The Future of Legal Accounting: Trends and Predictions

Welcome to Accountants LawPod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhardt.

Well, hello, hello, hello. How are you both?

Hi, Sarah.

Hi. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Happy Easter Monday.

I know that. I can't believe it's April.

No, I can't either.

Yeah, it's going fast, really fast. So do you guys want to talk— What was that, Lynda?

I think we say that every week.

It's going by fast. It's going by fast.

Yeah.

Well, do you guys want to talk about future things? Like future of the—

Well, Steve said we're going back to the abacus, so—

Yeah, maybe we'll move to post-apocalyptic.

That means there's an apocalypse, Steve. That means there's an apocalypse if we're going back to that.

Well, then I'm going to buy shares in abacuses. Abacuses?

Abacai.

Abacai. I like that.

I'd like 100 shares of abacai, please.

New words today. Well, our topic is the future of legal accounting trends and predictions. That's so big. But we obviously know the big trend is the AI trend.

Yeah. And think how it's being used. In fact, yesterday when I was at my Easter brunch thing and family friends from years ago from Rhode Island and And they're always so curious because they've been retired for a while and they're like, ooh, and two doctors, right? So they're like, oh, and what's happening in your world? And I said, well, obviously AI. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, you know, AI, if you follow it, even though you're retired, it's pretty big in the medical field as well.

Yeah.

And then they were asking me a lot of questions about it and how are you guys looking at it and what are you doing? And I was like telling them how Sarah and I are kind of looking at it and how lawyers look at it because you don't wanna be in the wild west of ChatGPT. You know, even with—

All right.

You have to do a presentation and we asked it to give us some statistics. Always, always double-check your statistics and ask for the source because it wants to please you. Rex wants to please me. He didn't do a very good job taking me to the place that I had to go yesterday because he didn't like where we were going on our drive. Rex is my AI in my car and I have a Tesla.

So he drove me there and he was like, very—

he struggled with the— we were way— it was a place called The Hideout, and it literally was down these long—

Well, that's appropriate.

Ever go, right? We're driving, I'm going, where the hell is this place? And the car didn't like it either, because it does really well, but it didn't seem to— I'm like, what is going on? Even when we were making like one turn, like the road made it like a hairpin turn, and it started putting the directional on. There was only one way you could go. There was one road, and it's like it didn't know what to do. And it tried to get in wrong lanes. It was funny to watch how confused it got where it's been so spot on here and where I live in Estero, beautifully, it works perfectly. But over there it really had trouble because it's probably, I'm like, maybe it's not getting an internet signal 'cause it was so weird where we were. It was so far out in the middle of nowhere, hence the hideout. I couldn't even get it because, you know, Mike's like, "Show 'em how the car will come to you." I couldn't even get it connect to summon it. Yeah. Because it was no— AT&T was just probably— maybe it was a Verizon land or something, but it didn't work.

Which is a really good point to what— to AI, because everyone thinks it's going to be automated accounting services. And that is the laughing joke, to be honest with you.

I agree.

It is not automated. There's validation, to your point, Lynda, and it will break. And how would you know? Are you trained to understand how you would know? Accounts payable, accounts receivable, all of that stuff. Like, it's a really kind of interesting segue that you just landed on.

Well, you know, it's true. Like, I mean, Steve might be talking to Fiona, and she's just telling him everything he wants to hear. And then—

Well, you know, I reached a point with her where I really challenge her. I'm like, I want it to be brief, concise, less than 10 lines long or whatever.

And she's really getting—

Because he gets chatty.

She's really pinpointing things. But I'll tell you what I'm looking forward to. And I agree with you, Sarah. I mean, when AI first came along, I was like, oh boy, what is this? We're scared it's going to take our jobs away. I don't think it's going to take away as many jobs as people think. And I see more and more articles now where they're like, no, it's not. It's just going to change you. But I'm looking forward to developing an accounting 3-way reconciliation for trust that will pinpoint the anomalies right away.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And give suggestions right away. That'll, that'll really help.

You gotta learn your prompts though. You gotta have the prompts. If you don't know the right prompts, you're never going to even get there because that's the biggest part of it. And it does kind of help you now with prompting, but.

Yeah, there's so many.

There's so many. Well, and I, you know, I was listening to someone talk about, which is very true in a lot of our spaces, is if you wanted to build an app, which happened in accounting for a while there where we would use these practice management services and all of this and all of that, and we were like, it was all separate, right? And you have to bring it all together. Okay, well, that is more tangible than it used to be. So that, that level of industry in that space, that is shifting, of course. I bet you what's being offered for people to study and so forth, that's probably going to shift in a big, big way. But I do see there are pieces to— if you, like Lynda said, you prompt it correctly, you're learning as an accounting firm how to move with the tools to kind of raise the bar. Mm-hmm. I wonder what our app space will look like. 'Cause in the beginning, what, '22, they were just layering it in like a little—

They were just sticking it on top and saying, I got AI in my tool, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Which is kind of what QuickBooks has done.

True, true.

'Cause they were trying to develop their own and I don't know what happened and they ended up partnering up with ChatGPT and layering it on top. I'm told, I actually listened to the QuickBooks, unofficial QuickBooks podcast the other day, and I'm told that it actually does learn and get smarter with the bank feeds the more you keep feeding in the correct ones. I've not seen that yet.

I have not seen that.

So I'm sorry, I have to disagree with you, Alicia, if you're listening. I have not seen that result. I find that I don't trust it.

I can't— Exactly.

Yeah, I don't have that kind of layer of confidence.

That's an interesting segue to the conversation, Lynda, when we talk about previous ways of like, we were, you know, you have bank rules and you have those sorts of things and those never reliably always hit the nose and like reading a bank memo. So if the bank memo changes how it comes in, does the rule actually work? Does the AI tool?

Should it adapt?

That's where I'm kind of going with it. I'm not saying— That's why I struggle with this idea that it is getting better as it goes. Well, shouldn't it have been all of this time?

It should be better, not worse. And it seems to be not as good as it was originally. I agree.

Yeah.

Doesn't seem like that. And maybe if somebody actually sat me down and took me in the Wayback Machine and said, this is the original and this is where you are now, sure, fine. But I don't know if you've all tried even using the reconciliation feature where you upload the statement into their system and you have it do the reconciliation. That is, if it hits zero, beautiful, 2 seconds, great. I mean, a little bit more than that, you have to let it grind it out.

Yeah.

I found though that if it doesn't read it right, I've tried to sit with it. It's taking me 5 times the amount of time to figure out what the heck they're trying to tell me. I just go back to the old way because I can't— I don't have time for that. And then I go back to always like maybe 1 or 2 transactions, but it'll show 15 don't match.

To the point of thinking that these business owners and law firm owners are going to have AI do this low-level work. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, you don't. This tool does not understand what it's missing. It doesn't understand if there— if the bank breaks and there's a gap or if the feed changes or the wording shifts, there's all of these little nuances.

Repetitive knowledge.

Repetitive numbers. It does not know how to, doesn't actually do repetitive numbers.

It doesn't add well still. That's shocking to me. I said that yesterday when I was talking to my friends. I'm like, it doesn't add well. And to me, it's computers, it's numbers, you know, binary, but why doesn't it add well?

Why?

Because it's so hell-bent on making you happy. Then it's just like, well, this is what she wants to see at the bottom. And the math doesn't work. You have to double-check the math sometimes. It's like— What do you?

What do you both think in this day and age now as we're looking towards the future, some of the kind of the basic foundational, I'll call 'em basic foundational, the pieces, not just the data entry stuff, but in being able to understand where things go. What about the accounts payable, accounts receivable, and all the additional layers? What do you guys think that that's gonna look like with, you know, the future prediction of it? Do we, 'cause banks are shifting, That's another big piece. Banks are shifting in a big, big way.

Yeah, they are.

Behind, but they are shifting. So what do you—

Well, they also have to worry about like security and that's probably part of the slowness of they have to do it right because they have to test it. I mean, security is so big and we see, well, we're on Wiser, the wise thing that's here enough for us to train us. And every time I watch the videos, I'm like, oh my God, it's just everyone gets smarter and smarter and you have to really, step back and look at things to see if it's actual or not, or is this something that somebody thought up to, you know, just right down to like, are you a human box? And you know how you, we just check it off like, oh crap, there's that, are you a human? And that could actually take you into a bad place.

Mm-hmm.

Somebody thought of that. It's like, yes. So there's always a lot of bad people out there that think of things. So I think for banks, for sure. I'm sure that'll get better. We think back to what we did with banks years ago. You went into the bank, now you don't even go into the bank anymore. But I don't know.

They do. Nobody's sitting at the desk, so.

Nobody's there, right?

I know it's a lot of empty spaces in there. They might as well just start co-sharing and like.

You know, Sarah, to your point, to your question about, and I'm going to jump on accounts payable, it's so subjective and so hands-on for so many businesses.

With billing, with attorney billing it is.

Attorney billing. Now, you know, in Clio, I've seen 3 different clients that we work with here. Are using AI to groom their comments on the client bills. Have you guys run across that?

No.

See, that's interesting. On Clio, when you bill the view, when you view the bill, when you bill the view in Clio, it'll say right there, and it could be an add-on that they put in there, I don't know, that the client put in there, but it'll say there, description AI generated or groomed or whatever.

Oh, so the AI is creating the potential description for the client.

It's cleaning up the descriptions. And so over the weekend I was reading doing some of these in 3 different clients, and I was like, wow, look at this.

Yeah, pretty amazing.

Smart.

That's pretty cool.

That's a good use case for it.

That's a good use case. But, you know, if you think, okay, so the foundational stuff could, like you both said, subjective on both sides— ARAP, the tricky multi-entities— because as we know, business owners are getting more complex. And in the way we live in a world where people don't own just one business, there's multiples to it. So that's a complex situation. You have to really understand what you're doing there. And then when you go to make these decisions. I think what the biggest shift— my impression is the biggest shift that could change is the way that you can speak to the tools. And maybe the— maybe building something that allows you to have the ability to kind of have a deeper insight versus— and I'm gonna pick on Intuit right now. You go in, Lynda Artesani and I could pull up— and I'm sure you're the same, Steve— we could pull up a P&L. Depending on the report style and depending on if we're looking at the AI tool, we can spot the inconsistencies of the—

Yeah, I know. It's so frustrating.

And you want it to give you that highlight, but then you look at it and sometimes you have to ask yourself, am I reading what it just gave me as what it thinks it is actually correct? And so that's where I think there's a new skillset to that level that can really differentiate—

Oh, I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, because so many people, there's so much animosity going on right now. Not to pick on QuickBooks, but with the data that we're looking at and how you can move from one screen to the other and it switches on you and you're like, wait a minute.

Mm-hmm.

I did—

Or it sends you back to your own file. I had that happen when I was running a payroll for a client. All of a sudden it was in my file and my name was there like I was on their payroll. I didn't switch companies at all. It just showed up that way. And I'm like, this is scary. Hopefully it can't happen with a client doing that. But, um, Yeah, it's just, that's the stuff. But I think with the way things are today, I think there will be, I think jobs will be eliminated, but I think there'll be other jobs that will be created just like every other time we've had a tech bubble.

Yeah, it'll evolve, right?

Yeah, it'll just be different. And I think you gotta stay on top of it. You can't be, I'm not gonna use AI in my firm. I think you're gonna be sailing through in the future. Even for us, Steve, I mean, it'd be nice to say that, but I don't think, and I'm sure there's people out there that do and don't.

Well, remember when the cloud, the cloud came along and everybody was like, I'm not using that.

That.

Yeah. Yeah.

How many clients do we still have that don't connect their bank?

Oh my God. Yeah. That's crazy. Or they, or they're in desktop. They're in desktop.

Oh yeah.

And desktop softwares that are still out there for legal and it, it, you know, why break what's not, you know, not broken. And it's like, well, you're missing out on the fact that a lot of this, these pieces are now automated. So if you sit back and don't follow the trends, you know, you're gonna fall behind really quick because I think in today's age, even with the cloud, the cloud came and we were like, whoa, it's really coming fast. This is faster. And I think if you don't—

It is faster.

Invest in it, invest in time to learn it, I think you're going to be really left behind fairly quickly. And nobody wants to be that, I don't think.

So what's interesting to me is that you, the evolution of who we are as firm owners, as individuals working in this industry and how it's going to shift. And I do see it shifting where you have to have a certain skill set of understanding what tools you're using at a deeper level and knowing how to work it, like you're saying, Lynda, prompting and so forth. And then Steve, I think when you look kind of like when you look to the future and you're seeing what kind of person like maybe you would hire to bring into your firm, that's a gap that I feel like is going to happen. I think it might work for a certain generation. Like my son's generation, who's already used to using it, whether the schools are teaching it or not. They're just— that's their natural tendency.

I hope the schools are starting to teach it.

There is. But then, of course, there's bumpers and guidance because of, of course, writing and skill set and knowledge and thinking. Yeah, that's true. I mean, we said it internally. I was doing something and Lynda's like, God, we won't have to think anymore if we're not too careful. And it's like, yeah, that's so true. But you also need the experience and the knowledge of how do you look at something and understand it's real.

Yeah.

So there's that whole gap of evolution that I think people just— we've always in our industry, it's always been advisor, advisor, advisor. What the heck is that? What does that mean? Well, I think these tools are going to really push that envelope.

Which means we don't need to be the advisor, right? We're the data keeper, but are we really going to need to be the advisor if the tools are going to be able to extrapolate data and spit that out.

We're going to have to be the validation group. We're going to have to be the compliance group in that sense.

I mean, but the fact that what they kept saying we needed to do is really something that can be eliminated, just like tax, doing tax returns. I can see that going by the wayside. You know, they're happy they plug it in.

Oh, please.

But, you know, but now you're going to be able to maybe pull that out and it might not be as hard. You might not, you might still need the expertise depending on your complexity. Like Sarah said, there's a lot of multi, multi-business owners. So we, we run into this a lot, which I think is why Intuit's going down the Intuit Suite trail, right? They know there's a lot of people who are entrepreneurial and they start a business and then they get another idea. Well, we're it, Sarah. And they start another and you got another business and you've got another business. And then all of a sudden we've got all these businesses.

Mm-hmm.

And do you wanna know You know, what do you want to know? What you are overall worth with all of them collectively. And that's the thing. Do you want to know your value?

Yeah. Now there's a real-world way to use it. That makes sense.

That makes sense.

Each business is so different. Each industry is so different.

And already we got clients that move things from left pocket to right pocket thinking, oh, it doesn't matter. This is this company. This is an S corp. This is an LLC. Doesn't matter if I just kind of shuffle the money around. It's like, it does.

It does. Do you both think that we might be more current in, like, as we get better with these tools, we would be more current day versus, you know, because cash flow is a big thing.

More real world.

More real world. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out the right—

Real time.

Real time.

That was the big catchphrase for a while, right?

Yeah. Real time.

I think so.

I mean, I think so. I just, you know, for working with lawyers and legal accounting, I just feel that because there's so much room for wiggle room for error, error because of the way the data is put in with Clio or LeanLaw. It's over here and then the bank is validating over here. If you don't have somebody that can make sure that it's all lining up properly, then you're still going to need us in the short run anyway for this because it's not going to fly.

I think it's in the long run because if you think about it, Lynda, the complexity of when a settlement happens, the tools do not understand the cadence for which it needs to work and all the little pieces.

The settlement is different.

Every settlement's different. Yeah. I think there's a use case, and this is interesting, as you were talking earlier, Steve, there could be a use case where a firm owner's like, how can I get better? Okay, well, let's see if it can prop, like, look at the last several bills, look at the time inefficiencies, show us the gaps, and then that could be a dialogue. But there's still human behavior in all of this. We, we still have to collectively work together. So. It's going to be, I think our future as firms, I think firms in accounting themselves will be different. Legal firms also are shifting too because we see it with the courts, right? We see it with how they're able to use tools and what's allowed and not allowed. And I think to Lynda's point, it is like literally light speed movement right now. And we don't see a lot of governing bodies moving as fast is that. So we're just never at the front end of it. We're going to have to be tighter about these compliance moments.

Because security and cyber risks are huge in this. And because it's just making those things, tweaking them to be better, they can copy your voice, they can copy your likeness, they can do a lot. I worry about people in Florida that are older and they're not really involved in this, that they're retired, they play pickleball, they play tennis and they hear about it, but they don't really know a lot about it. And I was just watching even this morning on the news and the lady was interviewing somebody about AI and about the war and different things. And she said to the expert who was, I don't know if he was with Harvard or some college and they teach AI. And he, she said, you know, as people start to use it more and more and he goes, I use it all day long, every day in my business. And she was like, what? She couldn't believe that. And I'm thinking, yeah, you kind of think about it. We kind of use it a lot all day long now. It's not just a little bit. We're not just correcting our emails anymore. And this has happened that fast. So, um, although it's a great tool for that. Yeah. But like I said, I told you last, like, to both, I think both of you were on when I was talking about it, that somebody wrote, you really need to write essays because you don't want to lose the skill of reasoning and thought and write. And writing is such a profound, you know, treat that we can pull from that. If we start letting this thing think for us, we're going to lose those skill sets because it's just like me driving my car without driving. I hop in the car, I go, hey, take me to the, you know, to the golf course. And it just drives me there.

That's just insane.

So it's right. But that, I mean, alone is just something in a day to day. And you're going to see more and more of that kind of stuff. Eventually, which is probably going to be a good thing. Maybe less accidents. You won't have people flying by. I'm sure there's still always going to be people driving. But yeah, I think that the future is changing really fast. And this is the stuff, you know, with trends, we see the trends, we see the AI starting to come into products. Prediction-wise, it's really going to be like the Wild West. I think we're going to have a bumpy ride to begin with because we have to figure this out.

Yeah.

Before it smooths out like the cloud, right?

Well, and to your point, when you were struggling with your vehicle, that's going to happen. So right now we have a new way of thinking of probably backup systems. How do we move? How do we actually operate businesses?

I just took it over and you don't have the skill set to drive.

Yeah.

Because now my grandson gets there and he doesn't need to drive. He can get in the car and tell it where to go. You don't have that. You have to have that skill set. I think the same with all the other guys, right?

Yeah, yeah. Well, Steve, you have been through the nitty-gritties of internal workings with firms, and I could see if you had your Fiona, your AI tool with you, being that collaborative piece of ensuring, do I have everything in correctly here for the next billing cycle? Is everything on time? Analyze this data, show me where my things are at. And then you have the skill set to understand, okay, I can look at that and go, is that actually accurate? I know where to find it. To Lynda's point, driving the vehicle, learning how. That's the skill set.

That's that balance.

I think that law firms will really embrace docketing too. AI docketing.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Because there's so many errors that are made in docketing, especially when you're going from a lower court into a appellate court or a You know, as you're working your way up the channels in court cases, you know, the docketing becomes even more intense.

Yeah.

And I could see AI taking that over all the way. But I don't think that there's going to be a comfort level with AI moving lawyers' money around and making those decisions and fixing things and having that human touch just because of the type of work they do. Same with the medical field. You know, AI is huge in the medical field, but, you know, it's—

Really fancy.

Yeah. And there's robots doing surgery and all those sort of things, but it's still— Well, you know, it's like a new toy, you know?

Yeah, you brought something up with the, like, the medical field. You know how you go in your doctor's offices now and they ask if it's okay if they take the notes, right? And they're gonna listen. I think it's interesting 'cause it's like that for us when we listen back to a meeting.

Meeting.

Like, what did we miss? Can you tell us what we might—

Right.

Ask it maybe a general thing and then kind of finite it, or ask it very, like, very, critical questions. Well, it's interesting because the perspective— we did this recently, Lynda and I— and the perspective it gave us opened our mindset up to a different way of thinking we otherwise wouldn't have thought. So this is interesting that you bring it up in the medical field because it is true of our own meetings. Like, our own meetings are gold mines of data, of information.

I never thought to take this meeting and throw it in and kind of analyze it from a plain old perspective of like, your new eyes on this, what do you see? Watch the video, whatever, and analyze the video. And it spit out, it actually looked from a neutral perspective. This is what you two are thinking as we were in this meeting together, and this is what the other person was thinking, and you were missing—

you were looking for things.

Oh wow. It was fascinating.

It was fascinating.

And you can do that. We've already done it with a client meeting. We had a meeting with a potential client. It didn't go well. It went well, we thought it was good, and then we got turned down. That's gonna— that's business. That's part of business. But we wanted to see, was there something that we missed that we and how can we improve?

That's smart.

And I know that's— yeah, Sarah's just like, she comes up with these ideas and it's great.

It's like, oh, let me see. Genuine curiosity. I think that's where I want to go with this in the end of it, is the future is— it feels so crazy right now. It feels so, I don't know, like you said, Lynda, Wild West, and so like out there. But then when you think about it, that curiosity, if you allow yourself to be curious, and kind of keep going. And that's, I feel like, been the balance for the three of us in our friendships together, in our inquisitive— like, we'll ask each other questions not to challenge each other, but just sort of like, hey, are you thinking about it this way? So I feel like that's what this is, is it's that tool. I can see where solos could actually— this would be their, their best friend sometimes, you know. Not, not that you want, like, your business Partner, but it can help you with marketing.

You know, when you're solo, you gotta do all these things. Marketing's a great tool. It's a great tool to market. Yeah. It's good. It helps with a lot of things that you, in the past, we always had to do manually. I mean, just like PowerPoint, right? It's just, and it's so, so many ways to do things quicker. Still gotta go through it. Still gotta tweak it. You should, even if you're using it for marketing and you're writing blog posts, you really, first of all, need to know how to write. And second of all, you need to add your own spin to it, your own flair, but it can help you think of ideas. Sometimes you can ask it to give you a list and then you're like, nope, that's not what I was looking for. And then maybe you can come up with other ideas off of the ideas that they gave you. So I think that that's, it's using the tool. Yeah. It's using the tool and refining what you're doing now and helping maybe save time in places. I think that that's kind of the stepping stone to getting to where it is when it's finally like magical and it's smarter than we are. 'Cause that day's coming too where it's gonna become smarter than us.

Mm-hmm. You know, over the weekend I was following the Artemis spaceship on its way to the moon.

Oh, isn't that cool?

They kept talking about how the Apollo missions back in the 1960s went to the moon and back with a computer that had less strength than our cell phones have, less data.

Can you imagine?

Yeah, but the thought came across my mind of—

That's weird.

But they still have to talk to Houston.

Oh yeah. Yeah, and they still, I mean, it was fun to watch them though because they're seeing it,— for the first time. And we're actually getting amazing footage, right? We never had that before either. It was always kind of, you know, and now it's like you're looking at it on FaceTime with it. And then you're watching them and just seeing them see the Earth from that perspective. And one of the astronauts was like, I can see this and this star and this star. And it's so like, I knew I was going to see this, but it's so different than what I expected. Mm-hmm. I think that's what's really cool about it. It's really, uh, an exciting time that we live in for sure.

It is. And the same thing with AI. I mean, there's— it's this whole new frontier, but we still have to remember the basics. They're still there.

You brought it up, Steve. He said it, one of the, um, astronauts said it.

We're—

you guys are asking me about everything up here, and I'm saying we're so fortunate to live on a planet where we're grounded and we have all these things. And yeah, You're right, Steve. There is still so much to learn and to understand and to be— I mean, yes, our industries are shifting probably more parallel between legal and accounting than a lot of other industries in a lot of, you know, a lot of ways.

But—

Well, I think we have a safety net because of legal.

It could be. I mean, I think it's true of any, though, any account— like if you think of a generalist, I mean, we're not as much anymore, right? But you think of those generalists out there, you have to have a skill set, probably a higher level skill set to understand multiple industries and be able to slide through it. And that's— you're always going to need, like, to Lynda's point, you need those foundational pieces. You need to understand how to drive the car, whether you drive it or not, because you have to— you may have to take over. Right. And you have to understand the protocols that are going to happen. What's going to happen to us, I feel, in the industry is it's going to push our compliance level into a more of a— not a challenge, but more of a controllership style, more further than what it has been before. Who does hit all of the movements? Who has the access to sign these things? Banks.

Banks.

It'll be interesting what banks are going to do. Our banks are not as, you know, at the forefront as probably they should be, and they're trying, but those are archaic, uh—

Be afraid.

Pieces.

Yeah, archaic, like the government's computer systems.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because when you hear— when I hear from my friend that lives in, in Europe and they share with me like how they can move very easily between you know, the, the EU and how everything's digital and it's just in one spot and how easy it is in that way. It's so comfortable to think about that, but it's also kind of scary. But yet I'm like, well, it would be— every state is so different and everything, but we're always going to have that. But how do we, at least on a federal level, streamline that, make that better? So that's the future, right? That's going to be— we'll see how it goes. But this was good.

It's a good topic.

Yeah, definitely.

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Cool. Thank you. That was good.

That was great. Thanks, everybody.

Bye-bye.