where this is going to be in, I was going to say five years, but I don't even know where it's going to be in five months. Right. But at the moment it really is best with if you do the thinking and it does the grunt work, if you will.

That's, it's true, it's unique. We'll put a link to the article and to the service in the show notes today. You can find those at BusinessBrain show, but check it out, let us know what you think.

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Great answer. You're a nice guy.

That's what he said. He says you're a really nice guy. And. And we got an email from our friend David Listener. David, who says, I just heard that segment where you were talking about it and how you said you've made more money by leaving money on the table, which is what we talked about. He says I can't help but be reminded of the well known Zig Ziglar quote. You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want. He says I've referred to that quote a few times in recent conversations. Yeah, man. Thank you for sharing that, David. Yeah, it's. You're right. And that really has been a big part of my career. It definitely turns off some people who think.

Who.

And I don't mean to say this as though they're necessarily wrong. It is different. I've seen people be successful by being ruthless. I am less ruthless than some of those folks, and I'm okay with it. Yeah, for me, it's better.

Me too.

We're different people. We're all different people. But, yeah, I've had some folks be like, wow, why would you. You know, why would you give them that for free? Sounds like that's. I'm playing the long game here. Like. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Yeah.

And it's in my zero sum game, too, by the way. I'm not trying to screw somebody. Yeah, yeah.

In our business, we always say, oh, let's. You got to leave a little money on the table for the other guy.

Yeah.

And when they knew they could make money on you as long as you were happy with what they were making, you know, what you were making off the relationship, it can work out great. You know, I. I think it's fantastic. Yeah, I think it's really good. And the. The other part of this story that I really like is the fact that you came back after and asked him about it. And there I saw a tweet on Twitter from a Michael Gurdley, who's in the business of buying businesses.

Okay.

And he says, you know, when you buy a business, there will be things about it that you don't know. They aren't kept secret usually, but somehow they don't get mentioned. Our business, we ask a simple question after closing. What didn't you tell us?

Oh, yeah, Same kind of thing, right?

Yeah, same kind of thing.

What.

What did you. What should we know that you may not have been comfortable telling us before? I would say it's the same thing. Like if you're buying a piece of property, a building, a house. I mean, I always comment, a house is one of the most complex systems that you buy, and usually you never get A chance to talk to the previous owner. And you don't get a manual with how things work, where the wiring is, the sprinkle, all this one side is weird or whatever. So that, you know what? Didn't you tell us exercise could be really powerful in all different aspects of your life, not just your business?

Yeah, I've had. I had one guy, I think it was the second house we bought. The guy was really nice and. And the deal was relatively simple and it all worked out fine. Everybody was happy. And at the end he did. He said, here I wrote up. And it was like two or three pages handwritten at the time of how the weird things about the house. This circuit is actually tied in over here. Every house has it. It's not like it's bad or good. It's just, you know, there's the quirks. I did have one thing, and we knew this when we were buying the house that we're in. There was someone around the corner from us on our street who was the lone registered sex offender in Durham, New Hampshire. Now for some reason I thought to look this up, like to see, oh, there are any sex offenders in Durham. Like, oh, yeah, yeah. And sure enough, it turned out that. That there was one at the time. He has since moved and he was on our street. And I was like, oh, crap, whatever, you know. And so I went. And actually when. When we found this out before we closed on the house, I went and found the. I read the court pleadings that went along with his case. And by the time I got to the end of him, I was like, oh man, this poor guy was like, I don't know if he was set up or what, but it was like the daughter of his ex wife made this claim afterwards. It was like, oh, this poor guy. And he spent some time in jail. It was like by the time I got to the end, right or wrong, I felt bad for this guy. I was like, okay, well, I'm definitely not worried about him with my kids. Now I know about, you know, if there's. If there's 20 people on our street now I know about one of them, it's the other 19 I need to worry about. Like, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

But, well, we got to the closing and the, the after keys had been passed, the. The seller leans across the table and was like, you know, there is one other thing we wanted to tell you. And it was like, okay, so you chose not to tell us this. And they were not obligated. We did not ask because we found it out on our own. But it was like they felt bad enough about it that they offered it without us ever bringing it up. They're like, you really should know because you're gonna have kids in the house. It's like, you know what? This makes me feel a little bit less good about you as people, but I'm glad you told us. Like we already knew. Yeah, but it was. Yeah, that's crazy.

We have. So I'm, I'm looking at a investment property vacation rental and I, I toured it this weekend. It's up in the mountains. There's a couple, a couple of homes on it. It, it's, it's gorgeous. But it's very complicated the way everything's set up. And I, I started to think over the weekend, I said, you know, I wonder if I could do some kind of hold back that got paid as a consultant fee for the previous owner. To be sure. They either provide me with some manuals, video, or come show me these things because it's going to take me months, maybe years, maybe. I'll never know if I don't have somebody hand off things correctly. So I haven't broached this with the real estate agent yet, but I'm pretty confident I'm going to do it and say, look, I want to pay X for the, for the property, but I also want to pay, you know, y. For a consulting fee. So they, they're going to get paid monthly and maybe it's just three months.

I was saying. Yeah, two or three months. Is, is that, I mean, if you.

Could get more questions.

But. Yeah, yeah.

And even though questions, the whole thing.

Those three months will pave the path to. If you've got a question at month six and you know, and you shoot them an email, they'll probably answer it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yes. But it just sets the tone of I need to be able to learn from you and it's not going to change the deal, but I want you on the hook for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Should be, should be interesting.

Yeah. That should be in every deal, right? Yeah. Because like I would do that for people. I mean, like, if somebody were to just move into my house tomorrow, my goodness.

Well, I would be.

This is driven crazy.

They wouldn't know, right?

They don't know.

They wouldn't be able to. They wouldn't fit in that, that tight shower you have. I, it would be a disaster. But the one thing, this is a business. So I was trying to research, well, could I pay less for the house and the properties, which would lower my property taxes and pay portion of it as a consultant fee over time. Like, you know, hey, I'm going to pay him ten grand a month for a year and lower my buy price. I don't know if it's legal yet, but I'm waiting for my attorney to, you know, analyze it and come back.

But so let's, let's look at this from the other side. Would you want to do that for you? No. Because you couldn't treat that as capital gains. That's now income. Right.

It would just depend on your particular situation.

That's fair. That's fair, right? Yeah. Yeah, right.

You're going to pay capital gains. Depends on what state you're in. Capital gains in California are taxed at regular income rates. There is no separate rate. So that's a moot point. So it's just federal. And if it was your, I don't know. I'm analyzing this thing. This is how I tune my business brain all the time, by thinking, how do I make this work? And benefits. So if you have any tips on real estate transactions, 1031 exchanges, paying consultants, I'd love to hear. And feedback at Businessbrain show. I'd love to hear from you.

Yeah. And if we include your email in the show like we did with David this week, we will add your name to the list for our MacBook Air giveaway this year. Year we still got to figure out what kind of MacBook Air that's going to be. We're halfway through the year, so, you know, like, it's looking good out there, folks. You got to be in it to win it. Thanks for hanging out. Keep living that charm life. We'll see you next week.