Mickey (00:00)
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mickey. I’m the host of Beyond Page One. I’m pleased to welcome our guest, Jeff Kahane today. He’s the founder and managing partner at Kahane Law Office. He’s been practicing law for over 20 years, volunteer work with various educational institutes and community organizations. He’s received the Alberta Centennial Medal for his community contributions. There’s a lot that he does, and I’m not going to list it all today. So Jeff Beyond the impressive titles and accolades, who is Jeff Kehany at his core, and what drives you to do what you do?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (00:33)
Sure. I mean, this is certainly a healthy dose of random abstract in terms of my existence. And I love it because deep at my core, I know that no matter what happens, it’s always going to be for the best and everything will work out just the way it’s supposed to perfectly. I mean, one, I’m not an externally motivated person whatsoever. So through school, if I got like a 50 % or 90%, there is no, I’m sort of missing that internal piece. I’m motivated by doing stuff that I enjoy, which should be like an obvious thing for most people, I think, but for a lot of people, it’s like checking boxes or dollars or, you know, clients or goals, whatever like that. I have a hard time working with business coaches because they’re like, well, how are we going to define success? Am I having fun every day? And I got really lucky. I found something that I enjoyed doing before law as a school teacher. And again, I went from a 51 to 74 in my undergrad because it was interesting, but I didn’t love it. And then education, I loved it. Got a 3.96 but only because I enjoyed it. Like I just don’t care about the marks. And then law school also went well.
Mickey (01:34)
Cool. Looking back at your younger self, what were some of the early signs that pointed towards a future filled with entrepreneurship and the legal side?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (01:45)
Ironically, when I was younger because my dad was an entrepreneur, he was in the meat business and still is. He’s 81 years old, almost 82 and he’s still running his business. But he was like very much the entrepreneur and liked schmoozing and getting business in and all that. And I thought like, I mean, I can never do that. And so I drifted away from family business or entrepreneurship, ended up in law, and lo and behold, apparently I can. Yeah.
it’s just that I never thought of myself or saw myself in that way. And it was just a matter of finding that niche that you enjoy doing and responding to people and moving that way.
Mickey (02:24)
Fantastic, I like that answer. So we see your success as a lawyer, but you also wear a lot of hats. Like I said, entrepreneur, community leader, and volunteer. How do you weave these diverse roles? And grandpa, congratulations, girl or boy?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (02:33)
I’m a grandpa now. Yeah, almost three months now. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. A little boy. Conceptually his name’s Shepherd, but conceptually it hasn’t entirely sunk in even though I see this baby. But yeah, like associating oneself with a grandparent, just, it’s odd. No, I don’t know what it makes me feel like. I mean, I love this little thing. It’s like, the cutest little bundle, whatever, but it’s conceptual, more conceptual. Like if I stop and think about it, otherwise it’s just kind of carry on and enjoy and it’s all good. But yeah, when I think about like, huh, I’m a grandfather, weird. Thank you.
Mickey (03:16)
Congratulations, it’s exciting. So, and grandfather, how do you weave all of these diverse roles together to balance your life?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (03:19)
I think there’s probably two things in there. One, like a healthy dose of ADHD. Like it’s, how do I say it? I think of it as a superpower, but it takes a lot of coping strategies to be able to do it. But I just have a lot of energy to do stuff. Like I wake up in the morning, five o ‘clock, I haven’t used an alarm clock in 30 years, and it’s not just, I gotta get up. It’s like, what am I gonna do now? Yeah, it’s like full-on. And then on top of that I just don’t sleep. Like I was just, I think my grandfather, my mom’s dad was like this, where I am literally up at five every day. So like when the kids were little, I was a single dad looking after these two little girls. And you know, they get up at eight o ‘clock, nine o ‘clock in the morning, which left me three, four hours to do things like build out a website and do work. But I always kept working. And that’s the third thing is just balance. I just, I’ve always had this intrinsic balance.
And it’s probably because I’m motivated by am I enjoying something? So when I get home, like I love being dad, I love being at home. I love like reading or welding or just learning new stuff. And then when I get to the office, I love being at the office. When I hear someone say, thank God it’s Friday. Well then change what you do. Like that should not be anything that you say. And so I think it’s those three things. It’s like it’s a quick kind of blend that just kind of works.
Mickey (04:35)
Awesome. With a little dose of ADHD.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (04:45)
Yeah, you know, it’s so there are there are some downsides. So like my paralegals know if I’m at their desk and coming straight back to my office, they know they should send me an email to remind me when I get here because it’s going to be like 13 distracting things. I come in and I’ll have eight emails for myself reminding me to do stuff. And sometimes it’ll be the same email three or four times because I’ve like I don’t stress over things. Once I send that email, I don’t have to think about it again. So it’s out of my brain. But then if I independently think about it again,
I automatically send an email. So, leaving things on my shoes, like I always have stuff in my shoes so I don’t forget. So just like little kind of coping strategies that help form it into something that’s, you know, you take the best of it. And I mean, when I’m, when I’m bored, it’s hard to like, like just fake it. I can’t, like I’ve fallen asleep in meetings before, not client meetings, but maybe a few weeks ago we were interviewing someone and the interview went fine, but I was just like.
Whoa, like this is going on too long. My brain doesn’t, it’s not working. It’s like, whoa, what’s going on outside? Yeah.
Mickey (05:49)
It sounds like you have a lot of coping strategies for it. So that’s fantastic. Kahane Law Office sounds like it’s been a staple in Calgary’s legal landscape for over a decade. So what inspired you 20 years, 20 years have passed since February. Yeah, you have been practicing since 2000. So we’re coming up on almost 25 years, but yeah, 20 years have passed in February.
Mickey (06:08)
What inspired you to start it?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (06:10)
Randomness, you know, I’ll go back to that beginning thing. So I used to work for Ernst & Young. They had a law firm in Canada and after, not Enron, like some accounting disaster, they decided to separate an audit from their other groups. And so they shut down their North American law firms. And I was approached by one of the consultants at Ernst & Young. He said, look, there’s this Ontario law firm. They want to open up a small firm in Calgary. You’d just be like, you’d start it for them. You start it off small.
And after a year, we were doing a pilot project for one of the national banks. They said, look, like we can’t do this program because of of the problems we’re having in Manitoba and Ontario. So either shut down the firm for us or take it over. And at the time I had like two little girls and I was like, getting them ready for school, taking them to school, going to work, going back to pick up the younger one from school, taking her to daycare, going back to the office. So it was like this cycle of stuff and going downtown wasn’t going to be an option again. I got the silver medal at a law school. So I had all these opportunities downtown, but it wasn’t going to work for me. And my kids were a hundred percent my priority. And so, when they said that I took it over and we were only doing maybe like 20 or 30 transactions, transactions a month. And, you know, but it worked. So I was never getting rich and never getting whatever, but it was comfortable. I enjoyed doing it and it just worked. You know, it was my flexibility. I could bring the girls to the office if they needed to. we always had toys and stuff ready for them.
Mickey (07:31)
That’s awesome. In the early days of the law firm, what were some bigger challenges that you faced and how’d you overcome them?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (07:38)
I mean, I had no clue. So when I started, the advice I got from one of my mentors was, real estate law, you learn quickly, but you’re gonna get kicked in the teeth a few times. Unfortunately, it was relatively painless. But I have no clue. Like everything from photocopy machines to accounting and all that stuff. I ended up finding like really good people to work with. My office managers have been with me for 17 years.
My first articling student has been with me for 18 years. It’s just been good people and we just stick together and support each other and work as a team and it’s just been great. But at the beginning, I guess one of the hardest things would have been when it was just me or just me and a junior who didn’t have signing authority, trying to go on vacation. Because you need checks to be signed, you need that. It was just really kind of a challenge. But one of my mentors stepped up and he said, look, I can be on your bank account for just co-signing checks or signing checks.
Mickey (08:06)
awesome.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (08:34)
And so it worked. I had like limited holidays, shorter ones, but more frequent ones until we started getting more developed.
Mickey (08:39)
That’s awesome. And can you tell our listeners about the current size of the team right now?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (08:47)
Sure, we’re about 50, almost 50 people, so 24, 25 lawyers and then support staff and yeah, it’s a good group.
Mickey (08:56)
That’s fantastic. Calgary Inc. Magazine recognized you guys as one of the best places to work. That’s huge. Cool.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (09:02)
Yeah, because I mean, but the competition, well, why it’s huge is because that’s across industries. Law firms typically are not the best. I remember hearing two paralegals talking like one of us on the phone, the other one said, well, what’s what’s it like to work for Jeff? She said, well, he doesn’t yell or throw things. Is that the standard? So, I mean, that was across the industry. So like I took it as a compliment.
On crazy busy days, we make sure we bring in sandwiches and food. And it’s just, we do treat it like a family. Next Friday, we’re having Office Olympics. We’ll have just internal after work like there’s the stapler toss, whoever throws it the farthest. And we have like a golden stapler board. And so we’ve been doing that for shoot like 15 years or something. So it’s, yeah, it’s just the little things.
Mickey (09:44)
That’s awesome.
I might take a page out of your book on that.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (09:55)
It’s really good. We have new events this year. I think we got the Pin the Moustache on Jeff as one of them. You have to spin it in an office chair. One of the favorites has always been the Stamp, Sign, and Seal Who Can Notarize the Most Documents in a Short period. Yeah, so every year we try and get a little creative.
Mickey (10:15)
That’s awesome. That’s cool. What’s a piece of advice that you would give aspiring young lawyers who are looking to navigate the ever-changing legal landscape?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (10:25)
You know, I’d say three things. One, it’s harder than people think it is. I’m just gonna throw up my shingle and the work’s just gonna come. It’s not, you gotta treat it like a business. You can never get complacent. You gotta be on top of everything and care about it more than anyone else. Like really, that’s sort of the drive. You gotta treat it like a job. So I got a lot of mentors through the law society and a lot of them were like, I wanna build my business, wanna build my business. And then you call them the cancel appointments or the no-show for appointments and stuff. Like how are you gonna build your business when you’re not even committed to yourself? So you’ve got to like really, you know, I mean nine to five isn’t even it. I like to say that, you know, like I’m not a slave to law and that I don’t work until one in the morning and on the weekends and stuff. I mean, in a way that’s a lie because I do, but it’s not like work, like the work I do at the office work, like building out my website is a game to me. So like I’ll spend the mornings you know, 45 minutes an hour per webpage. And you know, they’re become revenue producing within a few weeks of being loaded. Like I learned how to SEO, I taught myself SEO skills and a nerdy hobby. Like that’s all it was. I just wasn’t interested in it and just enjoyed it. In the evenings, I’ll go to events, but the events are always social ones. Like, and I enjoy it. So it’s like, I don’t think of it as work, although technically I guess it’s kind of work, but not work. So.
Mickey (11:27)
awesome.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (11:43)
It’s not 9 to 5, although it’s mostly E3 to 4 titanium.
Mickey (11:48)
Yeah, but it’s a blend of the personal relationships that you have with work as well, right? So you go to an event, it might be a networking event, but you’re also having a good time and you want to be there.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (11:59)
100 % and they’re all they become friends over the years like, you know, you’re in this industry and realtors more than lawyers are especially you know outgoing personnel like they’re extroverts like so It’s how they build their business. And so it’s it’s fun, you know, I’ve got probably like once a week I’ll have some kind of end I think I’ve got like a gala for the real estate board and then a brokerage is having like an event and I feel fortunate that I was adopted into the industry that way. But it’s really, it’s just so much fun. And the genuine, like just nice people. Not all of them, but most of them. The ones I like. Yeah.
Mickey (12:31)
That’s awesome. What ones do you like? Early in your career, you worked for Ernest and Yup. So big law firm, right?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (12:41)
It was a smaller law firm, a big accounting firm. Huge accounting firm. Yeah. We had, for the law firm, we had, I think, 2000 lawyers in 80 countries or something. And so, you know, like, but as an accounting firm, they’re much, much bigger. Yeah.
Mickey (12:43)
Big accounting firm. Yeah. What are some valuable lessons that you took from that experience and is there anything that you applied to your practice?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (13:02)
So accountants do things differently than lawyers. Like in some things they’re much better at. So they’re better at actually creating work between groups as opposed to making it a competition. I joke that a downtown law firm is kind of like the game of Survivor where you need to have your alliances and if you don’t have work then you get kicked off the island. So it’s really, it can get cutthroat internally.
We here, we work very much as a team. So if let’s say a client says, I’m booked with Jeff, like I want to come in at two, the paralegal said, well, Jeff’s busy at two, do you want to come at three or do you want to see someone else at two? And there’s no infighting over ownership of clients or anything like that, or who gets to call them their lead or anything. So that I think was a good thing to take from them. The other thing is they had a contest on how to build a better global law firm out of our London, England office. And I managed to win this thing and I got to go to the partners meeting in Stockholm. It’s like the only associate of all these partners. And I mean, it was a great opportunity, a great opportunity to network. And a lot of the people I’ve even stayed connected with like decades later. But when I was there this is maybe where I started thinking entrepreneurial is the way to go. Before I left, I stopped at my local MP and I got a bunch of Canadian flag pins and put them on all my business cards. And when I was there, it got to the point where people were like hunting me down to get my cards and like just say hi and stuff. And our national managing partner who is now a senator, he said on our way back, way back, said, Jeff, you work that room like anything else. And yet you weren’t even working the room like they were they’re hounding you down. And like it was so much fun. And so I like I appreciated that.
Mickey (14:49)
So creative weight, that’s awesome.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (14:52)
Yeah, it just seemed like a silly fun thing when I did it. It’s like when I get on an airplane, I always bring chocolates for my FAs. I love that a $10 box of chocolates can make, what is it, four or five people’s lives so happy. I mean, they’re so underappreciated for the work that they’re doing. They’re keeping you safe. They’re serving terrible food in an awful restaurant. And it just makes them glow. I love it.
Mickey (14:54)
That’s awesome. I have a note here about Dictacom International. Tell me about it. What is it?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (15:21)
Yeah.
So over the years, I’ve had a couple of ideas that I launched in the end, like business ideas not related to law. Dictacom was one and the Showbags was the other one. But Dictacom was, I had a friend I went to law school with who was working for a big international firm that had offices overseas in Southeast Asia. And the way their internal process was, if they needed something dictated and typed up overnight, they would send the recording to someone, in the Asia office, it was daytime there, they typed it up and were ready and waiting for them in the morning. And I thought, huh, that’d be like an interesting business standpoint. And around the same time, the federal government asked me to do a trade mission to India. And so I was talking to our, was it the Canadian Royal High Commissioner to India or something? And he gave me a list of names of companies that did medical transcriptions. So that’s, the infrastructure is all there and it’s India, it’s across time zones.
So I thought, why don’t we marry these two ideas where you can pick up your phone, dictate what you need to be dictated, it gets sent over and I’m only getting charged like a cost per character by them, Marking out, charging a cost per character plus on the other end and literally like no overhead. And you know, that file would then be emailed to the person who sent the dictation first thing in the morning. It was done overnight. But that’s kind of like a fun thing.
Mickey (16:31)
That’s awesome. Is that still being used today? Yeah.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (16:48)
No, no, it’s like technology has changed so much since then, that was a long time ago. Like now I can talk into my phone and it mostly gets my text messages right. Yeah, yeah.
Mickey (16:56)
Yeah, it’s yeah, I mean there’s tons of transcription even AI now coming out.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (17:00)
Yeah, yeah, it’s like the technology is really, and it was fine. It was never like my bread and butter or anything, but it was like, it was the journey that I enjoyed. You know, like I mentioned, I do welding. I like just trying new things or I wake up with an idea or try to watch TV. That’s when I learned how to weld and I thought, why am I sitting here? It lasted five minutes. Why am I sitting here watching other people pretend to have a life? I went to Princess Auto and bought a welding kit, took it home, and just, I mean, I almost set the garage on fire, but.
Mickey (17:06)
Yeah.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (17:29)
But it was fun. Not perfect or beautiful, but I just enjoy the process. Yeah, I just welded a penne for quad, one for the front, one for the back. And the one in the front, because we’re at Proper NBC, we always have happy hour four, is there, I welded, what do you call them? Like cup holders for beverages, because you need two hands to work the machine.
Mickey (17:33)
something to do, that’s fantastic.
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Speaking of some tools and software and things like that, is there anything that you’re leveraging right now internally that you can share? Yeah, like tech standpoint, yeah.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (18:02)
like a tech standpoint.
I mean, I guess there’s two things. One is like our website like our website will get 3,500 referrals a month off our website, just organic optimized search engine, like driven searches. Yep, yeah, the whole thing. Yeah, like I’ll get calls.
Mickey (18:15)
And you did that yourself. That’s awesome. That’s what my background is in. So that’s fascinating. We can have a conversation offline about it.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (18:22)
SEO, I found it is like, it’s like this game of Sudoku. That’s what like I have to game up on things to enjoy it. Like, if you have a diamond that only has two facets, and that’s it, you have a piece of glass, there’s no sparkle. But if you have like the cuts and the clarity and the, you know, no occlusions and all this stuff, all these little pieces that come together to make it work. And then you’re combining, you know, there’s the backend stuff, you got the like the user experience stuff, there are sometimes there are contradictions between what Google wants and what users want and just like developing you out. And then it’s, it’s constantly changing. So it’s like, it’s just this really fun game too, to do. Sometimes I’ll like, I’ll compete with myself. Let’s see how many days it takes for this page to rank number one, the first page of Google. And I think 12 or 14 hours was my record. Usually, it’s 24 to 48 hours and it gets indexed and starts getting searched.
Mickey (19:16)
That’s awesome. If the law ever gets boring and you want a job, let me know.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (19:20)
You know, I thought about it. So here’s the thing. I don’t have an appreciation for the lack of time that I have to do all the things I get excited about. And so I have an idea. I think I have like 150 domains because I have an idea like Calgary Bath and Tile. I love building websites. I’m going to build one for Bath and Tile. I’ll sell the leads. And you know, like I had this great plan, but like I don’t have time to do that. I have.
Mickey (19:29)
Yeah.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (19:46)
One of my trades out in BC is a drywaller and just like a nice guy who’s starting fresh after some life challenges. And so I just built him a website and he’s like, you, you did what? Yeah, I bought the name I’ll transfer it right now. And here’s the site and it’s like for drywall and renovations. And he’s like, he’s started to cry. He’s like, why would you be so nice for me? Like I drywalled your cabin. And I, well, because.
It seemed like a nice thing to do.
Mickey (20:16)
That’s awesome. It’s very cool.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (20:17)
Yeah, so I just don’t have time to do all the things I want to do.
Mickey (20:20)
That’s fair. I want to talk a little bit about the real estate, firsand t-time real estate buyers market. Given your extensive experience, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see first-time real estate buyers making?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (20:33)
I’m not talking to their lawyer quickly enough. Like the lawyers for real estate law should not be charging for people who have specific questions. I mean, you can’t call and ask them, is there any risk to signing this contract? Sure, there are a thousand different things, but you know, we see problems and problems are always easier to solve, if you catch them before someone signs something. And so, like so many times we want them to engage with us first because by the time people see us, their contract signed, like they’re, already committed and they’re getting what they’re getting and that’s it. So I think that’s probably the biggest one. We’re all here to work as a team, so the real-term mortgage specialist and the lawyer should all work together to make it so that the person’s biggest stress is having to move their stuff, which I don’t want any part of. But it should be. That’s how the process should go.
Mickey (21:01)
The market itself is known to be competitive in Calgary. What are some creative strategies that you helped clients, you know, utilize to secure their dream property? And I know that it’s a big part of, you know, the realtor side of things in your, but is there, anything that you know, or that you can share?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (21:33)
I mean, on our side, it’s more when someone is starting to back out of a deal, like if a seller is starting to back out. So the fact that it attention issues, it works well that there’s one contract that I’m not having to sit and focus on like a thousand pages. So I know that contract. And we’ve gone at people who’ve threatened to back out at deals. And I think we’ve always been successful here aree’s sometimes when they just can’t back out.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (22:02)
Although sometimes we find creative ways of making it work. But yeah, so that’s, yeah, we’re sort of after the fact in terms of helping them get like their dream house unless there’s like a stumble through the process.
Mickey (22:13)
Sure. I found something cool about you. Prestigious Kings Council designation. Can you share what that is?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (22:19)
Yeah.
Yeah, so the Law Society, well it’s the Province of Alberta, every two years they have a call for nominations and what they’re looking for is a contribution to your community, contribution to the legal community, like excellence at your practice area, of the area of law, and you have to have a minimum number of years you’re practicing, but I mean, anyone can wait it out. But yeah, and so technically it’s like if, the king needed legal help in Alberta. These are part of their king’s council who’s able to do it. And in some respects, it’s both a political and a recognition of hard work. I’m not a political person. And so one friend who worked the law side, she said, Jeff, you earned yours. You’ve done it. So it was like when I found out, actually it was funny how I found out, I was on the way to Europe or something.
And you know, when you’re on a flight every once in a while, you’ll get like a little bleep of cell coverage that pops up. And so I must have got this little bleep and this email pops up from one of my lawyers or text message saying, congrats on the at the time was QC, not Casey on the QC. Like, what? And of course, it lasts for like a second. And you like Google it. What like what? And that’s how I found out. And I had like a little tear like it was just really kind of touching that to be thought of by my peers that way.
Mickey (23:45)
It’s fantastic. Have you seen an impact from a career side of things once you got it? No.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (23:50)
Not even remotely. I mean, I’m told that sometimes if you’re a litigation lawyer and you’re in coke junior lawyers get like all scared of dealing with a cassey or QC. I don’t think so. I mean, I’m the opposite. I had one of the lawyers we were dealing with. And he said to me, we just finished resolving the matter. He said I wasn’t even going to take this file. Like, I knew you were going to win. I knew you were going to win. And so I drove over to his office with chocolates again, not the same kind they get the plated hands.
And I just said like, hey, like never be afraid to represent a client. Like, like I might, I might win because I know the contract, but I’m, my position’s only as good as my client’s situation. So never fear that. Like, please bring it on. And sometimes I wish I hadn’t encouraged him so much because he can be quite aggressive, but I say that tongue in cheek. Like it’s, I think it’s really good for us to be able to, well, we have to, it’s our clients. Like it’s their house is everything for them.
Mickey (24:48)
Yeah, competing for your client, right?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (24:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s not even, it’s not even like I don’t even see it as fighting with another lawyer. Some lawyers get very agitated and it’s like a personal affront. And it’s like, this is not, it’s not our issue. And it’s not to say that we don’t advocate for them, but it’s not like we should work together to find a resolution that works for both our clients. So if you just come in from a, like a positional standpoint, like I want this, why I want this? You’re never gonna get anywhere because that doesn’t work.
Mickey (25:03)
Thought about that.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (25:17)
It’s like, okay, what are your client’s concerns? Here are my client’s concerns. So let’s see if we can figure out a solution that works even better and just get creative with it. And that’s what makes it more fun than just like, cover yourself accordingly or, you know, barking at each other. So it’s, we had one lawyer, he, everyone had a hard time with them with one particular issue, like consistently. And I said to him, I was called in, I was on holiday, but I was called in to resolve a matter that the firm that was representing the client initially wasn’t.
Mickey (25:31)
Yeah.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (25:46)
dealing with. And I said, Hey, like when I’m back, do you want to just go for a beer? And we went for a beer and I’ve never had an issue with him since then. It’s just, you know, building those connections like those, cause it’s like, you get to know the person. It’s hard to be angry at a person. And then, yeah, like let’s work together, figure this out.
Mickey (26:06)
Yeah, it’s not a fight, it’s a dance.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (26:08)
Yeah, exactly. Great analogy. I love the analogy.
Mickey (26:11)
Yeah. So we talked a little bit about technology and the website side of things. What roles do you see technology playing in the future of real estate law? And legal tech tools are providing a lot of value for a lot of lawyers right now. What’s kind of your future cast on it?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (26:29)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, the most disruptive things in the industry right now are AI and blockchain. I think the issue. So I’m going to see my career through. I’m not worried about it because you can’t you can’t AI solutions to what we deal with. You could the transaction itself, but there’s so much more to the transaction because things go wrong on almost every deal and it could be, You know, I had a client that took the furnace once. I had, you know, knife fights, but the RCMP gets called in. We’ve had, you know, the front lawn removed from the property. The house explodes. There’s like a sudden unnatural death. Like there are so many things that are just random that you can’t, you can’t, until you can control human behavior, to keep people from doing things that are not in their own best interest, you can’t replace the people.
Mickey (27:24)
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (27:24)
Yeah, some parts make it easier. So like we have a high volume of referrals that come from online sources. So we’re very efficient in terms of signatures, like using signatures well to respond and provide just good valuable information to people. So tools like that are good. I did try building, wait, I didn’t try it. I did build a, like the AI kind of Autobots for answering questions. And it works pretty well for answering basic stuff, not everything.
The problem is it just, slowed down our website only by a few milliseconds, but Google likes that. And so I’d rather sacrifice that communication tool for Page speed.
Mickey (28:02)
Yeah. Well, page speed is huge when it comes to ranking. Thanks.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (28:06)
it’s everything. And we’re WordPress, which is good or bad. I mean, it’s good for most things, but bad and that’s a little bit slower than some of the other platforms.
Mickey (28:14)
Yeah. Can you share a particularly memorable or impactful case that you worked on that stayed with you throughout your career?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (28:19)
shoot, you know, you have these things, and every time you think you’ve seen it all, someone proves you wrong. You know, we have one now that’s set down for trial and I’ve isolated what I see as a hole in legal understanding concerning our standard form contract in Alberta. And I don’t know which way the court’s gonna go but it will have a significant impact on things. And so like I’ve been waiting years to find the right file, the right case to go to trial and it looks like it’s going to. So it will give us some certainty. So I kind of like that will be a pivotal thing. For me also, I never outgrew my passion for teaching. So I just, love it when I do a lot of education once or twice a week. I think I bit off a little more than I could chew. I had three or four a week for the last several weeks. But for me, it’s like a high. Like it’s like, okay, we got this class and we’re gonna keep them engaged and we’re gonna teach them. And so I’ve taught in Lethbridge and we don’t market to the Lethbridge area. I’ve driven to Edmonton, we don’t market that market either. But I just, love it. And you know, it’s good. Like I teach for brokerages. I’m on the education committee for AMBA, the Alberta Mortgage Brokers Association for I teach for CREB and RECA, like the real estate board, the real estate council, and the association of realtors. I’ve taught for like stuff for student college, for credit unions, high schools. I still volunteer at high schools all the time. So like I just really enjoy it. I’ve even taught marketing. This fall, I’m chairing a two-day conference for the Law Society’s education arm for making real estate lawyers better real estate lawyers. And so this is my second year chairing it but they have me speak on marketing to real estate lawyers. So I’m going to train like two or 300 people, whoever’s there, how to better compete with me. So, and I don’t mind, like, I mean, it’s like any of these motivational forums, whatever if you were gonna go, they’re gonna be all excited for like a week and then they’re gonna get back to work and they’re gonna like forget and not do anything. I hope that they just pick up like, one or two things and just start building on.
Mickey (30:34)
It’s awesome. It’s really impressive to me how much you take on, especially from the marketing yourself. Do you have any, do you outsource any of it? Like you’re advertising, anything like that?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (30:43)
I have I mean, we have a radio station and they do, I do all the voicing of the creative, but we will build the creative together. I do have a great IT guy who can do some of the background stuff on our sites. And I have a lady who’s a web, she’s not a designer. She likes will build sites. So she has more of the technical stuff. So if I run into a little block, like, huh, we’re not getting these pages listed and Google is saying this.
Mickey (30:50)
Yeah.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (31:12)
she’ll explain it and always like I’ll pay her to do it but I want to learn from the experience also so I can figure out when I’m building out pages going forward how I avoid that and so it seems to work pretty well but for the most part like I record all my videos some very basic editing I get done by a local guy I just I enjoy it.
Mickey (31:35)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, one of the last questions that I have is, what are some resources or professional development opportunities that you’d recommend for lawyers looking to specialize in real estate law?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (31:46)
reach out to lawyers who are in the business. Like we’re, very few people I think would say no. Like I never say no to meeting with people. If they say, I want to come work for you, like can I come and set up an appointment? Like we’re not hiring right now, but I’d love to sit down with you and you know everything from students going into law school, I’ll teach them, you know, there’s some tricks I learned that are good at doing better with not like a lot of extra work. Probably you’ll work less and better grades. And the feedback I’ve got from people like, whoa, that made a difference. And so right through. So because we’re high volume, you see a lot of unusual situations. So even more experienced lawyers who have been at the bar for 10 years more than me will call, hey, what are you doing in this situation? So it’s good. Like just reach out. People aren’t scary, or they shouldn’t be scary. I don’t think I’m scary.
Mickey (32:34)
Yeah. You don’t, you seem the least bit scared of me.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (32:38)
I think it is a compliment when people say you’re not like a lawyer. That’s like the Pez. I got like an office full of Pez. They don’t have room for them. And then at auction, I bought this thing, which I think circa 1930s exercise.
Mickey (32:42)
What is it?
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (32:56)
Yeah, just random. And I took it home and my wife said, I said, can I get this is like five bucks at auction and it’s a piece of history. She thought it was a milkshake, you know, those old milkshake makers. It kind of looks for except for the scale. Yeah. She’s like, you got to take that back to the office. No, no, I don’t know what to do with it, but it sits there. It’s been there for like four years.
Mickey (32:57)
That is awesome.
Yeah.
She’s like, that’s not staying in the house.
That’s awesome. That’s hilarious. Awesome. Jeff, thank you so much. For our listeners, we’re going to link all of Jeff’s LinkedIn website and everything like that in the bio below. And I want to thank you again for your time.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (33:32)
Thank you, and if your listeners are thinking of going to law, so much fun, love it every day. And if someone tells you otherwise, ignore them and give me a call or send me an email.
Mickey (33:40)
Awesome, you heard it there.
Jeff Kahane, K.C. (33:42)
All right, take care, thank you.
Mickey (33:43)
Thank you.
