Sign Delaware Banking Notice To Quit Mobile

Industry sign banking delaware notice to quit mobile

everyone thank you so much for being here i'm maddie martin head of growth and education for smith ai we are a 24 7 virtual receptionist service uh handling calls chats texts and facebook messages for small businesses many of whom are solo and small firm attorneys so today um as part of our masters series i'm really excited to have gavin um gavin and his colleague paul were originally going to present together uh paul uh came down with uh sort of a stomach bug so we've got gavin here uh who's in tip-top shape and he is going to tell us about better banking for attorneys iota compliance and beyond we're going to discuss the three biggest mistakes that you can make with your iota we'll hear from gavin the best practices to prevent mismanagement of client funds and then how to get the most out of your bank and why banking relationships really matter so without further ado uh gavin can you tell us a little bit about yourself and then you can jump into your presentation yeah of course it's so so good to be here maddie thanks uh for helping organize this uh as as mentioned my name is gavin muzinski um i am the head of sales at noda which uh i'd like for everyone to think of as uh think of it as a startup that's within m t bank fully funded you know my paycheck says m t i've been with m t for 10 plus years in the small business lending space operations and then for the last two and a half years doing nothing but working with solo and small law firms and uh we're working on building a digital bank specifically for that population of solo attorneys and uh really excited to share some of our learnings from uh without exaggeration hundreds if not thousands of conversations with solo and small firm lawyers all over the country so thanks for having me and really excited to uh to share some of the stuff we've learned so matty if it's good you want me to just share my screen and jump right into it absolutely let's get into it awesome can you give me a thumbs up maddie can you can you see my screen here awesome so really that the two themes we're going to be touching on it's it's surviving and thriving right so surviving uh simplifying your iota process we all know that's one of the biggest reasons attorneys could get in trouble is by uh by mismanaging that iota so sharing some of those learnings and then as maddie mentioned you know how can you make your bank work for you we know banking is generally commoditized uh it seems like it's a one size fit all but it doesn't have to be and we've heard some really good best practices and we can give you some insider tips again based on on our interactions that we've uh we've had so jumping right in as maddie mentioned i am not paul uh paul looked like a zombie but i'm glad i look uh a little bit a little bit better than he did today but uh as i mentioned on the head of sales at noda um and uh you know hopefully next time paul will be here so he can introduce himself as well but again starting jumping right in and talking about how you can simplify your ielts uh i always like to start with um with a cautionary tale and it's amazing if you put on a google alert or you uh you search the web there's no shortage of stories about attorneys getting in trouble right it's the naughty list there's a lot of different ways attorneys can be disciplined and every time you look there's always something that's ielts related uh with mismanaging client funds so i've got a story that i always like to share this one is kind of outlandish but it involves a florida attorney and this attorney actually uh hired someone to uh to help oversee his iota he's a busy guy and time is money so he brought in someone to uh to take care of this ielts but the problem one of many but the big problem is that the person who was brought in uh was previously convicted of uh of embezzlement and wire fraud and did 41 months in prison and sentenced to five years probation so that's a no-no right so we all know not to do that um some people might say well it's a mistake maybe you missed it in the background check the attorney actually knew so what's great about this story is that the attorney was aware and actually signed documentation acknowledging his acceptance of that risk bringing on someone with that type of background knowing uh knowing that it was a high risk fire so surprise surprise five months later this uh this individual that was uh running the iota um was caught forging a 21 thousand dollar check so again that's that's bad news but we didn't fire him we're not going to fire the person uh instead we're going to make this individual this new employee uh the head of our real estate division and uh give them full access to overseeing the entire ielts so again red flags all over the place fast forward even beyond that so over a four year period this individual with the prior criminal background with you know the convictions and and then the felony record there um basically stole over 4.7 million dollars of client funds no-brainer uh what did we think happened to the attorney the attorney was uh was was disciplined uh and can no longer practice right disbarred can no longer practice uh practice law and you know when i tell that story there's always smiles when i'm in person and we're doing it because it's it's almost like from a hollywood movie but you know most of us would never put someone like that in charge of our iota seems like it's a stupid mistake easily avoidable but the big lesson here is that you can be disciplined based on someone else's behaviors because ultimately with the ielts you are responsible you're the fiduciary you're the attorney so even though you might not put a convicted felon in charge of in charge of that account your bookkeeper can make mistakes your grandmother can make mistakes your spouse can make mistakes another attorney can make mistakes but ultimately you can be held responsible so even though we won't uh make that mistake hopefully uh for those of us on the line the big lesson learned is that you know to survive as a lawyer you can't make those mistakes with uh with with the ielts so that's one very big mistake you can make but but really there's there's general themes that we've heard and again in our hundreds of conversations we talk to not only clients we talk to attorneys all over the country all different practice areas all different sizes uh but really with a focus on on solo and small firms and the reason why we focused on on this segment is because these are the attorneys that are that are wearing multiple hats right so you don't have a dedicated accounting division you don't have a cfo that's doing this for you most of the solo attorneys and even you know one to three person firm law firms we deal with it's an attorney that's managing the iota right or it's convicted felon in florida but most times it's an attorney and uh we heard that you know there's a lot of different mistakes they can make and we wanted to just call out some of the three biggest ones that um that were most common with this this segment so number one and this this word uh if you uh are new to dealing with attorneys or a new attorney this is probably uh you know ethics 101 co-mingling it's the big no no it's the big word that we all hear about uh you cannot mix business and personal funds with your clients funds and this is all outlined directly in the aba rule 115 around uh you know safekeeping property client lawyer relationship and even though it's heavy legalese and lots of language there's really four big takeaways number one client funds should always be kept in a separate account and that account needs to be maintained in a state where your law office operates so if you have two offices one in new york and one in new jersey you probably need to have two iotas one for the new jersey relationships and one for the new york relationships a lawyer's own funds they are actually allowed to be kept in trust we've heard attorneys say hey i want to keep everything separate technically you are allowed to have some funds in the iota account but the sole purpose for those funds is actually for paying bank service charges or fees that that may be incurred you can have a little bit of a question there um we can talk more about that later but that's the sole purpose for when you can have your personal funds in that account if you're doing uh prepaid legal fees or you're managing expenses and tracking maybe through retainer agreements with the iota you can only withdraw once those fees are are earned or once the expenses are incurred you don't want to be pulling money out ahead of time you want to do it with a good paper trail once you perform the work that we've got you've got coverage there and lastly if you're receiving funds into the ielts account and they're due to the client you should promptly notify your client and deliver those funds in a timely manner fashion and again no surprise our little call out at the bottom here this managing client funds call mingling making admin mistakes that that you know not doing these four things here could lead to suspension and in extreme cases disparment so big no no big mistake let's make sure that we're not we're not commingling client funds now this one uh if co-mingling is the notebook where you're sitting there saying yeah of course everyone knows that this is a mistake that was more common than we would hope and it's around poor record keeping so bar associations and you know the aba they require pretty robust um paper trails in the event of an audit or if you've ever been in front of the grievance committee or the grievance commission like you probably experienced this first hand there's some questions here and you should be able to answer yes to every single one of these questions so great if we're not commingling funds we're checking that box that's awesome but can you prove uh can you can you prove that every ielts transaction is related to a specific matter can you prove that every balance down to the penny can be tied to a client matter and most attorneys say like yeah you know we the two answers we typically get is yes of course i can get it down to the penny or i can get close there's some money in there that's it's old it's from years ago i hope i don't get a phone call um but it's important right the requirements are you should be able to account down to the penny by client who you're holding out to funds for if you're making uh certainly you are making deposits or withdrawals you should have documentation of the date the source and the purpose of that money movement um quiet ledgers so it's one thing to be able to track down the penny by clients but any money moving in or out to explain what matter it's related to and again the transaction details for that client bank statements records of deposit all that stuff we see very very often that's usually pretty good because you can also call your bank and most banks can get that to you in a very quick uh quick manner but the bottom two there reconciliations of the tran the client trust accounts and and records for the past five years so you need to be reconciling uh not just the the trust account but the client ledger uh and you should be having records for this account as far as five years and in new york state i believe it's seven years so if you ever get audited if there's ever any questions you need to be able to provide not only uh yes answers to all of these questions but five to seven years worth of data showing that you're buttoned up because they may go back several years or several months to justify that and again these are not requirements that we're making up this isn't supposed to be fear-mongering but but this is pulled directly from the aba model rules on trust account records so if nothing else you know i can tell you this is one of the biggest mistakes that we see please be mindful of how you're keeping records how you're tracking this stuff because um if you are ever audited which i don't wish on anybody you should be able to answer yes to all these questions the third big mistake that we've heard and this is kind of this one of these terms that we hear like yeah i'm familiar with it but uh you know i don't really get it three-way reconciliation i'm sure we've all heard about it we know what through reconciliation is we've heard it but if i said write it down on a piece of paper can you tell me what the three components are and how that works most attorneys wouldn't want to take that that pop quiz it's actually not hard it's this is a pretty easy easy thing you can take away from this there's three components you've got your iota bank balance and again that's pulled directly from the ielts account but keep in mind that's just showing you a snapshot that's showing you a month of activity but it's not showing you any pending transactions so it's only showing stuff that's hit the account that's cleared the account number two you've got your quiet ledger balance so every incoming outgoing transaction corresponding to a specific client matter it's important that you don't just have the overall account but you're balancing by client matter and number three that third component is the trust accounting balance this is your accounting book right so if you're using quickbooks if you're using a third-party account that's helping you the trust accounting ledger uh that book balance the difference between that and the bank balance that typically includes pending transactions so if you're writing checks and you know they're in float your bank isn't going to realize that until it hits the bank account and you get that alert as a line item your accounting book should show you what's in flight that way you can balance number one with number two and number three and again as a refresher reminder for best practices you know on the right here that the safe keeping property requirements they like to see monthly reconciliation of client ledgers and at least quarterly reconciliation of the trust account so hopefully if nothing else throughware reconciliation is not as confusing after after seeing this slide because again it's pretty straightforward uh it's not that hard but it's something that we should be mindful of as practicing attorneys so we talked about the three mistakes and there's more there's a lot more there's a lot of ways you can slip up but those are three of the biggest most common ones that we've seen but don't worry we've heard plenty of best practices and it's not just me saying here's what you should be doing we've talked to attorneys and they've said yeah i'm buttoned up i've got a process here's how i do it then i can sleep at night so some of the best practices that i want to share with you you know starting with being active and and of course we're not going to put again a convicted felon in front of managing our own iota but you should really be paying attention diligently because again your license is at stake so paying attention to every single transaction and flagging or raising questions if something doesn't make sense like a 21 000 fraudulent check and regularly self audit double check what you're keeping track of and what's hitting the bank and make sure everything is is balanced number two and this ties directly to our florida example make sure that you're limiting access to the iota right most banks only allow an attorney to be the signer on the ielts you can't have a bookkeeper or another admin be a signer on the account so with that in mind be mindful of who you're giving access to we've heard attorneys that are saying yeah i'm the signer but i get my login info to my my paralegal or i give my office manager my login and she helps me he or she helps me stay organized i'm not here to slap you on the wrist and say you should or should not be doing that just be mindful of who has the account because if nothing else we know that you are ultimately responsible as the practicing attorney and if somebody does something improper whether that's a bookkeeper a paralegal or another attorney you can face consequences so be mindful that what we're giving access to and lastly this is a best practice that that might sound painful but don't wait till the end of the month you know i can't tell you how many times you've heard from attorney yeah you know normally it takes me 15 minutes it's not a problem but yeah february it was took me six hours i couldn't figure out what this check was it was outstanding i had to work on a saturday and sunday that can be solved by not waiting until the end of the month you don't need to reconcile every single day time is money you guys are very busy and it's all about billable hours but maybe don't wait until the end of the month maybe do it weekly maybe you have a low in the middle of the week you're eyeballing it and just making sure everything is balanced doing that little bit of work in the middle of the week will save you the headaches at the end of the month and again most of the attorneys that we've talked to that say nope i'm good i've got it i got it down i feel great they're not waiting at the end of the month and then opening up their books they're doing it throughout the month and they're staying on top of it this directly addresses uh the big watch out that we've heard right keeping detailed records so we showed you that slide with all those questions that you should be able to answer yes to so along those lines keep records that can help you answer yes to those questions right so not only justifying the balances but justify the activity being able to say right now do a self audit say can i look at my own set today and say down to the penny who i'm holding on to client funds for can i say for every single transaction anytime deposit withdrawal money and money out i can explain the purpose i can explain the client and understand what it's related to and the best practice that we've seen do it all electronic i know we love paper the attorney industry you know it's i've never seen so many checks written with any other industry i've worked with with you know uh construction manufacturing you name it but um it's pretty antiquated and everyone likes their paper trail and i get it keep detailed records leverage electronic tools that can help you simplify this because uh if you're doing it with a physical ledger and only physical ledger you might be in trouble if uh you know you spill coffee on that or if there's a fire or flood people don't think about bad things that could happen when they've got it hand written the best practice and i can't emphasize this enough no matter how you're doing it do it electronically that way you've got it it's in the cloud it's on a hard drive somewhere uh and you can do this in a more more streamlined fashion so this one might seem like a no-brainer but you'd be amazed how many attorneys are not doing this specifically the solo attorneys mid-sized firms yeah they've got solid teams around them but a lot of solo firms are saying yeah i just deal with whoever can help me across the board you need to surround yourself with experts so leverage partners beyond your bank that understand the legal space and the importance specifically around the iota so number one one of the top reasons you can get discipline to get in trouble so again regardless of what that bank is i would love for it to be gavin and noda and mit but we're if you're happy with your bank that's great make sure they have experience with ielts when you're setting up the account it's going to be titled correctly you have to make sure it's opened uh we've actually talked to attorneys no lie that thought they had an iota but they didn't they had just a regular checkout account and they were calling it iota just because you call it an iota does not make it an iota make sure that it's been set up correctly it's called correctly it's titled correctly to make sure you're complying with the state uh a best practice even though you're allowed to keep some slush funds in the account for fees don't have any fees hit the iota account with a lot of banks it's a click of a button behind the scenes you can structure it so any fees are coming from your operating account so even if it's new checks or wire transfer whatever those fees are set it up so it's not being deducted from your iota get that pulled directly from your operating account um just to remove that risk of you possibly uh going negative or having you know having an issue with uh with client funds gavin can i ask you a quick question so um you know anyone who you know may be too shy to ask uh and i would understand that on your second bullet specifically you know if you have named a bank account an iota account and you're doing a lot of things right but this isn't quite set up correctly how do you self-audit that how do you you know what questions do you ask specifically of your bank or banker how would you go into figuring that out and and making sure that now that you have some sense of ownership you know that it's being set up correctly what are some validation points along the way there yeah that's a that's a great question and this is where it helps working with a banker that knows what they're doing so all the ielts's have to be registered uh with the state so number one i would check to make sure that the financial institution you're using is able to offer iotas because you might walk into somewhere and say yep i opened up an iota but if you go to the state website and that's not an approved financial institution well you know it can't be an iota number two i would just ask what what their process is i can't speak about every single bank with my personal experience behind the scenes not to get too technical there's different sub product codes so you have a deposit account that's coded as an abc another one that's coded as a xyz we can provide documentation like here's the title here's the code explaining how this is different from your operating account your operating account is an abc your iota it's titled differently and it's coded as an xyz another good telltale is if there's interest being earned they should be able to show you uh some banks put it on the statements some don't but if it's earning interest and you're not seeing that swept out going to the state you know there's a red flag so if you're earning interest you know it's not an iota because with iota's all the interest earned is going to the state to fund um uh charitable you know public defenders legal services for indigent population so there's there's documentation you can get yeah okay great for sure so any questions you could ask directly today if you have any question around is it actually an iota that you have a thousand percent and i i i also feel like i'm a bit i thanks for jumping in maddie i i'm trying not to be too much of a talking head if you have questions put them in the chat matty if they're too shy and you want to interrupt me interrupt me but i'm gonna leave some time at the end for q a because we'd love to actually talk to people instead of just uh just talking myself but um thank you for for jumping in with that um so we talked a little bit about about the banking side these last two bullets are beyond banking though right if you're dealing with a a bookkeeper if you're dealing with uh you know a cpa make sure that you have experience dealing with attorneys right the best attorneys that we've talked to that say yep i'm good they've got a partner that has expertise in this field they're not dealing with a bookkeeper that's got the ice cream shop and the pet store and the occasional law firm they're dealing with someone that understands the nuances and importance of the iota as well as if they're assisting with throughway reconciliation they're able to uh to provide guidance there so we covered surviving and again if nothing else be careful with the iota that's one of the top reasons people could get in trouble but really there's ways you can thrive as well and and and people might be rolling their eyes but make your bank work for you it's amazing you know when we talk to attorneys and again this is not just just our clients but attorneys in general one of the big questions we ask is what are your pain points like what's your bank doing that's great what are they doing that's horrible and uh and some of the stuff that we've heard we'll share out here but really for everything that the bank is doing that's that's horrible banks in general as an industry there's some insider tips that that we can share with you to help you uh hopefully circumnavigate that as you're uh thinking about just just leveraging a solid financial institution as a partner and before we you know kind of jump into specific examples i always like to set the stage right so when you ask people to describe their banking experience it's probably somewhere in the middle right you've got the dmv which is come in take a number grab a seat maybe i'll get to you today maybe not sorry or you've got apple which is sleek which is cool they're coming to you it's concierge they're hand holding you i don't think banks are all the envies i think banks you know i certainly would have put us in that level but i also feel confident that a bank typically is not getting the same experience as the apple store so i want you to think as you're interacting is how can we shift our bank from the left side of this to the right side right what are things that we can expect and we can demand to get better service from our bank outside of that visual we talked to attorneys and and this interesting words that came up in those conversations right what do you think of when you think of a bank suits fees strategy it's commodity uh paper heavy siloed right all these all these buzzwords none of these are great right and it's very rare it does happen but it's very rare we'll talk to someone that's oh bank i love it my bank is amazing it is outstanding we hear that about apple you got people that'll never go to off the iphone because they love the apple experience but how come we don't expect the same type of service from from banks so what we're trying to do with noda and through this whole process of talking to attorneys is trying to make this shift right how do we shift from the dmv to the apple experience and how do we make these words uh terms of the past so a question you need to ask yourself how are you banking today are you just giving a 1 800 number are you are you treated like like anyone else is your banker unsure of how your firm operates do they understand the nuances of contingency versus versus retainer do you even have a banker you would be amazed how many attorneys we talked to i'm too small for a banker i just i just work with whoever will help me it's incredible is your bank slow to respond you have a question are you able to get a hold of someone to get an answer quickly and are your fees outrageous this is an industry problem across the board right we've heard this right like and there's been regulations and things have happened but a lot of times people complain about banks because the fees are high if you're answering yes to these questions you're probably doing it wrong and you can't solve all these there's no silver bullet to make all this go away but there's things you can do to make your experience uh as a solo as a small firm attorney better and the reason why is because banks love attorneys so even if you're sitting here and you're the solo attorney or the person that just started your firm and you've got nothing going for you you're just getting ramped up maybe you just got your your uh your pc formed banks love you and and don't forget that and the reason why banks love you is because number one look at who else they're dealing with across the board industry industry agnostic attorneys are highly profitable overall you're a higher margin business you keep large deposit balances especially in the iota right if you're if you're for example a real estate attorney you've probably got several hundred thousand or several million dollars flowing in or out if you're doing transactional real estate personal injury attorneys you've got big settlements that are coming in you're carrying much larger balances than a retail shop on the corner right or a mom and pop so so be aware of that you are highly profitable to banks even if you're a solo number two and this can't be understated you are community leaders so banks always think about you know who would want to partner with if someone's going to make the headlines to do something wrong do we bank that person is that someone that's our client that risk isn't as high with attorneys yes we've got the occasional story like the florida one i led with where attorneys make mistakes we're not all angels but overall you're invisible leaders in the community and you're an excellent referral source because you have clients and all of your clients have bank accounts whether it's business personal mortgage whatever it is there's good opportunities to partner there so banks love that you're involved in the community and you're seen as leaders and number three banks are all about risk every single bank is about risk they've got their credit division they've got their risk officers attorneys are low risk you're relatively recession proof and that's not to say that covet hasn't impacted us and the economic downturns of years past i know that i know that impacts everybody but you don't see a lot of law firms shutting down their their brick and mortar locations and putting up out of business they're doing virtual they're doing this right you're much lower risk you have low overhead costs nowadays all you need is a laptop a laptop and a law degree and you can you can start your own firm we deal with a lot of virtual attorneys and if there is lending there's a pretty low default rate because it's pretty stable pretty reliable so across the board banks really enjoy attorneys even if you're a solo so with all that being said are you feeling the love from your bank right and i know it's it's kind of cheesy to say are you just treated as another number but looking at all the stuff i just mentioned are you treated better than the pets shop on the corner or or the you know the struggling retailer you should be because you bring a lot to the table and you add a lot of value and stability to banks so despite this and and honestly it's just that it's information asymmetry attorneys don't realize the value they had so now that we know the value you add let's think about the stuff that we've heard and how we can how we can address that and i can't tell you how many times we'll talk to an attorney and they don't have to even be in our target market it can be across the country no opportunity to win the relationship but just having a conversation oh i'm too small i'm just a one-man shot i'm too small for a dedicated banker why based on everything we just said you should be able to have a dedicated banker and here's a tip truly don't be another number you should demand a personal banker and you might say how can i do that it's not hard wherever your local branch is if you who's my point of contact i would like a point of contact can i have your card can i have your cell phone do you have a personal extension you want to have an advocate on the inside you might not need one but if there's ever a crisis like for example the ppp i'm sure it helped a lot of people people who had a bank or they can call when there was a ppp need and they said hey i need assistance and people that just called generic 100 number and were put in the queue with everyone else so if you don't have an advocate on the inside number one first thing to do tomorrow or this afternoon go to your local bank or your local bank try to get a dedicated point of contact get their information and see if you can get them as an advocate inside the 100 number is important and they're i'm not dismissing 100 numbers there is a time and there's a place that should never be your first option you should always have a human being that knows who you are that can help you if there's ever a crisis and hopefully you don't have one but if you do you want a person that can actually that can actually help you second thing that we've heard if you are lucky and you say you know what i'm doing it right i have a banker i'm not really sure my banker understands how my firm operates yeah you know he's a nice guy gavin's nice but i don't know if he gets law he'll answer my emails but i don't know if he understands my business insider tip interview your banker just like you would for a nanny or for you know any other any other job interview it shouldn't be a commodity it shouldn't be just the first person that comes in and helps you we're not in a furniture store interview your banker make sure that they have experience working with attorneys and they should be able to provide you with references you can easily ask questions about how they understand the business but ask them flat out do you have other attorney clients if i wanted to call someone and get some feedback do you have any names for me most attorneys i'm sorry most most bankers if they have other attorney clients they can give you references and it won't be a problem but when in doubt don't don't take my word for it right ask other attorneys obviously i'm going to be biased that i'm going to be passionate about what we're building in the organization i'm affiliated with if you have a bad banking experience and you think your banker is not great talk to your attorneys that you know through your bar associated bni through your your cles who do you bank with who's your banker what's his or her name can you do an introduction i have some questions when in doubt you know attorneys stick together you guys are a tribe you share information you share best practices you share your mistakes i would definitely leverage that connectivity to see if you do have any any questions here that you're getting in front of someone that knows what they're talking about and this is one that that's improving but but it's still there right so we've heard hey yeah my bank has digital tools you know where it's 2021 i would hope so at this point i don't really meet my needs easy attempt to think about but honestly in practice it's not that hard research and negotiate so ask questions to understand what are the capabilities and limitations and how they might impact you as an attorney because again you're not just another number every single bank has their standards but there's exceptions people were talking to you and they said oh great you offer mobile check deposit with my phone nowadays every single bank does that but if i have a 1500 monthly limit does that help me that might help another business that's doing one check every six months but that's probably not helping a real estate attorney so figure out what those limits are figure out the pricing figure out how it would fit into your workflow and negotiate you can you can negotiate absolutely anything and you should be able to accept uh request exceptions based on bank standards and a lot of times banks are willing to do this as long as you can provide documentation so if you're going to a bank and saying hey i want an increased limit or i want this type of pricing based on my volume well you've got bank statements you've got data that you can show them and say look it's all right here my average check deposit is it's a hundred thousand however the money limit is a million right so for data that you have and having those conversations to see if the bank can adjust their out-of-the-box services to be custom for your needs because a lot of times it's just a couple clicks of the button behind the scenes um on the programming side with the bank you know the bank tech people just to give you the different uh thing or the different different structure this one we hear a lot that i'm sure there's groaning and then i can tell you oh i'm getting that alert that my internet connection is being tough okay uh bank fees it's a problem across the board we hear it a lot i have been guilty of this i've i faced the firing squad myself um at the end of the day the best advice i give everybody and this is uh you know i would tell my my family this negotiate everything everything is negotiable and attorneys are good negotiators so now that you know even as a solo attorney what your value is to the bank don't take everything for granted don't just assume the out of the box structure or the out of the box pricing is applicable for you and i am not exaggerating nothing is off the table the bank might say no they reserve the right and i've said no plenty of times most of the banks are evaluating their risk appetite based on again the industry which we know is attorneys on the pricing side they look at the profitability of the overall relationship so if you can build a solid relationship with your bank and show them here's the value that you're contributing here's what you bring to the table i would hope that there's a reciprocation and that i have uh you know different pricing of what you proposed that's that's a natural discussion to have if it's a transactional relationship and you're saying hey over here i want to use this one piece and i want you to be the low-cost provider banks might say no and you can be okay walking away from that but at the end of the day if nothing else don't take pricing for granted and negotiate and as attorneys we should be uh we should be good at doing that so i have a question there gavin sorry just to go back for one slide um if i'm sort of like a you know new solo or a small firm attorney i'm not but if i were um what sort of bank fees am i most apt to negotiate successfully you know are there some some wins that are sort of more easy to go after than others would you say like some that are less reasonable yeah so i mean some stuff should be a given right if you need like hey i don't want to pay for the initial check but like you know hey i need to order checks for my firm i just formed a firm i need checks can you throw that in complimentary i i can't tell you how many people their blood boils when they get the the monthly maintenance fees and a lot of banks have it so that hey as long as you keep 2 500 or 5 000 you're going to avoid it but that fees 20 a month if you can justify based on your relationship that i don't even want to even think about that the bank is most banks are not going to lose your relationship over less than 200 annually right if we're talking 10 bucks a month you know 200 whatever it is um so i think monthly maintenance fees you should be negotiating um ancillary services like ordering checks and do your homework right so honestly my job as a banker is much easier if someone comes to me and says hey i would love to work with you but you're charging twenty dollars for wires and i'm getting it for fourteen dollars at a different bank a lot of times it's just give me the data give your banker the data and they can either if they can meet the price they will if they can beat the price they will and if not they'll say sorry we can't touch it but you should be doing that type of work beforehand there's no surprises um because a lot of the stuff again it's just a matter of looking at the relationship and seeing what makes sense right so have multiple conversations ask if you can match it or basically move on exactly and no at the end of the day too some people are okay most attorneys like to negotiate and so this is uh this is i'm preaching to the choir but again they think of think of the value of the relationship think of what you're getting out of out of your bank if it's commoditized and you're looking for the low-cost provider then yet just shop around say here's what i want who can give it to me some people are willing to pay for for certain services right and not everything should be free right because that no bank is going to give you the world for free but just think about what your relationship is what you're bringing to the table for the bank knowing you're worth gushing and if there's something that's an actual hey this is a redline thing that i am not happy about and i'm leaving if you don't fix it for the bank it's gonna be very easy we'll either fix it and retain you or if they don't value you based on the analysis they'll do behind the scenes they'll they'll be honest they'll say no sorry we can't beat it that's the lock but you need to ask and if you don't ask that no bank is going to properly reach out to you and say we think we can save you money right yeah and i mean honestly like one of the most important things is just you know thinking back to earlier in the presentation you need to make sure first and foremost that your banker that the bank as a whole empowers their bankers to um really understand attorneys needs specifically and then the negotiation is like the maybe the next or or beyond that most important thing right like the most important thing is that you have someone who is even worth your breath talking to negotiating with et cetera that that's secondary the the number one thing is to make sure that you have someone in your information working out for you that's worth a lot more than 20 dollars or you know six dollar like wire transfer difference in the fees like who cares about six dollars if like your banker's not taking care of you that's something that you can negotiate maybe if not in the beginning after year one and you say look i've been with you i brought in three more clients my friends are banking with you now can we just like you know bring these fees down a little bit i'm really using this service often and it's adding up that'll pay for your calendar who knows right i i love that you said that so the one thing i'll add i love that you use the word empower and i think it's really important that you know when we talked about having an advocate on the inside you need to make sure that that advocate is empowered because if you have someone and the response is always going to be let me ask the supervisor oh let me escalate it that's not that's not worth your time time but if you can talk to someone that says matty matty i'll take care of it i'll email you by the end of the day that's who you want to be dealing with yep i agree so another thing another thing we heard from attorneys um specifically around working capital and it's unique with with attorneys because attorneys typically don't have robust borrowing needs right you might maybe get a mortgage if you're if you own your your building um maybe really from a there's no like equipment there's no need for like heavy loans maybe you're doing renovations but the biggest thing we hear from attorneys is working capital right it can be ebbs and flows peaks and valleys having that working capital cushion could help you during the slow months or god forbid when something like covet happens you've got you've got a little bit of a question there a lot of secretaries don't understand the process or know what they qualify for and and the advice that we give is really aim high and negotiate so make sure there's a common theme by the way negotia if you take nothing else away negotiate is the magic word of the day most attorneys um when they're looking for they're looking for lines of credit right to help with working capital the questions you want to ask and again making sure you're talking to someone who's educated who knows the process how was the line of credit calculated how much how much would i qualify for here's a spoiler alert and this is this is different with every single bank someone stopped me in the street and said hey what would you typically offer 10 to 20 of revenues is a ballpark you can go higher you can go lower but as a starting point if you're doing a million dollars in revenues maybe you're asking for a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars in a line of credit banks are going to do their analysis of the underwriting process but as a starting point you don't want to ask for a million dollar line of credit you want to position yourself maybe a little bit above that you know but in that in that range you also want to understand before you go through the process because the process depending on how your bank does it can be can be painful understand the requirements right what are the credit score requirements is there a personal guarantee how long does the process take you should be speaking with someone that's not just taking an application and shifting it into a black box but can actually articulate and walk you through the process a lot of banks are different but they do typically have credit score minimums where hey if you're below 600 it's it's almost an automatic decline right you want to get that personal credit score up because that's a factor even though it's a business loan i can tell you really the sweet spot you know i would ask people again there's there's different situations but mid-sixes is probably solid you certainly don't have like a bankruptcy or anything on your credit report but you want to ask about your unique bank and stuff every bank is different but a lot of banks especially with these small loans they will require a personal guarantee that being said i can tell you nothing is off the table so maybe you can negotiate if the bank has a solid relationship with you and they know that you're a long-time customer with with solid balances that's something that might be standard for everybody else but perhaps you can get an underwriter comfortable with accepting that risk of you not uh but these are the questions you need to ask and you don't just take it as as for granted when they come to you with something and lastly really make sure that you're understanding and you have them map out what is the with timelines right not yep i'll get your stuff dude and then i'll be in touch like that's not acceptable right here's what i'm going to take this information here's when it gets submitted here's who sees it here's what i'll give you an update let's commit to talking on that date and seeing the status update right like one of the biggest headaches that we've heard from attorneys is that yeah i applied for something and it's a black box i have no idea what the heck is going on i haven't heard anything make sure you're asking these questions um and again like everything else you can negotiate this whole process that can be rate that can be structured that can be fees everything can be negotiated on the lending side as well and the last one one of the last things that we heard and and this we've heard a ton and we asked the question and say no of course why would my how does my bank help my firm grow maybe they'll give me a loan but how can they help me this is something you need to almost shift your mindset for and i promise you most of us on the line are probably not thinking in this mindset bankers and i as as a banker i i do this i ask for referrals i try to serve my clients and say hey who do you know that that i can help who do you know that would benefit from meeting with me who do you think i could give good service to you should be doing the exact same thing if you have a banker if you have an advocate if you have a relationship identify your ideal client and go to your banker flip the script say hey banker here's what i want to get in front of here's who i work with who do you know who do you have in your portfolio who do you have through your organizations that you're involved with the events that you sponsor banks are rolodexes we've got clients on the personal on the wealth and the investment insurance business they've got a vast uh book of business and banks are all not not just us every single bank is looking to add value on commoditized offerings so your banker will be thrilled if he can he or she can do an introduction and connect you with someone that's value-add that's a win-win for everybody so make it a priority don't be shy but identify that client be strategic and ask point blank ask your banker if you can get in front of folks that that meet your uh your criteria so gavin um first of all i love this i think this is really great advice i'm also wondering if you could even scale it a little further because um you know sometimes especially with you know ethics rules you're not going to get like a a list of some you know people to reach out to as the attorney you know needs to really be inbound them expressing interest you know and contacting you maybe if it requires a little bit of education um you know if you do uh estate planning probate trust work etc as an attorney maybe you do real estate maybe you do um small business uh trademarks ip things like that i can think of so many things that banks are aware of bankers are aware of around uh business formation and a lot of overlap with attorneys you know what if you actually said look you know it's been really great working with you by the way you know i help with um you know high net worth individuals estate planning uh i do ipr trademarks i'd be happy to put on a seminar right similar to maybe even this you know would would that be something that you think you have clients that would be interested in joining for free then you have an opportunity to have a platform demonstrate your expertise build your network in your community and and allow for that inbound interest to flow through to you plus you could even do that for as a presentation for all the bankers in that group or branch particularly and they know what you do so they can provide better referrals to you um just because you know oftentimes you'll you'll say yeah here's my card and then they don't really know who you want as a client they don't really know what you do because i think everyone here knows and has heard me say it probably before you know lawyer law firm clients come in sort of not predisposed to understand what lawyers and law firms do so the more that you can teach the banker and their clients in these formats you know the more you get out of what gavin is recommending 1 000 and anything you can do yeah i love the example giving a business card i can tell you that's not going to work no banker is going to take that business card then clear their calendars sit and say how can i get maddie in front of people right it doesn't happen you have to create the stuff create create the opportunity make it a priority this is on you this is on you as the eternity to try to say how can i leverage my bank to get more and maybe it's not like even if you don't you know like i'm busy out of time for that it can be as simple as asking what are the events that you're going to coming up i'd love to attend i'd love love to join as your guest and then all of a sudden you can you can meet and greet and ask for introductions it doesn't have to be a formal business development plan but i promise you and covered a little bit of a crazy time because for obvious reasons but i promise you bankers are going to do mixers networking events seminars monitoring bars yup dinners i've even in buffalo here i see it all the time you know so they are probably at or sponsoring the events or want to be involved and things that you're attending to exactly exactly so make a priority most people don't think this is even an option for their bank they think of it as hey deposits loans if i need anything i'll call but shift your mindset really think about how you can get more and work with your community banker to see what you can do there because um i can tell you those relationships just become more and more sticky on both sides and if your banker is referring you business you'll obviously start referring to them and it's just it's better for everybody so uh make sure you're you're focused on yourself and how you can make your bank work for you uh with this regard so in closing i want to leave a couple minutes for for q and a i would love to hear from some of the folks on the line but if you take nothing else away right if this was just gavin as a talking head and maddie jumping in with some good questions there's two things you need to take away from this even if you're a solo attorney you are important banks love you so i have a voice and everything is negotiable truly everything so don't take stuff for granted and assume uh assume that you can that you can negotiate across the board and one thing just as a little plug here is that you know who i am and why i'm even talking you know we're trying to get there right so i'm with node i'm with m t bank we're not at the dmv level but i can tell you i'm not gonna put lipstick on a pig we're not apple yet right we got some work to do what we are doing is we're building a digital bank from lawyers so we put noted together we've grown in the last 12 months from 10 users to almost 500 users and we're building a digital bank specifically for the little guy for the solos the small firms and what we started with instead of saying let's build a perfect mousetrap fifty dozen whistles let's see what happens no we're working with attorneys saying let's start with the iota your ilt is a headache and getting a lot of trouble how can we help you and every single feature and functionality that we built was not built by gavin or an engineer but it was sitting face to face sitting with attorneys and saying what do you want how can we do it and what we've built is a tool that is integrated with your bank account helps you account for every penny in real time keep your ielts continuously reconciled and run reports not with a three-hour reconciliation session at the end of the month but with the click of a button so offline i'd love to connect with anybody even just as a just a conversation but if you do want to learn more our website is in the top right here it's it's www.trustnoda.com but that's that's all i have i appreciate that i would love to maybe open it up for questions and kind of hear from folks on the line yeah gavin thank you so much um you know i think that we addressed a lot of the questions actually that have already come through uh but you know when someone is sort of like debating uh you know how hard is it gonna be for me to actually move uh my bank from what they're using right now to nota um i think that's a question that's come up before when you and i have uh presented together or talked maybe that's something we can also address and also that you're rolling out nationwide i think is really relevant to this audience yeah so i'll touch on the latter points um on nationwide so nothing nothing is uh definitive yet so just as i kind of touched on in the overview right now nota is available in the northeast um states right new york new jersey connecticut pennsylvania dc maryland virginia um florida delaware and west virginia nicely done we have nicely done we have we have had conversations with attorneys all over the country and one of the things that we're pursuing um tbd is how we can expand or strategically partner to offer this type of service across across the country now i know what i can say this is to be recorded so i will say this that's not gavin the compliance person or the the legal division there's leg work that has to be done but we are having those preliminary conversations because what we found this is not an east coast problem this is a universal problem with solo and small firm attorneys um so we're trying to see how we can learn from attorneys all over the country and strategically pursue where it might make sense to expand right now regarding your your first question maddie on switching banks um it can be a pain i'm not i'm not going to say it's all sunshine and rainbows we try to advise people that there's there's smart ways to do it with your ielts i will never recommend anybody shut it down over here open it up over there overnight because god forbid you have a check that's in transit you forgot about and then it hits and it balances you're getting audited so there's a couple different things we can do and the big question we always ask is if you understand your client balances and you feel confident that's the penny it's as easy as writing yourself a check and moving funds to a new institution what a lot of firms elect to do instead of doing that just for peace of mind i'm going to keep it at bank a i want to move to bank b i'll start with a line in the same so starting march 1st 2021 i'm going to use bank b i'm going to let bank a wind down and then i don't have to worry about mixing and matching or getting into issues and the nice thing about about noda we don't require operating accounts to move over so it can't just be the iota you can start fresh with zeros and that's fine um but i would i would talk with and again this is a note a specific example i would i would talk with whatever bank you're looking to move for uh and then figure out what that process looks like and how they can streamline it for you because it can't be uh paid if it's not handled correctly okay um and you know to be expected uh there is a question about law pay so how do you integrate with law pay yeah so uh we do integrate with law pay so we allow uh attorneys obviously if you're accepting credit cards uh we heard from attorneys uh long pay is is the gold standard m t bank interestingly we do not offer log pay right there's there's there's agreements in place uh we know it's a value add for attorneys so we built that an integration even though it's directly competing with kind of what we offer as just standard credit card processing but we do have law pay integration if you want to learn more we'd be happy to connect for a 15-minute demo and i can show you um and you can also sign up for a demo on our website but what it does is allows attorneys that accept funds via credit card it helps funnel those if the correct client matters at a high level uh within the ielts account okay and are you saying gavin that also if you have nota there is an online payment portal for links to um directly put funds either by credit card or debit ach into your accounts through zell or something like that you're i'm loving it so we um we at the moment today no what i can tell you is that we have heard from attorneys and again this is my mousetrap analogy we want to make sure that we're building stuff where there's the need and we've heard from attorneys like hey receiving funds can be a headache how can we streamline that and build out a process there so our engineers are actually interviewing our users we're doing recording calls like this to see what their process is how they want to streamline it and how we can tie that in but at the moment i can say um there's no formal integration there what would happen is any funds that are received would show up in noda and you can easily tag and track it by client matter but i i can't tell you we are building that and if that's something that interests you and you have opinions on what that would look like would love to connect offline and see how we can maybe uh get something for you that would help with that okay great and if you're using something like clio that has law pay integrated you could set it at the matter level or you could set it up within law pay to say this is how i want my payments to be directed to those funds yeah about a thousand percent so um i'm not i'm not going to get in the weeds what i can say is that um over 50 i think don't quote me i think almost 60 of our users are using a practice management software so this is not practice management software think of this this is a bank account every attorney needs a bank account the goal for this is to be a smarter bank account we are building out integrations with practice management software we've already built that integration with quickbooks online and with law paying but um please do not think of this as a uh a change in your process and a complete revamp this is just a way to think about getting a few more features from your bank account that really aren't being offered um right so you know going to go into the right accounts and that's really the most important integration um wonderful well gavin uh thank you so much i have one last question um so i'll read this off is there a timeline for how long an attorney can hold client funds in iota on a matter essentially should an attorney cut small checks to clients until fully paid out or is it best to pay all funds on full settlement oh it might be involving a curveball like that at 3 358. that that is is a a bar association question i do know there's requirements that you can't sit on client funds for a long period of time so if you're sitting on client funds for whatever that that period is you need to make sure that you're complying with the bar but i am not an attorney i'm a banker i don't i do not feel comfortable kind of giving guidance there but i would definitely talk to you bar yeah i would i would get in touch um for the person who asked that or anyone else who has that question uh get in touch with your bar association and you know there are ethics advisors law practice management advisors really great groups there they'll route you to the appropriate person who can help you with that question all right wonderful well we're just about up gavin thank you so much so to get in touch with you to explore nota further trustnona.com and then to get in touch with you gavin trustnoda.com is that right yep i'll put in the chat right here so gavin at trustnoda.com um and even if you're not in those states that we mentioned and you just want to have a conversation and kind of see what we're building and how it might help i'm always looking to connect and have conversations and continue to learn so thank you for your time and maddie i'm really glad yep no i was going to say well first of all yes thank you for your time kevin like i didn't do anything here but thank you for being here and for sharing really meaningful advice you know i think that you know a lot of these conversations just you hear a product demo or something and you delivered so much more value and i really appreciate that speaking on behalf of everyone um you know the other thing is i'll say get in touch with gavin um you know just have a quick call or you know send him your information that you live in a different state outside of the northeast and mid-atlantic and you are interested in this so you can be notified when they expand um so we don't for any company that's not yet in your area i recommend that but you know obviously they're keeping track of where the greatest demand is um as you know part of their rollout so you know don't be shy anyway gavin thank you again everyone have a wonderful afternoon and i will include gavin's contact information in the show notes and and the email that i send if you registered live for this webinar so take care and see you soon thanks everybody see ya bye you