Hosted by Attorney Louis Goodman
Jan. 11, 2023

My Case & LawMatics Founder: Matt Spiegel

My Case & LawMatics Founder: Matt Spiegel

After spending five years as a criminal defense attorney and receiving a bar complaint for not calling back a client on time, Matt Spiegel developed a legal case management software so that law firms could keep better track of cases and communicate with their clients more effectively, and thus MyCase was born. A few years after selling MyCase, Matt noticed a shift in the legal market and returned to the law firm tech space by founding Lawmatics, legal software for client intake, CRM, marketing automation, billing and much more, which goes beyond just managing cases by helping turn old business into new. In this interview Matt talks about how the case is the most important thing in the life of the client, while for the attorney, it’s usually just another case. He explains that treating that relationship accordingly will result in a better experience for the client and better business for the firm.

Lawmatics
https://www.lawmatics.com/

MyCase
https://www.mycase.com/

Matt Spiegel
matt@lawmatics.com

lovethylawyer.com

A transcript of this podcast is available at lovethylawyer.com.

 

 Matt Spiegel is an attorney and serial entrepreneur in the legal-tech space. He is Founder and CEO of Lawmatics, the #1 automation platform for law firms, offering legal client intake, CRM, marketing automation, billing, and much more, all in one easy-to-use software. With Lawmatics, law firms streamline their operations, impress clients, and win more business. Prior to Lawmatics, Matt worked as a criminal defense attorney for six years and founded MyCase, a legal practice management software company that has grown into one of the most widely used cloud-based law practice management systems. It was then acquired by AppFolio in 2012, where he remained as a General Manager for three more years.
 
In 2015, Spiegel founded ExpoGuru, an event marketing management software. Later in 2015 he became the CEO of Cammy, a global consumer tech company with headquarters in Sydney, Australia. In 2017, he decided that it was the right time to go back in the legal software industry with Lawmatics.
 
He is a golf enthusiast and passionate about making an impact on advancing the practice of law. He can't wait to continue reaching audiences in all consumer-driven practice areas; legal professionals wanting to build and scale a profitable law firm!

 
https://www.lawmatics.com/

matt@lawmatics.com



 Louis Goodman
 www.louisgoodman.com

https://www.lovethylawyer.com/


 510.582.9090
 
 Musical theme by Joel Katz, Seaside Recording, Maui
Technical support: Bryan Matheson, Skyline Studios, Oakland

Audiograms & Transcripts: Paul Roberts  


 
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Louis Goodman
www.louisgoodman.com
https://www.lovethylawyer.com/
510.582.9090
Music: Joel Katz, Seaside Recording, Maui
Tech: Bryan Matheson, Skyline Studios, Oakland
Audiograms: Paul Roberts

louis@lovethylawyer.com

Louis Goodman

Attorney at Law

www.lovethylawyer.com

louisgoodman2010@gmail.com

 

Transcript

Matt Spiegel - Transcript

 

Louis Goodman 00:03 

Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer, where we talk to practicing attorneys about their lives in and out of the practice of law. I'm Louis Goodman, the host of the show, and yes, I'm a lawyer. Nobody's perfect! 

 

Matt Spiegel is an attorney and entrepreneur in the legal tech space. He is the founder and CEO of Lawmatics, an automation platform for client intake, marketing and billing. Matt also founded and developed MyCase, a legal practice management software that is widely used and cloud-based, and it is a law practice management system. Matt worked as a criminal defense attorney for six years. He lives in two places, the world of building law firms and the golf course.

 

Matt Spiegel, welcome to Love Thy Lawyer. 

 

Matt Spiegel 00:59 

Yeah. Thank you, Louis, and I appreciate that warm intro and thank you for having me. I will just point out one correction. I do not live on the golf course nearly as much as I used to or I want to these days, but separate conversation. 

 

Louis Goodman 01:13 

Well, we'll have to get you back out there more.

 

Matt Spiegel 01:16 

Yeah, I think that's gonna be easier said than done with the way in which this company is growing, but yeah.  

 

Louis Goodman 01:23 

Where is your company growing? Where are you right now? 

 

Matt Spiegel 01:27 

So, we are in, we're based in San Diego. 

 

Louis Goodman 01:29 

Tell us a little bit about what type of business that you have now. 

 

Matt Spiegel 01:34 

My business that I have now is called Lawmatics. Lawmatics is what we call software as a service, right. It's just a web-based software platform like almost everybody is used to using in their daily lives now. And we really look to solve a very specific problem for law firms. It's a problem that I've experienced for a long time. It's pain that I experienced for, you know, prior to my career in tech, as you know, when I was a practicing lawyer.

 

But we really, so we really look at the world and in terms of what's the journey that a client goes through with a law firm, right? So, we like to think of, we like to put ourselves, Louis, in the shoes of our customers' customer, right, the client of a law firm. And we look at it as three different phases to the journey. 

 

There is like phase one, which is the intake phase. You know, customers, potential client is determining whether they wanna hire the lawyer. The lawyer is determining whether they wanna take the case. And you know, it's a sales process. That's phase one. Phase two is you hired them, you hired the law firm. Now you have an active case, right? 

 

And then phase three is after the case is over, right. They're now a former client and there's a lot of aspects to that relationship which are important to a law firm. Along that, well, most of the traditional software out there, including my first business, MyCase, Clio, PracticePanther, Filevine, Smokeball, like all these products out there are focused on phase two, which is, you have an active case. What tools do I need to help me manage my cases, right? 

 

Lawmatics has really been focused on everything in phase one and everything in phase three. So everything you need before the person's hired you, help you do sales, help you do marketing, and then everything after the case is over, engaging with that, you know, nurturing that relationship, helping turn your old business into new business, things like that. So that's really where Lawmatics sits. 

 

Louis Goodman 03:27 

So Lawmatics really is more in terms of client development and marketing rather than running the case itself? 

 

Matt Spiegel 03:39 

You're absolutely right. Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. 

 

Louis Goodman 03:42 

Okay. Well, where are you from originally? 

 

Matt Spiegel 03:46 

Originally, I'm from New Jersey. 

 

Louis Goodman 03:47 

Really? Whereabouts? 

 

Matt Spiegel 03:49 

Yeah. Yeah. A place called Livingston. 

 

Louis Goodman 03:51 

Oh, well I grew up in Milburn. 

 

Matt Spiegel 03:54 

Oh, okay. Right next door! 

 

Louis Goodman 03:57 

Yeah. We used to play you all the time in football and wrestling and basketball. 

 

Matt Spiegel 04:03 

That's true. So I was there in some early formative years. And then like for middle school, high school, we moved out to Arizona, to Scottsdale. And so that was the second part of my childhood and then I went to school in Tucson and then migrated out to San Diego thereafter. 

 

Louis Goodman 04:23 

So, where'd you go to college? 

 

Matt Spiegel 04:25 

I went to college at U of A, University of Arizona. 

 

Louis Goodman 04:29 

And then from there you went to law school in San Diego? 

 

Matt Spiegel 04:33 

I came out here and went to the only law school that was still accepting applications. Given that I applied very late in the process. It's a school called Thomas Jefferson. Got a great education there, had a lot of fun. Passed the California bar in the first try and then went off and practiced criminal defense for about five years. 

 

Louis Goodman 04:53 

So, between the time you graduated from the University of Arizona and you went to Thomas Jefferson, did you take any time off or did you go directly through?

 

Matt Spiegel 05:02 

I went directly through. And what's interesting about my story getting into becoming a lawyer, is I was sitting at home prior to going on my senior spring break trip, senior year of college. So pretty late in the game, right? You're talking March of my senior year of college. And my parents sat me down and they're like, what are you doing after you graduate? I'm like, oh. I'm like, dad, I'm gonna kind of follow in your original footsteps. What he had done back east, he didn't do it any, you know, at the time he wasn't in the business, but back east, he was in commercial real estate. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm going into commercial real estate, and they're just like, no. We do not think that that's gonna be a good move for you. 

 

Louis Goodman 05:46 

Why didn't they think that commercial real estate would be a good move for you? 

 

Matt Spiegel 05:49 

I don't know. Maybe they just thought I wasn't good at selling or something. I have no idea. Or I, maybe I, you know, or maybe my dad had a bad experience with it. All I know is that they said like, why don't, like, we think you need to go get a further degree. Why don't you become a lawyer? Maybe it was because we were like, I feel like, you know, I come from a good Jewish family, and most good Jewish families have a lawyer in there and we didn't, so maybe they felt like they needed a good lawyer in the family. Whatever the reason was, this is what they said. And so they said, why don't you go to law school? And I'm like, what are you talking about? It's March. And I've never even thought about law school. So I thought about it for like a little bit, maybe like an hour. And I'm like, yeah OK. I'll go to law school. 

 

And so, I went on spring break. I came back from spring break. I studied for like a month for the LSATs. I took the LSATs. I did pretty well, and that's where I ended up. 

 

Louis Goodman 06:41 

When you got out of law school, you ultimately had a job as a criminal defense attorney. Can you talk a little bit about that process? Getting out of law school and then getting into the criminal defense world?

 

Matt Spiegel 06:55 

I'll be very forthcoming. The reason why I went into criminal defense, I don't know that I ever wanted to be, I don't know that I ever saw myself being a practicing lawyer for the rest of my life. And I've always been a bit more of an entrepreneur than anything else. And I think that that showed itself with my choice to go into criminal defense.

 

I think, one, I enjoy the action, and so I just thought like, wait a second, I'm a lawyer. Doesn't that mean, shouldn't I be in court all the time? And then I realize that very few practice areas actually put you in court, all the time. But one that does was criminal defense. So that was one reason. 

 

But the more important reason to me was I thought that it could be a good business to run.

I thought that having a criminal defense firm would lend itself really well to building like a repeatable business model. 

 

Louis Goodman 07:48 

How did that work out? 

 

Matt Spiegel 07:50 

Well, it worked out pretty well. You know, I was able to, I went and worked at a firm for like four years, and then I started my own firm. And when I started my own firm is when I really put into motion these ideas I had about building, you know, a repeatable process around criminal defense.

 

And so that was like, okay, every person that comes in, this is the process they're gonna go through. This is how I'm gonna treat them. This is, it's like an assembly line, not as far as their case is concerned, but as far as their experience is concerned. And I like the fact that it was, I thought it's easier to run a business and it's easy to have a more predictable business if you're billing flat fee, whereas an hourly business is not as predictable.

 

And so I went the route of criminal defense primarily because I thought it would be a good business model. 

 

Louis Goodman 08:34 

So can you talk a little bit about what sort of theories and procedures that you had in terms of the criminal defense practice and how you built that practice? 

 

Matt Spiegel 08:47 

Yeah, I mean, I had a pricing schedule really. I was like, okay, if you have a DUI that fits into this mold, like this is what the cost is going to be, right? There was no, doesn't matter the number of hours or it didn't matter the amount of work, the level of complexity was this was a flat fee. And so I could very say, okay, if I go get this many DUIs, this is how much money I'm gonna make. If I get this many felony cases, this is how much money I'm gonna make. And the reason why that was important is just kinda the way I looked at the world. And you know, ended up being very relevant to the type of businesses that I've built since, especially Lawmatics. 

 

But I look at it as like, okay, I'm trying to build a business. What's one of the first things you have to do if you wanna go get business? You gotta advertise, you gotta do marketing, right? The business isn't just gonna come to you without doing anything, even though most lawyers think that that's the case. 

 

So I was like, all right, well if I go spend money on marketing, how do I know if what I'm spending is worth it? Right? Like what's the value of going and spending a dollar on advertising? Well, if I go spend a hundred dollars on advertising and I get a case that I have no idea how much I'm gonna make from, might be a lot of billing, might be a little bit of billing, that's not really great from a, from a KPI standpoint. If I'm measuring, if I'm trying to measure data, if I'm trying to measure the value of a dollar spent on marketing, it's hard if I don't know how much is gonna come outta the back end.

 

So by going into criminal offense, which was a very flat feet oriented practice area, I knew. So I knew if I go and spend $500 to acquire a DUI client, I make $2,500 off of it. That's $2,000 in profit when it comes to acquisition cost. Right? And it's very formulaic. And now I can go spend a ton of money on advertising and I will always be able to formulate whether my acquisition cost is worth it.

 

And things like acquisition cost are things that lawyers just typically don't think about. It's one of the reasons why we built Lawmatics, but it really is critical to any business, and this is just how I looked at the world when I was getting started with my own practice, and it's just translated to now.

 

Louis Goodman 10:55 

Yesterday I did a podcast interview with a very successful lawyer who has a family law practice, and she was telling me about how her firm uses MyCase. 

 

Matt Spiegel 11:08 

I've heard of it! 

 

Louis Goodman 11:09 

And yeah, and I said, well, that's interesting because tomorrow I'm gonna be talking to the guy who developed MyCase. Tell us a little bit about MyCase and how you developed that and what the point of MyCase is.

 

Matt Spiegel 11:23 

MyCase is designed to be a product for a law firm. MyCase got started, it's an interesting story in the sense that it's not many people know it, but MyCase was only started because I had a problem at my law firm that I wanted to solve, right? 

 

So, the truth of the matter is, shortly after I started my law firm, I got a bar complaint from an existing client, right? And that bar complaint, if you have any knowledge at all about what the number one complaint at any state bar is, then you would know what my bar complaint was. 

 

Louis Goodman 11:59 

You didn't return their phone call. 

 

Matt Spiegel 12:01 

You are a hundred percent accurate. That is exactly what it was. It was attorney-client communication, and it wasn't like that I didn't call, it was simply that they were calling me, I was in court all day and I didn't return their phone call quick enough. Right? So I got a bar complaint because of that. And I thought to myself, this is insane. Like, how am I still dealing with this issue? 

 

First of all, that's ridiculous. I was in court all day. I called you back as soon as I got out of court, you know, and it was six hours, seven hours tops. What's the big deal there? But also I'm like, why am I still communicating this way? Like, there's all this great tech in the world. How in the world am I still not able, and you know, what they wanted from me was not earth-shattering. It wasn't like they needed to discuss something that was urgent. They just wanted to know what was going on. 

 

Louis Goodman 12:52 

How's my case? 

 

Matt Spiegel 12:52 

How's my case going? When's my next court date? Where's my discovery, right? So I'm like, man, I could, like I said to my cousin, my cousin was building my website for my law firm, just my basic website. It was like, you know, whatever, some basic HTML thing. And I said to him, I'm like, hey, look, listen Alex, can you just build like a backend to my website where I can put things up there so my clients can just see it without having to call me? And he is like, I don't know. I mean, maybe. He's like, but I don't know how to do that. I'm not that kind of developer. So, I'm like, maybe I could just find somebody to do it. So I found a friend who was an engineer or software engineer, and I'm like, can you do this? He's like, yeah, I guess whatever. So, he started to do it. I started telling my friends I was doing it, and they're like, oh, that's cool. Can they do it for me? And I'm like, no. And I said to them, hey, I'm getting some friends asking me about this. Do you think that maybe we should build a product that just does this for lawyers? Lets them communicate with their client? And so the first ever legal client portal was built, right? That's what we built. That's what MyCase was in the beginning. 

 

MyCase was not a practice management software. MyCase didn't even know what time and billing was, right? It was just simply a way to talk to your clients in a way that they were used to being talked to. And so we released that product, or we tried to release it and we went to a conference and we started talking to random lawyers and they're like, yeah, this is kind of cool. I'm not gonna pay extra for it. It should just be part of like these other, you know, practice management softwares that have been around. And so we said, huh, okay. 

 

And so then I'm like, Hey guys, I got another idea. How about we just turn this into a practice management software? Because I wasn't very happy with the other solutions that were out there. And I had been using a couple of them. At the time I was using Clio, I was using Rocket Matter. Both of those products have come a long way and they're actually, you know, obviously now they're very great, robust and mature products, but back then they were brand new. They didn't solve the problem I needed to solve.

 

So, I convinced these two guys, my cousin and my friend Chris to build, basically build the company with me. And that's how MyCase got started. And you know, a year and a half later or two years later, we were acquired by a much larger company and then we went public in 2015 and the story is still being written for MyCase.

 

Louis Goodman 15:24 

Yeah, I hear about people using it all the time. 

 

Matt Spiegel 15:26 

So now MyCase is owned by the parent company that owns LawPay, so it has become a very big, very big player in the legal tech space. 

 

Louis Goodman 15:35 

When did you decide to leave MyCase and then go and start Lawmatics? 

 

Matt Spiegel 15:44 

Yeah, that's a good question. So, I left MyCase. Time was up. The company was growing a lot pretty fast. I had like a deal with the company that acquired us, that required that I'd be there for a certain amount of time, and then when that ended, it was the right time for me to exit as well. And I actually went and did some non-legal related stuff. So for a couple years, Louis, I was just off, I was running a totally unrelated company as CEO, I was actually headquartered primarily in Sydney, Australia.

 

And so, I was going back and forth to Sydney, Australia frequently. And as a husband and as the father of two young girls at the time, it wasn't great. And so after about two years, I'm like, a couple things started to percolate. One was all this travels a lot. Two was, I wanna be my own boss again. 

 

So I was the CEO, but I had a board, I had a chairman. It wasn't really the arrangement that made me the most happy. so I decided I wanted to build my own company again. And I also decided that the legal space, I thought I wanted to get away from it, but I really liked it and it was a space I knew really, really well. 

 

And thirdly, back at MyCase, we had identified a shift or, or the beginnings of a shift in the legal market as a whole. We started to see law firms begin to understand that they need to think about their law firm more as a business and less as a law firm, right? And now it was just a kernel of an idea. It hadn't really become a mainstream concept yet, but this was back in 2013, 2014. So now fast forward to 2017, and I'm wanting to build another company in the legal tech space.

 

And I thought to myself, this little kernel of an idea that we saw years ago has now become a little, there's a lot more inertia behind it. And it's becoming more of a mainstream idea that like the law firm is not just a law firm, it's a business like any other. And it was that that allowed us to build Lawmatics. 

 

We needed that market shift. We needed that mindset shift in lawyers in order for Lawmatics to make sense. It wouldn't have made sense eight, nine years ago, but it made sense at the end of 2017, beginning of 2018, when I was coming back into the space. 

 

Louis Goodman 18:12 

And if I understand Lawmatics correctly, it has to do with funneling clients into your firm.

And then while they're there as clients, perhaps a firm would want to use something like MyCase or Clio, but then once they are done, once the case is over, you still wanna keep client contact with them because they're the people who are gonna be referring you new business. 

 

Matt Spiegel 18:44 

You're a hundred percent right. Yeah. You think about it exactly the correct way. Lawmatics is sort of the bookend around the bookends of other products that exist in the market. And that final part of the journey, that part where the case is over and they're a former client, that's the part, Louis, that so many lawyers get wrong. They neglect it, right. 

 

We talk to lawyers all the time, obviously, and I go all around the country and I talk to bar associations and all these big groups of people. And I always say, like, I always tell people, how many of you have more than 500 past clients? Right? And almost everybody raises their hand.

 

And then I say, how many of you send all of them an email on their birthday? And all of the hands go down. Like, what are we doing here? That's so easy. 

 

What you have to remember. What I think lawyers, what we tend to forget and like, what I always like lawyers to think about more than anything else is like for, for 95% of the practice areas out there, consumer driven law, personal injury, estate planning, bankruptcy, family law, criminal defense, to your client, this is the most important thing going on in their life, no matter what, right? It's the most important thing. To the lawyer, just another client, and you just can't think of it that way. You have to think about it in terms of like, this is the most important thing going on in their life. And if you think about it like that, you realize the relationship is a lot more important.

 

And you realize that like when their case is over, you're just dropping them and not communicating with them anymore. That doesn't feel very good, right? You helped usher them through the most important thing in their life, and now you just want nothing to do with them like they don't exist to you anymore? No. 

 

You need to be, you should be sending 'em an email on their birthday. You should be reaching out every now and again. You should be sending them updates about your law firm. And at the end of the day, that is ultimately gonna result in a better experience, which will result in a better business for the law firm. 

 

Louis Goodman 20:52 

And people referring their friends, relatives, and that sort of thing.

 

Matt Spiegel 20:57 

That's exactly right. Yeah. People forget about it. I don't know. 

 

Louis Goodman 21:01 

Well, what do you really like about working with lawyers? 

 

Matt Spiegel 21:04 

Lawyers are receptive to tech, right? So what I like about lawyers are they're not heavily invested in technology, typically. It's still an, it's still an industry that is behind the times, believe it or not, right?

 

Louis Goodman 21:16 

Oh yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

 

Matt Spiegel 21:19 

And I love that because that's such an opportunity to, the same way that as a lawyer, I want to delight my customers, I wanna delight my clients, I want them to have a great experience. I feel the same way now. I want the law firms that I work with to be delighted. I want them to have a great experience.

 

And it's really cool when you talk to a lawyer who's not using tech, not leveraging it in a way that really benefits them or leveraging it at all. When you hit them with that value proposition and when they see what technology can do for them, it's a really cool moment, right? And you can't do that in all industries because other industries have been using technology to streamline their processes, to make them more efficient for a long time. But legal just hasn't quite been there. 

 

So it's probably the thing I like the most is just really being able to have a significant impact with not a lot of effort. 

 

Louis Goodman 22:15 

What sort of mistakes do you think lawyers make? 

 

Matt Spiegel 22:17 

That's a good question. I mean, I think I pointed out a big one already, which is that they don't treat their law firm like a business. I think you could be the best lawyer in the world, but you could suck at bedside manner. So you could be the best lawyer in the world and you could have a terrible business, right? Because you don't provide a good customer experience. 

 

The flip side is you could have a great business because you provide a great experience. It's not always about the outcome of the case. And lawyers, I think lose sight of that. All they think about is, I'm gonna deliver you a good outcome. I'm gonna get you more money, I'm gonna get you... And that's great. Obviously at the end of the day, you know, you wanna be a good lawyer, but there's a lot more to it than being a good lawyer, right? 

 

It's like the same reason why, you know, we go shop at Trader Joe's as opposed to, you know, Ralph's or Safeway or whatever grocery stores in your community. It's because we get a good experience when we go there. You can buy eggs from any grocery store, but you go to the one that you like because it provides a good experience for you. 

 

Lawyers are becoming more and more ubiquitous and the difference between lawyers I think is becoming less and less. You have so many lawyers who are out on their own, so many great lawyers who are providing really good outcomes, competitive services, advertising on Google. Like if I need a criminal defense lawyer now I go on Google and I type in San Diego DUI lawyer, I'm gonna get a hundred guys. And all of them are ultimately gonna be able to deliver me about the same outcome, but they're not gonna all deliver me the same experience. And that's where I think lawyers make mistakes, is they just don't think about those things.

 

Louis Goodman 24:08 

How do you define success? You've had a lot of success from an objective point of view. How do you, Matt, define success in your own life? 

 

Matt Spiegel 24:19 

I'm a big believer in the cliche of, if you love what you do, you never work another day in your life. It couldn't be more accurate. And to me that, you know, when it comes to professional success, that's how I view it. I don't consider myself having a job, right? Like I'm just sort of always working, and I'm always not working because it's just like my life is intertwined with what I do professionally and it's just, it just is, right? It's not like, okay, I get up in the morning, I gotta go to the office and it's like a switch, and then I leave the office and it's switched off. It's not like that at all. It's just all intertwined. 

 

My whole life is intertwined with the business I build and my family and my friends and everything just works together. And to me that's success, to me. I don't care how much money I make, that doesn't really measure success to me. I think that's a byproduct of, of being successful. But, you know, building a business that supports you, you know, financially obviously is critical, but it's more. It's feeling like you don't work and it's just your life and everything kind of revolves around each other, to me is how I measure success and I have a feeling a lot of solo lawyers out there probably feel the same way.

 

Louis Goodman 25:48 

How has being in this business affected and fit in with your family life? 

 

Matt Spiegel 25:56 

Building a startup is not for the faint of heart. I built MyCase, I had the idea for MyCase the very same week that I found out we were pregnant with our first daughter. And that's hard. It is hard to build a startup and have a kid have a baby. Yeah. That was tough. 

 

But again, I've been able to have it become just intertwined with my life. So, if I need to go do something for my family, I just go do something for my family. It doesn't mean I'm not working, right. It doesn't mean I am working, it just means I'm doing what I need to do.

 

And then, you know, the business is a 24/7 thing. There's no hours for a business like mine, right, like a tech company, a software company. We're always working, we're always thinking, we're always, our head is always in the business. Even if we're, you know, if we're also participating as something else with our family.

 

And so for me, I've really learned this work life balance almost being forced to. Because, you know, truth of the matter is I've seen like a lot of, you know, families and relationships devastated by building a startup, right? Because it is really, really hard work. It takes up more time than you can imagine.

 

But I was really open with my wife when doing it. We were very upfront with what it was gonna take and what it was gonna look like. But then very quickly we learned how to morph and balance and turn the business into our life instead of kind of fitting everything around it. 

 

Louis Goodman 27:30 

Have you had any interesting travel experiences?

 

Matt Spiegel 27:32 

I'm actually not very well traveled, Louis. I had this whole Australia thing for a while and I don't know, have you ever been to Sydney? Have you ever been to Australia? 

 

Louis Goodman 27:42 

Yeah, I have. 

 

Matt Spiegel 27:44 

Did you like it? 

 

Louis Goodman 27:45 

I loved it. I thought it was amazing. I thought it was a wonderful mix of Southern California and British culture.

 

Matt Spiegel 27:56 

So that's a really good way to put it and I would totally agree with you. And I would actually go on a limb and say that Sydney might be one of my, might be my favorite city in the world. 

 

I did get to go play golf in Scotland, which is probably one of my highlight travel experiences. I also lived in Spain for a summer when I was 16 to train on clay courts. I was a tennis player and I went to train on clay courts for a summer. 

 

Louis Goodman 28:20 

What keeps you up at night? 

 

Matt Spiegel 28:22 

That's a really tough one. Well, it's not a tough one, but it is what it is. At a tech company, product is the most important thing. You know, in my opinion, you gotta have a good product. And what keeps me up at night is the fear of like Lawmatics going down, or, you know, waking up in the morning and, and seeing that, like, we broke something massive, which has happened before, and it'll happen again. But I think that keeps me up at night is like the fear that like, at any moment it could all, it could all fall apart. And it can. 

 

It's an, you know, we, we have an amazing team. We built an amazing product. We know what we're doing when it comes to building software. But there's always still this fear in the back of my head that like, you know, God, it's like we had to have screwed up somewhere along the way and at some point it's just gonna all explode. You know? And I think if anything keeps me up at night, it's that.

 

Louis Goodman 29:22 

Let's say you came into some real money. You and your wife came into, let's say three or four billion dollars. What, if anything, would you change in your life? 

 

Matt Spiegel 29:32 

Well, if you asked my wife nothing would change. If you ask me, probably a lot, but really like other than stupid stuff, because if I came into that kind of money, I'd probably buy like a sweet car because I'm really into cars.

 

I think the only thing that would change would be the way that, the amount of time that we experience life outside, like I think I would travel a lot more, like you mentioned travel earlier. I think that's where the biggest change would be, is I think we would just, you know, travel. You know, clearly we don't, I mean, we do travel a bunch, but it's just not the crazy places usually. I think that would change if, if we came into that kind of money. I don't think, I don't think I'm, you know, life is gonna change where I'm gonna move and buy new houses and do all this crazy stuff. I think I'm just gonna travel a lot more. 

 

And to be honest with you, Louis, maybe you're the type of guy that feels the same way, but I think I would still build the company I'm building. I don't think I would, I don't think I would be taken away from that. 

 

Louis Goodman 30:28 

Matt, if someone wants to get in touch with you and has some interest in Lawmatics or in speaking with you, is there a website or a place that they can go where they can open up that communication? 

 

Matt Spiegel 30:45 

Yeah, totally. So, If you wanna look at Lawmatics, which, you know, go, please do lawmatics.com super easy. Go there. 

 

Maybe more importantly, if you have any questions for me, if you have any thoughts. I love just talking to lawyers in general. As hopefully I've illustrated, I've been doing it for a long time now, and I love hearing stories from lawyers. I love lawyers who have problems and, and wanna try to figure out creative ways to solve them.

 

You can email me anytime. My email is matt@lawmatics.com. I love hearing from people. 

 

Louis Goodman 31:20 

Matt, is there anything that you'd like to discuss or touch on that we haven't had a chance to talk about? 

 

Matt Spiegel 31:26 

No. We've talked about a lot and some cool stuff, to be honest with you, so I'm not sure that there's any like one thing or any parting wisdom or anything I have. I don't think I'm very wise. But I think the only thing if I could leave lawyers with any, you know, with any thought, and this is, you know, again, from my own experience as, you know, a lawyer, not just someone who's been helping lawyers, but also as a lawyer. It's like, just remember that this is the most important thing your clients are going through and remember, you know, just put yourself in their shoes and how you would want to be treated during that time.

 

Forget about the outcome of the case and just think about how they want to be treated throughout that process. And if you can do that. I just think you're gonna have a better practice, a more successful practice, and you are just gonna be much happier, which is all what it translates to. So that would be all.

 

Louis Goodman 32:23 

Matt Spiegel, thank you so much for joining me today on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast. It's been a pleasure talking to you. 

 

Matt Spiegel 32:30 

Yeah, Louis, it's been a pleasure to be here and I appreciate you having me on. 

 

Louis Goodman 32:34 
 That's it for today's episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email. Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com, where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs and information.
 
 

Thanks to my guests and to Joel Katz from music, Bryan Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media and Tracy Harvey. I'm Louis Goodman.

 

Matt Spiegel 33:14 

I mean, like, I, you know, look, I like, I don't know, there's part of me that wants to say something really noble, right?