Click to play episode
"you're not going to be formidable at what you do unless you are willing to lose
Key Takeaways
- ◆Mark started his family law practice in 1988 with two clients, no money, and a commitment to never let his name be second again, he says the key was being willing to lose more than he was willing to stay where he was.
- ◆A law practice consultant looked at Mark's deposit slips in 1989 and told him, 'You're a divorce lawyer,' even though he insisted he wanted a general practice, that forced specialization became the foundation of his entire career.
- ◆When Mark asked referral sources why they sent him business, they said, 'We know you'll take care of it,' which taught him that service and care mattered as much as legal skill, he started studying spa experiences and the Ritz-Carlton to build a client experience, not just a legal product.
- ◆Mark says lawyers are technicians who ignore management and marketing, citing The E-Myth Revisited, he built his practice by writing a personal mission statement every New Year's Day and staying purpose-driven instead of money-driven.
- ◆Twenty years ago, 60% of Mark's cases came from other lawyers and 20% from past clients, today, over 90% come from SEO searches and ChatGPT queries for 'divorce lawyer in Jackson, Mississippi.'
- ◆Mark uses an AI receptionist named Alex to answer calls 24/7 and feeds his own books and past case plans into AI agents so they deliver his work better than he can, he says nobody can match the product his office delivers now.
- ◆Mark's personal mission statement puts God first, his wife second, and his children third, he tells clients that when a spouse isn't the number one thing in your life, your lives start to diverge and the marriage bond breaks down.
Full transcript
Show
Chad
Welcome back to Process Over Pressure, Chad Paris your host. I have a special guest with me today, Mark Chinn. In 1988, Mark Chinn put on his finest suit and drove to a PO box that didn't have any mail in it. He had two clients, no money, and a brand new family law practice in Jackson, Mississippi. 40 years later now, he runs a attorney firm. all over the state of Mississippi. He also is the recently awarded the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award for the Mississippi Bar Association. He's written four books on how to actually run a law firm and has spent two decades trying to convince his entire profession to stop billing by the hour. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome my guest, Mark Chinn
Mark A Chinn
Good afternoon, it's pleasure to be here.
Chad
Thank you so much for, uh, for hopping on and, uh, spending a little time with me. It really, it really means a lot. I had the opportunity to get to know Mark a little bit before we decided to do this podcast. And, uh, you know, I guess the thing that stood out to me about him is the, just the wealth of knowledge. Uh, you know, you meet people sometimes that, that have lived life and have experienced a lot of things. And, um, he has certainly done that and, uh, the. great thing is, is he's still going strong. And I think he would tell you still learning today. Is that true?
Mark A Chinn
Absolutely. Live, learn, live, learn or die.
Chad
That pretty much sums it up, right? mean, that's what we're at. Someone asked me the other day, they said, when do you get to where you learn everything? And I'm like, I don't think that ever exists. I think you constantly are learning and constantly evolving and getting better and really just honing in on your craft if you're good at it. Is that fair to say?
Mark A Chinn
Absolutely.
Chad
So Mark, I'd like to dive in. We've kind of had a pre-talk a little bit and really just get to know you. I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about why law? Why did you pick that?
Mark A Chinn
You know, that's an interesting question. think a lot of people thought that they would be any number of things when they were growing up. I have never wanted to be anything but a lawyer. I'm not exactly sure where that came from. I do remember watching some television shows. One that sticks out of my mind was Petrocelli. I believe he lived in a trailer out in the desert in Phoenix, but
Chad
Hmm.
Mark A Chinn
He solved people's problems. He fixed things. And I just have always felt that law was at the very center of civilization, that without the law, we don't have any civilization. So it's at the very center of everything we do. And it's very at the very center of the way our culture operates. and a person who works in the law has the opportunity to change lives and to change society. I was always drawn to that. Yes, I'll admit that I probably wanted to be Gale Sayers too and run a football like he did for the Bears, but that wasn't in the cards for me. Law degree was more accessible than his talent.
Chad
You know, we're all designed to have a calling and something that we're designed to do. you know, often I think back of, man, I really wanted to be this. This is what I wanted to do. But I think there was other plans for me that, that you, look back kind of, I'm sure you do this and I've done it. When you look at where you are today and go, man, I'm exactly where I was supposed to be. and so I'm a sure, you know, You're the same way. But one thing that is interesting in me and kind of I talked about it on that day in July the first, 1998, going and putting on your fine suit and going into a practice that really had no foot was nothing. You just started from the ground. How did you feel that day? What was the feeling, if you can remember going back into your, like sitting there looking at yourself in the mirror before you walked out.
Mark A Chinn
It was pretty much a 10 year evolution. I was raised by a good solid middle class family. My father was a mechanical engineer, went to work early every day and came home late. My mother was a stay at home mom and I was raised with very traditional values and those values were if you work hard for someone, if you do what you're supposed to do and keep your head in the game with them, they will take care of you and you will be rewarded. And what I learned after working for other people for 10 years was that no one was going to give me what I wanted. I had to go get what I wanted. And I swore after working for other people for 10 years that no one would ever be my boss ever again. My name would never be second ever again. I was jumping into the deep end and going forward all on my own. I can remember you talked about the suit. I wrote a diary note to myself on that day and I talked about, I'm starting my own practice today. I may go bankrupt. but I'm doing it anyway. I got up this morning, I put on my best three piece suit and drove to the office knowing that I had no one to see. And I drove by the post office box to look for the mail, even though I knew no mail would be there, but I'm going for this. you know, there was a lot of fear involved, but you have to get, a lot of people don't understand this when I talk to them about. litigation and about getting into a fight from a figurative sense is you're not going to be formidable at what you do unless you are willing to lose. And so I reached a point where I was willing to lose more than I was willing to stay where I was. And so that led me to jump off the cliff into the deep end. And what I I learned that
Mark A Chinn
that I did not have any clue was coming my way was that people helped me. People came out of the woodwork to help me. Now they weren't sending me high dollar cases, but they were sending me a case that maybe nobody else wanted, a case that nobody else could figure out, a case that maybe there wasn't a lot of money involved, but they sent it to me. And I didn't expect the generosity of other people. And so I did learn what I believe is a valuable life lesson is that you're not getting anywhere without the community around you. The community that you're in will either lift you up or not. And that's what happened with me unexpectedly. I got lifted up all along the way by people that I didn't even hardly knew.
Chad
Yeah, that's such a great story. really it's the, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as someone even like myself, jumping out, have worked for somebody for 15 plus years and now going out and doing it on my own. You said something there that was just, is just true. And I'm sure there's others that are listening that you were determined. Like I'm not going to have my name second on the list anymore. Like I'm going to do this, whether I go bankrupt or not. I think that's the line that a lot of people want to do it and don't do it. And then those that say I'm going all in no matter what happens. I think that's the difference in those that end up becoming business owners and entrepreneurs and do great things. And the ones that are always have wanted to do it and they look back 25, 30 years and say, man, I wish I would have, I wish I would have. Me and you, we just took plunge and I think that's kind of where you have to be a little bit in doing that because it's not going to be easy. I'm sure when you walked out and you started drawing, it wasn't like it was just, you you said it. wasn't people lined up at the doorway, don't need to get there. You had to go to work and work hard to create where you've done today. Four books all over the state, lifetime achievement award. They didn't just say, man, we're going to give this to you. You had to work for it.
Mark A Chinn
I've always been purpose driven. And I try to talk to young people and to other lawyers about creating a vision. I think probably one of the best books that anybody that starts a business or that wants to succeed in life should read is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That book focuses on the idea of creating a a personal mission statement, a statement that says what kind of life you want to lead and creating goals, setting goals for where you want to be, what you want to achieve, what kind of life you want to have. And I tell people what what builder starts out building a house without having architectural drawings and a clear picture of what that house is going to look at before they even start. Yet So many people get that degree or get that law degree or graduate from high school, whatever it is, and think that it's just going to all somehow fall into place with no clue of what they're trying to achieve. Now, obviously, at age 25, when I got out of law school, there was a lot I didn't know. I didn't even really know what kind of law practice I wanted to have. So your personal mission statement and your goals. can change, but I think one of the keys is paying attention to it. And so for me, it was usually a New Year's Day process where I would sit down and take again another look at the personal mission statement and the goals I had set before and say, OK, how did I do? Is this the direction I want to go? Do I want to make some changes to? what my personal mission statement is and do I want to make any changes to my goals. And so I probably one of the best compliments I ever got was from a friend of mine. The first guy I met in the law school registration line maybe some 20, 30 years ago, said, you know, Mark, you have always seemed to know where you were going and you went there. And I thought, wow, what a
Mark A Chinn
What a great statement to make to me that I looked to him like somebody who knew what they were trying to accomplish and did. And so.
Chad
Yeah, now that that is that's a, that's that's a huge compliment and, uh, and just shows that you're, you know, even, even in your early in your career, you, you, you knew what you wanted to become. And, and, and kind of leads me to the next thought is, know, listen, I have to believe that there's not every lawyer lining up to say, you know what, I want to be in family law. That's what I want to do. You know, in the world we live in today, know, corporate law and all these sexy words and everything that everybody's doing. But, you you mentioned something, you know, at 25, when you got that, you know, you're practicing law. And I think a lot of people today feel like they have to walk into the job knowing what they're going to do when they're 50 years into it. And that's not necessarily true because there's different courses, different paths it's going to take you on. So You know, there's probably some people listening that maybe, you know, coming out of law school, they're sitting there going, man, you know, this is what I really wanted to be. And for you, you found your love and, and, and family law. And, you know, maybe, maybe tell us a little bit, you know, why you picked family law and how it happened. Maybe you didn't want to be in family law. You just fell in love with it. I don't know.
Mark A Chinn
There's a book called Reframe Your Brain and one of the great statements that I saw in Reframe Your Brain that I don't think I've ever seen anywhere else is that your job is to find a better job. Your job is to find a better job. In other words, always be looking forward, always be looking for a way to leap from where you are. I tried all kinds of different practices. I tell people I've been in every court from Justice Court in Mendenhall to the United States Supreme Court. And I've practiced every kind of law. I haven't done much bankruptcy or taxation, but I've done every kind of law, been in every kind of court. I've been before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and argued appellate cases on a high level. I've done it all. And when I started out in 1988, I wanted to have a general practice. wanted my mantra was give it to me. I can try any case, anywhere, anytime on any subject. And that was that was the mantra that I operated on. And I took a lot of pride in being able to go anywhere, anytime, on any type of case. In about 1989, the Mississippi Bar created a project where they offered a contract law practice management consultant to members of the Mississippi Bar. And I took advantage of that. And the first thing he did when we sat down together, and of course this is before the age of computers or lots of data, but he said, what kind of practice do you have? And I said, well, I do a little bit of everything. And he said, well, how can we figure out what kind of cases you have? And I thought, I don't know. Maybe my deposit slips. And so I gave him my deposit book. And he would say, OK, Jones. I said, oh, well, that's a auto accident. OK, Miller. Oh, well, that's a contract. OK, another name. Well, that's a corporation. And
Mark A Chinn
what another name? I'd say, well, that's a divorce. And by the time we were done after about an hour, obviously I had a very general practice and did a lot of different things. But he looked at me and he said, Mark, you're a divorce lawyer. And I said, no, anything but that. Because in 1989 and 1990, there was really only one lawyer in
Chad
Mm.
Chad
you
Mark A Chinn
the state that was crazy enough to say that all they did was divorce. And he was a leader in that respect. So he said, you must specialize. And I said, I don't want to specialize. I don't want to not take something. He said, no, you must specialize. And when you think about it, Mark Chen all alone
Chad
Yeah.
Mark A Chinn
in his office in Jackson, Mississippi, with 6,000 lawyers at the time in Mississippi. It's probably two or three times up now, but how would anybody know to pick me out of that crowd? And so it became very evident to me that specialization was the key, creating some unique niche that you could occupy that maybe none of the other 6,000 lawyers occupied or occupied well. so that you could then garner that business. And so over time, I built on that concept. And why am I a divorce lawyer? I think that it's the personal connection. The personal connection that you have with a divorce client is unlike anything else in law. Obviously, divorce is very personal. And so you are... someone is bringing their life to you in shambles. And my goal is to create options for them and to create an opportunity for them to turn disaster into greatness, to turn suffering into joy and a better life going forward somehow. And so what could be more compelling than knowing that someone's entrusting their life to you in the worst of times and it's up to you to use your care and your abilities and your experience to give them a life that they've dreamed of, hopefully.
Chad
Yeah, it's so well said. know, don't think coming to you in that time, you said it best. know, that's not somebody's best time. No one's like, well, you know, this is great. I mean, this is very difficult time on everybody. And, you know, the delicacy that you handle it and the way you go about it, that thought process of, you know, I want to, I think you said like when their life is in shambles, someone there just to help. Because really, like, who do you turn to? chances are your family's upset with you or you're going through just a very difficult time and you've got to have somebody there that's like, listen, this is exactly what you have to do and this is what you need to do. And that's just a delicate situation. And my hat's off to you because like I said, I don't think there's, you know, a hundred law students coming out going, you know what, I'm going into family law. That's where I'm headed. And so... But that's what you've built your career on and could have done probably a thousand other things and smart enough to do, and again, you've tried a lot of cases and a lot of different courts and could do any of it, but that's the purpose that you were put here. You said it, you know, purpose-driven life. And I think that's probably the purpose that you had is exactly what you're doing.
Mark A Chinn
You know, we were in Key Largo many years ago, 20 something years ago, and we were at a particular place where a lot of yachts were docked. And so as my wife and I were sitting at the pool, we could watch these magnificent yachts going in and out of the bay there into dock and going out to sea. And she turned to me and she said, Mark, you need to go into asbestos. I want a yacht. And I tell that story because one of the main reasons to set to create a mission statement is to know why you're doing what you're doing. So, yes, if the number one goal in my law career was probably to make a lot of money, there are other choices that that I could have made. But My mission statement, the one that I've written and stayed with for many years, says nothing about money. So when I sat down and wrote, what kind of life do I want to lead? The first thing I thought, well, my wife and I thought, no, God has to be number one, he? And so I wrote down, God will be number one in my life. I will lead a spiritual life. I will go to church. I will. I like to sing in the choir. will sing in the choir. I will be a faithful churchgoer and I will try to use the word whenever appropriate in my practice to help people. And then number two, you know, my wife. My wife is the number one person on this earth. She's the number one thing on this earth. And so I wrote down what kind of husband I wanted to be. And the next thing was my children. You know, they come next. And I tell many people this in the context of successful marriage and what happens to people in divorce. If your spouse is not the number one thing to you in your life, then your lives start to diverge. And so a typical example, and I don't mean for this to be gender based, but a typical example might be that the man thinks
Mark A Chinn
Dedicates himself to his career dedicates himself to his physical body Dedicates himself to his connections to his friends to his golf game Because that's where the connections are and that's where his joy as a man is and at the same time the woman is dedicating herself to the children and to creating a great home and into all those things and When you hear that scenario you think of what's wrong with that? Well, what's wrong with that is that both parties dedication should? first be towards that marriage. And the reason for that is that the marriage bond is the very foundation of absolutely everything else. If the marriage bond breaks down, then the child rearing breaks down. If the marriage and the child rearing breaks down, then people break down. And when people break down, they don't do the kind of work that they need to do. So.
Chad
Yeah.
Mark A Chinn
again creating the priorities and creating the focus is what's really important in how you lead your life. And that has to be reevaluated and it probably has to change as time goes by.
Chad
Yeah, no, it's so true and, and, you know, just great wisdom. Uh, think it's spot on, you know, foundation, um, kind of, kind of shift in a little bit of gears because it, you know, we talk about foundation or we talk about, you know, one of the things that I've noticed I've spoken was, you know, I spoke on, what I do with a lot of law firms. And one of the things that seems to have, that keeps coming up that I keep, that I keep hearing. And I'm asking maybe you could elaborate or maybe you'd be like, no, that's not me. But it seems that, you know, when you go to law school, they prepare you for the law. You know the law. I mean, that's what you're prepared for. But running a business, they don't do a lot of classes on, here's how we're going to run a business. And so I hear this a lot from lawyers and those that have got operational people. like, I can practice law, but the business side of it is tough. and they don't do a very good job. Obviously you have, you've got to practice as long as you have, but what about the time when you realize, okay, I'm a lawyer, but I also own a business and I got to figure out how to run the business too.
Mark A Chinn
One of the interesting things you'll hear from lawyers is, just want to practice law. These clients are a real annoyance to me. I think I've always been by nature, marketing and management driven in addition to law practice driven.
Chad
Yeah. I hear that all the time. Yeah, I hear it.
Mark A Chinn
But a key time in my evolution was participating in coaching. I've had, at times I've had maybe three different coaches and for different aspects of my life and for different aspects of my practice, I believe very much in getting coaching. And as a part of the coaching I had with a group called Atticus out of Orlando, Florida, they gave me the book, The E-Myth Revisited. by Michael Gerber. It's a magnificent book. And it talks about exactly the thing that you're mentioning, that one of the biggest problems for professionals or people with a skill is that they love their skill and they hone their skills as what he calls a technician. And so they're magnificent technicians, but they ignore the management and the marketing. in order to be successful you have to have those three abilities. You have to have the ability of a technician but you have to have the ability of a manager and you have to have the ability of a relations specialist. And so I became dedicated to service in addition to how to practice law properly, I became dedicated to how can I deliver what I call rich Carlton service? How can I deliver a service that that makes people feel truly cared for? I can remember as a part of my coaching, one of the drills that gave me was to interview people who sent me business. And so I made a list of about 10 people and I called them up and I said, you send me business. really appreciate it. Would you mind telling me why you send me business? And more times than not, I got the answer because we know you'll take care of it. And I thought, you know, there's it was disappointing at first because I was hoping they would say you're brilliant. We've heard you're a magnificent orator in court. You're unstoppable. You're, know.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark A Chinn
all of those attributes and they didn't say that. They said, we know you'll take care of it. And so like I said, at first I was disappointed, but then I thought about it I thought, wait a minute now, that's got at least two parts to it that are pretty cool. Number one is take care of it means I'll get the job done. And so many people get work, but they don't do it. But the other part was the use of the word care. Care brings not just to getting the job done, element to it. Care brings a personal care about the other person, care about their circumstances, not just getting the job done. And so I really liked that. so I looked everywhere for what makes a level of service feel great. And I joked that one of the places that I looked was the lady who cut my hair. It was a spa. And so I would go in and there'd be nice music. There'd be a nice smell. There'd be candles burning. There'd be a pretty receptionist behind the desk. And she would say, hello, Mr. Chen. I can't believe you're here for a haircut. looks so good the way it is now. You know, just something like that, just to get you started. And then, and then they, they had somebody wash your hair. And they didn't just wash your hair. They would take 15 minutes washing your hair, which has zero to do with a good haircut, right? For me. So, but it added to the experience. And so I looked at things like that and those businesses and other business that how can I bring a great feeling to my clients? And there was a book I read.
Chad
That's right.
Mark A Chinn
back then, I haven't picked it up in a long time, called the experience economy. And it talks about how a great business doesn't just deliver a service, they deliver an experience. And so early on in my practice, I began focusing on how can I deliver not just a good legal product to people, but a great experience. And then I had a hip replacement some 25 years ago.
Chad
Mm-hmm.
Mark A Chinn
And I was in back in those days, you were in hospital for two or three days. You know, what an outpatient like it is today. So I'm in the hospital and I can't sleep. And when I finally fall asleep, they wake me up and do whatever they do, take temperature, whatever they think they're doing when they wake you up. And so you can't sleep. And then when you sleep, you get woken up. And so then you're in a bad mood and you're in pain. And One morning there was no coffee. was like eight o'clock in the morning. There was no coffee. And I really, I don't do this. I'm a pretty nice guy most of the time, but I really let some nerves have it about the fact that I didn't have any coffee and I threw my coffee pot across the room against the wall. And it wasn't like me to do that. And about 10 30, they had me out in the hallway walking and down the hallway comes my surgeon. He was a magnificent, brilliant man holding a cup of coffee. And he came up to me with a wry smile and says, here, I hear you need this. And so it made me think my clients are in the same pain that I was in when I had that hip surgery. My clients need the same level of patience and sympathy and care that my surgeon showed me in bringing me a cup of coffee and chuckling about the fact that I acted the way I had. And so I tell people, we try to treat people like they're coming out of surgery and they're in pain. And we understand that we want to try and make it better for them.
Chad
Yeah, that's good. Very, very good. And this is kind of on the line of that, you you've written four books and probably got two or three more you're probably working on if I had to guess. But one of them that specifically, you know, when I was looking at my research, you wrote a book, you know, how to build and manage a family law practice for the ABA. But you revised that or you did do some revisions to it and I'm curious, when you wrote that book and of course, then you did some revision to it, what was the one process that you noticed? I have to believe in your book. I have not read the book, but I had to believe that most lawyers were getting wrong when they were trying to build a firm. so when you was writing that, what was maybe one or two things that it's like, this is the nugget I'm going to give.
Mark A Chinn
Well, it had to be revised because of computers, email, and the internet. Computers, email, and the internet. I joke that before 2000, before I really got going with computers,
Chad
Yeah, absolutely.
Mark A Chinn
I would get a letter. would go to the post office box, get my mail, mail, bring it and put it on my desk and then open each letter and read it and usually get mad. And then go to the file room, pull the paper file, bring it back to my desk, flip through the file, through what we call the correspondence section of the letters. paper letters and then maybe we had another separate index for what we call the pleadings, know, the complaints and the answers and all that and flip through that. And then I would pull out the dictaphone, right? And I would dictate a letter to someone about what I had just received and what was happening next, whatever. I would dictate that and then I would take the file and the tape and take it to my secretary's desk and in hopes that she would type it soon and Then I would read it, proofread it, and then it would be put in an envelope and mailed. All right? So that might take half an hour, 20 minutes, whatever. And I might, during that process, when I was billing by the hour, I might hit 12 files a day if I was lucky. I mean, to get my eight or 10 hours a day, whatever I was trying to get. But I might hit eight or, you files if I was lucky. Today, with, you know, I'm sitting here looking at three computer screens. I have my chat GPT open on the far right. I've got my calendar and this screen open in the center and over on the left I've got all my documents, every single document in every case. We keep no paper except where we have to keep an original, which is rare now. So there's no paper. There is a file room, but I don't go to it. And so today, instead of all that process I described before, I get an email. I look at it. I look at my case management system on the file. Then I look at documents in the system. It takes me minutes, if not seconds. And then I type an email response of some kind or.
Mark A Chinn
I'll go into my document assembly program and generate a document, a legal document within minutes. All of that used to take, you know, hours. And so the practice has been completely transformed by technology marketing. Let me let me talk quickly about marketing. Maybe as an aside in my I used to be proud to to write about
Chad
Yeah.
Mark A Chinn
talk about personal marketing, how marketing was about personal relationships. And I talked about things like looking someone in the eye. Looking at someone so carefully in the eye, you actually could tell what color their eyes were, paying that much attention to them. And handing them a business card. And I talked about the ways to hand a business card. For example, you hand a business card to somebody with two hands. Two hands. And you take a business card with two hands, as though it's something special. And I guess that's all still very important. But the truth of the matter is, 20 years ago, 60 % of my cases came from other lawyers who don't do what I do. 20 % came from satisfied past customers, and another 10 or whatever percent came from random referrals. Today, 90 plus percent of my business comes from SEO searches on the internet for divorce lawyers in Jackson, Mississippi. Not that referrals have stopped. It's just that the marketing has completely flipped from personal to whatever people can find on the internet. When you're with somebody and you got to answer a question, what do you do? You go to your phone, punch it in. along these lines, in the last year, if not less, I've noticed that it's changed again, that it's chat GPT. And people are going to chat GPT and say, tell me who the best lawyer is, divorce lawyer is in Mississippi. And that's where they're getting their answers. And so.
Chad
Yep. I'm set. Yeah.
Mark A Chinn
So much has changed because of the technology.
Chad
No, it has and it's really, you I kind of expected you to kind of talk a little bit about that because the process and the revision, it has changed. mean, the way we do business today is different. 10 years from now, the way we do business 10 years from now is going to be different than the way we do it now. And you mentioned something about the internet and you're right, 20 years ago when the internet started, we all had the, know, the dial and it took forever to get on it. you know, it was, it was just like, this is the work I can remember. Cause I've kind of grew up. Right when it came out, was like, this is horrible. This is going to slow everybody down. This is going to take too much time. There's no way I'm going to do that. You know, and there was a big resistance and here we are now where AI is out there and so much change with that. And, and we were having the same conversation. It's the same conversations. I talk to people and I do a lot of AI automation, but I get, I get this all the time. This is, this is ridiculous. We got to slow it down. You know, I just read, I think today they're They're trying to get up, Bernie Sanders or whatever's coming out with this group to, to, to, to fight AI and all this. And I'm thinking, we're doing the same thing we did with internet. Here it is. And in 20 years now, it's going to be something different. And, and it's really, you know, we, we have to, we have to incorporate where we can incorporate it in our business and help our business grow. Otherwise we're going to get left behind.
Mark A Chinn
Everybody's using it. I see my wife talking to ChatGPT on her phone, asking answers to all kinds of questions. It's fairly routine for us to get challenged on law by clients who are looking up law on ChatGPT. I get letters from clients that I can tell they got ChatGPT to help them with. I had an assessment with a client yesterday and she had sent me all of her file materials and she herself had saved in there a chat GPT summary of a Guardian ad litem report. I said okay I'm gonna look at your chat GPT summary here. I see you've done that. She said yes I did and so it's it's It's inexorable. Anybody who thinks they're going to try and stop this is nuts. mean, it's an egg in eggs are able and and lawyers are afraid of change. And the first thing that comes out of a lawyer's mouth when you talk about anything new is they'll say, well, is that ethical? Can I do that? Can I do that? Because lawyers are terrified of licensure action and terrified of the ethics code. And so
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah. Sure.
Mark A Chinn
My attitude on that is, yes, I'm going to pay attention. Yes, I'm going to try and make sure that everything I do is authentic. But to ignore these tools, I don't think anybody wants a lawyer that would ignore these tools. As a matter of fact, I have an AI robot that answers my phone 24-7. Her name is Alex. You should call her sometime.
Chad
All right.
Mark A Chinn
I have actually suggested to the person who owns that agent, shouldn't she just say, I'm Mark Chin or I'm Chin and Associates AI receptionist? I mean, people can kind of tell, but wouldn't it be kind of impressive to people to know that we are doing that and that we are using that technology? So I haven't done that yet, but you know, the point I'm trying to make is I think people want to see that and we are using all these agents now analyzing documents, even, know, generating cross examinations based on certain information. And the stuff is just spot on and it just literally saves hours and hours and hours. You always check it.
Chad
That's great.
Mark A Chinn
You always make sure that it's yours. But to not use these tools is just, you're going to get left behind. And I can deliver a product. The more we use AI, the more I feel like I've always been one of the best divorce lawyers in the world. But I know now nobody can meet the product that I'm delivering with some of the AI agents that we've put into place here in this office. Nobody can match it.
Chad
I agree.
Chad
I think you're spot on. I think you're spot on because the angle that you're taking it is not replacing who you are and the knowledge that you have in your head. You're just using it as an assistant to help you process faster so that you can spend more time to review it and say, okay, this is a great point. This is not, this is that. It just helps you arrive at what you'd already do.
Mark A Chinn
Yeah.
Chad
faster than it did five years ago. That's the way you're using it. And that's a great way to use it. tell people all the time, use it as a tool to help you be faster at what you're good at. Looking at a diving into a case, the facts, the cross-examination, those pieces, you can do that all day long in your sleep. That's what you know. You know it very well. Give me the information that I'm having before. where you had to go down to a hallway or have a secretary or two or three paralegals to decipher to give you the report so that you can do that. There's no way one person can do that for a big case. It's just making it faster for you to get to where you can take it and say, I'm ready. And to me, that's tools that we should be, like we should do those, because that's just saving you more time and making you want to practice longer. I think we'll see people that'll want to practice longer because... if they accept some of these tools because it's going to make their job more efficient.
Mark A Chinn
less tedious too. So you're the technology genius. I'm just a country lawyer, but I do have some visions for how I want things to work. not necessarily going to try in any way to say something technological, but here I go. It's my understanding that AI can be intuitive or not. And so
Chad
Heh.
Mark A Chinn
In other words, intuitive means that the AI will learn. And so we have already built a system for doing one aspect of our business, what we call the assessment process, where we bring clients in and give them an assessment of their case, their options, what we think they ought to do, a full discussion of the laws, the pros and cons, and then also a case plan and pricing because we charge fixed prices. So when we created that agent, we put into it all the assessments and case plans that I had done before. We also put a lot of my writings in there and my books. We fed my books into the AI agent so that it knows me. And so I The product is going to, AI is going to develop so much so that it will be able to do me better than me. I'll never forget, I had a wonderful paralegal, wonderful paralegal, it helped me build my business. And she started out knowing zero, but became the finest paralegal in the world. And one day she brought me something and I said,
Mark A Chinn
this is pretty good. And she said, I said, how'd you do this? She said, well, I just took something you did three years ago and updated it. So I just did what you did, know, copied what you did. so AI will help me make sure that I'm always delivering that product that maybe I worked on so hard before. And it will make sure I don't leave something out. It'll make sure it's perfect. But it's going to be my product. And certainly after I review it, it's my product. Another thing we're learning, which maybe to your audience is nothing new, but we're learning that you have to talk to your AI agent, almost like a person. have to give it information. You have to tell it what you're trying to do, maybe why you're trying to do it, what kind of language you want to do, what kind of level of sophistication you want.
Chad
Yes, it is.
Mark A Chinn
And then a thing I heard like two days ago was you should always ask it, is there any more detail that you need from me before you answer my question, which I think is interesting. So and I've actually had an associate come into me and say, well, I was fighting with chat GPT all this afternoon. So I went to Claude and got a quick answer. And so I'm not saying the AI agents have personalities, but if you learn how to work with them and give them what you want to come back, it will learn and give you. Now let me ask you this. In communicating with AI, do you think it's not long before instead of dictating or typing in a question, I'm just on camera talking to my AI agent so she or he can see my expression and hear my voice and then
Chad
Yeah, it's true.
Mark A Chinn
start to learn to translate that personality into what's done.
Chad
yeah, yeah, that's, that's pretty close. I would imagine you'll see that maybe this year, it developed more. you know, they've already got it where you can just word, prayer, you know, work, talk right to it and, just adding the characters of the face to read, is not, is not far off. and, and I think you make a great point. You have to, you know, when you, when you think about, I always tell people when they're, when I'm talking to them about, you know, AI and how to use some of that. Is you got to think about it like it's a true colleague. It's not a human, but you got to be able to push back. If you and I were sitting in your office and we were having a conversation about a case and you said something that I was like, Hmm, you know, that was interesting, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. I might come back at you and go, okay, but can you elaborate a little deeper or can you go a little deeper on that? Because I'm not following what you're saying. Some conversation you would have with your AI is. Okay, I hear that, but I need you to go a little deeper here. I need you to elaborate on this or I need you to put it in, you know, simple terms for my client to understand. It will learn that and start, start creating more of a, what I call a forward facing for a client because listen, most clients can't understand the legal jargon.
Mark A Chinn
Sorry to interrupt, but you have an appointment soon.
Chad
that they can't understand, like when you put it in a jargon that they can't understand and read it. And that's so helpful. And that's the way you have to treat it. You have to treat it like it's another colleague in there you're kind of debating back and forth with it. And so, yeah.
Mark A Chinn
And you've just made several facial expressions while saying that. so I'm saying we're thinking within a year, our AI agents are going to be able to read our expressions to tell more about us and what we're asking them to do.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad
Yeah, I think it's very close. So, well, listen, Mark, we're at a time I'm going to, I'm going to close shop. Thank you so much for being on the show. What a great show. Really appreciate it. Again, I can't thank you enough. It's been awesome.
Mark A Chinn
It's been a pleasure. look forward to talking to you again in some weeks or months as this all develops.
Chad
Absolutely. So we'll stop it there and cut it. No, this has been great. hope you enjoyed it. It was very good conversation. could have probably could have gone for an hour and a half if we wanted to. It some good stuff. But yeah, I'll have it cut. I'll send you an email when everything's done. And then I'll also tag you on LinkedIn when it comes out. So you have it and your people can use it on marketing or whatever they want to. And thank you, by the way, I sent that over. I don't know if you had a chance look at it, but I hope that, you know, maybe when you get some free time, you can kind of look through and see what you think.
Mark A Chinn
I've been very busy this week and obviously and the things complicated complicated by a couple of funerals, but I looked at it. I read through it and I sent it to Wendy and asked her to study it and we'll try to get back to you on it because I've got her working hard on that and so I wasn't quite sure if you were telling me that there's a possibility that trying this could be a negative.
Chad
Yeah.
Chad
Yeah, I think, I think so. What I, what I was trying to be in there was, is that I think there's about, we're about a 65, 70 % right now. I don't, I'm not going to say it can't be done, but I don't think, I don't think that again, I wanted to be upfront and tell you where I think we are, where I think we can be a more realistic and what some of the work that we would have to do, which I think may already be there. may take us a little bit of work to do it, but that's kind of how I broke it out is I don't think, you some people say, Hey, I'm going to charge you this. And then it's for this whole thing. And we don't need to charge you for that. If we don't know it's going to work, then you're down in a bunch of money. It's going to be like, well, we can't build this. read someone, why did you tell me that? Like your motto, like this is what it costs to dive in to find out step one. And it's going to tell us whether we want to go to step two or not.
Mark A Chinn
Well, it phases looked like one of my cake.
Chad
Yeah, because you don't know, right? mean, and I don't want people to pay for something that's be a waste of money for them because it's not.
Mark A Chinn
I give them a choice. I give them a choice of pain in the faces or a lump sum that's usually discounted significantly where I take them. But if I solve the problem like that, anyway, it was very familiar to me the way you did it and I just need to, it's obviously something for me to take some time and read. So I'm going to do that.
Chad
Yeah, yeah. It's, you, it's, you asked me a question. I want to make sure I delivered on something that you asked me specifically. and, if Wendy wants to hop on with me, I'll do a chat with her or you. We kind of walked through it. I, I, I'm trying to be pretty upfront about what it is and what we're trying to do. Cause I want you to look at and go, yep, this is dead on chat or this is not because it's a service, you know, I'm providing a service. I want to make sure it feels like you're getting something that you deserve. So, thanks Mark. War Eagle. See ya.
Subscribe
Get every article and episode in your inbox
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.