Episode 92: Collaborative Divorce with Ari Harper, CPA, ABV, CFE
In this season of The Data Sleuth Podcast, titled "Conversations about Fraud," guest host Justin Burns, managing partner of Space Coast Forensics in Brevard County, Florida, tackles topics including embezzlement, collaborative divorce, economic damages, construction fraud, and more. In each episode, Justin is joined by an industry expert to help tell the story behind the numbers and explore the latest in fraud detection and prevention.
In today’s episode we discuss collaborative divorce with Ari Harper, CPA ABV CFE. Our conversation includes:
What is the difference between collaborative divorce and a litigated divorce?
Is collaborative divorce right for all your divorce clients?
What happens when you discover hidden accounts/assets in a collaborative divorce?
As a forensic accountant, should I add collaborative divorce cases to my practice?
GUEST BIO
Ari S. Harper, CPA, ABV, CFE, is a forensic accountant specializing in litigation support, business valuation, and collaborative financial neutral services throughout Florida. Ari is qualified as an expert witness in multiple jurisdictions and is an Accredited Collaborative Professional.
Ari earned a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Finance from Florida Atlantic University and a Master’s of Science in Accounting from University of Illinois Chicago. After becoming a CPA in 2012, Ari went on to become Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) by the Associate of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).
Ari’s experience at prestigious litigation support firms provided exposure to complex matters, top notch attorneys, and cutting-edge processes and techniques. At Ari S. Harper, CPA, P.A., he seeks to blend this experience with his personal touch and creativity to provide valuable assistance to clients and attorneys seeking his expertise.
Ari has presented for the Broward County Bar Association, the Family Law Section of the Florida Bar, and as a university guest lecturer. He also serves the collaborative community as Vice President of the Choose Collaborate practice group in Boca Raton, committee co-chair and presenter for the Florida Academy of collaborative Professionals (FACP) annual conference, and inaugural member of the FACP leadership institute.
Website: harperforensic.com
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
To learn more about the Investigation Game Education Edition, visit: workmanforensics.com/tig-educators
Order your copy of Leah’s book, Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigations today on Amazon!
CONNECT WITH WORKMAN FORENSICS
Youtube: @WorkmanForensics
Facebook: @wforensics
Twitter: @wforensics
Instagram: @wforensics
LinkedIn: @workmanforensics
CONNECT WITH JUSTIN BURNS, CPA, CFE
Website: www.spacecoastforensics.com
LinkedIn: @space-coast-forensics
LinkedIn: Justin Burns, CPA, CFE
Subscribe and listen to this and more episodes of The Data Sleuth® Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Android, or anywhere you listen.
Transcript:
Leah Wietholter:
Hi. I'm Leah Wietholter, CEO and founder of Workman Forensics, and this is the Data Sleuth Podcast. For the 2024 season, we are changing it up a bit. I've invited Justin Burns, a forensic accounting professional and fraud fighter to guest-host the episodes. He's one of the friendliest and most personable professionals I've met in this space and I'm excited for you all to meet him and his guests.
Justin Burns:
Hi, everyone. As Leah mentioned, I'm Justin Burns, managing partner of Space Coast Forensics in Brevard County, Florida, and I'm your host for this season of the Data Sleuth Podcast. I'm excited to host this season titled Conversations About Fraud, where we'll tackle topics, including embezzlement, collaborative divorce, economic damages, construction fraud, and more. In each episode, I'll be joined by an expert to help tell the story behind the numbers. On today's episode of the Data Sleuth Podcast, Ari Harper and I are going to talk about the collaborative divorce process, how the process differs from the typical litigated divorce process, the types of clients that are right for the collaborative divorce process, and what forensic accountants and financial neutrals do in a collaborative process.
Ari Harper is a forensic accountant specializing in litigation support, business valuation and collaborative financial neutral services throughout Florida. In his spare time, you can find Ari cheering for the Miami Heat, practicing his guitar, spending time with his wife and kids, or taking extra long walks with his best friend Rocky. Another note about this episode, Ari and I both live and work in Florida, so you may hear us talk about rules specific to Florida or the Florida Academy of Collaborative Professionals. Different states have different rules and laws for divorce. If you hear us say something, and you say, "That's not quite right," this may be one of those occasions where the rules in your state differ from the rules that we have to follow. All right. Thanks for joining us, Ari.
Ari Harper:
Good morning. Thanks for having me, Justin.
Justin Burns:
So Ari, our episode today is on collaborative divorce, and I know you work on a wide variety of cases, including litigated and collaborative divorce cases. What is it about the collaborative divorce process that you enjoy so much?
Ari Harper:
Well, so a number of things. Really, I think it's better for everybody. When I say everybody, I mean I think it's better for the families involved, I think it's better for the professionals involved, and I think it's better for the general public because it keeps the court system unclogged, so I think it's a win-win-win across the board.
Justin Burns:
Some of our listeners may not be familiar with the collaborative divorce process. I think this podcast and plenty of the other ones have covered the litigated process from a forensic accounting standpoint. Can you talk a little bit about how collaborative divorce differs from typical litigated divorce?
Ari Harper:
Sure. So the big difference is that at the outset, the people involved are committed to staying out of court, so it's a decidedly out-of-court process. You're taking the power away from the court system, which only learns about your family and your issues through what's presented by way of the attorneys, so you're taking a commitment to not go to court. The only thing that's really required, or at least here in Florida, the only thing that's required to make a collaborative process is two lawyers and a commitment to stay out of court. It's common, especially here, that you'll build a professional team that incorporates other disciplines. For example, a neutral, financial professional or a neutral facilitator, who is typically a mental health professional. I know they have different models in different parts of the state and different parts of the country. Typically, in my neck of the woods, that's how it's set up, and so in addition to the legal aspects of divorce, it acknowledges and addresses that you have a financial and an emotional component to the dissolution, and it brings in the professionals to handle that in a more streamlined fashion.
Justin Burns:
Okay. So you're talking about two attorneys, a financial neutral and a mental health counselor, all involved in these cases, with the mental health counselor acting as the facilitator. Is that more expensive, having all those people involved from the get-go?
Ari Harper:
Well, so it can be, and the best way to think about it is, is it difficult on the client's short, coming up with four retainers at the outset as opposed to just two retainers, right? If they're each retaining an attorney, but ultimately, if there are financial complexities and if there are children's issues, then you're really streamlining those discussions. So whereas your typical lawyer, no offense to my lawyer friends out there, aren't as adept at those of us who practice forensic accounting at doing the financial portion, right? Putting together an equitable distribution worksheet, assessing income, those sorts of things they hire us for. That's why we exist.
And so, in a typical litigated divorce, when you run into these complexities, you've got each attorney either doing the work themselves at a higher hourly rate and not doing quite as good a job as an accountant would do, or running out to hire dueling accountants, who then are each going to do essentially the same work, potentially come to different conclusions, and then be a part of this litigation, right? Whereas in a collaborative case, you have a neutral financial who gathers the objective data, and then can present it in an option building process. They can present it from multiple perspectives, whether they be emotional or legal perspectives, right? And so, ultimately, when the cases get a little bit more complex, they tend to save money, so nothing is ever guaranteed, of course.
It's not that a litigated case is certainly going to cost X, and a collaborative case is going to cost X minus or X plus, but in my experience, the common result is that, for a case with any kind of nuance to it, the streamlined financials, and then having the mental health professional take the lead similarly on the children's issues. So instead of having two lawyers each presenting how their clients see it, the mental health professional will gather the facts, and they will present, and again, make it part of an option building process. So as opposed to two lawyers, whose forte isn't necessarily the emotional component of parenting, you have someone where that is their forte, and they're helping to design the parenting plan. So that's streamlined as well, and so ultimately, when the process is worked properly and is properly committed to, for the most part, you actually do see clients saving money as related to a similar litigated case.
Justin Burns:
And just from what you were just talking about, you mentioned if there's complexities, like somebody owns a business, there's children involved, that's sort of the situation where collaborative would be more beneficial than if it's just a simple divorce, no kids, not a lot of assets, but you talked about the mental health counselor working with the children and things like that. Last episode, we talked to Ben Kincaid about embezzlements, and his big thing was people not really understanding the true cost of fraud. Part of that is an emotional cost and how, as forensic accountants, we sometimes become that emotional support person for our clients, and sometimes that's not the most comfortable thing for accountants to do, but in the collaborative process, we have a mental health counselor right there with us, so it's nice having that.
Ari Harper:
It's absolutely one of the best parts. At the outset, when I said that one of the reasons I enjoy it so much is that it's better for everybody, one of those components is for the forensic accountants and for the attorneys. Having a mental health professional on the spot, how often do we say, all of us, that we're not therapists, right? Because we're not, so number one, we're not qualified to do therapy. Number two, we're charging probably way too much to do terrible therapy, right?
If the client's calling us, and they're saying, "Oh, but my SOB husband did this," or "My terrible wife did this to me, and they're venting about it, you don't don't want to shut them down, you don't want to dismiss them, but you're not really helping them by billing them to let them vent. That's not really in their best interest. So to have a mental health professional in your pocket, who you can just kind of put forth and say, "Hey, they're talking about finances," or "They're talking about a parenting plan or equitable distribution, but really this is an emotional issue." Having the person who's equipped to address, it's better for them, and it's better for us as professionals. So that's one of the components that, in my mind, makes collaborative a win-win.
Justin Burns:
And this collaborative process and couples going through this, obviously, they need to be able to work together. What are the most important qualities for couples going through this that they have to have?
Ari Harper:
So again, first of all, it's not for every case, right? So I think that's really important to recognize, but the case is where it works the best. Number one is where they have a reason to use this process, right? So you have a critical mass of issues that require a team. If it's as simple as a house and a 401k, no kids, and we're going to sell the house and split the 401k, and we make about the same amount of money, you probably are overpaying by bringing in a full team to do a collaborative process, realistically, but what's really important in order for this to be successful is that the clients are able to be transparent, right? And that there is some level of trust in their ability to be transparent. Now, so obviously they're going through a divorce. When they get to you, there's almost certainly going to be an impairment of the level of trust between them.
So it's rare, but it happens where you have couples come, and they say, "We're simply not in love anymore, and we just want to go our separate ways in peace." In that case, they are a terrific candidate for collaborative, but what happens more commonly is something went wrong. Somebody stepped out, or there was some event, some impetus that caused the divorce, even if it wasn't on its own, right? Even if it was an aggregate over a period of years or over a period of time. And so, when they come to us, certainly trust is going to be impaired, but we do need to have a commitment of transparency. That doesn't mean that, as accountants, we're not doing our due diligence. We are, but it's going to be based on the scope, as defined within process. And so, it's extremely important that we can rely on the people involved to provide the documents that we're asking for.
We're not going to play games with discovery. We're not going to withhold information. If somebody asks for something, it's provided. It's provided on time, and it's provided completely. That's really 99%, I think, of what it takes to make it work. The rest of it is just a commitment to staying out of court, because if you consistently raise that threat, we all know it's there, right? We all know the court system is there, break glass in case of an emergency. If they simply can't resolve this for all of everybody's best efforts, then that option does exist, but it can't be wielded about as a bludgeon throughout the process, because that's, that's going to impair the mindset of we're here to work this out. We're here to build options and choose options that suit our family better than a stranger can do. As long as they can keep that in sight and commit to being transparent with each other, then we have a very high success rate.
Justin Burns:
And I think part of the collaborative mindset that I've been really interested in is that we're talking about, "Okay. There's two lawyers, a mental health professional and a financial neutral, all involved in this," but these meetings are all happening with everybody, and that facilitator is helping to keep everybody in that mindset of like, "Hey, let's just get to this end goal," and keeping things from becoming hostile, and really just getting everybody to be on the same team.
Ari Harper:
Yeah. The facilitator is really essential. So number one, they have to have this skill set of being able to create a parenting plan, being able to work a divorce process. Even though we're outside of court, it's still lawyers that are still going to be documents filed. It's still a legal process, so they need that specialty skill set. You can be the world's best therapist, and that doesn't automatically make you the world's best collaborative facilitator. Then, the other part of it is the facilitation skill.
They run these meetings, and it's terrific because it allows the financial person to focus on the finances. It allows the lawyers to focus on the legal issues. So the facilitator typically sets the meetings, drafts the agendas, takes the notes, makes sure that everybody's needs are being met throughout the process and in between the full team meetings, and then they run the meetings. One thing that I've always kind of noticed, that I kind of laugh at myself at, right? This goes back to financial people not being the best therapist.
Sometimes we're in these meetings, and the clients start having a bit of a go at each other, nothing crazy but, "Well, you did this, and you did that," and the back and forth and the tit-for-tat starts.
I'm looking at the facilitator thinking, "Hey, what are you doing? You got to shut this down. Let's go."
It always seems to go just a little longer than the lawyers and the financial people are comfortable with, and then, a really good facilitator will shut it down. Each time I've asked them, "Hey, why'd you let them go so long? It seems like you just kind of let that happen," they have this skill where they know that they need to let them vent appropriately. That limit, it's better defined in the mind of an actual mental health professional than it is in a layperson, as far as that stuff goes, an accountant and a lawyer, who don't really understand psychology the way that the mental health professional does, so it's always been interesting to me that the way they run the meetings, it really does take a very special individual with, in my opinion, a very particular background and skill set.
Justin Burns:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's great, having those skill sets all working on the same team together, and we're going to go ahead and take a quick ad break.
Speaker 4:
Breaking into the field of forensic accounting can be overwhelming, leaving you wondering where to begin. The best way to gain experience is by working cases, but how do you work cases to learn without the results impacting the outcome of a real case? Leah's book Data Sleuth: Using data and Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigations contains case studies and solutions for you to practice planning a case, from identifying the client's concerns and connecting them to the appropriate analyses and finding the most relevant data to perform the analysis, to build your confidence in addressing client needs through reliable analyses, using the Data Sleuth book and free practice downloads as a guide by ordering your copy today on Amazon.
Justin Burns:
Okay. We're back with Ari Harper, talking about collaborative divorce. Now, Ari, before the ad break, we were talking about trust and transparency being necessary for a collaborative divorce process to work. This is a forensic accounting podcast. We are forensic accountants. We're trained to sniff out deception. What happens when you discover that one of the parties has been hiding something?
Ari Harper:
So I think it depends a lot on what it is that they're hiding. Is it material? Is it not material? What's the emotional fallout of this? Because ultimately, as a neutral, you do have to bring everything to the team. We're neutral. We're transparent. We are not the keepers of secrets here, so if we've discovered something that has a large financial impact, everybody's got to know. It's a question of, do you first maybe alert the facilitator and then the lawyers together, and then the clients? Do you alert the professionals first and then the clients? Do you potentially bring it to the client who was involved in the deceptive activity, and give them a chance to cure it or give them a chance to come clean? So there's a lot of judgment there in terms of how you address it.
There's certainly not a one size fits all solution, but ultimately, the important thing to remember is that it's in the client's best interest to remain in the process. We're still doing our jobs, right? We go to a collaborative process. It's not as though we say, "Okay. Well, there's no court, so we're only going to do a portion of the work." Unless it's been agreed upon and memorialized that you're not going to look at certain accounts or do a certain scope of work, you've got to do your due diligence anyways, so it's really important that the clients understand, first of all, at the outset, so it doesn't even come to that, right? That they understand that you're going to be looking at things. And so, it's in their benefit to stay in the process, and so they signed a participation agreement.
There's a number of good reasons for them to be transparent, and you want to hold them to that. So for us, we're still doing our diligence, we're still doing our work, and if something comes out, it's really important to use the team that's at your disposal to get the best outcome, because it's not necessarily the case that you would terminate the process because of this. The process can survive some amount of issues like this. It might very well be the case that it can't, and maybe you make that determination as a team. You go right back to the clients, and that's what you tell them, that, "Our process is done, because the participation agreement is not being respected."
Justin Burns:
And you touched on it there, it's not a decision that you have to make in a silo. You bring it to the other professionals on the team, and you can talk to them about it. So it's not something that's all on you to make this decision on how you want to bring this forward. Another interesting thing about the collaborative divorce process. Well, we know litigated divorces, statistically, they take about 18 months to finalize, or at least that's the statistic here in Florida. How long does it take for a collaborative divorce, from start to finish?
Ari Harper:
So actually, in Florida, we have statistics on it. The Florida Academy of Collaborative Professionals asks that its members complete a debrief and a survey at the end of each case, and they provide those statistics to the organization. I apologize, I don't have them here in front of me off the top of my head, so I couldn't give you the statistical answer right now. I can tell you that, in my experience, when the parties are engaged, when they're actually coming to the meetings, ready to do the work, listening to their attorneys, and working through the process, it's rare that it would probably go more than six months in terms of what I've seen. I've had some cases conclude in two or three months, a couple of meetings, you get it right out of the way.
Sometimes it does take longer. It's sometimes the case that maybe one of the parties doesn't actually want the divorce, and isn't ready and is struggling to process it. It can, then, take more time. Sometimes I've had it happen where families will come to the team to start their collaborative process, and then at some point put it on hold. It can be a lot of time before they come back to us, so it could be because they're reconciling. It could be because they're trying to reconcile. It could be because one or both of them is now seeing the reality of what life looks like post divorce, and they're reconsidering it. So for any number of reasons, it can take a long time. But when people are coming to the team, looking to actually get divorced, then it would be odd to me that it would really take more than six months.
Justin Burns:
Yeah, and I mean, because this is outside of court, you're not waiting to get on the docket. You're not waiting for those next hearings.
Ari Harper:
That's the biggest factor by far, right? So I mean, trying to get on a court docket here, especially down in South Florida, Dade, Broward, Miami, these counties, you're waiting a long time for a hearing now. You're waiting a long time for trial. We've all seen it where you've waited a long time for your hearing or your trial, and then the judge, or one of the parties, or one of the attorneys suddenly gets COVID, or suddenly can't make it, has some kind of an emergency and you can't just reschedule it for next Tuesday, so the litigation process inherently takes a long time, unless you're able to settle, which is obviously preferable, but in this process, that's what you're focusing on throughout. You're not preparing for litigation, and therefore are not beholden to those timeframes.
Justin Burns:
And so, you mentioned that if somebody is hiding something and they're not willing to be transparent, there's a possibility that the professional working group says, "You've broken the practice agreement. We think it's best if you leave the collaborative process. So if they leave the collaborative process, what happens?
Ari Harper:
So the participation agreement usually provides for that, in terms of what happens in the event of a termination. I've seen agreements where there's a cooling off period, where they have to wait 30 days before they can hire additional counsel. There can be different kinds of nuances worked into the agreement, but ultimately what happens every time is the team is conflicted out. So the attorneys are no longer your attorneys, for purposes of the divorce. The financial professional is no longer assisting you with your finances, and the mental health professional is no longer facilitating your process, so all the professionals are out. The work product can be used by everybody's agreement.
So if, for example, they say to me, "We're sorry the process fell apart. We'd like to use the draft equitable distribution chart that you've prepared as we proceed towards litigation in hopes of settlement," if I say, "Sure, you can use it," but one of the attorneys says, "No, I don't want them to have it," that's it. All of the participants can preclude that, so you run the risk of losing everything that you've done. The cost becomes a sunk cost. The institutional knowledge that your attorneys have gained is essentially out the window. The parenting plan, unless you've managed to get interim agreements in place, those can still withstand, but all the rest of the progress that you've made, all the expense, and all the time is gone. So it's not meant to be punitive, but you are committing to staying out of court. So if you're not following through with that commitment, then you lose the benefits of the process.
Justin Burns:
So that risk of losing the costs that you've put into this process, that risk of having to start the clock over, find new attorneys, do all that stuff, that's a really good motivator for people to stay in the process, be open, transparent, and to try to work together to complete the process.
Ari Harper:
Correct. The other substantial motivator, at least ought to be, the reasons they chose the collaborative process in the first place, right? If you wanted a quicker resolution, you wanted a less expensive resolution, you wanted a mental health professional, a neutral mental health professional to work on the parenting plan, you wanted the confidentiality benefits of collaborative. There's a myriad benefits to choosing this process in the first place. If you terminate the process, you can start over in collaborative. I believe that's highly unlikely. I don't know that I've ever seen that, where a process is terminated. I'm sure it's happened. I don't know that I've seen it, right? A process is terminated, and then they start over with a new collaborative process. Almost for sure, you're going to litigation, and you're losing all the benefits inherently of why you chose the process in the first place, in addition to the costs, the knowledge, and everything else that's sunk into the particular process that you've just terminated.
Justin Burns:
Right, so last season of this podcast, Leah explored the business side of forensic accounting. So for the forensic accountants listening to this, what are the advantages of this type of work, that maybe a forensic accountant would want to get into this line of work?
Ari Harper:
Sure. The first that comes to my mind is control over your calendar. How many times, as a forensic accountant, has one of your dearly valued referral sources called you and just started riffing about a trial or a hearing that was next week that you didn't have on your calendar, right? And they just, "Oh, and we need this, and we need that, and I need you to hurry up," and it's like all hands on deck?
You stop them and you say, "I'm sorry. What hearing?"
"What? Nobody ever sent you this."
Then, you go back to your emails. "No, nobody ever sent me this."
But the hearing is on, and so you've got to drop everything, rearrange your priorities, get everything together, and be prepared for this imminent hearing. In collaborative, that doesn't happen, because everybody takes out their calendars and sets the meetings when it's appropriate for them. You don't have to tell the court, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm on vacation at this time." You simply just say, "Hey, not available," and then you move to the next day, so the control of your calendar is, in my opinion, a very nice benefit for the professionals. The lack of receivables, so the way that it happens in my professional circles is, if one of the professionals is not paid, everybody pauses work on the case. So sometimes it may be that one of the participants doesn't like the facilitator or thinks the financial neutral isn't being totally neutral, and then they stop paying the invoices.
The entire team is going to stop at that point. Now, the client still has the prerogative. If they want to move on from one of their neutrals, that can be a part of their process, but the money that is due and owing at that point has to be paid, and supporting each other as a team makes sure that that's so. I don't think I've ever finished a collaborative case where I didn't collect time that I'd billed, so the lack of receivables, if you have receivables on a collaborative case, you've at some point must have made a dire mistake, because at every meeting, we're checking in the beginning of the meeting, "Is everybody paid up? Is anybody owed money? If so, why? What are we doing? Let's get this addressed, because we have to get that addressed before we can proceed." So it's the control of your calendar. It's the lack of receivables. It's the lack of stress.
So again, as forensics, we know that we can put together equitable distribution chart that has all of the information that the clients need to make decisions about division of assets, and we can do that in X amount of time, but to take that same chart and have it stand on its own with all the footnotes, all the supporting documents, and all the documents are highlighted, redacted, and put into a binder with tabs and everything else, it can take two x or three x the amount of time to get that answer, so you simply don't have to put as much of yourself into the same work in order to give the clients the same level of service, and not being scrutinized by an opposing counsel, not having your deposition taken, not being cross examined. Those stressful factors are inherently removed, because you're just not going to court.
Then, the other thing, and this is no small benefit, is being a part of a supportive collaborative community. It may sound a little corny, and if that's the case, that's probably just because a little corny, but the real meat and potatoes of that is you can get non-collaborative referrals from that as well. So if you're a forensic accountant and you join a practice group, a collaborative practice group, hopefully you're getting collaborative cases. That's why you're there, and that's the preference for all the reasons that we just went through, right? The calendars, the receivables, the lack of stress; all of these reasons make it preferable to get collaborative work, but for most of us, or at least for myself, the collaborative work still isn't the majority of my revenue.
So I'm in business to be in business, and the volume, the majority of the volume of the things that I work on are litigated cases, but these are still family law attorneys that are joining these groups. So when you're a part of the group, if they get a collaborative case, hopefully they bring you in. If they get a litigated case, it's not odd that they would come to someone who is part of their collaborative group, assuming that they're equally adept at handling a litigated matter. So the community is really nice, and that's not to say anything else of the corny part, right? Which is that you have nice events, you meet nice people, and can help each other be sounding boards with issues you have in practice and things like that. So having the built-in community is really nice for a number of reasons, but at least of all is you can generate business out of it.
Justin Burns:
Yeah. I mean, the practice group that I'm in, in Brevard County, we do quarterly get-togethers, and since it is a mixture of, you've got your attorneys, you've got your financial neutrals, you've got your mental health counselors, the CPAs, we get together, and it's like, "Hey, let's get a couple of hours of CPE while we're here," but it doesn't really match up that way when you've got people from different sorts of practices coming together. We went Axe throwing last time.
Ari Harper:
Yeah. We do a lot of fun things at our group. Yeah.
Justin Burns:
Yeah. I look forward to these things. Like Christmas, they have a murder mystery Christmas night thing that we're going to go do, and yeah, you're just meeting these people, networking. You've got a common interest, and yeah, you can pick up other cases from this too. You're not changing your rate any, are you?
Ari Harper:
No, no. A billable hour is a billable hour, so you have your rate, times your time, is your revenue, and it's kind of a common objection to attorneys who don't practice collaborative, that they can't make enough money doing this, but you can because you're billing the same rate. So if you're willing to work X hours and you've got the business, then you're still going to make the same amount of money. It is not a decrease in any way. It's only positive.
Justin Burns:
Yeah. All right, so I think that's all the time we have for today, Ari. If anyone wants to get connected to you, how do they do it?
Ari Harper:
All my contact info is on my website, Harperforensic.com. If that's too hard to remember, Lawyershatemath.com redirects to my website. That's usually a little more unforgettable for most people, so lawyershatemath.com or harperforensic.com. It's got all my contact information. I'd love to hear from you.
Justin Burns:
All right, and we will have links to get in touch with Ari in the show notes. Thank you for joining us today.
Ari Harper:
Thanks for having me, Justin. This was really great.
Leah Wietholter:
Thank you for listening to the Data Sleuth podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review wherever you listen. The Data Sleuth podcast is a production of Workman Forensics. To learn more about our investigation services and resources, please visit WorkmanForensics.com.