Hi, I’m Matthew Brickman, Florida Supreme court mediator. Welcome to the Mediate This! Podcast where we discuss everything mediation and conflict resolution.

So I am joined here today by Jamie Lima. Jamie is a former Morgan Stanley Fidelity executive who oversaw uh a few dollars for a few families. Um, you know, somewhere, what was it, a billion dollars for 450 families, I think I saw Jamie. Somewhere in the range. Um yeah. Um, but then uh then you left to become a certified divorce financial analyst. Um, and you’ve got a lot of great uh things going on. You’ve got some technology I definitely want to talk to you about that you’ve uh I guess created and um and and whatnot. And then you’re also a mediator too, right? Correct. Correct. Yeah. So uh yeah. Tell me about yourself and how you how you got to where you are today.

Jamie Lima: 01:02
Well, I mean, you covered a lot of the high points there, but um I think yeah, people ask me this question all the time. And I think if you look back at even going back years and years and years ago when I was a kid, you know, I’m the product of a divorce. I watched my parents go through this, struggle themselves, and um, you know, and I I watched them from a financial perspective. They really, really struggled, both of them. And I think that’s really kind of what propelled me into the world of financial planning in and of itself. And I had always had um an interest in business and an interest in finance even growing up, and and I had an opportunity, like you mentioned, you know, to to start my career at Morgan Stanley uh about 21 years ago now, which is crazy to think. Um so I started with Morgan Stanley, um, built my practice there, and then I went to uh Fidelity Investments. I was there for about 10 years or so, had a couple different roles, one of which was managing, like you mentioned, you know, the uh about 450 households. And I think when I left I was at like 1.2 billion, which is a gigantic number. Um but you know at the end of the day, it doesn’t really get you much in that type of environment, believe it or not. Um so I decided to start my own wealth management practice. Uh my my timing was impeccable.

unknown: 02:16
Okay.

Speaker 2: 02:17
I decided to start my wealth management practice April of 2020. Anyone remember what was going on? April of 2020? Raise your hand if you’re gonna.

Matthew Brickman: 02:24
Well, I remember March. I remember March of 2020, and then after that, it was the longest decade of our life, right? Yeah, seven months.

Speaker 2: 02:34
Exactly. So I started a wealth management practice with zero clients, zero income, zero revenue in the throes of COVID. And uh believe it or not, it actually turned out to be a blessing because all of the clients that I worked with at that point, it’s it’s went from having to work with people within you know 20 miles of your office to you know working with people in Florida all over the country in this type of environment. And now we’re so used to it, it just it just makes sense. Like, why hadn’t we been doing this all along? And it put me in a position where I could work with people all over the country, I could I could work with a select you know, few uh folks that I I really wanted to work with, but I I didn’t have to work with, but I wanted to work with. Um but I have always had a pass for doing the divorce work and something that I I went through my own challenging divorce in 2017. And knowing what I know now, had I known it then, my my experience would have been you know so much different in so many ways. But uh I just I decided once my wealth management practice was underway and in a good spot, I wanted to go back and focus on the certification for the work that we do now. I do now, and it actually put me in a position where I was able to sell my wealth management practice last year to go all in on divorce. So that’s what I’m doing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, effectively.

Matthew Brickman: 03:51
Yeah. I mean, and so I’ve I have a similar type story where I got into my, you know, as a divorce mediator because of my own divorce. Um, not my parents’ divorce, but my own. And that led me then into like like I was fighting with my ex, didn’t never heard of mediation. The judge was tired of seeing us, ordered us to mediation. I’m like, this is a cool thing, like I could do this. Um, and so you know, then had to get you know, get my education, certification, and then start building the practice. Um, like you said, one of what one of the great things was, you know, prior to 2020, you’re really just working local, right? Like whoever’s in your vicinity, driving, calling, whatnot. But a lot of it was that personal interaction that people were looking for for local. Um so I actually started doing virtual in 2009. So two years after the iPhone was released, I I had an idea going, why can’t I mediate everywhere? The problem was the technology wasn’t there. And so, Jamie, I I called Microsoft, I called Apple. They’re like, we don’t have at the time there was iChat, which is now what we know as just chat with Apple, and then there was Skype. That was it. There was nothing else. So I found a young engineer at WebEx who was fascinated by mediation and said, we have nothing like that. Oh, that sounds fun to build. So I spent a year with WebEx and they built me what we’re on now and the platforms that we use. And actually, Zoom was created by a former WebEx uh engineer. So I started expanding my reach way back in 09. So when 2020 happened for me, it was awesome. I was like, I’ve been doing this for years, and so there was no learning curve. There was no, okay, how do I go virtual? How do I run a system? How do I’m like, I’ve been doing this for me. What happened was I went from paying over $200 a month for a license to $20, was it $24.95? So I saved thousands of dollars just in licensing fees. And but but yeah, I mean, 2020 was a huge, I mean it was it was bad, but business-wise, it actually turned out to be my busiest year I ever I ever had. And now, yeah, I mean, it’s just the efficiency, it’s so much easier. The technology is there, it just took a while for like like we need like I I hate to say it like this. We almost needed something like that to actually wake up to that’s an old way, old business model, and it’s limiting. And look at our reach now.

Speaker 2: 06:33
Absolutely. And I’m I hope you got in early on some equity in the WebEx piece there. No, oh man. I was gonna say we should be having this. We should be having this from your yacht. We shouldn’t be having this conversation from your yacht at this point. This is crazy.

Matthew Brickman: 06:48
Yeah, so so it’s interesting. I actually have a YouTube video, and people are like, really, man, like wrong. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, seriously. You can go back on YouTube on my channel. I have a video that I actually made in I think 2011 that was actually advertising using this platform and using Cisco WebEx and going virtual. And I created a video advertising, and so I still go back to my YouTube channel. I watched that video going, that was so cool. Uh because it was so visionary ahead of its time and fun. And then I even have screenshots. So, like yesterday in mediation, we were talking about this like Matthew, why don’t you use Zoom? I’m like, Because this is the platform that was built for me in 09. I know this platform is my platform, like I’m not going to something different. And so I actually have screenshots of old mediations and what the and what the platform looked like back in the day. And you look at it, and so one of the attorneys goes, Man, that gives me AOL dial-up vibes. I’m like, I know that’s like, you know, that’s what it was. And even and what’s funny is the technology back then, Jamie. Like when we went into a breakout room, right? We couldn’t take a camera with us. They didn’t know how they didn’t have the technology. So we could go into a breakout room and we would lose camera. We’d still have audio and screen share, but lose camera. And eventually technology caught up and we were able to then move a camera into a breakout room. And like when they started, um, I told them, I said, look, I need like five. They were like, okay, we created, I think it was like 10 or 11. Then it went to like a thousand, and now like you can just have like, you know, the Muppets Gallery, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But uh so okay, so so you started that in 20 uh, I guess in 2020, and then like when did you start mediating or getting more into the family? Like, like you you were managing family money, because you said like 450 families when you were done that. How did you then transition into like what you’re doing today?

Speaker 2: 08:50
Yeah, well, when I moved over to the wealth management practice, and just a little quick backstory on the on the CDFA, the certified divorce financial analyst designation that I have, I had I had asked my manager when I was way way back when when I was at Fidelity Investments, like, I want to get this designation, I think it could help a lot of people. And this was this was like right after I did my CFP. Uh I I had studied before my CFP exam, uh, took the exam, and there was a window of like six or eight weeks where you didn’t even find out if you passed the exam until the letter arrived in your mailbox, right? So that’s uh that it was way back when. And in my the way that I work from is I need to keep that momentum going, right? I was afraid that if I didn’t pass and I had to go back and take it again, it was like it would be like starting from ground zero again as far as studying goes because it’s like there was a lot of information shwooshed into my brain, and then as soon as I could let it out, I was letting it out.

Matthew Brickman: 09:44
And yeah, control delete. I’m done.

Speaker 2: 09:46
Oh, a thousand percent, a thousand percent. And I went back to my manager and I said, Okay, like just to keep my brain going, I’d like to this designation exists, I like to study for it and at least keep that you know momentum going. And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, We don’t do that kind of work here, kid. Go back to your office and go make some more phone calls. And sure enough, I fall in line and I go back to my office and make some more phone calls, and a couple, you know, like a year or two later, I go through my own divorce, right? So fast forward to to answering your question. Once I got my wealth management practice in place where it was it was not necessarily self-sustaining, but I didn’t have to like go out like every day, like trying to get new clients, every get new clients. I took a beat and went and finished the designation and actually built two companies. So I had my wealth management practice and then I have allegiant divorce solutions, which is where I do my divorce manager planning. So there was a clear delineation between both roles I was playing. And it got to the point where I was getting like 120 prospects on my calendar a month on the divorce side. So I just decided to I don’t have time. Yeah, I was kind of like, yeah, and then and the the compliance headache and insurance and the tech stack and everything else that goes along with wealth management, I decided to walk away from that and and actually parlay the sale of the wealth management practice into building the software that you mentioned earlier.

Matthew Brickman: 11:08
Okay. All right, so talk to me about the software. I love software. So what did you create software-wise?

Speaker 2: 11:18
Well, in our world, as you know, there’s very little application, very few applications out there that will allow us to do our our highest and best work that haven’t been created like when the two of us were in high school. I mean, it was the the stuff the software that’s out there right now. We used one long period of time, and it was a veritable spreadsheet based on a Windows XP. Talk about AOL dial-up, right? This if you look at this platform, I won’t say the name, but if you look at this platform, you would it’s it’s WebEx V1. Yeah. And I got so frustrated with it and couldn’t do manipulate it the way I wanted to, and do the reports coming out of it, and it were awful. If I’m working on a case in Florida, I have to input the data one way, but if I’m in California, I have to input it a different way. It’s just there’s just no cohesiveness to it. So I decided in talking to an engineer and and you know developer and web person, you know, early 2025, that we need to do something about this. So uh we started putting the wheels of motion on it, and we’ve built the platform that mediators like us, family law attorneys, even some forensic accountants, uh paralegals, you name it, are using to handle the financial aspects of divorce. And it’s everything from client intake to data gathering, client portal, secure messaging. Uh pretty soon we’re gonna have time tracking and billing. Like we’re maybe we’re building a platform where it’s gonna be a one-stop shop for divorce professionals. We’ve launched uh we did a soft launch in March, came back, fixed some bugs and cleaned up some things, and then officially did a hard launch in June. And we’re at like 30 some odd firms and you know, hundreds of professionals in already, and we’re we’re gaining momentum every month. It’s been super cool.

Matthew Brickman: 13:14
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So I don’t do numbers, um, you know, which is why I went into family law. I’m like, I don’t do numbers. Like, give give me the emotional stuff, give me the kids stuff, like, you know, now granted, you know, we’re gonna deal with equitable distribution and alimony and child support and stuff, but you know, the number stuff, like most family attorneys are not number people. That’s why we do family law. Like, um, and so having the having the right software is everything. Um and and so, yeah, I mean, I I like the idea of having like a one-stop shop cohesive software platform to be able to do that where, you know, you know, and especially everybody can have access. Like, you know, there’s there’s with without name dropping, but yeah, there are certain platforms out there which is okay, it’s for the professional, but the client doesn’t have access to it. They can’t do it. So then, you know, and and software is only as good as the input that you put into it, right?

Speaker 2: 14:25
Absolutely. And we’re solving we’re solving the consumer problem too. We actually have a consumer application that’s in development right now, and you know, it’s more educational. You know, you can run some rudimentary numbers, you can get connected to the professional if necessary, and so on. So that tool will be coming as well. But to your point about the like you don’t even have to be a numbers person to use SecureSplit, which is the software. Because picture this, picture this. You have two two clients that you’re gonna be working with. You know, you have the spouse and the spouse that you’re gonna be working with, you send them both a link to the platform, they log in, they create their client portal, they start to upload their financial information or input their financial information because some professionals do things differently, right? A lot of people will want to gather the information to do it themselves. Others, myself included, I want to put the onus on the client. And then I’ll go back and verify I’ll go, I’ll go back and verify the information, don’t get me wrong. But I want to make sure I want them to have some skin in the game too. Plus, it saves them time and money. Absolutely. And then once that data is in and validated, then we can actually manipulate it. So we actually created an asset division module where we have all the marital assets in the middle, sole and comfort on either sides, right? So it’s kind of a nice three three-column can ban board, so to speak. Yep. And all you gotta do is click and drag assets from one side to the other, and in real time, the mathematical equations will run. It’ll tell you the equalization payment, taxes and tax components, all of it, all in one module. So you could actually share your screen with the client, and in real time, it’s a little bit of gamification, right? Okay, Susie, let’s put this on your column. You know, Tommy, let’s put this on your column and back and forth. But what how does this look? And you can do that all in real time with them and not have to evolve spreadsheets.

Matthew Brickman: 16:07
Yeah, yeah, I hate spreadsheets. Um they’re just like dude, I hate spreadsheets, which which is why. So I will name drop one. So the main program that I use is family law software. Um and where um, but I generally where I generally go is I go to the property evaluation screen, which gives you a he said value, she said value, and value to use. Then I’ll go to the division of assets that shows the two columns. I’m like, okay, if if Tommy gets this and Susie gets this, and we just start moving stuff, and then it starts doing those numbers as well. Um, and you know, you know, again, it’s only as good as the information you input into it. And I do a lot of pro se where the parties are gathering the information and they give it to me, and then in mediation, I’m having to put it in and whatnot. Whereas if if they’re able to log in and do that, like you said, it saves time and money. So then we almost almost, you know, for the most part, we can save time and money on the identification of the asset and the valuation, and we can go right to negotiation and distribution, right? 100%, 100%. Um, so so with this, is there AI in it? Because a lot of people are like, oh yeah, you know, AI is great. It can do some analysis, you can upload the docs, it can, you know, take a certain doc and populate it. Do you have AI in it?

Speaker 2: 17:34
Yes, yeah. So we have uh open AI uh chatbot that’s in the uh platform. We call Casey. Uh well, okay, him or her, he or he or she, right? I mean Casey can be either way, so that we we thought that was a nice appropriate name for for our chat. Yeah, I like that. I like that. So so Casey lives in the platform and we are secure split. So there’s a couple different components of this. The first is we have to maintain security at all all we’re like we’re we’re moving towards SOC2 compliance, bank level encryption. We have all that stuff in place right now, we just need to get the certification of SOC 2 piece, but bank level encryption, you know, uh encryption at rest or whatever, whatever it’s called. So we can’t let Casey go out into the universe to start gathering information to pull into the case file. So we don’t wanna, you know, we don’t want to have the uh the Brinkman case brinkman versus Brinkman file, and it now knows that uh you’ve been doing this work for 20 years and you used you used to be, you know, you you’re the you first launched, you know, you helped WebEx, you know, launch their first assume like we don’t want it to have all that information. Yeah. But we can send it into the case file to look at things like um document uploads. What is the status of the case file? Um are there any deadlines that we’re up against? Um even to the point where which we’re working on right now, which is hey Casey, good morning. Uh tell me the top five things I need to do with my cases today. Oh, that’s right. And having it work through. That’s amazing. And having it work through, work with you as a veritable assistant versus having uh it be like you know, like going out in the universe and pulling in all hallucinations and whatnot. We want to keep it focused on the work that we’re doing. So the you know, we’re this is in V1, and it also it’s like a knowledge base to you know, like tell me what I’m looking at on screen, how do I update my username and password, those types of things. Over time it will evolve, and we’re also gonna layer in OCR into the platform as well. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with OCR or not, but for those that aren’t, it’s a document scanning tool, which will allow you to, like when you upload tax returns, we can securely scan the tax return. We can look at, and then we can go back to Casey and say, okay, Casey, tell me the uh just a gross income for the Smith family in the last five years. Right? Then we can evolve into things like you know more asset tracing and are there any red flags on the transaction.

Matthew Brickman: 20:05
Or use the way back in the way web access stuff. I found it, I found that doing my educational. I found that I am an audible uh either visual learner, you have audible learners, which is sort of what you actually have to do. Like you’ve got to read or view, and then you’ve got to write it down. You can register. I found that I’m audible. So what I started to do when I was in school was I got a razor blade, I got a hole punch, three ring binders, I got a high-powered uh flatbed scanner, and really good OCR software. Because without good OCR software, when you’re scanning stuff, you get symbols instead of being able to read handwriting or whatnot. So I tore apart all of my college material, scanned everything. I bought the first iPod with a little click wheel, transferred everything into audiobooks, and had all of my books read to me throughout college. Um, way before there were audio books, I was creating audiobooks. And I still have all of my, I got all of my college books from my bachelor’s degree, my uh my associate’s degree, law school, everything torn apart, still in audio files long before. But I know the importance of OCR software because yeah, if it’s not accurate, then when it’s reading it, it again, it’s only as good as the the input that’s there. So I’ve got a question about the software that that you were mentioning about Casey. So let’s say, for example, I’m mediating and I’ve got two parties, right? And I and so in like going back to that that three column division of assets and stuff, and then you can just draw. Drag and drop. Can you just talk to Casey and say, hey, can you move this asset over here, this asset over here, instead of manually doing it? Um not yet.

Speaker 2: 22:13
Maybe that’s good feedback. We had to be honest, I hadn’t even thought about that. I have a two-year roadmap in my brain, but now we have to now we’re gonna have to extend that because that’s a great idea. The the the the reason I say uh no and not yet is because it would take you uh in my personal opinion, it would take you longer to prompt Casey than it would take you to actually divide it. It’s literally click and drag, and like you can even divide it up by you know 60. Maybe you don’t want to have you know exactly 50-50 split between an asset or a liability. You can go in there and manipulate it as you know, 65, 35, whatever, and it’s literally like boom, boom, boom, boom. I went through a whole case the other day in mediation. I think it took us all of 10 minutes to go through the entire asset division mod process. Wow, it was it’s it’s pretty clean.

Matthew Brickman: 23:00
Yeah, it’s pretty so. What about so this is something I run into as a mediator a lot? Um, so what about like when we’re dividing up? I’ll I’ll just give you a I’ll give you an example from the other day of mediation. They had they had 11 properties, so we’ve got 11 real estate properties. They had a pension, a 401k, and of course they had debt. They’re wanting to divide it out, and then they thought, well, maybe we’ll do maybe maybe you take more properties and then we then tax effect pension and you know, you know, all of those type things. Are you able to then see it’s like, okay, well, if we’re trading liquid for liquid versus taxable, non-taxable type of assets, will it go in and say, okay, look, if you took these non, you know, these liquid assets that don’t have we don’t have to tax affect them, whereas like a 401k, 20,000 is not 20,000, we’d have to tax affect it to make it equal. Does the software do that?

Speaker 2: 24:05
Yes. Oh my gosh. So we have the we have the taxes, we have the tax layer. Yeah, we have the tax layer added, right? So when we go into uh each of the assets, right right now, right now the the tax inputs are there’s a manual process on the intake right pieces, right? So we know if I’m in the 22% federal tax bracket and the you know 5% state, you know, I just put that I put that in the input process and then it will immediately show me a before and after tax evaluation of that particular asset. So when you are having those conversations, I can show them, okay, you know, you’re uh you know, Susie, you’re gonna keep the house and you’re gonna get all that equity. Johnny, you know, you’re gonna it’s cool that you want to give up their retirement account, but like that’s what it’s worth today. Let’s look at your you know projected tax situation, and that’s gonna mean that you know you maybe your your $500,000 401k is really only worth $350,000 after taxes. So we have to true that up and find that, find those dollars somewhere else. We are actually we actually just got an investor in. We’re in the middle of a raise right now, and we just got an investor in who I personally know, and then the monies that she’s giving us to do this work is actually going to build out a dedicated tax engine. So there are no manual inputs, it’s pull pulling everything in from the you know, running a 1040 in the background, we’re gonna be doing like state-specific, all that stuff, and it’s all gonna be done in real time. So when we do, we don’t even have to worry about any fat finger mistakes on tax inputs. The tax engine is gonna run behind, and then we’re gonna build in things like depreciation schedules and amortization and like all the other stuff that goes into behind the scenes, like more technical stuff of the taxes and how they layer in. Because you’re absolutely right. I mean, like I do a bunch of pension evaluations, I do like all that stuff, and taxes are and every state is a little bit different with how they handle pensions.

Matthew Brickman: 25:53
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:53
So we’ve so um right now, as of today, when we’re recording this, it’s a manual entry, but still reflected in real time in the platform. Yeah, in just a probably six to eight weeks, somewhere in that range, we’ll be uh in pre-production with a tax engine that’s gonna do it automatically.

Matthew Brickman: 26:10
Yeah. Then um, so based on then, you know, all the input, the negotiation that we’re doing using then that that that platform, I would imagine that you can print out schedules for attachment for documents, you know, all that like here’s their final equitable distribution scheme. Yes, we’ve mapped that out in the MSA. Um, and then we just attach it and you’ve got all of that. Or if they need to then, you know, look at different scenarios, you probably run different scenarios, they can then print that out, take that, or if they have an account, they can just look at that. The question I have though, based on that, is as I’m just processing through, is let’s let’s say, for example, somebody comes to mediation, we run all of this, they need to like step back, they’re not ready to settle, they need to go to you know think about whatnot. Now they have access. They don’t have access to what everything we did, like for me under my account and whatnot, to where they can go start screwing up everything that I did. They would have like a the like their own access or porter, or like I could export what we did so they could play with it, but I still retain what I have. How does that work?

Speaker 2: 27:28
Exactly. The the client portal, the end user, you know, the consumer portal is nowhere the same as us for us as professionals. Yeah, we have all the bells and whistles, we have we can create folders, we can create subfolders, we there’s a whole uh there is a secure vault that is built on every case with a with a formula a uh standard folder tree, you know, your kids info, insurance, taxes, like all this, all the usual stuff they can upload and organize into those folders, but they can’t go in and manipulate any information, they can’t go back and run attention evaluations, and all that stuff is all left up to the professional for for a good reason, right? Because you don’t want to do all this work. Okay. This used to happen with me in my wealth management practice where I use soft financial planning software and I would go in there and we’d spend weeks and weeks and weeks building out this financial plan, and the client would go in there and make one change to it, and I’m like Ruin everything. Like, what do we just do to ourselves? Oh, I used to take took off that access for them. But um no, and then you’re and you’re right. So we can um so where it stands right now as far as exports to reports, we have state-specific coverage for all the court-ready forms. I shouldn’t say all the court-ready forms, because some states have like a million of them, but the more popular state, you know, let’s call the top five in 37 states, right? So when you use the platform, you can run child support calculations, alimony calculations, export to the court-ready forms in 37 states. By the end by the second week of October, we’re actually recording this towards the tail end of September for those of you listening. Um, we’ll have 51 jurisdiction coverage, including the forms. Okay. So we’ve got about two, two and a half more weeks left of getting those dialed in. The main reason that exists is because, as you know, every state does things differently. So we literally had to go out and build the calculators for every state. Now, when you’re dividing up assets, when you’re dealing with tax issues, you’re running a pension valuation, like all the state the stuff that I mentioned earlier, that’s 51 states that’s already live, and and everybody, people are using it all across the country. It’s the where we have that state specify. We need a little more time on that, so we’re gonna get that done the next couple of weeks.

If you have a comment or question regarding anything that we discuss, email us at info@ichatmediation.com that’s info@ichatmediation.com and stay tuned to hear your shout out and have your question answered here on the show.

For more information about my services or to schedule your mediation with me, either in person or using my iChatMediation Virtual Platform built by Cisco Communications. Visit me online at www.iMediateInc.com. Call me at 561-262-9121, Toll-Free at 877-822-1479 or email me at MBrickman@iChatMediation.com.