Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Relay, the legal show for personal injury law firm owners, presented by Lex Amica, the number one attorney referral network. I'm your host, Gabriel Steeritz. My guest today is Eric Vogt, the founder of Proof. Eric's path is a little bit unusual. He started as an engineer building aircraft, walked away from it to become a trial lawyer, and spent more than 20 years in litigation, doing litigation, not being sued, to be clear. Then he got fed up with enough with one broken, unglamorous piece of the job that he built a company to fix it. If that sounds familiar, with. We have very interestingly parallel journeys. Now, Proof is the first on demand platform for service of process, the part of a case where somebody has to physically find a defendant and hand them paper. And it's grown into a nationwide network of thousands of firms and tens of thousands of process servers. Now, I love Eric. He's just absolutely the nicest guy you could possibly imagine. If you meet him, he is not going to tell you how wildly successful and smart he is. So I'm going to say it now, and then we're going to spend some time having one of the conversations that I enjoy the most, which is talking about the state of legal tech, what it's like building and where we are. Eric, thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Thank you. I love being here.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: So listen, you and I catch up a couple times a year. Always an interesting conversation. Just before we dive in, what is Proof and why? Why did you build it?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I used to always start with asking my audience, do you know what due processes, where does that come from in the Constitution? But we live in this beautiful country where they can't take away your rights, can't take your life, liberty, or property without due process. And due process starts with adequate notice. Adequate notice is actual notice that you've been sued or notice that you've been subpoenaed up here at trial or deposition. That has to be done through the hand delivery, you know, you've been served. Now, I just talk about a Pineapple Express, and people get that from the cult classic movie. But we do that now at a very scaled clip of about 80,000 times a month.
I struggled mightily with that in my plaintiff side practice. And everything came to a head when I had a case where we had served some real estate developers on behalf of a real estate consultant that I represented in at least a dozen cases. And we went to collect on that judgment. It was about a quarter of a million dollars. And all of a sudden the lawyer popped into the case, said, hey, you didn't serve that right. And I was like, I don't even know who the process server is. I don't get any information. Dug up the affidavit of service and the judge said, we're going to try this case whether you serve these people correctly.
It took me about 15 grand in fees to try the case over a day long.
And the judge held up this handwritten affidavit from my process server and said, you know what? All I got is this piece of paper and a bunch of conflicting testimony. Mr. Vogt, you're going to have to start over again. And my client fired me, never hired my firm again, didn't pay that 15 grand in fees. And I said, holy cow, that's all the proof. I got some scrawled on piece of paper and no real time transparent information. During all the attempts at service like, this has got to change. I told a friend of mine who was a software developer and named it Proof because I wanted more proof to determine whether service had been done correctly so other lawyers didn't have to deal with the same thing I dealt with. And that was the beginning eight years ago. That's why I started it. And the rest is kind of a story of ups and downs that every entrepreneur faces. But that's why I got into it. It was really this, we can do better. Litigation is expensive. We shouldn't be trying cases on whether we started this thing, right?
[00:03:50] Speaker A: No, not at all. And I want to go back just to the number that you said, which is 80,000 serves a month. First of all, that's a very large number. And second of all, and there's something that I think we can really dive into here is that's not AI like, and I mean that in a positive way. That's a human being who's going and serving a physical document to another human being. Everything right now in LinkedIn, in the news, the media cycles, it's all about automating work, using AI and then driving that down. What does it mean to build a business where you can't do that in the age of AI? Because I think that's a relevant question for all of our lawyers who do serve papers, who do need to talk to clients. And there is this tension of can legal work be automated away entirely? What's left? And there's, you know, and we're seeing all these pro se cases being filed via AI. It's like, where is the humanity in this? And I think you're a great person to ask as someone who is really doing a business that can't not be AI'd completely away. Even though I'm sure you're using AI to process documents like it fundamentally is human work.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: It is. It's fundamentally human work. And the most important person or thing that happens is actually that transaction at the door where we, our process server identifies the person that they're handing the documents to and makes sure that they're handed in a way and to a person that the law says is acceptable to for adequate notice and opportunity to defend. And so it is fundamentally a human endeavor. Now what we've done is we use AI in our operations. We use AI to ingest the documents, figure out everything that all the rules for the delivery, the way the judge is going to want to see the affidavit, and then gets it to the process server that's closest to that, does a good job in this type of serve, and then monitors that process server along with our operations team and creates the affidavit which is reviewed by humans.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: And then that's our final product that could see filed with the court. So, but the linchpin and all that is that human.
And we, most of what we do is to take care of that human and make that human efficient, make that human believe that they're getting paid a fair amount of money to do a very difficult and sometimes dangerous job. Because as we all know as business leaders, as employers, if an employee doesn't feel like they're treated fairly both in compensation and support, then they're not going to do a good job. And so early on, when I created proof, I asked some of my friends in the Denver legal community and the Colorado community to use it. And then I realized that I didn't have any process servers, so I had to go serve all these documents myself.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: And I realized you, Eric, went and served documents.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: I realized all the windshield time, I realized the disappointment when they weren't there. I realized the trepidation and fear, fear going into a situation that felt a little bit unsafe. And we decided right then and there that these folks were going to be as important, if not more important, than our 30,000 law firm customers. Right. They're very important.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: So how do you. And let me. Yeah, I mean, how do you, how do you do that in an era where everyone is pushing for AI, AI, AI, let's replace everybody. How do you not make someone who's doing that job feel like, well, you're just the last meat sack that's left when AI is doing everything else. And I mean to say that kind of insultingly, because I do think that's kind of where the conversation's going a lot of the time in the media cycle right now.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: I think so too. And everybody's got to put AI in their legal tech product and claim it's a legal tech, it's an AI offering or whatever. We're using it to become really good at our jobs and helping that, that very crucial human being in the loop to do a fantastic, flawless job. Because that's what as lawyers, we require.
So we're detecting fraud, we're detecting mistakes, we're doing all that operational stuff. We're using it as a tool to make sure that we are the foremost experts and every job is done correctly. But, but, but we don't trust AI, which is not a deterministic, you know, technology to be the last say on quality. And I think the same holds true to your customer law firms and my customer law firms. Lawyers aren't going to get replaced.
Look, I practiced law for a long, long time.
I love to take a deposition, but I only love to take a deposition when I'm really prepared. And those are thankless, drudgery hours, right? But now AI can go through those 20 banker boxes worth of documents that I had to memorize so that I can cross examine, impeach this witness and do the best job for my, for my client. Now I have AI as a tool that helps me, but it doesn't replace me.
So it's the same thing in process serving.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: And what's really interesting, Eric, I'm making this connection now. You know, 18 months ago, I was, I will admit to anyone who will listen, I was on the AI voice bandwagon with everybody else. It's going to replace everybody overnight, whatever, whatever. By the end of 2025. That was my prediction and I was dead wrong.
People are better at doing intake into law firms than AI is and nobody in 2026 who is worth anything. And I was on a call with a founder that I deeply respect this morning who's moving into intake with AI and they're saying, you know, it's people and there's an AI layer that helps people be better. And I tend to agree. And I think some people say, well, intake's actually one of the maybe not easier jobs in the firm, but it's one of the more rote jobs. You're doing the same thing over and over. Surely we can autom automate this, if anything. And I think kind of serve as a process is similar, although there's like physical requirements to it. But I do think to your point, it's like, look, if we can't even automate away intake and no one is saying that we're about to do that, then lawyers jobs, litigators jobs are certainly going to. And there's both of those. Right? There's both the. There's like a human element, which is what you see in the intake side. And then also there's the physical piece where a litigator has to show up in court and be in front of a jury and talk to a judge. And those are things by design too. Right. Like we're saying you could technically allow someone to be served by email, but we're saying like as human beings, there are things that we believe to be true about humanity that we don't want to replace with technology.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. You know, some people are like, oh my gosh, all these decisions are going to be made by AI judges. And in fact AAA has come out with an AI judge that could make decisions in very, very small construction cases. Right. But that.
We're not going to allow that as the human race to determine, you know, how rights are determined, how preced that there's just no way. And we're not going to trust AI to take a case into court for us. We're going to. We want a human being that's armed with the best AI to do that. There's still a humanness about the practice of law, the practice of medicine that is going to require lawyers.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: I think to one of the dividing lines is where, where does the process automation end and where does the judgment and the.
I don't think I'll go out and say this. I don't think that anything that has like moral or like implications for a human being's like life or time or money should be made by AI. Like unless both parties have agreed, sound mind and body have agreed already to do that. But like large, outside of that, like, no, we shouldn't be doing that. Like there's a role for people, for human beings inside of the legal system and AI, we need to figure out how to use it to, to make that process move faster. Because the, the. There's this other downside, Eric, that I'm sure you're aware of is like how long it takes things to move to the court system. And that itself is a cost to the people who are seeking justice. So we should be trying to make it move faster but not replace the human yeah.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: So I am a, I'm a huge optimist about the practice of law.
I think I say this often. I, this is an estimate, but probably the 25, maybe 24 out of 25 of the matters that came across my desk. And we worked in a small firm, I ran a firm of 15 lawyers and we, and relatively our billable rate was, was pretty low. But 24 out of 25 of those cases we couldn't take because of financial reasons, because they couldn't afford us or there wasn't enough at stake for us to do it in a contingency fee. So there's a lot of societal costs there. Right.
About 80% of Americans and American businesses can't afford to have a dispute going to trial, much less take it all the way through. Right. So we went from might makes right, early stages in America. Right. To money makes right. Right. Because the litigation process is so expensive. So. And the expensive parts are the drudgery reviewing all these documents. Right. And so AI is tailor made to make those difficult, time consuming TAs much shorter and allowing more cases to go forward and more cases to get to the trial level where they don't get stopped at the deposition level. So I'm just like, I think it's one of those maybe even triple wins with society. Lawyers and litigants and courts are just going to be much more efficient, more justice is going to be served, it's going to be better for society. I'm like, but it's not that we're going to replace humans. It's not like you're going to feed this stuff into some robot that tells you who's right and who's wrong. That's not going to happen. It's just going for the longest of time going to just make our jobs as lawyers easier, more enjoyable, less tedious, where we can do the good things, problem solve, get in front of a jury, take a good deposition, get to mediation, but do it in a more efficient way where everybody's winning, not just the lawyers.
So I'm very bullish about it.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: One of the big trends that we've been talking about for a couple years, it's if I think 2026, we started to get the news cycles around it, the roll ups, the MSOs, the private equity buying law firms. We saw Chad Dudley did his MSO, Dudley DeBoser, they just announced that they bought Hughes and Coleman, another big personal injury law firm. There's more coming right now in the works. What does this mean for the practice of law? What does it mean for mid size, you said 15. Lawyer firm. That's really not our industry in the personal injury space. That's like a pretty normal set shop. You've been in that seat. What do you think, what are your, what are your, what are you telling the law firm owners who you're talking to, what this means for them?
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, I think we've, we've enjoyed for a long time, if you know, enjoyed is the right word, sort of this protect us protected status as lawyers. Doctors had it too, right. We could only share. Doctors could only share profits with other doctors. Accountants could only share profits with other accountants and kept corporations out. Right. And all the efficiency and technology that, that corporations with investors drive. Right. We're kind of the last of those professions that has the luxury of, of, of not allowing profits and losses to be shared with other investors. But I'm, I'm, I'm optimistic. But I'd also say lawyers that don't think this is coming gonna have to get used to that idea. Right. I mean, we all have our friends that are doctors, right. And now insurance companies are telling them a lot what to do and they've lost some independence. So, you know, lawyers, it's gonna kind of go that other way. It may be gradual. We're gonna hold on to some of the things that make us professionals, like the rules of ethics, etc, but let's welcome the parts of that that will make us better and will allow us to serve more people, allow us to be part of a justice system that works for more.
Right. Works for more people. And the folks that, you know, recognize that and move that direction are going to be fine. If you don't, you're going to have a more of a difficult time period. So I think it's coming. I don't think it, you know, I think we're seeing it already to give great examples. So let's get in front of that. Let's drive that conversation instead of letting it drive us as lawyers.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: And I think for better or worse, it is happening. And so there's, you can have the discussions about should it happen. And there are states are lining up on both sides of it. California more against. Illinois legislation was proposed against MSOs, difficult to regulate but still on the table. And you have Arizona coming out in favor of it. Clearly everyone knows about that structure. But I think one of the things that's also happening, Eric, is technology is allowing law firms to operate at a scale and with efficiencies that they never were before. And both the Platforms that we've built are really testaments to that in that they are one, they are unbundled services that you can go and you can click a button and something happens that you used to have to build yourself and now you don't have to anymore. And two, it's things, they're both national, so they're point solutions at a scale that if someone wants to run a law firm in every state, you have how many process servers available through a single button click.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: I think somebody said 2, 600 across the US and all US territories and even some internationally.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: So, and that's, that's a huge, that's a huge difference than 15 years ago you would have had to build that out. And so now these larger scaled law firms that need solutions, they're able to pull them off the shelf and they're able to move more, more quickly. What are you seeing? Who, who are the, the law firms that are taking the best advantage of this? Are they smaller firms? Is it larger firms? Is it the kind of the firms in the middle who have a mixture but they're starting to professionalize?
[00:18:19] Speaker B: You know it, all of them are coming to us, right? I mean the, the independent or the, the solo practitioner doesn't want to file, doesn't want to find a process server, doesn't want to, you know, kind tabs on that process server to the most scaled of law firms that just want to set it and forget it, just want to upload the docs and if they want to check in, fine, they just get notifications, they can text whenever they want. Everything is transparent in real time. It fits for everyone.
We have MSOs that are using it for their law firms. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. We're saving hour and a half of paralegal time for every serve. So even a small to medium sized law firm is saving a quarter of a million dollars a year just in paralegal time, much less just seeing higher quality.
So it's the way everything is moving.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: So everything, you know, and the gains are adding up. You know, you save an hour and a half here, an hour and a half there. You're saving time on your demand, your process service, your referral, you're saving time drafting this, reviewing your medical records, all of those efficiencies. I think the area that is most concerning to me are the lawyers who are saying I'm making good profit margin today, why should I change?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: That's the most dangerous position to be in. And you point out doctors Accountants. Yeah, that, that was true. That was true 25 years ago for other professions. It's not true anymore.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: It's not. And it won't be true for lawyers.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: It's just, yeah, the, the landscape, the ground is changing underneath and you might be able to live for another three, five years. Heck, you may even be able to try her out.
But what does it look like for someone a decade from now to practice? It's going to be very different.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: And look, it's, and I'll say this again, and I say it to all the lawyers.
If 80% of Americans can't afford you in American businesses, right, that means only 20%. There's, it's only 20% served market. That market is what, $500 billion, $450 billion. You got 80% over here. That's unserved.
Right.
That has no choice. They have nothing they can do. So get efficient, get a part of, get a piece of that. It's not like you're going to run out of a job. There's a whole ginormous market out there that could be, you know, I don't know, another $500 billion. Maybe a trillion dollars that we can go capture through some smart technology adoption. Yeah, but just to point out your platform, man, if I could have had this platform for referrals, it was such a pain to send my cases to somebody else and then try to figure out if I was going to get my referral fee. Where are they? This is.
Talk about a revenue generator for a lawyer, right? Somebody calls you up, they've got a case. You can't do it because it's outside of your expertise or outside of your jurisdiction that you're barred in.
Man, what a beautiful thing to get that over to somebody that can do that and then, and then co counsel that case or share in your referral. And that was something I just didn't do because it was such a pain in the butt. It just took too many hours. And now that's open to lawyers that are willing to do that.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: And it's, and it, yes. With like Samica. Absolutely. And you can start, you pick up all these gains at the edges and they compile little. They do a piece here, piece there. Your service of processes faster, more transparent. There's a proof, you know, there's proof of work that reduces risk, it increases your efficiencies. You compile, you know, across your platform, you're saving people 90. What is that, 120,000 hours per. You said 80,000 serves per month.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: That's what we're doing.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: But so that's, that's 120,000 hours of saved work across the legal industry like that. We're processing 300,000 referrals a year. That's saved money, saved time. And the thing that I'm actually the most proud of, Eric, and you had mention this, is that 75 to 80% of people who need legal services, they don't get it. Referrals almost by definition have, are people who are qualified, who are looking for that service. And they've done the hardest part, which is pick up the phone and call an attorney. That's the scariest part. If you're a customer and you make that call, you're already well on your way to that. We're making sure they get matched to the best attorney for their claim. And we're doing that in a, at a scaled level that is starting to actually make a difference against that statistic now. Not a big one yet, but give me a couple years and that number is going to go down because we're able to make sure that firms and clients get matched, that people get that legal help. And to me, that's a huge deal because we're not just talking about numbers now. We're talking about people who are in the worst moments of their lives. They've been in a car wreck, they've been fired by their horrible boss, they've been evicted from their home, they have gotten injured in some way. Those are people who are making these calls and not knowing. And if law firm A says, I can't help you, that's okay. If they can say, let me point you the direction of a good attorney, it's not okay. If it's, I can't help you, don't call anyone be. Now that person's been told by a professional that their claim isn't one to be taken, and it's actually a win win because the law firm can make money by turning that person to somebody else. And so ultimately, but to your point, like, it's just not feasible for most lawyers when a niche claim halfway across the country comes in because someone heard their jingle 10 years ago, like, like that's not. For one time, that doesn't make sense. But when you're talking about it across hundreds of thousands of people, now you can build a network that serves that entire, that entire population of people. So I love it. I love the marketplace. I mean, you understand, like, the beauty of having two different groups of people who need to talk to each other and how like any one pairing doesn't necessarily make sense, but at scale. We're talking about this at dinner last night that you. I'm sure you've heard that if you have 50 people in a room, the chances that there's a shared birthday between any two people is close to 99%. Wow, that's crazy, right? 365 days in the year you get up to 70 people in the room, you have a 99% chance that at least one pair of people match their birthday. That's the power of a network.
Any two people, the chance is almost zero. By the time you get to scale.
You're solving problems that literally couldn't be solved before. And that's the beauty of what you've done with proof, is you've collected process servers in the, like, the forest reaches of the US So there's never a time when you don't have that person at your fingertips. And, like, that's such a fun problem to solve.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a. It is a beautiful thing. I love what you're doing. You know, it's. It is fantastic for lawyers, but it's really fantastic for.
For individual and businesses that need legal service. So. Yeah. Wonderful. I love hearing these stories.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Eric, I really appreciate you hopping on today. It's always a pleasure to talk.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you.
