Episode Transcripts
Lisa Ainsworth: I wanted to start off with a hot topic that comes up a lot. A headline stat from the report this year is that 96% of firms raised their rates in the last 12 months, and most plan to do so again in 2026. Despite that, we're seeing 89% of firms saw write-offs increase year on year, and 90% also saw write-downs and discounting increase. These stats speak to what we've talked about for a while as a doom loop. Law firms are year on year raising their rates, some quite highly, and they're doing that to protect profitability. But what they're not aware of is that partners are then offering discounts to keep clients happy — and clients want more value from the work because they're paying a premium and not seeing that. So write-offs are increasing. What's your initial take on these stats? Do you think the doom loop cycle is worsening?
Rob Stote: I think the stat that 96% are raising their rates doesn't come as a surprise to anybody — law firms do that all the time. But I think what that stat, coupled with the write-off stat, is hiding is that firms are not realising those rate increases. There's something happening under the surface that's causing write-offs to increase year over year. It's a healthy environment that can raise rates, but it really comes down to whether they're able to realise them. The real challenge firms have to look at is what's structurally missing inside the firm that's causing them to write off basically all the gains they're getting from price increases.
Eric Wangler: Agreed. I would wonder who the 4% are that didn't raise rates, because I've not run into them. And usually this time of year, particularly in the US, people want to know what the outlook is for rates in 2026. My bold prediction is they will raise rates above average again this year. And I think it gets back to what Rob alluded to — they're covering some bad behaviour and bad hygiene under the surface. You raise rates 12% and net 4% — still healthy, still good for the business. But coupling all that together and cleaning up the issues in the back office would be paramount to holding that.
Rob Stote: As we get deeper into this, we'll talk more around cash flow and profitability. But when I talk about firms being able to realise those rates — that really is the key metric. I can raise my rates, but as Eric said, if I'm raising 12 to get 4, that's not a good spot. I'd rather raise 10 and get 6.
Eric Wangler: The headline rate of 12% is not anywhere near what they expected net, because they've got a lot of multi-year agreements, discount agreements, and AFAs in place. What that all nets out to is what really matters.
Lisa Ainsworth: You touched on it there, Eric — do you think 2026 could be the year firms hit the ceiling on rate hikes? What does the long-term future look like?
Eric Wangler: The Nostradamus moment. I don't think 2027 will be any different — there's nothing in the global economy suggesting otherwise. We'll talk later about AI and the impact that could have. I also think clients are getting smarter about the billing data they have and what they can do with it, so there'll be more scrutiny around rate comparisons between firms and service levels. It's going to remain a competitive market, but all indications are that rates will continue to rise.
Rob Stote: I agree — they'll go up in 27, 28, 29. Firms will continue to raise rates partly because their costs are going up as well. At the end of the day, it's more expensive to run a law firm this year than it was last year. So they're going to have to raise rates, but it gets back to: can they realise them?
Lisa Ainsworth: What do you think all of that is going to do to the client relationship?
Rob Stote: It will impact it if firms are not being transparent about why they're doing it. At the end of the day, they're delivering a service and the client is paying for that service. As long as they're able to articulate and justify why the rates are what they are, and what outcome they're trying to achieve with the client, that's fine. But if you raise your rates without a conversation, you're opening the door for that client to shop elsewhere. If rates keep going up and you're not providing equal value, your clients are going to look around.
Eric Wangler: And a conversation isn't an email or a letter — it's a conversation. Clients are looking for predictability and consistency. When they get that, they're generally pretty happy. Of course the outcome is what matters, but if you can show them what you're going to be billing them, show them how you're going to bill them, and do it consistently — don't surprise them — you'll probably come out ahead.
Lisa Ainsworth: I wanted to talk to you both about some of the cash flow related data that came out of this report. We're seeing 26% of firms now citing cash flow predictability as their top financial concern — it's risen drastically since last year and overtaken profitability. 50% identify aged WIP as the primary driver of cash flow pressure, up 32% from last year. There's quite a bit of nervousness and focus on cash flow from firms right now. Did that data surprise you at all, Rob?
Rob Stote: It didn't surprise me. If you look at how firms operate — profitability is a metric, it's a directional metric. But if you really want to get under the hood and understand the health of the firm, you're looking at cash flow, and you're looking at their WIP and AR together, their lockup, their production. That really gives you a sense of where the firm is sitting. Under increased pressure from slower paying clients and rising costs, it's not surprising that firms have identified cash flow predictability and WIP as a higher concern. They want better visibility into that because at the end of the day, that is the true measure of the health of the business. Profitability is a great metric — it's a very public metric — but it's your cash flow, your liquidity, your strength. That's the strength of the firm, not necessarily just profitability.
Eric Wangler: I would agree with what Rob said. Profit per equity partner is often a recruiting tool — what you're publishing is what gets picked up in the legal press. It's not a massive surprise that clients are choosing not to pay quite as quickly when firms are showing a billion in profit. It's hard to make a case that you're really struggling. Anecdotally — and this is the first time since 2021 — we sell software, and a lot of those renewals come due at the end of the calendar year. Because firms are cash-based, it's important to them what cash comes in and goes out. A long way of saying: we had a number of clients come to us in December wanting to prepay 2026 and even 2027 in some cases, and a couple of others who said, can I extend payment into January, really trying to conserve cash. My guess is 2025 was really strong for some of these firms — they had the right hygiene in place, they were doing the right things from a collections perspective, and they decided to de-risk 2026 by pushing some cash forward before paying it all to their partners. These firms are trying to be smarter and more aggressive with their internal measures and billing hygiene. Those are good things to do, regardless of the profitability of the firm.
Lisa Ainsworth: Touching on being smarter with internal measures — who do you think is the primary owner of aged WIP and AR within a law firm? Is it the lawyer? Has that changed in recent years?
Rob Stote: It is the lawyer, but it's like in sales — everybody has a hand to play. Finance is involved because they have to be giving timely information to the lawyers. The partners are involved because they have the relationship with the client. If your client relationships are good, the partner should be able to pick up the phone and make that call — if you're 90, 120 days behind on a collection, that's something the partner should be able to handle. But the back office has a role to play too, because they have to provide lawyers with the information. At the end of the day, lawyers are out doing their jobs, providing services — they're not necessarily thinking about the business side all the time, which you don't want them doing when they're in the middle of their work. But at the same time, they have to take a step back and operate like a business, and finance has a role to play there as well.
Lisa Ainsworth: What's the best way for finance to provide that information quickly to lawyers?
Rob Stote: Regardless of how you do it, having timely reporting and information delivered to the right people at the right time — we'll talk about this a bit more with some of the technology findings from the survey. But having the proper structure in place to provide that, where lawyers don't have to look hard for it and it's in front of them — that's really where the back office has a role to play.
Eric Wangler: When the billing cycle is on the right path, there's no reason a partner should be engaging in collections — that's a waste of their time. It's the exceptions they should be managing. If you see a large bill that's four or five months overdue, there are one or two things going on: either it didn't get to the right person to pay, or there's a problem with the case. Law firms are massively guilty of a big collections push at the end of their fiscal year. We've essentially conditioned clients for what I'd call the December discount — they don't pay the bill until December, and they know the firm will probably offer a discount just to get the cash in. Our law firm clients have inadvertently educated the market on the best time to get a deal, which is just lost revenue.
Lisa Ainsworth: And you're coining that term — the December discount?
Eric Wangler: I am, yes.
Rob Stote: Eric is right. If your business is running correctly, your partners shouldn't have to be scrambling in December. Every law firm sees it start to creep up in November — the reports start, finance gets hammered with requests. If things are running smoothly, that should just be ticking over normally without needing that big push at the end. But that's something all firms just have to work on internally.
Lisa Ainsworth: We're going to talk in a moment about the billable hour still being the key metric lawyers are measured by. But we are seeing law firms start to introduce other KPIs and metrics like management of WIP and aged AR — and that's come through in the research. Is that reflective of the conversations you've been having with law firms recently?
Eric Wangler: I would say it is. There are KPIs that firms are measuring their attorneys by, and whether or not there's a carrot or stick attached, it's likely to lead to a better outcome. We are seeing firms take a more aggressive interest in managing profitability and its impact on compensation. I think there's still room for improvement there, but part of it is just the culture of the firm. One of the reasons a firm is a preferred provider of legal services, or a preferred place to work, is because of the way they operate — they take care of their clients. So it's always a balance. Some firms are very aggressive with it, and that's their culture.
Rob Stote: Bringing it back to the WIP piece for a moment — when we talk about managing WIP, I think part of the reason that stat has increased is that firms have always realised this, but it's coming to the fore: managing aged WIP and production is really about recognising it as a risk to profit, not just a cash flow issue. Every day something sits in WIP or AR beyond the normal run, beyond that 120-day point, you have a decreasing chance of collecting. So to me, it's not surprising these numbers have increased — it tells me that firms are putting this into the risk category rather than just treating it as a straight cash collections exercise.
Lisa Ainsworth: The big debate — and I know both of you will have sat in a lot of conversations about this — is the billable hour and whether it's going to stay the primary KPI for lawyers. The research is telling us yes. 74% of firms still use the billable hour as the primary KPI for their lawyers. 99% plan to raise their billable hour targets again this year, despite 64% of firms actually reporting declining billable hours. The top line summary: law firms appear to be asking their lawyers to bill more hours, whilst also asking them to adopt technology that reduces the number of hours — for clients who are requesting they adopt that technology. Do you think we will see the demise of the billable hour anytime soon, Eric?
Eric Wangler: I do not. In all seriousness, I think there will be a trend away from it — a very slow trend over time. The demise of the billable hour has been predicted for my entire 30 years in legal, and we've not yet seen it. But we are seeing gradual change. Firms are going to focus more on value and outcomes because they're going to have to — the use of AI and technology that in theory reduces billable hours means they've got to get smarter about how they're pricing things. Their clients are also going to begin demanding evidence that they're being smart with their money. But at the end of the day, it's still going to remain the foundation of what goes on in a law firm. The fact that billable hour targets went up in an environment where firms are struggling to realise them, and where new technology makes that more difficult, tells me firms are setting targets high with the expectation they'll be challenged — but if you leave the target where it is, you could lose at the bottom. The real pressure will be on commoditised work — the repeatable stuff that an AI model could replace.
Lisa Ainsworth: Rob, you've worked across several financial legal tech companies. How have you seen things shift over time? Do you agree with what Eric's saying?
Rob Stote: I agree — it's not going to go away. But I think we're entering a hybrid era, where the billable hour metric will be used more internally to drive behaviour, goals and targets, while externally firms will start to shift to an outcome-based model in terms of how they price. In theory, the billable hour goes away externally — but it really doesn't. They're just shifting how they use it. This is an apprentice-style business where people learn as they're doing, so you're going to have to measure that somehow. Internally they'll keep it. Externally, I think you'll see things change — outcome-based pricing, client retention metrics, satisfaction measures. Firms will measure the success of the engagement differently. That's where I think we're heading.
Lisa Ainsworth: Tying into that — the research also shows 47% of firms have seen increased client requests for AFAs, up 29% from last year. You mentioned it's going to be a gradual process with a hybrid approach. What kinds of AFAs are most common, and is it about identifying certain practice areas or types of work that suit different arrangements?
Rob Stote: Yes to pretty much everything you said. There are certain engagements that make sense for an AFA — a fixed fee arrangement where it's very commoditised, straightforward and predictable. Visas, things of that nature, are fairly straightforward. Litigation, M&A — those will likely stay in the hourly category. But that's not to say portions of those engagements won't have an AFA component. I think you'll start to see blending within an engagement — some hourly, some fixed fee. And that's why how firms price and go about their business is going to have to change. They'll have to get more creative. But internally, firms will still track hours so they know what someone's doing and can grade their work. The advent of new tools is forcing firms to rethink AFAs — AFAs have been around a long time, but the real push to value-based pricing is being driven by clients who are asking: how are you leveraging technology? We want to see our bills reduced because you're using tech that makes it easier to deliver the service.
Eric Wangler: I'd double-click on a couple of things. First, the billable hour may become a cost measure rather than a billing or profitability measure — you need to understand your costs, and the easiest way to do that is attorney cost divided by hours worked. Second, the client side has to want to consume services that way. What we hear from our pricing clients is that they go to market, offer an hourly rate, the client asks for something more creative, and the firm spends a lot of time putting together creative models — only for the client to come back and say, actually, just give me the hourly rate with a discount, because it's predictable and understandable. The other point I'd make is that AFAs have maybe gotten a bad reputation as a profit squeeze. But just because the firm handles a case efficiently, that doesn't necessarily mean it should be less profitable. That's partly why pricing discussions that go beyond the billable hour and get more creative are so important.
Lisa Ainsworth: So we've been skirting around it — let's talk about AI. Data shows law firms are saying AI is delivering 29% faster task completion and 34% higher matter throughput. In the last year, firms have come a long way in terms of adopting AI, and it opens up the shift to value-based pricing. What's your view on how firms should be approaching that?
Rob Stote: We did a dinner in Chicago back in September — about two dozen senior pricing and ops people from law firms — and we talked through exactly this problem. To no one's surprise, no one really had a good answer. Everyone is still finding their feet. AI has come on faster than any other technology in my experience in legal. You think about the e-billing revolution, e-discovery — AI has really taken hold over the last two years in a way nothing else has. Firms are struggling with it — this is an industry that moves at a slightly slower pace. Going back to that September conversation, firms were still grappling with how to price, how to use the technology effectively, and what their clients expect. There isn't a one-size-fits-all. You have to engage with your client, be transparent about how you're using AI and how you're not. More and more clients are asking for that information in RFPs and RFIs. You have to fit it with your business model, fit it with the type of service you deliver — and then be transparent with your client. You don't have to get into the cost savings, but you have to explain how you're using it and how it will benefit them. Once you shift the conversation to how it benefits the client, you're talking about value, and you're talking about a different way to price that engagement.
Eric Wangler: A couple of the conversations at that dinner were around what the consumer of legal services is actually buying — they're buying an outcome. Everything else is a cost associated with getting to that outcome, but that shouldn't necessarily change the price of the outcome itself. Value-based pricing gets thrown around a lot, but the reality is, as AI makes a bigger impact on efficiency, clients will expect to benefit from it. The consensus in a few conversations has been that it might be a 10 or 20% efficiency gain — but it's still very much a finger-in-the-air estimate. These models are new, they're evolving quickly, they're expensive, and they're a big investment for law firms. Most firms haven't figured out how to bill for them yet. I think 2026 and 2027 will be the years that gets figured out. Where AI is likely to make the biggest impact is on repeatable, predictable processes — that's clearly where these models can deliver. But at the end of the day, if a law firm's client is pushing them to reduce fees by 20 or 30% on work they've been handling forever, are they also going to give up 20 or 30% of the risk the firm takes? The other side of the equation is that, while firms might be getting more efficient, the expectation is still that they deliver quality legal representation — and if they don't, that becomes a big problem. Every firm we've spoken to is reviewing everything produced by AI painstakingly. And as the data gets better, it's going to take smarter, more experienced lawyers to tell the story. You may see higher-rate work increase dramatically while the lower-rate commoditised work faces the most pressure.
Rob Stote: I'd add to that — we've been talking about the outward-facing side, how you communicate and price for clients. But inwardly, law firms have to look at how they manage those efficiencies. Just because you gain efficiency doesn't mean you automatically become more profitable. If you don't engage properly in the conversation about efficiency, the client is just going to drive down the price to a commoditised level. You have to be very clear about how you're managing efficiency internally and how you communicate it externally. Otherwise, all the profit you get from using these tools gets lost in a discounted conversation. What we've heard anecdotally is 20 to 25% efficiency gains — but what people may read in the press is 80 or 100%. So you have to be very careful in those conversations.
Eric Wangler: I think we may also see more pressure where larger corporate legal departments do more of the commoditised work in-house and push the higher-level work out — which creates a whole new challenge for the law firm. You've got to certify it, you've got to stand behind it. But where it comes out well is when law firm clients are talking to their customers, communicating what they're doing and how it will benefit them, and building trust in the relationship. That leads to a more efficient result they can share — better profit for the law firm and a better result for the client.
Lisa Ainsworth: Do you think there's any trepidation within law firms about adopting AI, particularly from lawyers?
Eric Wangler: There are plenty of lawyers who just shy away from technology in general, so this has got to feel a bit more daunting. Some have probably thought it threatens their business model — though I think that's been largely disproven over the last couple of years. Out of the gate, it was understandably a case of: what is this actually going to do? We saw a lot of law firms channel everything into AI early on just to prove it wouldn't disrupt their model to the point of changing everything. We partner with a lot of AI providers, and their vision of how this technology will benefit a law firm still has time to incubate and for lawyers to pick it up in the way they expect.
Rob Stote: It's like any other technology they acquire. Lawyers are typically sceptical — they want to see it work, they want to see it work repeatedly. With our financial tools, the numbers have to be right, otherwise they won't trust it. In my experience in legal, if the product is solid, does what it's supposed to do, and delivers results, they'll adopt it. But that curve takes time. And this one takes a little more time because it's directly relevant to what lawyers do — it's not just a pricing or BI tool providing information, it's mimicking the work itself. So it'll take a little longer to adopt, but they are getting there.
Eric Wangler: And what gets into the press is when someone does lazy lawyering — pushes AI output straight into court and it gets questioned. That's someone using it incorrectly. That's not a reflection of the technology.
Lisa Ainsworth: One thing we've heard from law firms — particularly large ones — is that clients are now writing into contracts that firms must be using AI and must also demonstrate how they've used it and what efficiencies it's driven. Do you think that's going to become more common?
Eric Wangler: Yes, 100%. And the question is how aggressively. Writing it into a contract pins the law firm down, maybe more than they'd like. It does get back to that idea of trust, communication, predictability and consistency in the relationship. At a recent event Rob hosted, there was a general counsel — from a software company, so perhaps more aggressive than most — who essentially said, don't bill me for anyone under a fourth-year associate. That definitely sparked some debate. The counterargument being: you're tying our hands in a way that probably damages our ability to do the work well.
Rob Stote: That person's particular viewpoint was: we expect you, as law firms, to make the investment in these technologies and use them to our benefit. One of the counters to that — and it's a slightly tangential point but directly relevant — was: we still bear 100% of the risk. You're asking us to use these tools, but the risk doesn't transfer. And that goes back to the pricing model. Part of what you're charging for is to assume that risk. So I think that's where you get into this idea of value and how engagements are priced, even when you're using this tech. And I think that's the paradox — it's really about how value is priced versus how value is created. Firms have to find the balance between the two. Some are better at it than others, and over time the industry will move to a position where everyone understands the dynamics and you get to a better place.
Lisa Ainsworth: The last theme I wanted to talk to you both about is what we're calling the intent-to-action gap. We're seeing an increasing number of firms committing to implementing new measures and introducing new technologies, but the data is showing that's not necessarily happening at pace. A couple of data points: last year, 44% of firms reported using advanced business intelligence tools and 20% were planning implementation. But this year, only 46% have them in place and just 14% are planning to implement — so that stat has gone down really. And in terms of the data side, just 33% of firms are currently providing their associates with access to financial metrics like billing. Why do you think there's such a persistent gap between strategy and execution?
Eric Wangler: I'm amazed this remains a challenge. Why would you not want to build smarter business people in your law firm? Partners make a lot of financial decisions on the fly — pricing, discounts, agreements. They're great negotiators; that's what litigators do. But they tend not to want to negotiate with their own clients, and I think it's because they're often operating from a position of weakness. We've also seen the evolution of business professionals in law firms change dramatically over the last five to ten years — firms have brought in talent from outside legal, into both senior and mid-management roles, where they can add a lot of value and take some of the pressure off partners in negotiations. But on the training side, the firms that are doing it well are using it as a recruiting differentiator — we invest in you, we'll show you how a law firm operates. They bring associates in on the basics and carry that through their entire career at the firm. To me, the ability to make better decisions on the fly, in the heat of the moment, is just going to add profitability. I don't see the downside, and every year I'm surprised it's only crept along at 5% more firms doing some training.
Lisa Ainsworth: And you mentioned recruitment — but the retention side is huge as well. Research we did last year showed the cost of losing an associate at a large law firm is around $1 million. So another reason why it's a no-brainer.
Rob Stote: Touching on what Eric said — going back to the source of the problem, there's probably been a push in a different direction with technology recently. Now that that's settled a bit, I think you'll see firms get back to the more fundamental things that matter. One of the big challenges is the split in ownership of the problem. The lawyer or partner is talking to the client — whether it's a collections call or negotiating a new engagement — they own the client relationship. Finance, on the other hand, sees the issues: the decline in realisation, the growth in WIP and AR. It's a splitting of responsibility. I think that's one of the reasons firms struggle to adopt these kinds of technologies — someone has to take ownership and say, this is the direction we're going. Firms want to train their lawyers to be more financially savvy, to understand just the basics of how the firm works. I'm not expecting lawyers to understand allocation methodologies, but just the basics of dollar in, dollar out — what realization actually means. As more firms do that and back it up with technology, you're in a much better place. But that ownership has to come from the top. Otherwise you'll keep getting this tension between: I need this information — and: I'm not going to give you this information. Our tagline is right information, right people, right time. If you give the associate the right information early on — and today's associate will be tomorrow's partner — you serve yourself well in the future. That's where a lot of this split comes from: an ownership problem.
Eric Wangler: And being in early, they'll own the relationship, they'll own the case. The ability to make good decisions on the fly is so important. What I also find interesting is that more people from outside legal are coming into law firms and asking: why do we do things this way? I was at PwC, I was at Deloitte — we do the same stuff, just in a different area of practice. We figured resource management out 20 years ago. We figured partner-level profitability out a long time ago. We changed our comp model a long time ago. Some of those drivers are working their way into law firms — it's a slow roll, but I get back to: what's the downside of helping lawyers better understand how to drive profit?
Rob Stote: There isn't one. And we have seen it — more and more people from outside legal coming into C-suite roles, bringing fresh ideas. And they're starting to have an impact. It goes back to what I was saying about ownership: if someone coming in is empowered to make changes, those changes will be to the firm's benefit.
Lisa Ainsworth: There's also the investment in and adoption of technology as a driver — being able to surface the data needed for training. There are a lot of options on the market for surfacing financial data. What's your advice to a law firm leader exploring those options, and what would you recommend they ask of potential vendors?
Rob Stote: The trite answer is buy our stuff, we have the best on the market — and I'll give out Eric's cell number later. But seriously, whatever path you go down, the first thing you have to do is take a step back and understand what you're trying to accomplish. Take stock of what you have internally — no law firm is operating with no understanding of their numbers. So understand what you have today, understand where you want to go, and that will help you narrow your list, whether it's vendors, buy versus build, whatever it may be. That's step one. Step two is going to market — figuring out what's available, talking to your peers, talking to other firms in your area to understand what they're using and how. We obviously think we have the best product on the market, but start your research, talk to peers, and go from there.
Eric Wangler: At the end of the day, it gets back to what problem you're trying to solve. Law firms are famous for not wanting to be first, so talk to peers — it's a reference-based business. Find out who's having a good experience with which software. The software will do what it's built to do, but having the right knowledge around it — from an implementation, delivery and support perspective — matters. That relationship is going to evolve over time. You don't just want a vendor who comes in, sets the measures up and leaves. You want someone who can come back and say: have you thought about a different way to look at profitability? Have you thought about a different way to approach allocation? One of the benefits of working with a vendor who works with hundreds of law firms is that we're aggregating knowledge across multiple firms and can advise clients on better ways to do things.
Rob Stote: I'd build on that. A vendor who can say: we've seen someone try that before and it didn't work out well — or, we've seen this work, but if you bend it slightly for your needs, you'll probably get the outcome you want. That's where you get the real benefit of a vendor who's been there and done it. In my experience, every law firm comes in saying they have unique metrics and special requirements. And really, when you get down to it, 95% of it is the same as another law firm — there's maybe a 5% twist to the calculation. That's where a specialist can really help, because we've seen those variations before and can point you in the right direction. Building isn't necessarily the wrong answer, but in my experience, you typically get a phone call four or five years later because it didn't work out.
Eric Wangler: Either the person who built it left — which happens a lot — or the system stagnates. The argument for building is it's custom, it does exactly what you need. The counterargument is that the day you deliver it, it's already becoming obsolete — you spent a year building to a spec you wrote a year ago, and the business has moved on. We're talking about how to work AI into a pricing model; an in-house built system isn't going to be able to deal with that. One of the benefits of working with a software vendor, as I said, is that we're constantly evolving the product based on how firms are using it. We don't have all the ideas — our clients do.
Rob Stote: I agree entirely. And it goes back to this idea of partnership. We talked earlier about firms partnering with their clients — let's reverse the dynamic. Firms partnering with vendors, vendors partnering with firms. It is a partnership when you buy software. Finding the right vendor, understanding what you're dealing with and where you want to go, and partnering with the right people — you're going to get great outcomes.
Lisa Ainsworth: Fantastic. Thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with us — it's been a really great conversation.
