Real Stories of Legal Struggles and Successes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:31 — 136.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Jane Muir  – J. Muir & Associates P.A.

From the basics of forming your business entity to protecting yourself through solid contracts and smart bookkeeping, Jane Muir shares invaluable advice for business owners at every stage. She discusses common pitfalls companies face, such as collecting unpaid invoices, navigating litigation, and when (or if) it’s even worth chasing what you’re owed. You’ll also hear about the often-overlooked power of credit reporting, and why a solid business plan includes preparing for legal disputes, not just dreaming big.

Jane Muir gets candid about her own journey: growing up in a family of lawyers, how market downturns led her to start her own practice, and why embracing technology and AI has helped her firm stand out and serve clients more efficiently. Plus, she recommends the essential business books every entrepreneur should read (hint: it’s not all about law).

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Business Entity Options Explained
05:45 “Small Claims: Worth the Chase?”
08:51 “Litigation: A Business Strategy”
12:59 “Enforcing Judgments with Legal Writs”
16:03 “Fighting for Justice and Fees”
18:49 Settlements vs. Trials: Key Insights
21:01 Partnerships and Legal Financial Dynamics
26:20 Beginner Business Tax Tips
28:49 “Credit Reporting Agencies Explained”
33:02 “Gemini and AI Automations”
34:07 Automated Document and Scheduling System
39:03 “Spot, Read, Decide Quickly”
42:00 Vespa Insurance Coverage Gap
46:24 “Starting a Law Firm”
50:33 “Legal Challenges and Opportunities”
51:21 “Assessing Threats and Opportunities”
56:23 Bookkeeping: Your Business Backbone

Podcast Transcription:

Jane Muir [00:00:00]:
in whatever that area is. You could be a painter or a social media marketing person, but if you’re not getting your invoices out and getting paid, you’re just not going to have a business. Well, that’s really so important that we make sure everybody is aware that bookkeeping is the backbone of your business and you might not like it. It might be boring. So you got to find someone who’s going to do it for you. But if you don’t have your bookkeeping in order, then you’re lost and you’ll never be able to succeed.

James [00:00:39]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found on the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service, The Bold Business Book, as well as LiveSwitch. Today we are welcoming/preparing to learn from Jane Muir of J. Muir and Associates, PA. Jane, how is it going today?

Jane Muir [00:01:09]:
It’s a beautiful day in Coral Gables. How are you?

James [00:01:12]:
I am doing well. You know, you and I were chatting right before here about the initials after the name, J. Muir and Associates, the PA. So let’s dig into some legal stuff right away. What is the PA?

Jane Muir [00:01:26]:
Every state has statutes that define the different types of corporate entities that they allow. And in order to tell the public what corporate entity you have, there are little letters at the end of the name of the company, like Inc. or LLC or Co. And those are designed to give notice of what rules and, um, rights and responsibilities apply to that corporate entity. Uh, my entity is called a professional association, which is specific to professionals who hold a license. It can apply to accountants, architects, engineers, lawyers, doctors, and it’s essentially a partnership form. Um, which is an option just for licensed professionals.

James [00:02:18]:
Nice. So that would be in addition to, or instead of an LLC or S corporation, something like that?

Jane Muir [00:02:26]:
It would be instead of.

James [00:02:27]:
Uh, instead of.

Jane Muir [00:02:28]:
A professional group like lawyers or doctors, they can have a PA or a PLLC, or they can have another thing called a limited liability partnership, an LLP. Theoretically, they could have other types of entities to allow non-licensed professionals to participate. Like if, if I were going to start a non-law firm business, for instance, I can have anything I want. It could be an LLC, it can be an Inc. And in Florida, they allow us to kind of make a Frankenstein where we take features of the different statutes and make them into one. Corporate entity that has features of all of them. Uh, but really anything goes and the, the little letters at the end are supposed to just kind of give the public an idea of what to expect.

James [00:03:24]:
Interesting. Is that, is the PA thing newer or has that been around for a while?

Jane Muir [00:03:29]:
No, it’s ancient. It’s, it’s one of the earliest corporate forms.

James [00:03:33]:
Oh, really?

Jane Muir [00:03:34]:
All right.

James [00:03:35]:
How cool is that? And just outta curiosity here, why did you or your team choose PA versus LLC or LLP or whatever?

Jane Muir [00:03:44]:
I think, well, I, I’m the sole shareholder of our firm. We have partners, but, um, I’m the sole shareholder and I just think it’s a classic choice. It, to me, it conveys that we’re traditional even though We’re advanced in technology and we’re advanced in, in our approach to managing matters. We, we do want to convey to the public that we’re old school lawyers doing real legal work.

James [00:04:18]:
Right on. I love it. So let’s dig into that, Jane. What is, what do you do?

Jane Muir [00:04:24]:
I’m a business lawyer. I’m located in Miami, Florida. Our firm has offices in Dade, uh, Palm Beach, and, um, opening soon in Alachua County.

James [00:04:36]:
Nice.

Jane Muir [00:04:37]:
And we help business owners with their legal issues from mainly contracts and, and issues relating to permits needed or, or business licenses, troubleshooting all kinds of random things that can pop up in a business. Uh, and then the remainder of our practice is commercial litigation.

James [00:04:59]:
Oh, that sounds like fun.

Jane Muir [00:05:01]:
I don’t, yeah, we deal with a lot of conflict.

James [00:05:05]:
All right. All right. So let’s dig into that cuz that sounds like fun, right? Uh, tell me about the conflicts that a typical business owner or business entity would run into.

Jane Muir [00:05:15]:
I would say mainly it’s collecting money. All right. Or dealing with—

James [00:05:20]:
it always comes down to money, right?

Jane Muir [00:05:21]:
Yes. It’s always money.

James [00:05:23]:
All right. Um, and is this because somebody put together a partnership that’s bad or more, uh, vendor-customer type relationship?

Jane Muir [00:05:32]:
We do have the partnerships gone bad, but I would say the majority of our work is vendor and customer relationships. Like someone owes you and you need to sue to force them to pay.

James [00:05:45]:
All right. So in my extremely limited experience. There is a dollar amount threshold where it’s just not worth chasing from the headache and the way the system is set up. I guess in the, the little experience that I had of going to small claims court, it was annoying. It was expensive. And in the end, even when I won, I still didn’t get paid. So tell me a story from, uh, what you would like small business to know, small business owners to know when it comes to collecting money, when it comes to dollar amounts. Or who’s worth chasing and things like that?

Jane Muir [00:06:19]:
What a great question. That’s, that’s my every day. I process that question. What, what the cost benefit analysis is for a litigation. So first you want to know how much is at issue. And let’s say if it’s under $50,000, I really don’t, I usually tell people, don’t throw your good money after bad. And the reason is because our average litigation has expenses of about $50,000. And takes 2 to 2.5 years to come to a conclusion.

Jane Muir [00:06:50]:
Wow. Our, our least expensive litigations are $10,000 to $15,000, and they either resolve early by settlement or we win by default. And then the most expensive litigation we’ve had so far was a 3-year litigation. It had expenses of like $800,000. We ended in a jury verdict of $6.3 million. So that justified the expense, but whether we’re ever going to collect on that is still an open question. So question number 1 is how much is at issue? Does it make it worthwhile to pursue? Then you want to ask, is there a way to recover the fees if you win? Because you don’t just want the money you lost, you want to get the fees back. So oftentimes when I consult a business owner, I’m looking at their agreements with their customers and they don’t have a prevailing party fee provision, which makes it not really worthwhile to pursue.

Jane Muir [00:07:51]:
So you want to see if you can collect fees and then you want to see that there’s a pocket to pull the money out of either insurance or a property that’s not protected by homestead or some other exemption that makes it uncollectible, and that’s how we decide how we’re going to proceed. So I also tell people there are kind of two good reasons to litigate. One is a long-term philosophical goal, like if you wanted to integrate schools, for instance, or support freedom of speech. These are long-term things for society that are good. Beneficial to society and no amount of money is, is not worth spending. Like you, you should spend all the money in the world to make these good things happen. And then the other thing is like a long-term business plan. So example being, if you’re an insurance company, you want to avoid people making false claims.

Jane Muir [00:08:51]:
So you always try to fight against the litigations that that come into your office to avoid there being a lot of false claims. And people know, I might as well just give up so that I will not have to spend and potentially lose and fight for so long. So in my firm, what we typically do is we’ll have a company that has a lot of accounts receivable. And once we see how, how much it is in total, maybe it’s $3,000 and $5,000 small amounts, but if the whole amount is $200,000, then that’s worth pursuing, even though it’s a bunch of little cases, because we can get a client signed up on a retainer where we’re copying, pasting the same kind of lawsuit over and over. The contract looks just the same. It’s pretty much a repeat of the same fact pattern. You know, someone owes us money and we need to get paid, and that, that makes it more efficient. But long story short, litigation has to be part of your comprehensive business plan.

Jane Muir [00:10:09]:
And if you’re just kind of shooting from the hip on whatever random thing that pops up, it’s not gonna benefit your company.

James [00:10:18]:
Gotcha. Interesting. It is so, so I guess bizarre, cuz I remember when I first started business and I had my first customer not pay me and you’re like, ah, I gotta make payroll and I’m chasing after, I don’t even remember what it was, $200, $300, something like that. And I remember when I went to the courthouse, right? You gotta drive downtown and you gotta park and. And then they’re like, oh, that’s going to be $50 or $100, whatever it was to file. And I was like, what? I have to pay you guys to chase after my money? And then I remember going through all that. Then the court’s like, yep, you totally win. Go get your money.

James [00:10:55]:
And I was like, I remember asking the judge, cause I wasn’t smart enough to get an attorney, or maybe an attorney was smart enough not to take me on for $300. I was like, hey, um, how do I do that? And the judge was basically said, that’s your problem. And I was like, I thought that’s what I was doing here. Cause if I could collect it, I wouldn’t have had to go through court. So it’s just an interesting dynamic, I guess.

Jane Muir [00:11:24]:
Totally post-judgment collections. That’s a whole discipline. And when you know how to do it, you can take that piece of paper that you won. And seize people’s computers and sell them on the courthouse steps. And that’s kind of the fun part. That’s like the cowboy part of being a lawyer where you get to show up and lock down all the assets and change the locks on the building and, you know, do a foreclosure sale, that kind of thing. It’s just a very tricky area. And you gotta kind of know what you’re doing.

James [00:12:03]:
Tell me about that. Tell me about selling a computer in the courthouse steps.

Jane Muir [00:12:08]:
Yeah. So after you have a judgment, there’s a process called execution where you have to get the courts to issue writs. So it starts with the judgment. You send the opposing party a fact information sheet. They’re supposed to honestly fill it out and tell you where their bank accounts are, what account numbers, how much money they have in them. And they don’t because people who lose in court are often resentful and they want to kind of avoid fulfilling that obligation. So you give them the fact information sheet, you record the judgment with the county and with the state. State and make sure you send it to the credit reporting agencies.

Jane Muir [00:12:59]:
And by doing that, you make the judgment not possible to be ignored because the debtor is like pretending that it didn’t happen. They’re just like, uh, you know, I don’t, I don’t really owe this $300 or $300,000 or $3 million or however much it is. But once you’ve recorded it, then it’s, they can’t ignore it. Their creditors start to notice. And then you, you get writs issued. Writ of attachment is one where you can, uh, attach means grab, like physical assets. There’s another one called a writ of garnishment where you shut down their accounts and you take their money right out of their accounts. And a writ of possession is what you get to obtain a property and the possession of the property.

Jane Muir [00:13:52]:
And even if your debt is a little bit that you, that they owe you, you can take a lot more things because selling a bunch of computers, for instance, liquidating them is not going to bring in as much as they’re worth retail. Like a computer is $1,000 if you’re buying it new and it could be fresh from the Apple Store. But if you don’t sell it retail, then it’s worth like pennies on the dollar. So people really hate it when you liquidate their assets because they, they feel like the benefit that you got is worth less than the objects. And the attorney’s fees continue to stack up after, after the judgment. So every time I’m getting these writs and going to court and asking the judge to interfere, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, the, the, the clock keeps running and we keep getting paid as lawyers. And sometimes the money that goes to the lawyers exceeds what goes to the judgment.

James [00:15:00]:
Wow. So when you tell me about the judgment versus the collection afterwards, so you get the judgment. Let’s just say it’s $100,000, whatever. You are still involved as the attorney in this process of collecting the money. It depends. Do your fees stack on top of that $100 grand?

Jane Muir [00:15:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. After you’ve won. So the process starts with, you know, complaint and answer, and the complaint says, you owe me money. And the answer says, no, I don’t. And once you’ve ironed that situation out, there’s a whole process to find all the evidence supporting both sides of the story called discovery. And as long as there are facts in question, like you owe me money, no I don’t, then you have to go to trial to determine what, what facts are true. And that’s why they call the jury the trier of facts because they’re deciding what’s true and what’s not.

Jane Muir [00:16:03]:
So I like to represent people who are right because I believe in the courts and I think that they generally come out correct. So I choose to only represent people who I believe are genuinely owed money or genuinely deserving of my legal help because they’re doing the right thing and they’re trying to achieve excellence in their fields. So we try the case, we prove to the trier of fact what the facts are, and then the verdict gets rendered into a judgment, which entitles you to collect. So once you’ve got the judgment, and that entitles you to post-judgment attorney’s fees, and it makes sense. Like, if you imagine You’re, uh, if, if you didn’t get attorney’s fees, there’d be no incentive to keep fighting to get that money because every time you have to pay a lawyer, it’s chipping away at the amount of money that you’re gonna get paid. But because after the judgment, it’s, it’s been confirmed, you are right, they are wrong, they owe you this money. So if they don’t pay, then of course you should get your attorney’s fees.

James [00:17:19]:
Got it. Makes sense. Tell me, do you know, or is there some industry standard for how much money or what percentage of, uh, I’ll say guilty verdicts, I don’t actually get collected on? Just like there’s 50% of people get divorced. That’s just a statistic people know. Is there some like, hey, 20% of judgments actually get paid or something like that?

Jane Muir [00:17:40]:
I, I wouldn’t know that. That’s a great question, but I have no, I have no way to know that.

James [00:17:46]:
Okay. It’s interesting, I guess, out of curiosity, because I’ve had, I guess you chase after money. And I don’t know that I’ve ever, I don’t know that I’ve ever actually had money. No, that’s not true. I remember a car accident where I got hit and I would receive these. The lady didn’t have insurance and she had way, way, way, way more problems than just totaling my car. Whole list of reasons police were after her anyways, but I would get a check for like $23 a year and a half later. And I forget what is this for? And you realize like, oh, this is, they must’ve got some money from her and they’re paying against the thousands of dollars that she owes me, $23 or so annually.

James [00:18:33]:
So I guess I can’t say that I have never collected, but It’s rare as far as that goes.

Jane Muir [00:18:40]:
Well, I would, one statistic I do know is that 99% of cases end in settlement and 99%. Yes.

James [00:18:48]:
Wow. Okay.

Jane Muir [00:18:49]:
So most of the time it is, it is almost every time that cases end in settlement. We really only try cases when there is such a difference of opinion of fact Or, or somebody just can’t face the reality. Like that, that’s what I find people trying cases on. Like example, I just have tried 3 cases that have to do with condominiums. And in that setting, since it’s people who are fighting over their homes and their, their home. Related issues, they get really steamed and there’s no way to resolve it because they just cannot see anything other than the black and white situation. Uh, another type of case I recently tried was having to do with, uh, influence over a parent that passed away and one of the siblings got the parent to give her all of the family’s assets over the other two siblings. And we were able to establish that that one sibling had kind of isolated and, um, prevented the parent from having a relationship with the other children, which caused a lot of strife.

Jane Muir [00:20:19]:
And eventually it was an undue influence situation. So those are the kinds of, they, they tend to be very emotional. And another type of case we, we try a lot is either business divorces or, or fraud where like one of the partners has found out that the other one was pocketing money and they’re so upset that they have to file a lawsuit right away. To sort out where the money went and who’s owed what. And it requires getting into those details with the forensic accountant to figure out like who’s, who’s entitled to what.

James [00:21:01]:
Interesting. I can, yeah, partnerships are an interesting thing. I’ve had a few partnerships, the great majority good. Uh, one that I, that I way long time ago that went bad, not to the point of going to court or anything like that. It just, Didn’t work out, but I can see, I guess the partnerships that I’ve seen, some you’re like, ooh, thank goodness I’m not in that train wreck. Tell me about the court cases you see that you hear about on the news. The ones where like Apple owes $400 billion or something like that. Is there some accountant in Apple that’s just writing a check for some psycho amount of money and mailing it somewhere? How does that work?

Jane Muir [00:21:43]:
Oh gosh. Well, to be honest, that’s not my area and I don’t even pay attention to the news because it’s so depressing. I really just focus on what I can work on and do in my own local community. Okay.

James [00:22:03]:
Fair.

Jane Muir [00:22:04]:
I try not to worry about that. The most recent newsworthy case that I paid attention to was the Johnny Depp lawsuit.

James [00:22:12]:
Oh, sure.

Jane Muir [00:22:14]:
Yeah. But that was more of a domestic dispute and a divorce situation as opposed to what I normally deal with, which is business related.

James [00:22:25]:
I don’t, I remember the court case with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but I don’t remember why or if there was money involved or what they were even arguing over.

Jane Muir [00:22:34]:
I think that it was a defamation case where Amber Heard had written an op-ed about Me Too, implying that she had been abused by Johnny Depp.

James [00:22:46]:
Okay.

Jane Muir [00:22:46]:
And Johnny Depp was a star in the Pirates of the Caribbean, and Disney dropped him because they found out about this alleged conflict.

James [00:22:59]:
Oh.

Jane Muir [00:22:59]:
So he had to sue Amber Heard to kind of clear his name. And that’s how all this bizarre behavior on her part came out, like, uh, famously defecating on their bed. Um, that was so that it was apparent that Johnny Depp wasn’t an aggressor in a Me Too situation. It was sort of like mutual crazy conflict between them. And, um, it was a, a wild ride.

James [00:23:31]:
Interesting. All right. So did any money end up changing hands?

Jane Muir [00:23:36]:
I don’t know that. I only paid attention during the trial because I was curious to see the presentation, but I didn’t pay attention after that.

James [00:23:45]:
All right. Watching the train wreck. Tell me, let’s shift gears into the, when we talked about the PA and LLC, it’s really quick for the people that are starting a business. They’re like, hey, I got a really good skill in whatever this is. I want to be a painter, plumber, whatever. Well, I was going to say lawyer, but hopefully they know if they’re a lawyer, chiropractor, whatever it is. What do you typically tell people to start as their entity type?

Jane Muir [00:24:12]:
Well, when it’s a single person, it really doesn’t matter. And in fact, a lot of the times I’m telling people, come back to me when you’ve made $50,000. Okay. The administration that goes into creating an entity, like you have to register with the state, you have to file an annual report, you have to file a tax return separate from your personal tax return. And it’s a bunch of extra steps that you have to pay people to do and hire, hire an accountant, hire a lawyer. And if you haven’t made a dollar yet, it may not even be worth it, especially for the examples that you just gave, like a painter. If you’re painting houses, just take money and tell your accountant at the end of the year how much you got. But once you get over that $50,000 mark, that’s when things are worth potentially separating into a real business because that’s where you’re going to need an assistant.

Jane Muir [00:25:16]:
You’re going to need You’re going to need to have gas and tolls considered because you’re driving around to get to where you’re painting. So once, once that is your level, I think it’s worthwhile to go ahead and file your, your reports and, and get all those administrative steps done. And so half the time I’m literally like a beginner painter. Business, I say, you know, we offer a 30-minute consultation for $250. So I spend 30 minutes with them showing them what they need to do. And then I say, come back when you’ve earned $50 grand and we’ll spend another half an hour to try and figure out what else you need. And I’ll give people little breadcrumbs because you don’t need to treat a business like it’s a multimillion-dollar operation when it’s just a little baby bird, you know?

James [00:26:16]:
Right. I suppose under the $50,000, it’s almost a hobby.

Jane Muir [00:26:20]:
It’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s a beginner business and you’re allowed to file tax returns with personal income from, from people like pressure washing, window washing, home cleaning and repair. The, the kind of regular beginner business, all, all you need is just keep receipts for everything you buy and give people an invoice that shows what you, um, what you did for them and how much they paid for it. And if you’re organized and you keep all that, all that stuff, you’re, you’re okay. So once you get to that $50,000 mark though, that’s where you need to start getting more organized and more. Automated. And that’s where I want to see QuickBooks or some bookkeeping software where you’re sending the invoices out digitally and people click to pay. And then you start to categorize your expenses as they come in because they’re too many to give a folder to your accountant. You need it all organized and every month you need to be looking at it instead of once a year.

Jane Muir [00:27:30]:
So then the next kind of important level is around $100,000, $150,000, which is where you start getting stiffed. You start having problems with, with clients or, or with employees. And that’s when you start needing those contracts. And the contracts will establish that you’re entitled to prevailing party fees. They’ll protect you from the real annoying client, the, the one that says, oh, you missed a spot and brings you back to paint a whole nother room. That’s the kind of thing that, that you want to protect yourself from by establishing the scope of your services clearly in an agreement. And then also it lets you sue them when they don’t pay you.

James [00:28:16]:
Right on. Cool. That seems, that’s very nice. I like the steps there though. Progress. Hopefully if you’re starting a business that’s a real business, you’re hitting that $150,000 mark sooner rather than later. Tell me about the credit reporting agency thing that you mentioned, um, a little while ago.

Jane Muir [00:28:36]:
Yes. Well, um, it’s a little known fact that if you are owed money and you have an agreement, you can directly report it to the credit reporting agencies.

James [00:28:47]:
Is this a Government agency or what is this?

Jane Muir [00:28:49]:
No, in, in the United States, there are 3 credit reporting agencies: TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. And those are the companies that banks use their databases to search you if you want to take out a loan. So I’m— I walk into Bank of America and I say, I’d like a line of credit, please. And Bank of America says, sure, Jane, let me just look you up. What’s your Social Security number? And if I already owe $500,000 and I don’t have income to support more of a loan, then they’re going to say, sorry, I’m not going to give you a loan. And the other thing they’re looking for is credit card history. Are you timely at paying? Are you, are you a reliable borrower? So if you have someone owe you money, you can send that debt to the credit reporting agencies. So that next time that they try to buy a car or rent an apartment or do anything that requires a credit report, your debt is on the credit report and it makes them think twice about stiffing you.

James [00:30:02]:
Interesting. And what, what is the proof that you have to supply to the credit report to let them know like, hey, this is legit. This isn’t just me getting mad at Whatever, my grouchy neighbor or something like that.

Jane Muir [00:30:14]:
Yeah. You need a contract and you need to establish that it wasn’t paid, that the amount wasn’t paid.

James [00:30:22]:
All right.

Jane Muir [00:30:23]:
You don’t need a judgment to report someone to the credit reporting agencies.

James [00:30:28]:
Interesting. And that’s for individuals, not for businesses.

Jane Muir [00:30:31]:
It can be for either.

James [00:30:33]:
Oh, really? Okay. Interesting.

Jane Muir [00:30:36]:
All right.

James [00:30:37]:
And is that, I imagine you find, you go to Equifax or whatever and you’re like, hey, this person owes me money, they didn’t pay. Then do the other two pick up on that as well? Or do you have to send this thing to all three of them individually?

Jane Muir [00:30:52]:
You have to send them to each individually.

James [00:30:55]:
Okay. Got it. Interesting. I had never heard of that, but I suppose you can see it in play with when you look at your credit report and you see the different banks and credit cards and all that kind of stuff. So. There must be some way to communicate. Interesting.

Jane Muir [00:31:09]:
You have to be a business entity and you have to have a real contract. And once you’ve signed up, you— there are also services that will do this. Like we have a service that we send to when we have clients that decide that they don’t want to pay anymore, we send them to collections and the collections agency reports them.

James [00:31:31]:
Gotcha. All right. Interesting. Let’s shift gears. You have some stuff going on with AI in the legal world. So AI seems to be everywhere. Even, I swear to God, if you were to buy a can of corn, it would probably say now with AI on it. So tell me a story about AI in the legal world with what you have going on.

Jane Muir [00:31:54]:
Sure. Well, I wouldn’t ever recommend. Somebody use AI to write a contract or even summarize information, because unless you have already set up the kind of subscription that protects your data, technically anything you submit into ChatGPT or Claude or any of the different AI tools, they get to have it and use it for future iterations of their AI. So number one, I have to always disclaim, like, don’t use AI just blindly. You have to do it with guardrails. But in my office, we have access to 3 different AI tools and we’re using them in concert with non-AI automation tools like Zapier. But we’re using the Google tool and let’s see, I’m like blanking on the name. Is it Genesis?

James [00:33:02]:
Gemini?

Jane Muir [00:33:02]:
Gemini. Thank you. Oh my gosh. We have Gemini, which we think is quite good because it already uses our data that we’ve been storing in our Google Drives for 5 years ever since we started using Google. And then we also have Claude and professional versions of Claude and ChatGPT with the guardrails so that the data is in our own hub. What I’m proudest of is even before AI, we’ve started enabling these automations to be used so that we don’t have human beings having to enter data as much. Like for instance, every time you file a document in court, there’s an email that comes in and the email says service of court document and tells you the case number and what the document is. And it gives you a link to download the document.

Jane Muir [00:34:07]:
Well, most firms, you have to click on the document. Which downloads it. You look at it, you see what case it is, you file it in the correct file, and then you put it in some kind of index system. That over time is like hours and hours of people clicking and moving and mistakes that can happen. Well, we were able to eliminate that by using a mail parsing tool, which I isolated what data was necessary to identify the case and the name of the document, automatically upload the document into the correct file by— with a— we basically have a database of every case in our firm with the case number and the folder number and the ID, and it’s like a long spreadsheet. And so every time these emails come in, they’re getting auto-filed into, into our case files, which is fantastic because anytime anytime you need to look at a case, you just open the index and there they all are. We also have an automatic scheduling app like that where anytime a hearing is set, it’s getting automatically added to our calendar. Similar process, it looks at the data in the email through a mail parser and then automatically puts it on the calendar.

Jane Muir [00:35:32]:
Or if it gets canceled, it’s automatically getting canceled. So those are things that we started doing more than 5 years ago that have just paid dividends in the lack of mistakes and the ability to have our files always up to date without question. Now that we have AI, it’s getting even easier and better because you used to have to like code a document, like if you made a template, You would have to put codes into the different fields so that it would like put in the person’s name and you could have these merges, you know, what a mail merge is. Mm-hmm. Now that we have AI, we can template what we’ve already got without coding, or the coding just kind of happens by automation. So We are really proud of being early adopters of the technology because we think a lot of law firms have waste. And when we compare our, our bills to other law firms, we’re like 30% of the expense that they charge at, at a lot of the big law firms that we’re competing with. So by adopting these technologies, we’re finding that we can be a lot more efficient.

James [00:36:56]:
Gotcha. And your bill is less because you’re spending less time.

Jane Muir [00:37:00]:
Right.

James [00:37:00]:
To accomplish the same task.

Jane Muir [00:37:03]:
Exactly.

James [00:37:04]:
Interesting. And have you seen that get better over the past couple years or it’s just been what you were doing 5 years ago and it’s maintained?

Jane Muir [00:37:11]:
I have some things that are maintained, but other things are starting to get better. Like as long as you are, you cannot rely on AI entirely, like it hallucinates, it calls up the wrong information. Like we have the AI apps from Westlaw and LexisNexis, which are the best legal search tools on the market, and they still make mistakes. Like ultimately you have to get in and read and put your eyeballs on all the cases to figure out what the real answers are, but it does help get you closer to the answer in a faster way.

James [00:37:52]:
Nice. Interesting. I can see how that would be very helpful. Tell me a story. You mentioned something about not summarizing a contract. So let’s just say a client comes to you and they have this contract and the contract’s whatever, 100 pages long and 100 pages of what I call lawyer speak. They just take many sentences to say one simple thing, but it’s got to be very specific. Do attorneys just sit there, grab a cup of coffee and read through these page by page?

Jane Muir [00:38:20]:
We sure do.

James [00:38:22]:
They do. Okay. And then after you hit page 9, is it still making sense or do your eyes glaze over? How, tell me about that as an attorney.

Jane Muir [00:38:32]:
Thank you. What a great question. Well, first of all, practice makes perfect, right? So I’ve been reading contracts and legal documents. At least since 2006 when I started law school. So that’s 20 years. And I’ve calculated, like measured how fast I read. I’m reading 600 words a minute plus now. So, so I would say number 1 is we read really fast.

Jane Muir [00:39:03]:
Number 2, we can spot the headings that, that direct us to the important information. And so we read it fast and then we’re like, this, this is the part that matters. And then we zoom in and maybe read that part 2 or 3 times carefully to decide what to do. Just this weekend, I ran into a former client who had a really complex issue where a former attorney had kind of inserted themselves into the business in a, in a way that wasn’t permitted. Like he, he didn’t have permission and then magically he was an owner of the business and trying to get value from his ownership interest. So I had to read carefully and figure out where the termination provision was. And it had a complex calculation of dates. Like, it’s the first Sunday after the first Tuesday of the third month after the something happens.

Jane Muir [00:40:12]:
You know, it was, it was like phrased in a way that was incredibly tricky to make it difficult to actually terminate the contract, which makes sense because if you’re, if this is a lawyer who’s unscrupulous enough to insert themselves into the business without permission, then obviously they’re going to make it as difficult as possible to get rid of them. But I had counted correctly between all these weird contingent phrases and sent certified letters terminating the agreement on the date that they needed to be sent. And when this same client went to it, they went to a different law firm. They, they had a different situation later on to try and defeat that problem. It turned out that my letters timely sent were like the key to winning the case.

James [00:41:12]:
Oh, how cool is that?

Jane Muir [00:41:14]:
And what’s funny is I, nobody ever called me about it or asked me or else I would’ve you know, explained it to them and, and helped them along the way. But it, it feels good to know that you’re, you’re interpreting the puzzle correctly and that helps someone long-term.

James [00:41:34]:
Gotcha. Interesting. That’s, I mean, kudos to you for being able to read through those contracts. It’s, I remember just getting insurance on property and you’re reading what’s included and what’s not included. And it’s written in lawyer speak. And I’m like, how many people actually read this document? Or is it written in a way to hopefully prevent you from reading it?

Jane Muir [00:42:00]:
Uh, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t be sure about that, but I will say that in my own life with insurance, I just sign and cross my fingers, honestly. Um, my husband was in a wreck with a Vespa scooter and had to go to the emergency room and our, our car insurance didn’t cover and our health insurance didn’t cover. And they were both like pointing fingers at the other. And you had to look down at the, at the exclusions. And it turns out that a scooter, they’re not insured because they don’t qualify as a vehicle. But then they also don’t qualify as a pedestrian, although bicycles count as a pedestrian or, or mopeds, because if you pedal at all, then it’s a pedestrian vehicle, even though it’s a vehicle. Um, so I learned we really probably need to change the law in Florida and require insurance for, uh, Vespa scooters and, and those small type of scooters. Because right now the law doesn’t— there’s like a hole in between cars and pedestrians that is the size of a Vespa.

Jane Muir [00:43:15]:
And as a result, my, my husband’s accident wasn’t covered. Wow.

James [00:43:20]:
I mean, scooters aren’t rare.

Jane Muir [00:43:23]:
I don’t think so. Like, well, it depends on where you are, but we see scooters all over town.

James [00:43:29]:
Yeah. I mean, we see them. I’m in Wisconsin. We see, you I even see them, especially around campus. That’s, I think half the students have them because they have to get to class and the campus is spread out. So interesting, huh? Who knew? So, and it’s, I guess on top of that, right? Piggybacking on there. If you had read that, would that have stuck out as like, wait, we gotta make sure we’re covered here?

Jane Muir [00:43:51]:
I would have probably. Yeah, I would have. Because I’m always wanting to be in, you know, we’ve got windstorm insurance, we’ve got fire insurance. We try to make sure we’re covered for any, any issue.

James [00:44:03]:
Yeah.

Jane Muir [00:44:04]:
I just never would have guessed that there was that gap.

James [00:44:08]:
Dang. Well, hopefully your husband’s okay now.

Jane Muir [00:44:10]:
He’s fine. He, luckily he was okay. He’s going to get a full-size motorcycle now and just, no, his, his two-wheel vehicle days are over, I think.

James [00:44:22]:
Oh, right on. Right on. Um, what else did I have to ask you? Oh, oh, oh. About you, how you got involved in the law world. What made you decide to become an attorney?

Jane Muir [00:44:33]:
Uh, well, you know, growing up, um, my family are all lawyers. My mother was a judge for 35 years, finally retired in 2021. My dad is still practicing. He’s almost 80. And in my family, we’re, we’re all lawyers. My brother’s a lawyer. My grandfather was a lawyer going back on my dad’s side. 6 generations.

Jane Muir [00:44:58]:
And wow. And I just didn’t really think of any other options other than doctor or lawyer. And my, uh, my best friend turned into a surgeon. I’m, I’m a lawyer and I, I started doing things that would advance a lawyer’s career super early. Like I was doing debate in junior high and high school and, um, a little in college, but actively in, in law school. I was on the mock trial team and I just always knew I was going to be a lawyer. So I’ve been working at it and doing things that I thought would make me a better one.

James [00:45:36]:
That is awesome. Tell me now, what made you decide to start your own practice instead of just becoming a partner in an existing practice?

Jane Muir [00:45:44]:
Well, I graduated from law school in 2009, which was after the subprime mortgage crisis. And the economy was really bad. A lot of law firms revoked offers that they’d made to young lawyers starting out. And so the job market was really not very good. And I had some offers because I’d always worked at least 3 jobs at a time. I was, uh, I loved working. I wanted to get as much experience as I could. And, uh, so I had 3 offers, but the one that I took, I ended up getting laid off from.

Jane Muir [00:46:24]:
And so I called up the other 2 and said, are you, are you still available? I, I, I’ve come available. And they said, oh, we’d love to have you, but we’re not going to have this job open for another 6 months or another year. And so at the time, my law partner. Um, he had also been let go from his job and we were trial partners in law school. So we decided why not start a firm? And, uh, this was with the mentorship of a friend of mine, a trial lawyer who said, you know, Jane, why don’t you just start a firm? And I was like, well, gosh, I’ve just started my career. I don’t know if I could do that. He said, sure you could. All you’ve got to do is.

Jane Muir [00:47:09]:
Get an office in a shared space and try all the cases nobody can settle. And next thing you know, you’ll be a big trial lawyer. And I was like, well, gosh, if Tom Gamba thinks I can do this, then maybe I can. And pretty much we did just that. We made cool business cards. We threw a party to launch our firm and we just did a little at a time and grew as as we could, and eventually that partner went to join the public defender’s office and I joined with a different partner and I’ve been through a couple of different iterations before starting J. Maren Associates back in 2018. Uh, but this firm has been the most successful of all my ventures.

Jane Muir [00:47:58]:
We’ve got 5 lawyers now. We’re a 7-figure firm. And we’ve won a 7-figure verdict. So that’s pretty unusual. Like, I hope to win many of those in the future, but it puts me in sort of a class of trial attorneys that is on the higher side.

James [00:48:20]:
That’s incredible. Congratulations for that.

Jane Muir [00:48:23]:
Thank you.

James [00:48:24]:
Tell me a story about how you end up in business law versus family law or any of the other different verticals you could jump into?

Jane Muir [00:48:31]:
Wow. That, that’s one of my favorites. Um, I was originally doing personal injury because in, in law school I was the captain of the trial team. I wanted to try cases more than anything, and they call personal injury lawyers trial lawyers because they tend to try the most cases. So that’s why I went into personal injury. Well, when I got laid off, I continued in personal injury believing that that would get me trials. But after a few years, I called up my friend Steve Schlagman, who is a brilliant guy. He’s got an MBA and he’s been, he’s had an incredible career.

Jane Muir [00:49:12]:
Now he’s working as chief innovation officer for a startup company called Orange Genius. But I called up Steve because he’d been in marketing and I said, Steve, I need to get more clients. Will you help me? You know about this. And he says, sure. What kind of clients are you looking for? I’m like, I don’t know. He says, well, let’s have a talk. So he comes over to my office and we had a big whiteboard on the wall. And he says, do you know what a SWOT analysis is? And I said, no, what’s a SWOT analysis? And he said, he draws a, uh, X and Y axis on the, on the whiteboard.

Jane Muir [00:49:49]:
And he says, this is your strengths and these are your opportunities and this is your weaknesses and at the bottom are your threats. So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. And on a scale of 1 to 10, how strong do you think you are in personal injury? I said, well, gosh, I’ve been practicing 4 years. I’m a smart person. I’m a hardworking person. So I give myself a 4 compared to lawyers who’ve been doing this 50 years and they have a million dollars in the bank and they can take on whatever big case and fight it to the end. And he says, okay, great. And what about your weaknesses? And I said, well, I don’t have a war chest.

Jane Muir [00:50:33]:
Um, that’s what they call having the, the bankroll necessary to pay your experts and your transcripts and all those expenses that go along with a case that that you’re not being paid for until you win. Um, so I thought, oh, I would, I would say weaknesses on like an 8, you know, I don’t have the marketing. I don’t have the, the money. So pretty weak. And then, okay, how many opportunities are there for personal injury cases? I’d say not very many. You know, people don’t get hurt that, that traumatically, you know, maybe you’ll roll your ankle, but people aren’t getting splattered on the pavement very often. I’d say it’s very rare. And so I give that a 1.

Jane Muir [00:51:21]:
And he says, okay, how about threats? And then I say, gosh, well, there’s 411 Pain and there’s all these big firms like in our area, there’s Colson Hicks, very prominent, respected. Firm just down the block from me, or Haggard, or, you know, these big firms that specialize in personal injury. And then you’ve got your mills like Rubenstein Law or Morgan and Morgan, or companies that advertise on the radio. And so I’d say threats are like a 9. So when you draw a line between those points, all the space in that this weird shape that was created was in the threats and weaknesses quadrant. And he says, well, it doesn’t look like you belong in this area. And he says, why don’t you think about what are the best clients you’ve had? Because I was taking anything that I could do and I was just figuring it out. So at that time I was working in an office in the Upper East Side area of Miami, which was a real rising, up-and-coming neighborhood with a bunch of startup activity.

Jane Muir [00:52:37]:
They had The Lab, Refresh Miami, um, Waffle Wednesday. Different startups were getting a lot of attention in that neighborhood, and they were going on the internet and Googling lawyers, and I was locally I was close to them and so they were finding me. So I was getting these smart, like software engineers and people who were interested in achieving great results and wanted to do things right. And so they were finding me and that was, that was my favorite kind of client because I could easily communicate with them. And we kind of had, we were about the same age. We were all ambitious. We were trying to, trying to do good things. And so we did that same SWOT analysis and that business area was in the opportunities and, and strengths quadrant.

Jane Muir [00:53:31]:
So Steve said, well, it sounds like you need to be a business lawyer. And after that, we completely overhauled our website, made it totally focused on business law, and ever since then, I really have been growing and, and being, become more respected in that area. I’ve been, I’ve received awards for being business lawyer and, um, I, it’s just been perfect for me because I started my business too. So I know how that goes.

James [00:54:07]:
That’s incredible. I love it. What was the timeframe from when you started your business running in the personal injury till the time that you flipped the switch to working on business law?

Jane Muir [00:54:18]:
It was about 5 years.

James [00:54:20]:
Okay.

Jane Muir [00:54:21]:
Before I niched. And, uh, now that I’ve gotten to know different communities of, of lawyers that practice and own their firms, I realize how ignorant I was at the beginning. I just really had no idea how to run a business. Or, uh, and that, but I was a good lawyer and I was working hard and, and I was doing good service to clients. And, and so I feel like the knowledge came at the right time. And, and once it did, we saw a real hockey stick growth.

James [00:54:58]:
That’s incredible. I think that seems to be the same story with just about every business owner, myself included. You have a skill. You’re really good at that skill. You start a business with that skill and the business thing, you kind of learn along the way, just like your uncle throwing you in the deep end of the pool. Just learn how to swim or die trying.

Jane Muir [00:55:20]:
Yes. Yes. And I always recommend some books to people that I found especially helpful. Um, the E-Myth Attorney or the E-Myth Revisited for people who are Small Business Owners is a fabulous book. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz.

James [00:55:38]:
Great book.

Jane Muir [00:55:40]:
Um, I highly recommend that. I felt it was true for me because every time I earned a little more, I would spend a little more and hire someone, get a nicer office. And I didn’t set aside money for myself until after I read that book, which was really key for, for my personal growth. Um, I would add you gotta read Rocket Fuel and, um, the, the, all the books about Entrepreneur Operating System have been incredibly helpful to me.

James [00:56:12]:
Oh yeah. EOS. Yeah. Yeah. Traction.

Jane Muir [00:56:15]:
Traction is great. Um, there’s another one called The Rockefeller Habits.

James [00:56:21]:
Great book.

Jane Muir [00:56:23]:
It’s hard to read. Like, I think Traction is better. Because it’s more conversational and easier to, like, easier for a person to take away from. But, uh, I always recommend those books because I think that just like you said, people, we have a skill in an area and whatever that area is, you could be a painter or a social media marketing person. But if you’re not getting your invoices out and getting paid, you’re just not going to have a business. Right. Well, that’s really so important that we, that we make sure everybody is aware that like bookkeeping is the backbone of your business and you might not like it. It might be boring.

Jane Muir [00:57:16]:
So you got to find someone who’s going to do it for you. But if you don’t have your bookkeeping in order, then you’re lost and you’ll never be able to succeed.

James [00:57:27]:
Totally agree. Totally agree. 1,000 times over. Jane, thank you so much for being on the show here.

Jane Muir [00:57:33]:
It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

James [00:57:36]:
Yeah. Tell me, where can people find you?

Jane Muir [00:57:40]:
Visit my website, miamibusiness.law, and we offer a 30-minute consultation for people and help identify what their issues are and see what they need to do to fix them.

James [00:57:50]:
Did you say miamibusiness.law?

Jane Muir [00:57:54]:
Correct.

James [00:57:54]:
Oh, that’s a cool website. I like that.

Jane Muir [00:57:56]:
Yeah. It’s also Jane, uh, J. Muir and Associates. So, but that’s such a mouthful. It’s hard to spell. So I just—

James [00:58:04]:
Sure. I love it. I love it. Miami Law, or I’m sorry, say that website one more time.

Jane Muir [00:58:10]:
https://miamibusiness.law.

James [00:58:12]:
MiamiBusiness.Law. I love it. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumph and successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country, on the web at https://CallsOnCall.com. And of course, The Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. Uh, if you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and of course share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those friends that may need some legal help, which let’s just be honest, if you’re in business sooner or later, you’re going to need some. You should probably get some before you need it really. Uh, Jane, thank you so much for being on the show.

James [00:59:02]:
Can you tell us that website one more time?

Jane Muir [00:59:04]:
https://MiamiBusiness.Law.

James [00:59:06]:
Awesome. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome, and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.