Yuval Goren:
AI is not going away. We could talk about the perception out there, but the reality is if you're not at least looking at AI as a firm, you're going to get left behind.
Chris Dreyer:
It's the shiny new toy everyone wants to play with, but rushing in AI without solid foundation is a guaranteed way to bleed cash.
Yuval Goren:
Great technology is not going to fix a bad process. And I think a lot of firms, that's what they do.
Chris Dreyer:
You cannot automate a fundamentally broken system. To scale a massive PI firm today, you need strategic IT leadership and bulletproof data security. Because if you get it wrong, your firm's reputation is on the line.
Yuval Goren:
All you need is one breach, one exposure, one vulnerability to really impact your reputation. And it's one Google review that somebody latches onto and said, "They can't be trusted. They mishandled my data."
Chris Dreyer:
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite firms specializing in personal injury. Today, we're sitting down with the CEO of Kobargo IT to talk about the real world application of digital transformation for personal injury firms. We cover why AI agents shouldn't be your first line of defense and intake, how to turn your rigorous data security protocols into a powerful marketing differentiator to win even more referrals, why hiring a fractional CIO or AI chief might be the missing piece to leveling up your firm's operations and also your overall valuation. Let's get into it.
Can you just give me a rundown on Kobargo IT and what you do for PI firms, just the big 80/20, and then we can get in the weeds and get granular.
Yuval Goren:
Yeah, I mean very simply, we're a managed service provider, although we take a little bit of a different approach. Companies, firms will outsource all of their IT to us. We can manage it end to end and just bring more efficiency, the right technologies, and really the security that's needed today around IT services.
Chris Dreyer:
AI's a hot topic, the agentic stuff, everything going on, and we've had firms kind of dabble, and I'm excited to talk to an expert and someone that actually is doing this for firms. And so I'm excited to have you on here and we're going to dig in the weeds on all of this.
Yuval Goren:
Yeah, let's do it. I mean, AI is, it's not going away. We could talk about the perception out there, but the reality is if you're not at least looking at AI as a firm, you're going to get left behind.
Chris Dreyer:
So let's talk about that. When you walk into a 50 person employee PI firm today, what's the biggest misconception the partners have about AI and what it's actually going to do for them?
Yuval Goren:
Leadership is always going to be let's use AI. So there's a big movement initially to public, they're dropping stuff in ChatGPT, the free version, and that has kind of morphed to people are putting in their own personal, and now starting to realize that we need an enterprise plan for AI. Because it's all about controlling data, your data, your client information.
So they think it's going to do everything for them, but I think the biggest challenge is understanding the use case. And I think this is where a lot of firms falter and some don't move forward because this is the piece they're missing. Where does it fit? Where can I use it? And really understanding setting some real expectations around the use of AI, where can it help me most in my firm, in my operations, and really just making my people more effective.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk about the front end. Let's talk about intake capturing. Personal injury attorneys spend a fortune to obtain the lead, the opportunity, and many of them are still reluctant to call it sales, but it's sales. Intake is sales. So let's talk about the front lines where speed's everything. You emphasize AI powered intake. So is it backup? Is it the first engagement? Where do you see it being most valuable?
Yuval Goren:
So AI, and this is including voice AI because there's a lot of talk about how do we use these tools. AI is great at collecting information, but when you're talking about your clients, you need to create relationships and people create relationships. And voice AI in particular is getting better. There's a little empathy. There's some great tools out there. But this is my personal opinion, because we're all in the same business, it's customer service. You got to create a relationship with your client to build that trust, to get that referral, to get that good review.
So yes, AI for intake, it's great to collect information, whether you're using Intaker or on your website or you're using Lawmatics. And I'm not endorsing anyone, but just to give you an idea about these types of tools that leverage AI, and more importantly have integration with your CMS. We could talk about that. The right technology, but it's got to fit your business model. So after hours, AI is great. We don't want attorneys being up 24/7, on call, returning calls. So I think there's good coverage there. I don't think first line of contact with a client or prospective client, again, my opinion, the tools are decent, they got a little bit of ways to go on voice. But I think we can't miss that point that humans create the connection.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's well said. And I also like the, hey, you're an expert when it comes to technology, but hey, you're saying front line human. But you mentioned Intaker, I think fantastic from a live chat perspective. They've got basically the logic-based AI component. So one of the things I've been an advocate of is the chase side. So most of the PI firms have a follow-up sequence of seven to 14 days, and it's just kind of off to the next. And I've always been intrigued by that because I understand the percentage chance to convert a client goes down considerably, but it seems like maybe AI could maybe bring back some of those opportunities.
Yuval Goren:
100%. So as your lead list is building, because a lot of, they'll make that first call if they don't get a call back and then you're chasing them to get them on the phone, and obviously metrics we want to track as well, but the top firms have a process in place. AI could certainly fit that model, these follow-up calls, get somebody on the phone. And I would say in terms of how you build it out, you want to give, if you can get somebody on the phone, you collect that basic information, give them the opportunity to hand it off to a human.
We've had clients that have tested voice AI really just for backup, not as the primary, 9:00 to 5:00, 9:00 to 9:00 because we're going to hand it off to an attorney who's on call, but then it goes to a service. They're looking to replace the service as a backup. Handling those calls between 9:00 and 8:00 AM, I think there's an expectation there that people are going to be like, okay, I'm going to give my info, somebody's going to call me back. But that chase that you talked about, the ones that don't answer the phone, we're trying to call them between 9:00 and 5:00 and they're working. You got to have that. And again, the voice AI piece is not the end all be all, but it can certainly fit your model and how your firm operates around intake.
Chris Dreyer:
Speed to lead is everything, and using AI to chase down uncontacted opportunities is a massive advantage. But before you plug in the latest automation tool, you have to look under the hood. Most firms suffer from disjointed undocumented workflows. If you automate a broken process, you just get bad results faster. So I ask Yuval if his engagements always start by mapping out these foundational processes first.
Yuval Goren:
This is a big topic. And I'm smiling because over the last five years, we've done half a dozen digital transformation for law firms. And the thing that we run into are the processes. And we're finding that we need to get into some process engineering work, right? Look, we do technology. I'm not going to pretend to be an attorney and understand all the nuances around the business, but we've done a significant deep dive into understanding how you operate.
And I think, all of that, the engagement starts with let's define the use case. But the use case only works if you have a process. So we dig into the process. Because the first thing we're looking to do, call it AI, call it automation, where are our opportunities to automate? And if you've got one person in your firm is the lead and the end all be all on one process, you know what's going to happen. No one else knows it. It's their process. Nothing's written down. There's no SOP.
So we want to use technology. Look, I have a saying, great technology is not going to fix a bad process. And I think a lot of firms, that's what they do. They're like, okay, let's just get this software and it's going to fix this process. It's not the way it works. And a lot of times they're disappointed or a project doesn't get completed.
So again, we walk in, understand how you operate as a firm because there's differences, and what are the use cases? And we're not jumping in with two feet into the pool at the deep end with AI because you're going to spend a lot of money and you're not going to get the value out of it. We look at where can we implement? What's your team like? Do you have a team? Let's talk to them about their process. I know I'm being a little verbose, but I think it's important to set the expectation that there's a lot of great technology out there, and you can go out on your own. Oh, here's something I like. I read it in the AI newsletter. And then you're going down a rabbit hole.
Chris Dreyer:
You mentioned right at the beginning, you briefly touched on data, there's this fragmentation there. How do you integrate all of them? How do you turn data into an asset instead of a liability in regards to powering these systems?
Yuval Goren:
So here's the other thing we've seen over the last five years. Data's everywhere and everyone has access. So it's not just the data, but how do you secure it? Who gets access? And we'll talk a little bit about that, but starting with the data, these digital transformations, we're moving everything to the cloud for a couple of reasons. Obviously COVID, everybody scrambled to get remote. And that's pervasive now, right? Attorneys are, they're at the court, they need access, you've got people who are working remotely. You have mothers, you have fathers, they need to take half a day, but they got stuff they got to do.
I think for the most part, people really are interested in getting what they need to get done, but they need a little bit of flexibility. So the data's got to be consolidated. It's got to be in one place, but it's got to have a little more structure. It can't be your data from 10 years ago you're still holding onto and you're paying a lot of money for.
Chris Dreyer:
Again, not endorsing, no endorsements, were you like a BigQuery, you lean in with Snowflake? How do you think about the data warehousing components that goes into the cloud, collecting it on the cloud?
Yuval Goren:
I think for most, if we're talking about 50 to 150 users in a firm, I don't know that you need Snowflakes or Databricks. We could talk about that as part of that KPI dashboard that we want to get to at some point, but this is just operational. Your CMS is not holding onto the data. You've got data sitting in different places on-prem, maybe in an AWS S3 bucket, maybe it's in Azure, in SharePoint.
And again, the thing that we've run into is data is everywhere. There's a lot of it that's been kept for a long time. It hasn't been cleaned, it hasn't been segregated. So you got to make sense of that. And on the plus side, there could potentially be some cost savings because a lot of the data could be moved into cold storage, which is pennies on the dollar. If you're not accessing it all the time, why do we have it sitting in prime storage at a premium cost?
Chris Dreyer:
I couldn't agree more. The other side of that is the security, the sensitive information. You argue that data security is increasingly part of the firm's brand, not just a compliance checklist. So how does a firm actually use their security protocols as a marketing asset to win more say B2B peer referrals?
Yuval Goren:
This is a big topic, right? I mean, this is your sweet spot because it's reputation. It's Google reviews. It's referrals. I mean, that's a channel to get more business. And I say, first of all, publish your privacy policies. Make sure it's clear. You have to be very client-centric about how you handle their data. It's PII, it's PHI. Get your BAAs with your providers. Any provider that's touching client data, you got to have a BAA.
And for a couple of reasons. First of all, it shifts the onus. I mean, you have responsibility, but now it shifts 50% to the vendor. So you got to make sure that whoever's touching that data is operationally making sure it's secure. But that's your reputation. You talk about and use it as a marketing tool, hey, we use technology, but here's how we protect your data because you're important to us.
And to your point, that can really be leveraged as a technology differentiator. We're not just throwing your stuff into AI. We understand the sensitivity. We know what's going on out there. AI deepfakes, phishing emails. PHI is much more valuable than credit card information even because there's a lot of fraud tied to it. I could submit an invoice to get paid for, I had this medical treatment done, and people are doing it all the time. They're using other people's PHI to do that. So it's a big topic. All you need is one breach, one exposure, one vulnerability to really impact your reputation. And it's one Google review that somebody latches onto and said, "They can't be trusted. They mishandled my data." That could set you back a ways.
Chris Dreyer:
I see a lot of times in the courts, the hallucinations and things like that as a risk. But what other just big risks? Do you do a risk profile when you work with a firm, and say, "Hey, you got to plug this. This is a giant red flag."
Yuval Goren:
So again, a lot of this is operational, having the right policies in place that are public on your website to address your client. But also internally, appropriate use policies, AI usage policy. We talked about get the enterprise plan. So you have a BAA, but you also have to mandate that you cannot use any other AI. Pick a platform, but have a policy internally.
And also, again, this is a story you could tell about how we leverage AI. You can have policies for clients to opt out if they don't want you to use AI. But this is a lever that could be pulled and used to your advantage. You have to make sure your ducks are in a row in terms of usage before you go full-blown AI, making sure your employees understand what's appropriate, what can we put in that. I would also say to err on the side of caution, even if you have a BAA, redact. Redact before you put it into AI. There are tools to do that.
Look, we want to leverage AI for efficiency, and it's certainly going to be able to do that with generating demand, letters, chronologies, discoveries, all that stuff. You're going to get more efficiency. Take that time and make sure that everything is verified. You can redact, and then it's easy to replace if you're using Word. But also make sure that nothing leaves your firm that hasn't been verified.
Now, a lot of the AI tools, they'll give you citations. They'll give you the source. Go to the source, read the source. The time that you've saved on more the admin operational stuff, leverage some of that time to make sure you're verifying. There are plenty of stories about law firms being tagged by bar associations and the courts for these hallucinated citations. So I think this is really more of a discussion about policy and how we operate and putting those measures in place internally.
Chris Dreyer:
Getting your data in the cloud and setting up strict AI governance protects your clients and keeps your firm out of the crosshairs of the bar association. But even with the most secure cutting edge technology in place, your investment is completely worthless if your staff refuses to log in and actually use it. Change management, it's notoriously tough, and getting your team to embrace new tech requires deliberate top-down leadership.
So I wanted to know if people are still resistant to AI adoption, perhaps fearing it would cost them their job or the future, or if there's been a change in how people view it. Are you seeing the barriers start to drop and people are like, okay, the AI's here, the capabilities are here. Talk to me about their resistance gap.
Yuval Goren:
So again, I mean, you got the younger crowd, and I think this is important from an HR perspective too. The people that you're hiring, the younger people, they want tools, they want technology. So think about it that way too. You're going to get a lot of value from leveraging the right tools that work. The cultural adoption within an organization is led by the leader. You can look, and there's plenty of news out there that AI has a pretty negative perception. People are afraid they're going to lose their jobs, and it's real.
Chris Dreyer:
I saw the guy from Google. Who was the guy that gave the commencement and they were booing him recently? Yeah, the former Google CEO.
Yuval Goren:
Correct. And there was another guy that also, they're talking to young people who are trying to get into the market, and they feel like, hey, jobs are not going to be available because of AI adoption. But the culture in your organization is paramount for technology adoption. So how you lead, how you present, presenting it as a tool, making sure employees understand, look, this is going to make us more efficient and this is how it's going to help you be more strategic. It's going to be a career opportunity for you. Instead of saying, "Okay, use these tools, put all your tasks in here, let's automate them." And then you got crickets. And they're thinking on their own, what happens when I do that? Am I still here? So that has to be addressed as part of the culture of the organization in the adoption of technology.
Look, I'm sure it was the same thing, let's move to a cloud CMS. Oh, it's a different platform. There's always hurdles. But at the end of the day, it makes the paralegal, the legal assistant, the attorneys' jobs easier because they got better tools. So again, how do we position it? I think that's vitally important, and that's why I also say don't throw everything at them. Be like, "Oh, voice AI agents, we're totally changing intake. We're getting rid of intake. It's going to be agentic." I don't think that's the right messaging at all.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I agree. It's funny, like adoption and how things change. I remember when I started, and we're not on QuickBooks anymore, but we had QuickBooks Desktop. And then I had to push the bookkeeper to go to QuickBooks Online. Now I can't even remember what we're on. We're on a whole different financial platform. But I remember that being just a push, and that's not too long ago.
There's also what came to mind when you were speaking is I listen to this podcast, it's called How to SaaS by Shiv, and basically it's all about, he just interviews PE, private equity groups, and the whole premise is is how they think about adding value to any business they buy. And one of the things they look at is how adaptable the organization is that they're going to buy, which kind of leans into your point. If they're really adaptable, they're more willing to use tech and make changes and innovate.
Yuval Goren:
I mean, ABS, MSOs, all the PE money that's going to make its way into PI law. If you are thinking about an exit, if you're maybe five years away, you got to leverage technology to bring the value of your company up. They're not going to look at it as wasted money, but it's got to be the right technology. If you want more value for your business, put in the right processes, put in the SOPs, leverage technology to grow your business.
I mean, it's the same thing with marketing. A law firm that's not using Rankings as opposed to one that is, they're going to have more value because they're doing all those things. They've got a marketing plan. They've got a process in place. It's the same thing with technology, whether you do it in-house or you outsource, right?
Chris Dreyer:
Well, and I'll give you the plug too. So you guys have the fractional CIOs and the AI chief. So most firms are just going to have an IT manager, an IT director, even segment, there's even sub-segments of RevOps and things like that to just handle maybe just the front end as opposed to all operational complexity. So talk to me about the difference of having a true CIO and an AI chief at your organization.
Yuval Goren:
It's funny. I think this has started when we were in PIMCON last year. We did a 60-second commercial, but I attended. And I'll tell you, I learned a lot of things because I'm not a marketing guy.
But the thing that became clear to me is about messaging. And I'm not going to lie, we're like every other MSP. Our first initial contact is, eh, we do help desk, we do system admin, we manage your network, all your tech. Who cares? I mean, really, who cares? And the thing that I realized starting on that journey is that what's missing is tech and AI leadership for these companies.
You look at bigger law firms, they can afford to hire an AI chief. They can afford to hire a CIO. Most companies can't, and to be honest, they don't need a full-time. But they need to have a strategy. We flipped a script. We're coming in with leadership because the level one support, the level two support, it's commoditized. I think we're great. We got great people, but that's what everyone says. It's a consultative, it's the leadership. That's got to be part of the package. It's not, oh, you want me to help you with AI? It's extra. You want me to help you develop? That's extra. I want to bring value to clients.
Listen, if you start and somebody says, "What's your goal," and you say, "It's to make a lot of money," I say, "Well, that's not really a goal. It's a result." I've been doing this for 30 plus years. I've had clients I liked and I've had clients I didn't like. I work with clients I like because I want to be completely invested. I want to help them succeed because their success is my success.
So to be honest, I don't have such a big back office team that I need to worry about invoicing for every time they ask and we have to do something a little extra. It all comes out in the wash. My goal is for them to be successful, for them to grow, to have the right tools, to create these efficiencies and make sure they're 100% secure. There's never a guarantee, but there are so many things that need to be done around security.
And if you're trying to do it on your own or if you're using your IT manager that doesn't have that exposure in that market, in technology, they're putting their finger in a dyke. They're not researching, they're not talking to clients, they're not doing strategy. So even if you came to me, and said, "Look, I got internal IT," I'm going to say, "Great, we can work with your team. We can direct them. Bring us in for leadership, bring us in for strategy."
I'll give you an example. I know I'm being a little verbose, but I'll give you an example. I've seen clients look at software, get on a demo. They don't trial it. They don't actually use it, and they go in and they sign a five-year contract. You know how many clients I've gone into they got five-year contracts, five-year leases on printers? Why? And that's negotiation. That's part of that leadership, helping you negotiate, vet the vendors. What are you really getting?
My question's going to be a lot different when you're looking at a CMS or some other tool for intake. I'm going to ask about how does it integrate? Because now you sign a contract for a tool that doesn't integrate with anything else. Maybe they don't even give you an API so you can at least get a dashboard that gives you some visibility and insight into your company. So it's different. And these are my values that I want to bring to clients.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. So for the audience listening that wants to have Kobargo IT take a look at their tech stack and bring them into the future, look at their AI risk score, or has questions about this podcast, what's the best way to get in touch?
Yuval Goren:
Connect with us, kobargoit.com. We have an AI readiness assessment. We also have a free download. We created a report, not a pretend report, a 2026 tech and AI report that you can download. You do have to give your email address. We won't bombard you, I promise. But connect with me on LinkedIn, and then we can have a 15, 20 minute call and talk about whatever tech or AI related subject you want to talk about. Anything I could do to help, and you're not going to get a sales pitch. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm not a sales pitch kind of guy.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, this has been amazing. So we'll link it all up in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Yuval Goren:
Thank you, Chris. I appreciate it and I'll see you at PIMCON.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, sounds good. See you there.
Yuval Goren:
Take care.
Chris Dreyer:
If you want to scale a massive personal injury firm and increase your ultimate evaluation, you have to build processes that actually work before you throw software at them. By consolidating your data, enforcing strict internal security, and bringing in fractional leadership to negotiate your vendor contracts, you stop being a reactive law firm and start operating like an elite business. Just like you need a strategic IT partner to bulletproof your client data and eliminate operational bottlenecks, you need a specialized elite marketing partner to dominate digital search.
If you're ready to stop burning cash on generic marketing strategies and want to engineer a pipeline that consistently delivers high value cases, heading over to Rankings.io. We build the digital infrastructure that puts your firm in front of the clients who need you most. That's Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
