Building Finch: First Hires, First Customers, First Wins

Voice over (: 00:00

The most dangerous place you can be as a trial lawyer is to think you've got it figured out.

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I'm still trying to get better. I still have the passion for it. I believe in it.

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Everyone can learn to do what I do. And yet there's a group here that continues to get extraordinary verdicts. Trial Lawyers University is revolutionizing educating lawyers to be better trial lawyers. It's been invaluable to me.

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Trial Lawyers University, where the Titans come to train. Produced and powered by LawPods.

Dan Ambrose (: 00:44

All right. Well, this is the first episode of the Founders Podcast, because I've been in this space for about 12 years now, and I've seen a lot of different companies come and grow and thrive, but not all of them make it. So I've always been fascinated, and especially recently with the tech companies, with the AI companies, and the way that they've managed to come up with ideas, and then novel ideas in the space, and then execute them, and grow, and service so many plaintiff's lawyers, and help them become more efficient in all their processes. And so our first guest here at the first Founders Podcast is Viraj Bindra of Finch. And Viraj and I have been knowing each other about a year now. He came to TLU Beach about a year ago, and always remember Viraj because I saw him about a week later. And he was all ... I saw him in Detroit and he was beaming more than he is now.

(: 01:41

And he's like, "Dude, TLU Rocks." I'm like, "Why is that? " He's like, "Man, it was a great conference for us. And next year I want to be a bigger sponsor." I'm like, "Fantastic." That's exactly what I wanted to hear because my goal and my job as far as when it comes to the students is to give them the best education possible. But for people who sponsor an exhibit at TLU, it's to put them in a position to actually have conversations and create relationships with trial lawyers so that way people could figure out how it is that this service is going to benefit them and make them more money at the end of the day. And that's what we try to do at Trial Lawyers University with the way we have it set up, just the way it's ability to connect with people. So that's the whole idea behind it.

(: 02:25

And so Voge.

Viraj Bindra (: 02:28

Such an honor. The inaugural episode.

Dan Ambrose (: 02:31

In the inaugural house.

Viraj Bindra (: 02:32

Yeah.

Dan Ambrose (: 02:33

Welcome

Viraj Bindra (: 02:33

To Dan's new home that he hosted a party at yesterday after driving up and seeing it for the first time already, which is-

Dan Ambrose (: 02:40

It was

Viraj Bindra (: 02:41

Great. Amazing.

Dan Ambrose (: 02:41

Yes. It was a great, amazing start. There was a few leaks that were unanticipated due to a torrential downpour, but this is where we just learned mental toughness and learned how to deal with it firsty a little bit as a new homeowner.

Viraj Bindra (: 02:52

Resilience.

Dan Ambrose (: 02:52

Resilience. But

Viraj Bindra (: 02:53

These

Dan Ambrose (: 02:53

Things are going to happen. Everybody's like, there's always problems with new homes. I don't know that. It's the first time ever. So these things will have to be taken in stride. But Voge, Finch legal.

Viraj Bindra (: 03:03

Damn.

Dan Ambrose (: 03:04

How did you come up? Is it Finch or is it Finch legal?

Viraj Bindra (: 03:07

It's Finch.

Dan Ambrose (: 03:08

FinchGuild straight.

Viraj Bindra (: 03:09

Easier.

Dan Ambrose (: 03:12

Well, first of all, what does Finch do? That's

Viraj Bindra (: 03:15

Really

Dan Ambrose (: 03:15

The most important question. Before you came up, what does it do? Why do people need it?

Viraj Bindra (: 03:19

Finch is white glove pre-litigation in a box for firms. And so this is intake through demand. And for firms that would like to focus on litigation work and trial work or that are growing astronomically and would otherwise have a lot of staffing problems, we've been a solution to help them say yes to every case that comes through the door that's worth taking. We use a blend of really thoughtful experienced case managers that are all based in the United States plus AI to handle any of the work that's not claimant communication. So things like lean notices or medical record retrieval or police reports are all automated with AI by default, which gives our case managers a lot more time to focus on care management and the claimant experience and therefore getting better outcomes.

Dan Ambrose (: 04:03

TLU Huntington Beach is going to be the greatest event of 2026. There's going to be four lecture tracks, eight workshop tracks with the top trial lawyers in the country. On Tuesday, June 2nd, there's going to be a golf outing and also a pickleball outing. That night, we're going to have a dinner at the Lorea. We're going to buy it out so everybody gets a chance to meet each other beforehand. And then during the conference, of course, we do a full breakfast, full lunch, and theme parties every night. This year we're going to be utilizing the pool area and the restaurant for more of the parties. And we're going to have an adult swim right one night, a Satch Oliver party on Friday night. And the last theme party's going to be a 80s run DMC Adida jumpsuit. It's going to be the greatest. And last year we had over 800 people.

(: 04:48

This year it's going to be over a thousand. So if you want to be part of it all and you want to stay at the Pusello Hotel, don't delay because it sells out fast and then you're going to be in the overflow. Can't wait to see you there. TLU Beach.

(: 05:03

And so when you first ... So that's what it does. So how did you come up? Because prior to Finch, what was your life like prior to Finch?

Viraj Bindra (: 05:13

It was not illegal. I have no legal background. And I'm very upfront about this with anyone we meet, but-

Dan Ambrose (: 05:19

To me, that's amazing because I have a legal background.

Viraj Bindra (: 05:21

Yeah.

Dan Ambrose (: 05:21

And the thoughts, the idea of doing some of the things that you've done or these other people have done, just it hurts my head. So to come up with such an idea when you're not even familiar with the industry.

Viraj Bindra (: 05:33

It's been fun. One, I love this industry. I've been in it for now a year and a half, two years, but I spent my whole career before this at a company called DoorDash. Have you used DoorDash?

Dan Ambrose (: 05:42

I think I've heard of them. I might've used them.

Viraj Bindra (: 05:44

It catered your whole party last night was via DoorDash.

Dan Ambrose (: 05:46

Oh, you see that? Thank God you've helped build DoorDash.

Viraj Bindra (: 05:49

Yeah, you're

Dan Ambrose (: 05:49

Welcome. Done the party on a push of a button.

Viraj Bindra (: 05:51

Yeah. Which I would say was a masterclass in building a company focused on logistics and operations plus great tech alongside it. And what I've found as I've entered this space is, especially pre-litigation and the workup of a case before it gets to litigation and trial, is more of an operational exercise and effort and logistics operation than it is necessarily using the capital L legal part of every lawyer's brain. And so the way I got introduced to this space was through a friend of a friend named Ryan. And Ryan had, just a few months before we started Finch, had left a big firm he was a part of, which had a lot of case staff and operational rigor built into it and SOPs for him to work off of. So he spent most of his day lawyering. And then when he went and started this firm, because he's charismatic and bubbly and everyone liked him, he got a lot of referrals in very quickly.

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So he had something like 50 cases referred in within his first three months and had to start saying no to new cases because he was the one doing all of the busy and admin work that otherwise he'd had case staff and paralegals and intake folks to do. He was missing intake calls because they'd come in late. He was just not able to say yes to every case the way he would like to have. And it was going to be a little bit before he'd settled enough to afford the kind of staff that he'd been able to rely on previously. So we came, my co-founder and I actually flew out to Austin and were his case managers for a while. So we did intake calls for him. We helped request records, we helped draft demands, we helped do a lot of that work. And in that few weeks, built kind of an understanding and empathy for the work that went into it.

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A lot more of that work felt that on the three to five year timeline, he wouldn't have to depend on humans to do and would be able to self-serve because of where technology was moving. So that motivated us to look into the space a little more, serve for more customers and eventually build what is now Finch.

Dan Ambrose (: 07:47

When did you leave DoorDash?

Viraj Bindra (: 07:49

I left it in, I guess two and a half years ago. So I'd been there about eight years.

Dan Ambrose (: 07:54

So DoorDash eight years.

Viraj Bindra (: 07:56

Yep.

Dan Ambrose (: 07:56

And the two and a half ... Well, how many years did you take off after?

Viraj Bindra (: 08:01

I took a year and change off between that and starting Fitch. It was a fun time. I already told you what I did during that time, right?

Dan Ambrose (: 08:08

What'd you do? I can't remember.

Viraj Bindra (: 08:11

I got married. Okay,

Dan Ambrose (: 08:13

That's

Viraj Bindra (: 08:13

Exciting. I traveled.

Dan Ambrose (: 08:14

Traveled

Viraj Bindra (: 08:14

To my most

Dan Ambrose (: 08:15

Important.

Viraj Bindra (: 08:16

I was on a game show with my now co-founder, Ben. So we were on ... I don't think I've told you this. We were on a game show called Beat Shazam, usually hosted by Jamie Foxx. We were trying to guess songs before the other team does. We didn't win, but we won enough money coming in second place to pay for 75% of the bar tab at our watch party. Net loss. And then after that, I bartended for a while. I think what I thought I was going to do post DoorDash was actually start a bar. And I have enjoyed making cocktails forever. So I bartended for about six months in the city in New York City where I live at a couple different bars, which I love doing. But then somewhere along that journey, Ben and had the inkling of wanting to start a company and we talked about what we would do when we started working together and that led to Finch.

Dan Ambrose (: 08:59

I always wanted to be a bartender because I thought it was great because there was no pressure.

Viraj Bindra (: 09:03

And

Dan Ambrose (: 09:03

You could just talk to people and give them general life advice like you do as a lawyer, except as a lawyer, there's a lot of pressure on people, whether they're relying on you or not. And it was fun. People are generally in a good mood. At most bars, sometimes they're depressed and talk about their problems, but generally in a good mood. So I was like, let me build a good mood because generally I used to be a criminal defense lawyer. So people were not that good at mood when

Viraj Bindra (: 09:23

They

Dan Ambrose (: 09:23

Came to see me, generally not bubbly. I feel

Viraj Bindra (: 09:26

Like you're curious too. I feel like you can pull stuff out of people.

Dan Ambrose (: 09:30

I try to figure out what's going on with people, their stories, and I guess what drives them, what makes them tick. So you were out for a year and a half enjoying your life before you start Finch. So Finch is a tech startup. So the capitalization, how'd you go about getting, because I assume you had to go out and pitch investors. Is that right?

Viraj Bindra (: 09:53

Yep.

Dan Ambrose (: 09:54

And so what was that like?

Viraj Bindra (: 09:56

It was daunting. I'd never done it before. I'd worked at companies with amazing founders where I was able to lean on them raising enough money to get us going and we'd go build. But I think we spent many months on this before we decided to go raise money. We wanted to make sure we knew there was a problem worth solving here and we did that by us doing the work manually ourselves and then prototyping on the side and kind of building a baseline of what this thing would look like. One of the things that I had in my back pocket was I had an amazing network of people I'd already worked with at DoorDash. And so the first investors to put in money were Tony Shu, who was the CEO of DoorDash, Christopher Payne, who was COO, their first general counsel, his name was Keith, who also was chief business officer there.

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And that helped give us a start where then we were going into conversations where we had a little bit of a ... We'd already had some great folks who had decided- Some

Dan Ambrose (: 10:52

Credibility.

Viraj Bindra (: 10:52

Some credibility.

Dan Ambrose (: 10:53

Some people believing in your idea.

Viraj Bindra (: 10:55

Correct.

Dan Ambrose (: 10:55

Besides you.

Viraj Bindra (: 10:56

And it's still daunting because when you're raising for the first time and meeting new investors, it's a little bit of a shotgun wedding where you're meeting people who are going to impact the direction of your company for decades to come, but you're trying to figure out very quickly if they're going to be good thought partners in that or overbearing thought partners or absent though partners and you're trying to figure that out in real time. So we met a bunch of great people during about the week that we raised. This was our seed round off of a deck and we- So you say

Dan Ambrose (: 11:23

A seed round off a deck, just for people who've never raised a seed round, how much money are we talking about?

Viraj Bindra (: 11:30

It varies significantly and it's varied over time. So there's seed rounds that are 500,000. There's big seed rounds for people who left OpenAI to start brand new AI companies. That'll be $50 million. That's very, very rare. Our seed round ended up being just below four million, which was enough money for us to hire an initial team, build out the prototype, start marketing it and selling it in mass and prove that there's a there there before we would raise enough to kind of go make it really big.

Dan Ambrose (: 11:59

Join us April 15th and 16th in Hermosa Beach, California at the TLU Beach House. We are doing a two-day witness prep and direct examination workshop. The witness prep will teach you not only how to get your clients to remember their stories, but to relive them, and then the direct examination so the jury just doesn't hear the story, but they experience it, they witness it. And this is right before Nick Raeley's Trial by Human in West Hollywood, April 17th through 19th. So come for the witness prep, stay for trial by human. We'll see you there. So people gave you $4 million on the if come, believe being in you, probably more because how do they really understand the concept of it all? They did not illegal.

Viraj Bindra (: 12:50

Yeah. The one feedback I got from an investor, which was very kind feedback in retrospect was, "We don't believe in your idea, but we believe in you. And we think you and Ben are going to go iterate enough to find something that's great, but we don't understand the space well enough to believe in your idea." The person who did was, and one of the reasons we picked him when we were otherwise shotgun wedding with a lot of people, Alfred Lynn is a prolific investor who's chair of Sequoia, which is a great venture firm out in Menlo Park, and he had led an early round at DoorDash. And so there was a lot of street credibility I had from the founders of DoorDash who said amazing things about working with him. And I saw that the first time I met him. And so we did three meetings and he was excited about it and was excited about the end state of what we want to build.

(: 13:31

So that felt like the right one to lead.

Dan Ambrose (: 13:33

Well, it's got to be somewhat encouraging when people that have made a lot of money and invested wisely believe in your idea, I'm guessing that helps for a little momentum.

Viraj Bindra (: 13:42

It's validating. It's weird. The advice that I got early was you're way more likely to find an investor who is going to distract you than one who is going to help make your company successful, especially early. There's like a greater risk that someone is going to lead you down a wrong path and not let you iterate. Alfred has been in great balance of we'll meet with once every month or two months and he gives a couple of nudges that he frames in the form of questions to help us think bigger and deeply, but not been distracting. So we've loved working with him.

Dan Ambrose (: 14:13

Wow. Must be great to have, because I've had gone through building Travelers University pretty much with my own brain power. Obviously a lot of people contribute to it, but basically I'm the one that has to come up with the ideas and execute them and hope they work.

Viraj Bindra (: 14:34

Did you ever wish you had a co-founder with you?

Dan Ambrose (: 14:42

I don't know. Not really, just because I mean, I've never had a ... I don't really work so well with people and I don't know. I mean, it's hard to get advice from people in this space because I'm the only one I feel like in my space that does conferences the way I do them. There's other people doing conferences. They just do them very differently than I do them. You know what I mean? With my combination of workshops and lectures, I'm the only one that does that,

(: 15:06

Having multiple lectures at one time so that people have a choice. I'm the only one I know that does that. Sometimes people have two, but they don't have like five or eight. And so I just kind of come up with my own ideas and try to push them and try to make them happen and see if people in the marketplace support them. I mean, I support them. The way we know is if they come to the conference and buy tickets to the things that I'm selling is the only way you know if somebody likes your idea. Same thing with my TLU on demand. It's the only educational platform that's anything similar to it and that I spent these years building. And so it'd be nice to have some outside ideas, but it's just never been ... I talked to obviously people and I want to have ideas, but just never had that co-founder or that investors that were like built like a big business similar to the one we're building like this.

Viraj Bindra (: 16:01

Yeah. Well, it feels like a lot of your bootcamps and other workshops foster that for others where folks who maybe feel like they're solo leading their firm, don't also have that other person to bounce stuff off with and come to forums you create.

Dan Ambrose (: 16:14

Oh yeah. It's different like being a lawyer. I mean, the idea of like the synergy and bringing someone that actually practices law, like working on cases, that's something I really love doing because that's something that's like I'm totally comfortable with and learned a lot about that specifically. Whereas like building a business and running a business is very different than practice or like working on cases and the strategy of being a lawyer, strategy being a lawyer.

Viraj Bindra (: 16:40

Do you have a therapist? Have you been to therapy ever?

Dan Ambrose (: 16:44

Only when I got in trouble with the bar about 15 years ago. It wasn't for ... There was a lot of challenges. So we did little counseling, little talking for like a few months and then everything. Then they decided that, okay, I was okay to continue on with the practice law. I'm like, oh, thank goodness. I'll ask you more about this after. Some of the things you have to do with the bar in Michigan, that was a long time ago.

Viraj Bindra (: 17:09

Noted.

(: 17:10

Well, the segue I was going to make off of that was my, when we were deciding whether or not to found this, because it felt like a big decision to incorporate and go raise and hire employees and now you feel like you're committed to them as much as you are to each other in the idea. My therapist, who I loved and appreciated, led me through a values exercise of like, what do I care about and get energy from? And a lot of those things ended up aligning more closely with starting a company than I expected. They were ... I love being bad at things and getting good at them. The most energy I've felt is not necessarily I'm perfect and at the top of my game. It's when I'm trying new things that I tend to be not great at at my start and learn.

(: 17:52

And I was bad at fundraising when I started and I got good at that. I was bad at sales when I started and got good at that. And you've kind of watched me get good at that, but I loved that. I loved being with a team that moves really fast and is very optimistic and is really talent dense. And when I'd looked for that team at other companies in New York, I hadn't found the place I wanted to go. The one downside of being at a bar is generally most other service people don't enjoy their jobs and aren't excited to be there. And I found that with a couple of bars I worked with, as much as I enjoyed the service piece, not everyone did. And when you build a company with an ambitious vision and you raise thoughtfully and hire great people, you feel this magic in a bottle that I felt really early at DoorDash, and we've kind of captured that here.

(: 18:35

So values-wise, that got me to the, this is worth doing. And I love Ben. And I think if you were going to ... I wouldn't have started a company without an amazing co-founder and I needed that. Does

Dan Ambrose (: 18:43

He ever come out and visit people or he's just keeping back there doing thinking and working on stuff?

Viraj Bindra (: 18:48

Ben wears Ben wears four to five different hats at any given time. He's a father of three and he's 31. He is leading our product team and engineering team and most of our strategy and operations team. He's also leading all the legal operators. So we have 60 plus intakers, case managers, paralegals, demand writers across the country that he leads. So everything at home is humming only because of Ben. And it allows me to be on the road and hang out with you and shoot the shit.

Dan Ambrose (: 19:16

Be the face of

Viraj Bindra (: 19:17

Finch

Dan Ambrose (: 19:17

And be the happy

Viraj Bindra (: 19:18

Charm. We need a prettier, more handsome face, but I'm happy to sub in for now until ...

Dan Ambrose (: 19:22

Well, but charm. You got

Viraj Bindra (: 19:23

Charm. You

Dan Ambrose (: 19:24

May be a little shorter in the looks department, but you got-

Viraj Bindra (: 19:27

You're not supposed to agree with me.

Dan Ambrose (: 19:29

You definitely got the charm department. So sometimes you got to make up with what we lack with charm.

Viraj Bindra (: 19:33

So

Dan Ambrose (: 19:33

I'm very experienced at it. It's like, God.

Viraj Bindra (: 19:36

How did you learn your charm? I feel like it has to be a childhood experience that teaches you how to be disarming and connect with people.

Dan Ambrose (: 19:42

I don't think so because when I was younger, life was a little tougher because I was a very extremely overweight child, so I got picked on a lot and it wasn't very athletic. And so honestly, it's like-

Viraj Bindra (: 19:54

That's the thing though. I mean, how else did you get cool and survive and make friends? You had to be funny and charming and bond with people.

Dan Ambrose (: 20:02

I think it's a later in life thing for me. I think I had to learn charm to survive because

(: 20:08

When I first came here, my buddy Steve King was like, "Dude, we got to work on your personality because you're never going to make it in California." We got to smooth it out a bit. So I didn't know what he was talking about, but apparently, because we're still friends and stuff, he's like, "You made a lot of progress, but we're still working progress, but you made a lot of progress, Dan, so that made me feel better about it. " But this is the people business. I mean, if anything is a people business, the business we're in is the people business because you need a community to live, you need a community to build a business,

Viraj Bindra (: 20:38

A

Dan Ambrose (: 20:39

Community that likes you and believes in whatever you're doing.You're still scaling, so what are some of the biggest challenges you're facing right now?

Viraj Bindra (: 20:52

I'll talk about a couple real ones. We scaled really fast out of ... So we launched in April of last year, right before TLU Beach. I know. It's

Dan Ambrose (: 21:00

Amazing. How many employees are Finch now?

Viraj Bindra (: 21:05

Just under 100, so about 85, 90.

Dan Ambrose (: 21:07

Right.

Viraj Bindra (: 21:08

To

Dan Ambrose (: 21:08

Grow that fast in a year, less than a year so far. We're not even in April yet. That's insane. That's like ferocious work.

Viraj Bindra (: 21:17

It was unexpected how quickly it happened, but we made, for example, an intentional decision last November and December, we slowed down onboarding. So almost every firm that signed with us, we actually pushed to onboard at the start of this year. And it was because we were starting to see some of those cracks that come from growing a little bit too fast. There was miscommunication at onboarding or there would be things that we weren't documenting crazy well. And so then there'd be issues later where an attorney said, "I said this is like, this is how I want to operate." And we hadn't set it up perfectly. And so we did a lot of the systems building that would allow us to grow 10x in that two months. And we hired a lot of smart people right around that time, but the challenge of knowing when to bend and break, because you want to grow, you're in a venture backed business and you think this is a giant market that you'll reach and serve by expanding fast and you have customers who want your services and need it to grow very quickly, but the trade off and push and pull of, but we don't want to do that and now we're launching it over our heads on this and creating experience that's actually worse for people.

(: 22:19

So the like moving a little bit slower to move a lot faster. And then in January to like first week of February, we doubled our revenue. And so that like let us do that kind of growth because we had invested for a couple months. So I'd say that, most of it's been fun, but I would say like maybe the other challenge, when you're growing that fast, holding the bar high on hiring is a real challenge. For every thousand applicants we have for a case manager or paralegal, we make one hire, and that's a huge amount of time and process that's going to go into vetting at the initial stage to like the rounds we do with folks. But we know that the product is only as good as the people here and to hold the bar that high has been important.

Dan Ambrose (: 23:08

April 21st through 25th in Hermosa Beach, California, we're hosting a bootcamp where you will train in the fundamental skills of trial, witness prep and direct, cross-examination, performance skills, which are opening statement and closing argument, and jury selection or voir dire, depending on where you live. We're going to focus on eye contact, voice control, emotional state control, hand and body movement, glance control, creating space amongst other skills. And then once you learn these skills, we're going to apply them to your case. So at the end of the day, it's an investment and a case expense. This program will fundamentally change your life. That's such a hiring so hard. It's so hard because to vet people to find out who they really are in that interview process and then it's so rough. And you think they're one thing and they come to work and it's just like a totally different ... You're like, oh my God, how'd I oversee this?

(: 24:07

How did I miss this? How did I miss this? As far as like Finch though, because there's a lot of, I mean this AI space, I know would you consider you're sort of like a hybrid AI?

Viraj Bindra (: 24:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Ambrose (: 24:19

But like with all the AI companies out there doing in litigation, so what distinguishes Finch from everybody else? Why would somebody that has these cases come to you

Viraj Bindra (: 24:33

Or

Dan Ambrose (: 24:33

Everybody else? I

Viraj Bindra (: 24:35

Will start with, I don't think there's been a better time in history to be a plaintiff attorney. The amount of services and software and things out there versus what I assume was there at the same conferences five, 10 years ago is massively different. And what's going to work for some firms isn't going to work for others. And you see a lot of folks talking about how they're building their tech stack of the future. One of the things we saw early in starting Finch as we were approaching firms is we actually started in more of a software model than service. So we looked a lot more like a software product that would listen to an intake call and then take actions off of it for you. So help with that initial bit of case setup. And we realized not just from conversations about how Finch was working at firms, but how other products that are more software, some firms you see the whole staff embrace AI from the onset and everyone's using it and getting adoption from it and everyone's using the tools and you ideally take on more cases and you move cases faster and clients are happier.

(: 25:33

We've seen a lot of firms where what they struggle with is the managing partner or name partner will love AI, will be excited about what it can do for the business and then the problem becomes adoption. So they'll have a team of 30, 40, 60 case managers that are all different levels of technical competency, different levels of how many decades they've already spent doing this job and how open they are to change, many of whom are a little bit, don't trust or worried about AI more than seeing the benefits of it complementing their work. And so you can have an amazing tool, but it doesn't, even if it is at its nth degree of how much AI can do for you, you're not really getting the output on a day-to-day basis at scale, or you're spending so much time investing and trying to train and focus on adoption and then you're hiring people who are more tech inclined.

(: 26:21

And so that's the problem folks were incurring. The shift we did that we thought was differentiated and we would have more of the stomach to do, given my background at DoorDash and Venz as well, is be more of a service than the software. And so by us bringing case managers and paralegals in house and us training them ground up on how to use these tools, and these are folks who are the top 0.1% of their field, we can make the outcome true. So when a firm partners with us and gets their Finch case manager, who for all intents and purposes works for that firm, they get that firm's email, they work in that firm CMS, so it feels the same as you would have made a hire. This person is ground up using AI, so they're taking on 3X the caseload that your typical paralegal or case manager would.

(: 27:03

They're moving those cases faster. More of them are settling for policy limits. So you get all of the outcomes that you would have hoped from an AI tool that you might have struggled to implement yourself if you didn't have a staff that was very accepting of it. And that's probably been the biggest difference in how we've pitched ourselves and grown.

Dan Ambrose (: 27:18

Right. It's a human element, the paralegal and the training and the quality of the paralegals that have to run the AI.

Viraj Bindra (: 27:25

And that's why we have to keep the bar crazy high because if it doesn't work if you don't hire exceptional people who are very client centric and understand the nuances of talking to adjusters and navigating a case. So we've kept that bar very high.

Dan Ambrose (: 27:37

So Verage, you come up with this idea and you got your one friend that kind of lets you experiment work in his firm, but how did you find your next set of customers?

Viraj Bindra (: 27:50

It was hard. We didn't know anyone in this space beyond the one friend. And so one, we met someone who referred him cases and that became one of our first customers. But beyond that, we were scrappy. And that was things like posted a lot on Reddit on forums where personal injury lawyers were talking about their firms and struggles with hiring and trying AI. So posted there enough to get eventually banned, but probably got five of our first 10 customers that way. We did a little bit of cold calling as people who had never done sales before, where we just went to Google type personal injury lawyer and called. And actually one of our second ever customer, his attorney named Mohammed, who's out of New Jersey, he eventually after working with him for a couple months, referred his great friend who was working at another legal tech company, who was also named Mohammed to work here, who's now been here for a while, who we love, who then referred the lovely BTA over here in the corner to work with us as well.

(: 28:45

So series of coincidences.

Dan Ambrose (: 28:47

Was her name originally Mohammed?

Viraj Bindra (: 28:49

Yeah, it was just three Mohammed's.

Dan Ambrose (: 28:50

Three Mohammed.

Viraj Bindra (: 28:51

She had to change it to make it to fit in. Exactly. I

Dan Ambrose (: 28:54

Mean,

Viraj Bindra (: 28:54

It makes sense to

Dan Ambrose (: 28:56

Fitting it.

Viraj Bindra (: 28:57

But it was that. It was a little bit just showing up at conferences and talking. Early, I'd heard this metaphor of the first customers who will use you when you're still figuring it out and bad and trying to learn what great would look like, will use you if the problem is a hair on fire problem. And the metaphor I heard for this was, if your hair is literally on fire and you're in this room, it's not that someone's going to offer you water because that would put the thing out. That's the perfect solution. If someone offers you a rock, but your hair is literally on fire, you will take the rock and try to dowse the fire. And so the only people willing to buy a rock from you are the folks who have such a need that this may help them. And so for Ryan, it was, "I'm currently turning away cases that come through the door and that is revenue out the door and I need a way to serve them." For some folks, it would be, "I just started my firm.

(: 29:52

I have this amazing paralegal, but she's going on a mat leave and for the next three months I don't know what I'm going to do. " It'd be some folks who had to let The go of someone and had a bunch of cases sitting there that were going idle or were doing poorly that they just needed help with. And so early you look for folks who really, really needed help and you are upfront about what you're good at and what you're not. We have this tech. We haven't probably figured out the perfect place to put it in your workflow, but if you're down to work with us, we'd like to build the right solution with you. And that kind of honesty was a better selling tactic early than trying to come out pretending we were a lot bigger than we were.

Dan Ambrose (: 30:27

Join me and my mentor, David Clark. May 27th through June 2nd in Huntington Beach, California for a dark arts bootcamp. This program will change your life. Dave will teach you about neural linguistic programming, conversational hypnosis, embedding stories in the unconscious mind. He changed my life and he'll change yours. And I'll coach you on your witness prep and direct, cross-examination, performance skills for opening statement and closing argument and voir dire. These days will change your life. Come for the bootcamp, stay for TLU Beach, the greatest conference ever. Yeah. It seems like the people that I've seen to try to pretend they were bigger than they were, they're not around anymore because they crash hard. It's tough to see it. They're nice people, but flawed business systems and operations. So you mentioned earlier that Finch's competitive advantage really is the paralegals, is the human element because everybody has the tech, everybody has some variation of the AI that has to be somewhat similar.

(: 31:39

And so what's done by the human beings and what's done by the AI? I

Viraj Bindra (: 31:47

Think we're going to see that balance shift over the next five years a lot, but I'll tell you where we've landed today is today we're interoperable between all the tech. So we'll use sometimes Google's AI products, Gemini, we'll sometimes use Anthropics, we'll sometimes use OpenAI. We'll use different voice AI providers and browser agents. So we're testing a little bit of everything and every version of AI we've tested to handle claimant communication or client communication has backfired. So at intake, every time we've tried a tool like that, we'll typically see 20, 25% worse conversion rates than when we're staffing really thoughtful, empathetic humans on it. Or when we're using it for treatment check-ins every time we've tried that in the past, it has led to more poor client experiences and one star reviews are clients dropping you then. So I think that's an instance where the tech isn't quite there yet.

(: 32:38

Some of the thoughtful communication with adjusters, it's not there yet because there's nuances to how you develop that relationship and what you share and don't share over time. The places where we've used it are really the moments that feel monotonous for a case manager. And so actually those two uses. So one of them will be things that I would do when I'm sitting on the phone for a long period of time, which will be opening a claim, for example, with Geico or Progressive or whoever it ends up being, is largely let me be on hold for 30 minutes and then when I get someone, let me give them some information and get a claim number. That there's no reason for a human to sit there on the phone when they could have checked in with two to three clients and made sure they were on track at the same time.

(: 33:19

There's a lot of work that's done in portals, like whether it's getting medical records and bills or whether it's getting police reports and then the data entry back into a case management system. And we'll use browser agents to do a lot of that. They're now at the point where about 80 to 90% of the time, they're very accurate in being able to pull those things. So that's 80 to 90% leverage for the average case manager. For all of those, they're still not there where we would fully trust AI to fully do it and if not, hand it over. So we have a human backstop for each one of those things. And as AI gets better, we're using those folks less and less. And so we're getting more and more output from AI doing the job. But today we've distinguished on any high priority human communication.

(: 33:59

We have left human on our end and we'll try to use AI for almost every other part of it. The last couple pieces I'll mention where we'll use it for something like a demand, we'll draft with AI, but the thought of the risk to a hallucination there is really high even today with any kind of verdict analysis. And so we will have a human scrub on that before it goes out the door. And similarly, I think what AI has been good at doing is helping drive insights on cases at scale. And so the decisions around balancing under treatment and over treatment or like how close are we to risk of exhaustion on policy limits. A lot of those are where we're seeing a lot of leverage from AI helping a case managers working 200, 300 cases at the same time to be smart and thoughtful about each one of those cases and go into those communication with clients and treatment check-ins with a lot of, "I know exactly what procedure you went for yesterday.

(: 34:53

I know what to ask you about it. I want to check in on how you're feeling. You were an eight out of 10 last week. Where are you this week?" So it can help make people feel super human in each of those moments of thoughtful human interaction because it's able to do a lot of this analysis at scale.

Dan Ambrose (: 35:06

And you've only been at about a year now, but where do you see Finch going in the future?

Viraj Bindra (: 35:16

We've been pretty ... A lot has changed and I think I've referenced how the product's going to iterate, where AI is going to iterate and our pricing is going to ... We're going to change a lot of things, but the mission has always been to increase access to justice for everyday Americans. And the gaps you see are very different from between different practice areas. For immigration law or for trust and estate or for bankruptcy, it's often going to be a, "I don't have the funds to hire a lawyer right now." Whereas in a lot of contingency-based practices like personal injury, it's more of, I have a few thousand medical bills, I have a real case against someone else, but it's not a big enough case that the attorney I'm talking to is going to take it on. And so the gap becomes whether my case is big enough for someone to be able to spend their limited resources helping me on.

(: 36:08

And so what we're doing today with this kind of shared back office is helping firms that otherwise would have been a capacity and had to say no, say yes to more cases and help serve more clients. That's going to be the vision for a long period, which maybe I'll ask, do you know where Finch comes from, the name?

Dan Ambrose (: 36:22

I'm going to say Atticus Finch. Atticus

Viraj Bindra (: 36:24

Finch.

Dan Ambrose (: 36:25

He was from, I think it was to Kill Mockingbird.

Viraj Bindra (: 36:28

To Kill a Machibird from the town of Machome.

Dan Ambrose (: 36:30

All right.

Viraj Bindra (: 36:30

Atticus Finch was a big believer in everyone, regardless of their circumstances, deserves great counsel. And the stat overall in America, 78% of Americans who have a legal need do not have access to counsel. And that's the problem that over the next decade we want to solve. And we think that someone is going to solve because the tech is going to be there to take what otherwise you have to depend on unlimited subset of legal operators and lawyers to help you with and democratize a lot of the busy work so they could solve for more people.

Dan Ambrose (: 36:57

We're starting off the summer right, May 8th and 9th in Hermosa Beach, California at the TLU Beach House. We're doing a two-day witness prep and direct examination workshop. You will learn how to prepare your clients so they just don't remember their stories, but they relive them. And then we transition that to direct examination so the jury just doesn't hear the story, but they relive them, they experience them, they witness them. We'll see you there. It's us trying to do a TLU, democratize justice, give everybody access to the top thinking and training so they become great lawyers faster and have more fulfilling lives and deliver more justice to the people that trust them, the people that trust them. Well, so let me ask you, now that you go to a lot of conferences and stuff like that, but you've only been to one TLU so far, but how is TLU different than other conferences?

Viraj Bindra (: 37:59

There's one way that's very off the bat for me, which was a lot of conferences, the conference strategy for a vendor is how do I find the right targeted people and go pull them away to my event? There's a like, "I want to set up a dinner or a lunch here or go meet these folks." And TLU feels a little more like college, like it's like a college party or spring break party where everyone's in the same spot. You see everyone at the same time, no one's going ... There's limited going off and doing your isolated event. And I think people showing up together leads to it feeling ... We felt a lot less like it was a transactional sales culture for us and it was more of we met a lot of people. They would introduce us to their friends. There would be deals that closed nine months later because we met great people there and then that ended up being the right time for them.

(: 38:44

So for us, it was, especially as people new to the industry trying to meet a lot of folks, it was maybe the most developer real relationship, solve real problems kind of conference we've been to.

Dan Ambrose (: 38:53

Try to have a community. That's good. Because this year people come to Trial Lawyers University on Tuesday, June 2nd, if they decide to play pickleball or go to surf camp, the great part is after that, Finch is hosting a dinner for everybody that's there. So we only have room for the first 300. And so this way you get to come to TLU, get to meet all your new friends before the conference even starts, courtesy and thank God for a finish and barrage and beta that was all possible. So I really am grateful for that. And I know that because if people could become friends before the conference even starts, then the chances of them ... Because nobody does business with people they don't trust, nobody. And it takes time to develop trust and it takes interaction. And that's why TLU is kind of like four, maybe to five days long if you count Tuesday because that way you have more time to talk and you have breakfast and you have lunch and you have theme parties and you have all the interaction and buying out the whole hotel is

Viraj Bindra (: 39:53

Something

Dan Ambrose (: 39:54

I think really makes it feel like smaller and even ... And intimate, even though it's a pretty good size, it's a medium sized

Viraj Bindra (: 40:02

Conference.

Dan Ambrose (: 40:03

There's 820 people last year. I think it'd probably be a little bit bigger this year. We'll see. I mean, I think it's going to be better. We have a great lineup with the top trial lawyers and just so many activities and great people supporting it. So I'm looking forward to it.

Viraj Bindra (: 40:17

It'd be fun. Well, the person you introduced me to personally was Ben Ravitz is a good friend of yours and James was at that conference for the first time. And then he and I now ... His wife and I, sorry, his partner and my wife and I have been out for a pizza making class in New York. We've been out for drinks a bunch of times. I saw him last week. So it was real friendship came out of that in addition to ... He's a nice

Dan Ambrose (: 40:39

Guy.

Viraj Bindra (: 40:39

I

Dan Ambrose (: 40:39

Can't wait. It's probably this year. James, I mean, Ben's coming back and teaching quite a bit. He's such a rockstar.

Viraj Bindra (: 40:44

All

Dan Ambrose (: 40:44

Right. Thanks, Baraj. Hey,

Viraj Bindra (: 40:46

A pleasure.

Dan Ambrose (: 40:46

Appreciate it, buddy.

Viraj Bindra (: 40:47

Hey, good times. Appreciate it. It was good times, man. Thanks,

Dan Ambrose (: 40:49

Dan.

Viraj Bindra (: 40:56

Den, you just got back from Big Sky, right?

Dan Ambrose (: 40:58

That's right.

Viraj Bindra (: 40:59

How was it?

Dan Ambrose (: 41:00

It was fucking awesome. It's only words I can actually wrap around it. And we had a nice group of about 10 lawyers and a couple other folks. And my sister was there. She made breakfast, lunch and dinner for everybody the whole time, but we trained three hours in the morning.

Viraj Bindra (: 41:15

Reni?

Dan Ambrose (: 41:15

Yeah. Rene

Viraj Bindra (: 41:16

Was

Dan Ambrose (: 41:16

There.

Viraj Bindra (: 41:16

She's a

Dan Ambrose (: 41:17

Great cook. But one night Ike and Aaron made steaks. One night Aaron made gumbo, but we basically, every morning we'd get up at like 6:30 by 7:00, 6:30, have some coffee. But Raleigh's place is insane. It's like 12,000 square feet, nine bedrooms. The great room is, it's great. I mean, this area here is probably six of these areas here. Take this space and times it by six and then- It's like the living room area and the fireplace and that's how big it was. So it was like the community aspect was massive, but from seven to 10 every morning we would train and then a bunch of us would go out skiing and then everybody else would just stay in and do work or do depositions or whatever. Then we'd get back around four or five and do three hours of training at night. A couple of nights we had poker games.

(: 42:11

We were working on not just our skills, but working on different people's cases. One day we all went snowmobilings. We had like 14 people on snowmobiles. And so that was really sick. And we raised a total of like, I think like $54,000 for the Uber defense. So like we're having great time learning and doing productive for the community too. And I'm really looking forward to ... Our next ski camp is, I think it's March 18th through 25th in Winter Park. And so that's going to be, because every time we do it a different place, it's just a different vibe. It's a downtown community, a lot of great ski resorts nearby, but there's a lot of hotels nearby because my buddy Jerry gave us his condo and it's that I'm pretty stoked about. So looking forward to that. And then I forgot, and so it was great stuff.

(: 43:08

So next time, because you're girl, Bita and ... Ellie? Yeah. Ellie were in Cabo with us before Christmas. So I know that we had a great time. There were like 30 people there. That was pretty cool. I heard good things. It was awesome, bro. And let me ask you, how do people get ahold of you?

Viraj Bindra (: 43:28

If one, I'm everywhere, so I'll give my phone number. You can put that in the bio for whatever this thing is. But no, if they're interested in Finch at all and want to learn more, finchlegal.com is where you can learn that. Or feel free to message me, Varaj@finchlegal.com. Even if you're just passively want to learn more, happy to share more.

Dan Ambrose (: 43:47

Or if just pass me when I have to grab a cup of coffee or drink, same thing.

Viraj Bindra (: 43:50

I'll be in your city at some point in the next- Some point.

Dan Ambrose (: 43:52

Me

Viraj Bindra (: 43:52

Too. Three months. Yeah. Me

Dan Ambrose (: 43:53

Too. Chancey, we ran a little bit of the same circuit of the international legal conference. It's got to be like see all of our prints.

Viraj Bindra (: 44:01

True.

Dan Ambrose (: 44:01

It's not the same. All right. Sounds good.

Viraj Bindra (: 44:04

Thanks, Dan.

Dan Ambrose (: 44:05

Thanks, Viraj.

(: 44:15

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