ERISA Litigation: How Attorneys Target 401(k) Plans

[0:00] JD: Today's guest, not to be confused with a 7 foot 1 inch Swedish European professional basketball player, joins us from the chilly hometown of the second rate NFL team, the Minnesota Vikings. He's one of the industry's most respected and very first pinterest attorney brave enough to put his career on the line by joining the other two retired Hawks on the show today. He's got a no bullshit, speak his mind attitude which we all can certainly appreciate. He's a founding member, origination specialist and subject matter expert of Nichols Caster's ERISA and financial services litigation practice. Ladies and gentlemen, Carl Engstrom. [0:38] Carl Engstrom: Thanks. [0:39] Chad: Really important, [0:44] Justin: Let's go through. We're going to play some games today, Carl, so just make sure that you know exactly how everything's working. We will be playing acro sin, which means you can't say any initialism or acronym. You can say my name, that's okay. And for everyone out there and you guys here, Carl again does not like to poison his body with alcohol. Kudos to him. So we are going to do something new and fun today, everybody. Carl's got a friend, he has got a little acrostin buddy, Nick, who we are going to put in a little box up there. And every time Carl does a penalty, Nick will drink for him. [1:27] Mark: I'm thinking that should be the rule going forward. I just have to know like, who is Nick? Who Nick? [1:36] Carl Engstrom: So I've got, I mean Nick actually does need an introduction, unlike some folks, but. So not only is Nick a good friend, he fought his first professional mma fight in 2003, the age of 22. He retired with a record of 3814 and 1 38, 10 if you don't count his last four fights. Four years into fighting, he decided he needed to diversify professionally and enrolled in law school at the University of Minnesota. Graduated in 2009, got knocked out a week before he took the bar. Passed. Anyways, today Nick is the owner head of Casey Jones Law, specializing in railroad worker disability, discrimination and personal injury. Notably, he on July 1st of this year procured a $44 million jury verdict in favor of his client, of which his client will collect 300,000 because of generous federal limits on emotional damages and punitive damages. Nick. [2:35] Justin: So does Nick get to keep the rest? [2:42] Carl Engstrom: I don't know. Maybe it goes into Dogecoin, I think and maybe an account somewhere, I'm not sure. Can we all get a rating on [2:49] JD: that intro please in the chat bar? [2:51] Justin: Yeah, that's a big a good one folks. Justin, I feel like that's one Of Justin's. That's one of Justin's fake introductions. But it was all true, I'm guessing. So that's a pretty gnarly story. Wow. Well, we are honored to have you here, Nick. And so we will let you know every time you need to drink on Carl's behalf. We will also be playing chat bar champion, so. And I think I'm thinking Nick can get a vote too. So Carl and Nick, keep your eye on that chat bar a little bit. You'll be voting someone into the semifinals for chat bar champion at the end of the show. There's no rules to that, just whoever floats your boat, whatever you're into. Headlines. Let's get right into headlines. Brandon. Graphic please. Yes. I love that. [3:47] Chad: It's good be just good. [3:50] Justin: I was on call earlier this week. Don Trone had an announcement to the world, to the industry. The center for Board Certified Fiduciaries is affiliating with Wake Forest University to provide the industry's first executive education certificate and fiduciary studies. You can find out more at www.c hyphen bcf.com great URL Don, that you picked up there for more information. Anything. Oh yeah. [4:24] Chad: Ding ding, ding. Mark you on the buttons. [4:29] Mark: Yeah, I do have to make one mention though. I think Brandon has officially cut me off of any other button than just your faces because there's nothing else there. [4:38] Chad: There's like four [4:42] Carl Engstrom: bastard. [4:43] Justin: Anything that Don Trone is into I think is worth following. So check it out. We got the new 2022 401k limits today. Chad. Where did, where did they go? Up, down, sideways. They went up. [4:57] Chad: They went up. [4:58] Justin: Great. [4:58] Carl Engstrom: Yeah, all of them. I believe that's a first. Also the first time it happened in $500 increments. [5:10] Mark: Catch ups didn't go up. [5:11] Justin: Ketchup stayed the same deferrals up to 20,500. So you'll see everyone and everyone's mother posting that on social media. [5:21] Mark: So I'm sure you'll wait to go into LinkedIn tomorrow and everyone thinks of the only fucking person that figured that out. [5:27] Carl Engstrom: Yeah. [5:28] Mark: Great. Yay. [5:29] Justin: Thanks for letting me know the limits came out. [5:32] Carl Engstrom: To be clear, I don't think the catch ups are going to go up for a while because America hates Gen X. [5:39] Justin: I like Carl. [5:40] Chad: Sorry jd. [5:42] Justin: I like Carl. A census and Newport Group merge. I don't think this is really an acquisition. I don't know. Most articles I read are calling it a merge. Yes, Chad? [5:56] Chad: Nothing. [5:57] JD: I'll. [5:57] Chad: I'll save my comments. [5:59] Justin: No. So that's funny. I've got my own notes here in my notes telling me to go find the stats on it and go. Got to make them pretty big. I'm wondering, are they. Do they have the most plans of any record keeper at this point, or is someone like Paycheck still ahead of them? [6:17] Chad: The release said 150,000 plans. Not obviously not just in the defined contribution space, but they got. I'm not going to say all the other acronyms, but they got a lot of plans full of acronyms. [6:31] Justin: Do you think that Newport Group will remain a name or will it be dissolved? We will only know a census at some point going forward, I think. [6:39] Chad: Remember, Newport Group rebranded when Verisite purchased them. And they did so because Verisite had, in my opinion, had such bad track record from a service perspective. And so they rebranded Newport Group, who had a good track record. [6:56] Justin: I think Hackler's got a great branding name for them, so nuisance would be good. Good one. Hackler, the. Their CEO at Ascensus, David Musto. I hope I'm getting that. Chief Executive Officer had a little quote I'm going to read for you. Is it okay if I read from you? Because I want to get everyone's take on this. [7:18] Mark: Yep. [7:19] Justin: He said, quote, we've used acquisitions in a couple of ways, but I'd start with our focus on growing client relationships and driving more value in the market through investment in our own capabilities, products and solutions. We've been very successful doing that. Where do we see opportunities to accelerate the expansion of capability sets or to access segments of the market that we've not previously tapped to create additional scale? Those are the opportunities that appeal to us. Why do CEOs talk like that? I don't understand what the fuck he's saying. Oh, got to drink in. Do they all go to some. Did they go to some fancy CEO son of a bitch school to teach them to talk in nonsense? I don't know. [8:11] Mark: Jd. Takes one to know one, buddy. What do you think about that? [8:14] Chad: Yeah, and it was a relief statement. You really think he wrote it? [8:19] JD: Good point. [8:19] Justin: I just don't. I just like to hear about it in normal, plain English. [8:23] Carl Engstrom: That would be my wants to make [8:24] Justin: more money than the stupid corporate blabber. [8:28] Chad: What access did they get through this acquisition? Like, what portion of business did a census not have a fingertip in that? They now got in through the Newport acquisition. [8:39] Justin: I'll tell you, Chad, they got the opportunities to accelerate the expansion of their capability sets. [8:47] Chad: Duh. [8:49] Justin: That's what they got let's see, we were told that when Build Back Better was slashed and all the retirement provisions were taken out of it, I think it was Mr. Brian Graff that said, well you know, at least we're not. What would he say? Eating our vegetables and not getting our dessert because they did not take with it the mega backdoor raw stuff that stayed status quo. Now we're learning that maybe some of that shit is back on the table. So in graph terms we have to eat our vegetables and we don't get any fucking dessert. So that sucks. [9:26] Chad: Yes, Chad, I was just saying this is like a little birdie whispered this because the only place I've seen it is from the man in here himself, Mr. Nevin Adams. And he says at the bottom I haven't seen any legislation from it. Like there's no write up, he hasn't seen anything. So I think it could all just be another talking point. [9:45] Justin: Nothing's gone through but Nevin and those guys are writing articles so they're concerned about it. They wouldn't put it out there if it wasn't a thing. They're not just making it up. Goldman Sachs. There's a lot of headlines today. Goldman Sachs on a census. [9:58] Mark: Don't worry Carl. Don't worry Carl. You'll get to talk at some point. Don't worry. [10:04] Carl Engstrom: I have so many opinions about the. [10:06] Justin: I believe Carl can chime in on Goldman Sachs in a variety of ways so we'll let him get involved in this one. Goldman Sachs census are coming out with a small plan solution that they, they advertise to be tied to digital financial wellness and digital planning and advice. So I'm just bringing this up for everyone out there. We don't have to go into it in detail. Keep your finger on the pulse of all this stuff. It's happening and it's happening in real life advisors and I want you to pay attention to it. But we've talked about this before so I digress. We don't have to go back to it, Carl. Goldman Sachs, are they a fan of you, those guys? [10:48] Carl Engstrom: Well we are currently suing them. We're in the middle of a lawsuit so I believe maybe not, maybe not. Now in all fairness, our case has nothing to do with their digital financial wellness product with the census. So it's instead for, you know, just use of proprietary funds and self dealing are kind of our huge. But yeah, that sounds great. Is there even an app, JD with their new products? [11:19] Justin: There has to be. There must be, there must be an app. Oh, is that a We call that. [11:24] Chad: Those are applications. I was an abbreviation. [11:29] Mark: No, but I was. [11:30] Justin: I was over. [11:31] JD: I was drinking. [11:33] Mark: Calm down, people. Hold on. I was overruled on that many moons ago. So I don't press the button on that one anymore. [11:40] Carl Engstrom: I can still drink, right? [11:42] Justin: You can drink anytime you want, Nick. Yeah. [11:45] Mark: Yeah. [11:46] Justin: But I may go off the rails, Carl may go off the rails a little bit, and then in a more pop culture sense. And I'd love to get Carl's take if he even paid attention. This Mark Zuckerberg Facebook now is no longer Facebook. The corporation is now meta. And Zucks has introduced to the world through about an hour long presentation, the Metaverse. Did you see this at all or have you paid attention to it at all, Carl? [12:14] Carl Engstrom: I mean, a little bit. I mostly just saw people make fun of it on Twitter. So from that I have some correct and some parody versions of what actually happened. But didn't they in fact not check the logo? And it's identical to a migraine drug. I feel like that's a bad start. [12:33] Justin: I think it's just that classic, like, infinity kind of thing. [12:36] Mark: Yeah. [12:37] Chad: Mark, are. [12:38] Justin: Are you excited for the Metaverse? [12:41] Mark: Honestly, I didn't see anything about it until about 30 minutes ago when you said that email. 3 days ago when he sent. [12:50] Chad: Yeah, he sent that email. [12:51] Mark: I wasn't paying attention to it at all. I think I had heard something about it, about meta and all that, and I was just kind of like, I don't really give a shit. I don't have a Facebook page. So I just kind of let it slide. And I realized, and I watched it, I was like, if I'm being honest, I'm like, there's some pretty cool applications to this whole world that you could create. And that the ideas that he was bringing out were, again, I'm not the most technologically sound person out there, but I was kind of like, what? That's crazy. I mean, people thought we'd have flying cars by now, but instead Mark Zuckerberg is just gonna turn us on the holograms and we're going to be zombies at some point. So whatever, that's fine. [13:31] JD: We're not going to be alive long enough to see it come to fruition. [13:34] Mark: But I will say watching Mark Zuckerberg talk was. [13:39] Carl Engstrom: He's. [13:40] Justin: Yeah, I don't know. [13:42] Mark: I don't know about creepy. That guy is just some. [13:44] Carl Engstrom: He's. [13:45] Mark: He's built different. [13:46] Justin: He's creepy. Alien creepy. [13:48] JD: If they could make it, like, Ready Player one, it'd be amazing. [13:51] Justin: But I was just gonna ask you that, Justin. I was gonna ask you if you'd seen Ready Player one and if you felt like life and Ready Player one would be fun for you in the future. [14:01] Mark: Weird. [14:02] Justin: Dude, that would be cool if you [14:05] JD: didn't get a right and you can actually have human interaction. But if life is anything like it is in the movie, hell no. [14:10] Justin: God, [14:13] Chad: I'd stand up on that thing and I'd run all day and I'd be a professional football player and race cars, all that'd be awesome. You guys already have the game, but I wouldn't have to. [14:22] Carl Engstrom: Oh, you can hit the ball 300 yards, Chad. [14:24] Chad: You can hit bomb. [14:26] Carl Engstrom: Show me your short game. [14:27] Chad: I want to see your short game. [14:28] Carl Engstrom: I know you three putt Chad. [14:30] Justin: I know you three putt Chad. Okay, let's. Let's go straight into topic number one. And of course you could guess what this topic is going to be. 401k lawsuits. So I'm going straight to you, Carl. How do you sniff these suckers out? Do you have a bunch of people sitting in cubicles sifting through, scouring through 5000 500s? And then what step do you take it to? The next step. How does this start, this whole suing a company? [15:01] Carl Engstrom: So it's evolved over time. So at first, when we were first starting this practices were pretty bad. And so it was literally me because I was so. I was a financial advisor for six years. Years and then went to law school. And so it was me just remembering some of the mutual fund companies and looking up their plants like, oh, Putnam. And then it was like, oh, Putnam has 30 Putnam funds in the menu. It's like that doesn't seem consistent with fiduciary duties. So it was, at first it was just like the lowest of the low hanging fruit. In fact, I had one day in October 2015 where I just googled biggest banks and I got the list of the 50 biggest banks, looked at their 5000 500s and that turned into four lawsuits that settled for over $100 million combined. So that was the process originally. Now we have, yeah, we have three or four people that we take the data set from the dol Every single year we process that. We've created formulas so that we can look at the rates of return of all the different plans we create lists of. Now we then segment them based on standard deviation and try to find lower term plans vis a vis the risk. We're looking at new employee stock ownership plans. So yeah, we're looking, but it usually starts with A theory of who a bad guy is. And then from there we figure out ways to sort of filter the universe. [16:28] Justin: Yeah, you clear? When I started to do my research on you, that was what I was shocked at. That's where my eyebrows got raised was when I saw names like mfs, Goldman Sachs, John Hancock. Oh shoot, what does that stand for? Massachusetts Fund something. [16:48] Carl Engstrom: It doesn't stand for anything anymore, so I don't know what that means. [16:53] Justin: And I was tripping. I was like damn, dude, this guy's going after our very own industry. And so you just mentioned it. It was as simple as that. You poked around enough to know why does Hancock have all Hancock funds? And that was enough for you to laser in on it and go, right? [17:12] Carl Engstrom: I mean I would say that we have to then go beyond that. Right. So we have to sort of look at what the participants experience is what are the funds they're investing the most in and how has this manifested itself? So with Hancock we found that, you know, almost half the assets were in their target risk funds and that those target risk funds were basically just a mishmash of their funds and effectively just taking 50 bips out of your returns without any real alpha. And so that would became kind of the focal point of the case in addition to just the all proprietary lineup. So you know, we dabble enough in Morningstar to be a little dangerous to ourselves and others. So we usually refine the theories. But yeah, it starts with something pretty simple like what you know in the self dealing cases, what you know which, what their products are using and whether a objective prudent fiduciary would ever use those products of a plan of that particular size. [18:11] Justin: What's interesting too Carlos, like we're pretty. I love how Nick knows when to drink. He's solid, he's got it covered. I love it. [18:19] Mark: It happened a little while ago. [18:21] Justin: We have industry people that watch the show, you know, that are in our very chat bar right now that may not like your approach to these types of things. It was funny. When you're talking about Hancock or I was thinking about it, if I worked at Hancock and I was a participant in the 401k plan and we were using, not Hancock, target date funds. I understand fiduciary and responsibility and all that kind of shit, but part of me feels like that'd be kind of weird, wouldn't it Mark? Like why are we not using our own money management funds? Like it's the company we fucking work for. Aren't we proud of what they do? [18:58] Mark: Yeah, think of think of like an Apple employee using a Samsung. [19:02] Justin: Right. [19:04] Mark: It has that same feeling, but I get that this is very different. Very different. [19:08] Carl Engstrom: Yeah, but what about like a Google employee having used a pixel? I think that's a better analogy. Right, like another word. I mean in another word. And also if it's true for. Well, they don't have any actual money managers. They sub advise anything. But you know, maybe for people on the investment side that's perhaps it. But looking at Hancock, there are actuaries, accountants, administrative assistants, et cetera, who have nothing to do with the investment products which are just part of their variable annuity line. So to me the idea of it all being Hancock is stuff. There is a problem. I sort of can understand that argument better when we start talking about like MFs where Goldman. [19:47] Justin: Goldman, yeah, Goldman Sachs. [19:50] Carl Engstrom: Goldman's massive. Like only, only 2% at most of Goldman has anything to do with the mutual funds. But on those some of money managers, they only have like 1500, 2000 employees. And I can kind of see the case except when I've talked to the employees again, the majority of them are doing back office processing, customer service and the notion that they should get stuck with, you know, second third rate proprietary active management actively managed funds just because they work there, I think kind of sucks. [20:20] Justin: Can I ask you Carl, if the to challenge you and I want an honest answer and I feel like you're an honest dude with this stuff. Let's say that those proprietary funds were in line with expenses. Like let's say you looked at them, you analyze them and the expenses were not out of whack. Would you still attack it? Would you still go at it? [20:44] Carl Engstrom: I mean we've turned down a number of cases and not pursued them because we thought that the offerings were generally competitive. You know, we made it a strategic decision, I mean not to go after Vanguard, not to go after T. Rowe Price because we thought that, you know, within Hero Price's case, they were really aggressively switching to CITs in order to keep the cost as low as possible for employees. Like there was enough. [21:07] Justin: Thank you Nick. Thank you, Nick. [21:09] Carl Engstrom: Thank you, Nick. Like, and again we maybe could have brought that case. We err on the side. I mean it's a massive risk taking a case, a massive financial undertaking. So we've certainly turned down cases based on views that can I ask you competitive, but they're even in cases where the fees might be competitive, there could be other problems. Which is the case. [21:34] Chad: I was going to say that it seems like in some ways you're Almost being an investment advisor and looking at the strength of some of these providers offerings and targeting them based upon that, that it truly is about investment prudence and you're going after groups specifically over that, let alone less about process, less. Well, you started to touch on fees there, but maybe getting back into that fee realm with proprietary funds and appropriately pricing their cases. But it seems like you really are analyzing the investments and going after groups for that reason. [22:08] Carl Engstrom: Actually, I would. It's true that we are analyzing the investments and their merits, but I'd say that we do that really with a very large focus on process. In other words, the thing we're thinking about is what process could have led to this outcome. How could this be, you know, could this have happened without a piece of bias advice or laziness behind the wheel? So like my job is to make it so that usually in a lawsuit, you know, you file the complaint, it gets passed, the motion is missed, then there's discovery and you get all the emails, all the everything. And the comment I've been getting since we started this practice group six years ago is how is it that every time the discovery comes in exactly as you predicted in terms of what the motivations were and what happened? In other words, we're just thinking about how the organization existed, who had the power, why a decision was made, and we're looking for parts that are broken. And to me, as someone who has worked at a whole bunch of places and who generally loves to think about how organizations work, it has to sort of fit together and it usually does. We're wrong a little bit of the time. We've had to voluntarily dismiss cases where it didn't line up the way we thought. But actually, yes, we're looking at the investment merits, but the thinking about John Hancock is the thinking about like, was there really? Could this have resulted from an objective process in which they were trying to define the best target risk fund for their employees? [23:37] Justin: I think it might have been fuzzier back then, but I agree right now that there's a reek of self dealing with and we know enough about fiduciary responsibility these days that you would think that they would steer clear of that. And I think that they are doing that these days, the majority of them. But, you know, kudos to you because those lawsuits kind of crack them on the head and let them realize what they need to do. Daniela had an interesting kind of gossipy question that I'm into. So you, you use your research to find a target, but now you do have to get, like a participant or a human involved. Right. Do you reach out to them? And is that totally legal? And what does that look like? [24:18] Carl Engstrom: Totally illegal? And I definitely can't talk about. No, I'm kidding. Our cases thus far have 100% been reverse engineered, meaning that it starts with our investigation and belief we found a plan of the problem. We then reach out to participant people who are employees or former employees of their. Either we get their employment information through, like, LinkedIn, stuff like that, publicly available sources, or we advertise on social media, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn allow you to target advertisements based on what, someone's list. [24:53] Justin: Okay, so you do. You go. You go out and you get them, [24:56] Carl Engstrom: you find them, and we just. And we just say, hey. Our investigation says we think there's a problem with the retirement plan. If you, you know, if you want to hear more about it, if you have a plane, contact us. Then if they do, then I talk with them and talk about, you know, what we found, why we think there's a problem. [25:13] Justin: And hey, and you say. You say, hey, man, we can sue them. They might settle for like, 6 million. I'll take 2 million of it, and then you can have like, 500 bucks. You want to get in on this thing? Let's do it. [25:29] Carl Engstrom: Yeah, that's. [25:30] Justin: Something like that. [25:31] Carl Engstrom: Usually not the exact phrasing, but yeah, [25:36] Chad: positioned a little better. [25:38] Carl Engstrom: I'm super clear on the phone that our fee is up to one third of fees. It oftentimes is less, depending upon the amount of work we do in the case. [25:48] Chad: You're proactively finding these things, Carl. So what do they care what your fee is? If they're disgruntled and have left and they feel there's a problem, just as you are preaching to them, then what do they care what your fee is? [25:59] Justin: Be quite honest with you. If you. If you work four years on something and your firm's dragging in. I've. I've seen some of your settlements, and you're dragging in $1.3 million. Like, I don't even think you're getting a fair shake on the deal, you know, after several years of working on it. So can I ask you more on that? And then we'll shift to a little game here, some fun. But how many do you look at and take an initial step with, and then somehow the wheels fall off and you don't follow it to fruition? Like, what are those stats? Like, how many at bats and how many strikeouts and how many hits? [26:33] Carl Engstrom: You know, that's amazing. That you didn't use any acronyms with that, with that analogy. It ends up being for every good case we find I probably have swung and missed at least in terms of looking into it initially 20 or 30 times. And I should say when I say I It's not first person. Brandon McDonough at our firm is freaking amazing. Steve Iden. I mean there are other people doing this and it's not just me. But point being, yeah, we look at have through so many ideas that don't go to fruition. But in terms of even like the cases that I advert that we advertise on social media, even then it ends up being less than 50% even have a lawsuit brought because you know, when we contact participants part of the reason is to get their 404A5 to write a letter to the plan in order to get the plan document. And we just find that like oh, the reason why Nationwide's fixed account, I mean this is an actual example, its fixed account was paying like one, you know, 150 basis points less than the fixed account in the defined benefit plan. And it looked as if, you know [27:41] Justin: that that would be with self interest points of revenue. [27:44] Carl Engstrom: Yeah, right. And as it turned out it had to do with actual very understandable formula is written into each plan. We learned that we dismissed the case. So you know, even for things that go so far as to we're going to try to find plaintiffs or in that case file a lawsuit, there's you know, more misses that I heard, I [28:03] Justin: heard Schlichter, I heard Schlichter, I forget where. But talking about all the money and all the time spent, you know, to follow these cases down the path and all the losses that happen on the ones that you don't keep going. So there is some overhead involved as well. It's not just getting to a settlement and getting a couple million bucks. You lose a lot of money on the way. [28:26] Carl Engstrom: I mean the risk is, I mean first of all the risk that Jerry took is insane. I mean he racked up in litigating the first Boeing cases, Lockheed Martin in those first, you know, Tulsi, those first cases he racked up eight figures of debt on a credit line in order to see those case to fruition because the entire industry lined up trying to just defeat him. And every time he lost the statute lets you get the other side says you may have to pay if the judge decides that they want you to pay the other side's attorney's fees and costs, which is an eight figure bill [29:05] Justin: and have you hung out with. Have you hung out with Schlichter? Does he have a beer and you have a Kool Aid and you guys hang out and talk shop? [29:12] Carl Engstrom: Well, as a recovering alcoholic, you know I am not going to have the beer side. Yeah, we co counsel. The. The very first case we ever filed was against BB&T. And two weeks later, Jerry filed the exact same case. It turns out they had been looking into it for like a year and a half, so we ended up co counseling with them on that case, and we had a mediation where I got to spend like six hours with him. [29:35] Justin: I think Nick, you already got that one. Yeah, Nick's policing himself, which is pretty awesome. He's solid. He's solid. I was actually going to ask you about that later, but I saw whether you guys ever step on each other's toes in cases. But let's have some fun. We're gonna. We're gonna spin. Yeah, we'll get to it. Nick, I want you to pick. One of the guys down here is the guy with the beanie, the yellow hat, or one of the two, you know, shaved head guys. Which guy do you want to match up with for the Wheel of Ice? [30:09] Carl Engstrom: One of the shaved head guys? [30:11] Chad: Yeah. [30:13] Mark: Oh, you get two of them. [30:14] Justin: Then we'll give you. We'll give you Justin because it's landed on Chad like the last three weeks in a row. So I don't. I don't know if it's be gonna can land him in. Let's spin the Wheel of Ice. [30:24] Chad: Funny how you. You talk on the Wheel of Ice, and all of a sudden you get it over and over, like saying something. [30:35] Justin: All right, Mark, that's gonna be on claiming at least. Justin. Sorry. Justin's Justin, drink your. Or is there a double? [30:44] Carl Engstrom: Yeah. [30:46] Chad: Froze. Froze. Froze. [30:48] Justin: Yeah. [30:49] Chad: Damn it. I gave you a cup in there too. I know you have one. [30:54] Justin: All right, Justin's gonna drink his smearing off with his makers in it. And Nick, I'm thinking that's the equivalent of about four to five swigs for you. So what is drinking? [31:08] Mark: What is Nick drinking? [31:09] Chad: He's got a ice ball in there. [31:11] Carl Engstrom: Peanut butter whiskey. [31:13] Justin: Okay, never mind. That's. You can do two and a half to three. I didn't know you're drinking whiskey. You're good. You're good, my friend. [31:20] Carl Engstrom: No, it's never going to make it [31:23] JD: back on the show, buddy. [31:24] Chad: Screwball. That's it. Thank you, Jeremy. [31:27] Justin: Carl. So let's go to that. Do you guys ever. You guys. You Schlichter Other plaintiffs attorneys, do you both run into the, you want the same client? Do you have to like, compete for it? Do you have like, like, say, point of sale day where you say, hire me because of this, or do you [31:46] Mark: guys compete with each other like a real estate listing? [31:49] Carl Engstrom: Yes, yes, absolutely. The plaintiffs bar is competitive between firms in a whole lot of different areas, and this one's not an exception. And in fact, there are a number of plaintiff attorneys who primarily. Who Plaintiffs attorneys who primarily make their living looking at all the cases that get filed and finding ideas they like, and then filing the same case, finding a different plaintiff and filing the same case and hope that they get included into the case as co counsel. So we, we, when we were starting, when we were new, we ran into an issue in our second year where out of all of a sudden a different firm in two different cases of ours filed a, filed a complaint like two or three weeks after. And the, this happened to Jerry as well in like 2007 or something. And what he did is just say, you know, screw you. Let the court decide who class counsel is. You end up. There's a motion called 23G Fight, and the court has to say who the plaintiff's lawyers are going to be and, or maybe they'll say they should both be them. In securities cases where, you know, everyone's filing on the back of like an Enron accounting fraud or a public event, these things are very commonplace, oftentimes determined by, like, who has the institutional client, stuff like that. Less so in our cases. But the problem we had was, you know, we had only been around a year. Most of our settlements were all in the area of unpaid overtime. And so we even, you know, called Jerry like, hey, I want to co counsel just so we wouldn't lose any of these fights. They said no, and we just stuck it out. And. But now when people try to file on top of us, you know, we just say, go ahead and try and we'll see who the court sides with. You guys have a million worth of cases. What have you done? So it's less an issue now, but it absolutely. [33:49] Justin: Well, I was on, I was on Schlichter's website and it told me that he's done 1.5 billion on behalf of plan participants. And you, how much have you guys done? [33:59] Carl Engstrom: I think we're over, I think we're over 250 million at this point. I mean, he had a deck, he had a 10 year head start on us. [34:05] Justin: Big one. Yeah. And he did a couple of big, big dogs too. [34:08] Carl Engstrom: I mean, and look I'll be, and I'll be the first to admit, look, they are the, they are the number one firm, the leader in this area and nothing. It will never be. That will always be true. And even still since we're doing it their. There are more leaders in this area than we are. They're the ones bringing the claim, that brought the claim about plan data. Now they're the ones bringing the claim against tiaa, cref. In terms of cross selling, I mean we're frankly less bold than them. We just want stuff we can win. And so we're a little less daring than they are. Whereas they're continuing to push the envelope and looking for the newer areas. So I mean I will always take a knee to their firm. I have extraordinary respect for what they've done, extraordinary respect for their knowledge, for, for the contribution they've made and for them as lawyers. [34:54] Justin: Brown noser. What Chad? [34:56] Chad: Sorry, not, not all that important. I was just curious if Schlichter hunts the way you guys do. I felt like all of their cases come inbound to them. Right? [35:08] Carl Engstrom: No, they're doing the same thing we are. And I think they're, although I think they get a lot more intake than we do because they're more famous. But I think the vast majority of the time they're just reverse engineering case the same way. And in fact the reason the university case thing happened. What you know, because they filed, you know, they sued like 14 universities within like a week as, as they thought, like we, that we in particular and I think maybe a couple of other firms would all just sue the other universities. And so they got everything all lined up to drop everything all at once. That was just to keep out other plaintiffs firms not to make like a statement because it's a terrible strategy because the thing that defendants love to say is this is another copycat lawsuit or try to act like there's a wave of litigation. Some judges fall for that and get scared that there's going to be too much adverse implications. They knew that. They just didn't want to have to share. [36:01] Justin: Well, we're definitely seeing, I mean they haven't told me that we're definitely seeing more of this stuff than we've seen in the past. You know, if you look back 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and then you look over the last five years, there's a ton of this happening. Can I ask you as a naive kind of outsider to the actual process, when you win these days, you're literally. It's more A settlement than an actual judge winning a case. Right. Like very few of these, if any, have gone to a judge in a court. And actually, you know, I know these aren't the terms you use in court, but it's always a settlement, right? [36:39] Carl Engstrom: Well, not necessarily. We are currently, I would say over three or maybe if you're being generous, 0.5 and to two and a half in terms of we've had three trials and have lost all three. I mean, and the successful outcomes have been, have been trials. The reason for that is pretty simple, which is that, you know, there's no juries in these cases, it's all a judge. And so when you get a judge who's moderate, I mean, just to be totally blunt, I know we're not supposed to say that there's Trump judges or anything or Obama judges or Clinton judges or whatever, but there are. And if moderate to left leaning judge is going to give us a fair shake, they'll settle with us. And if we get a Trump appointed judge or a far right leading judge that they think is going to be very pro business, they'll just take us to trial. So the only trials we're having are where we have a very bad judge draw. We're trying to overcome that. In one case, you know, we had a Reagan appointed judge in the district of Massachusetts, he found for Putnam and then the first circuit reversed him and then we settled with Putnam for 13 and a half. So I call that a tie. [37:44] Chad: This is some crazy shit that I'm learning right now. [37:47] Justin: Exciting. That's exciting. It's straight out of like TV and the movies where they're going like, oh, this judge going to be favorable to them or not favorable to us and that that impacts our decisions. [37:57] Carl Engstrom: They're not making decisions politically. They're not. I mean they're doing what they think the law should be and following it. It's just that, I mean left leaning people point particular judges for a reason, which is that they think that they see the law and the world in a particular way. And I say, you know, right about a Trump judge, it's this person, I mean I did what they think was right, made the correct decision. It's just they have a worldview which is just inherently very pro business. And it's like, yeah, of course they cross sold. What did you expect them to do? You know, they were having to compete with Callan and Associates and Mercer. Of course they were going to cross sell to their clients and it's, I mean, what do you do? [38:36] Justin: So, and they don't know shit about 401k. Really. [38:40] Carl Engstrom: I mean, that's a struggle in all our cases, regardless of who the judge is. There's a huge educational component to what we do in terms of how we write the complaints. It's foreign. [38:48] Justin: It's totally foreign. [38:49] Carl Engstrom: Clerks about retirement plans. [38:52] Chad: So here. Here's what bothers me, Carl, is that we're trying to make an impact in this space and create better outcomes and further the industry. And. And everything I've heard so far is we're going after the ones we know we can win. We're going to settle, preferably. And when we settle, there's no real outcome that is going to affect others because it's not settling in court. Right. They're paying out before it gets to that point. And you're willing to drop cases for a bad judge, which means we're not really trying to help the people we're targeting. [39:28] Justin: Carl's gonna counter you. And he. [39:32] Chad: I don't know why you're making it sound like that. [39:34] Carl Engstrom: So 2. Let me make two clarifications. First of all, we've never settled a case before. It's been filed. So every settlement has been. A lawsuit was filed. It's public. The settlement is public. And nearly every settlement contains injunctive equitable relief, meaning we require the plan to hire an independent consultant or to make actual changes to the plan lineup. So that. That's one plan. [39:57] Chad: But is it. Does it set a basis? Does it set a precedent that others will have to follow? [40:02] Justin: We. [40:03] Carl Engstrom: I think. I think the motion to dismiss orders that we got in Deutsche bank and we got in American Airlines were real, were important cases. Those were ones where they were using proprietary index funds charging only maybe like 9 bips or 23 bips, but still they were S&P 500 funds. And we got orders that. That appeared to be standard and poor. Nick, you know, that. That appeared to be a fiduciary breach. I think that that's played a role in getting rid of some of the shoddy proprietary index funds from the marketplace. And so I. Even though those cases settled, I. I guarantee that they help. [40:39] Justin: Guarantee. [40:40] Carl Engstrom: I think if you dropping cases. We've never, ever, ever, nor would we drop a case just because we have a bad judge. We have an ethical obligation to our clients and to the class. If we're appointed class council, we will see it all the way through. And so I agree that would be a questionable practice. It's not something that we personally do. But I hear what you're saying and the way I'm sort of talking nonchalantly about the judges can leave a bad taste. [41:05] Justin: No, it's real life. I mean you got to play the game smart and strategic and so it makes perfect sense to me. It's just not stuff that us we're used to hearing. [41:16] Chad: I didn't know it existed so. [41:19] Carl Engstrom: And what I would say in terms of what we're looking for easy cases is, is that easy cases on the one hand what I would also the other way to put that would be is the. Is the bad actors. In other words, it would be far worse if we were bringing cases against the average plan or if it were random. In other words, my hope is that we do a good enough job in our case selection so that good advisors and consultants it really helps their business. Like I have. I am very pro professional advice, very pro consultant. And in fact I would say we've even looked for plans just that only have. That are getting their only advice from the record keeper or that's pretty apparent from the 5500. They are way more likely to screw up than if they have a fee based, you know or just are getting independent advice. So my hope is that, that by going after the worst acting plans that we have a bigger difference because you know, in general to do a better job. [42:18] Justin: Chad, can you imagine a world where. Because usually when I see 401k lawsuits, to be honest with you Carl, I'm in like the anti shop of you. I'm the industry guy, you know my. It's my family's business started in the 70s. I'm kind of like these motherfuckers. [42:34] JD: But. [42:34] Justin: But can you imagine a world where there is no 401k litigation? And I think that, I think things get real wild west real quick and a lot of people are self dealing, making too much money, taking advantage of situations. And so it's a necessary. [42:52] Chad: What I hear though, just so you know what I hear and I'm not saying I disagree with you JD and Carl, you supported your points very well. But when I hear of chasing just the low hanging fruit and we're talking about litigation or issues where there are is some, some significant fuck ups would be like a police officer saying I'm only prosecuting which San Francisco did felonies. Like yeah, there's a lot of bad shit and I recognize that that's terrible but it's, that's gonna be tough for me to prosecute. So I'm just going after these ones that are easy and that's what bothered me as you were saying and I clearly that's not the case but. [43:26] Carl Engstrom: Well, I mean to be clear, there are other firms out there right now, especially with it, who have, who have sort of popped up in the past year and a half who are filing a much larger quantity of cases and are going after I would say not necessarily just the low hang fruit. Then again, they're looking for plans that are using higher cost share classes. Some of it is too though. If I'm over ambitious in terms of what I file a case and I lose right away the law's move backwards. And it's gotten worse for people because the judge is saying something like, oh, they're fine because they had like 10 other large cap growth options. [43:59] Justin: So it's a free pass. It's a free pass for everyone out there. They see that we're cool, we're all right. [44:06] Carl Engstrom: Yeah, yeah now. But in terms of what the world's like without litigation, I mean I think the best example of it is in record keeping prices which is that like Fidelity didn't want anyone to know what they were paying. Right. And it was only kicking and screaming that they even disclose what those fees were. I mean we've got. I've gotten a cease and desist letter from Fidelity saying that the 404A fives I'm getting from clients are proprietary information. Can you imagine that like those ads were like Walmart. It's like, oh, that other grocery store is charging too much for bananas. And the other grocery store being like that is confidential information. You can't say what we're. [44:41] Justin: And when you're in, when you're in, when you're in investments, whether they're private wealth or especially foreign K obviously under the laws of the thing that I will not name you you it has to be transparent. It has to be like that. That's only fair is fair. People need to know what it costs. And so I think that's total bullshit. And so I appreciate that that has that type of result. [45:09] Carl Engstrom: And yes, of course the 408 have helped with that. But I think all of the lawsuits that you know, pled what a reasonable record keeping fee would be and decision that said what plans were charging has played a large role. I mean record keeping fees have come down since 2009 like 60, 70%. I mean that, that's not just, that's an abrupt change to the market that I think litigation plays a primary role for. So in and so yeah, I think [45:43] Justin: it would be the primary primary might be a stretch, but it's definitely plays a role. [45:50] Carl Engstrom: Can I rescind primary? How about significant material? [45:55] Justin: Yes, sure. Significant. I like that. I don't know the other word you said. That's above my pay grade. Let's play a game. And then I want to ask you a little bit before. I think the after show is going to be on Fuego tonight. But I'll ask you a little bit about how far down market you all might come. But before we do that, Brandon, if we could, let's play that favorite song I love so much. And we will test Carl's skills. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the other by the time I finish this song? Hey, Carl, it's way better that that [46:41] Mark: Nick is no longer inside of a box. [46:45] Justin: Nick's floating. It's pretty simple. One of these things is not like the others. And we got a little theme tonight. And at the end, I'm going to give you three tests and if you can guess what the theme is, which will be pretty easy, you'll be the golden winner. But which one of these does not belong? [47:03] Carl Engstrom: No kicking below the waist. Doesn't belong. And the theme is Rules of Fight Club. [47:09] Justin: Well, yeah. Well, we'll get to the theme for all three, but you're right. Yes, it is. No kicking below the waist is not a rule of Fight Club. Does not belong. Very good. You are one for one, Brandon. Let's go to the next one. Nick, stop playing around. These are four movies. You've got Moneyball, Inglorious Bastards. I think I'm getting that right. Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I think I'm getting that right. And then a Benjamin Button is the fourth movie over there. This one's a little trickier. [47:46] JD: I think he said it. [47:48] Mark: Brad Pitts and all of those. [47:49] Carl Engstrom: Well, yeah, so it probably is more about whether he got. I'm gonna say in Glorious Bastards because it's the only one for which he wasn't nominated for an Academy Award. [48:02] Justin: You motherfucker. Way to go. Brad Pitt had an. Had a nominee he should have been for an acting either supporting or best actor in every movie but Inglourious Basterds. That is up there. Phenomenal. [48:15] Chad: Incredible. Holy shit. [48:17] Justin: Okay, let's play the last one. I'm so excited. Clearly we know the theme, right? You can guess the theme right now. [48:30] Carl Engstrom: Yeah, I'm gonna go with. [48:34] Justin: That's awesome. [48:35] Carl Engstrom: Wait. Yeah. I think the answer. [48:38] JD: Oh, [48:40] Carl Engstrom: man. It's between Juliet Lewis And Gwyneth Paltrow. [48:44] Justin: Yeah, I'll give you that. Oh, Juliet Lewis. [48:48] Chad: Wait, wait. [48:48] Carl Engstrom: Can I. Can I take it back? [48:50] Justin: I shouldn't. [48:52] Carl Engstrom: The answer is Jennifer Aniston. Because it's. She's the only one that he hasn't been a romantic lead opposite in a movie. [48:58] Justin: Well, that could be true. That could be true. He has been engaged to three of these actresses, but not Juliette Lewis, so. But he had it. But you might be right. There's always alternative answers to the. One of these things. [49:13] Carl Engstrom: Remember whether his romantic relationship was with Juliette Lewis or Gwyneth Paltrow. [49:18] Justin: Well done. He. He married Jennifer Aniston. He married Angelina Jolie. He did not follow through on Gwyneth Paltrow, but they were engaged, and he merely. He merely dated Julia Lewis. And the overall theme of these three [49:31] Carl Engstrom: games is Brad Pitt. [49:34] Justin: Brad Pitt. Yes. Congratulations. Well done. [49:37] Carl Engstrom: J.D. can I ask an important question in regards. [49:40] Justin: Absolutely. [49:41] Carl Engstrom: Movies with Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt. What's in the box? Sorry, [49:49] Justin: that's a bad ending. Bad ending. Not good. Not a feel good. Feel good ending. No, not a feel good. Not good. All right, we got a few minutes before we close and then head to the after show. You were on Rick Unser's podcast, I think, I think back in August or something is when it came out this year. And I heard you several times throughout the hour talking about plans as targets and mentioning like a $20 million plan, a $30 million plan, or a $50 million plan. Like seeing things like they probably shouldn't have a shares, or they shouldn't be doing this or shouldn't be doing that. And I was thinking to myself as I listened, why is he talking about $30 million plans? Does he intend to come that far down in the market. [50:44] Carl Engstrom: At this time? There are no official plans to come down in the market to bring any lawsuits against 20 to $50 million plants. Sorry, I was trying to emulate your opening, J.D. i think it will happen eventually. The more. The more cases that get brought, the less expensive it is to litigate them. Right. So when Jerry was first starting these cases, he needed like, six expert witnesses for everything because nothing was lost. So he needed an expert to prove everything. How record keeping works, how revenue sharing works, et cetera. As more of this stuff becomes law, as opposed to just being something that you need an expert to establish, you can litigate these cases less expensively, similarly more efficient. A lot harder to write a brief the first time than it is to write it the 20th time. So. And there's more and more lawyers. You know, there's probably now a couple dozen of us out there. You know, Troy, Sean and Heather and Jerry's shop. You know, there's probably now three or four lawyers at Nichols Caster. There's Mark at Kaposi Adler. [51:55] Justin: You're saying there's going to be, there might be more smaller kind of minor league types that might be willing to, you know, they don't need a big case. [52:03] Carl Engstrom: Well, they could, yeah. Just might go out on their own and just like, and just like, hey, you know, because if it's a single plan that's, that's too expensive. All you'd have to do is depose like three members of the committee, maybe have one expert who can sort of recycle a report. You could start to litigate against 30, 40, $50 million plans less expensively. So, yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know what the timeline is going to be, but, you know, as of right now, I mean, I definitely don't want to give almost seven figures to get to trial. Okay. So it's very expensive. It can get less expensive depending on the type of case you want to bring. We're usually ambitious, so we're not. Our costs aren't really going down because, you know, I mean, we're, we're filing big cases and we want big results. But yeah, I mean, I. Absolutely. [52:54] Justin: What's your guys? What's your, what's your guys? And what's the industry's typical cut of the settlement? Like 25 to 35% or something like that. [53:03] Carl Engstrom: The max is a third. It probably averages to around 25. [53:12] Justin: Dollar dollar bill. [53:13] Carl Engstrom: Yo. Ninth Circuit, which is California, caps it at 25%. So that's the most you're getting. It just kind of. And it just kind of depends on the case, how far the settlement went. So, you know, our settlement against McKinsey was really big, but the case was very new. And so we got, you know, closer to more like 20%, I think. I don't know. I don't really actually touch cases once they settle. [53:36] Chad: Someone else does that know there was one. [53:39] Justin: What, what, what, what color is your Ferrari? I will tell you this. I do think that when plans are in that 30, 40, $50 million size, they are kind of having growing pains. It's like they do come from products that maybe are a share type products. And you do get to the point where the revenue that's being generated outweighs the actual costs. And so there is some, some problems in that space. It's like they're not big enough to, like, figure their shit out yet, but they're big enough to have some hangover problems from the smaller micro market. [54:23] Carl Engstrom: What. What I see a lot of is especially where there's a merger, right? So in other words, it was a $20 million plan, and now it's a 60 or $70 million plan, and they still have the same broker sold group variable annuity, you know, and with there are. They don't know what the share classes are because it just. Because they don't even just, you know, show them on the statement or anything like that. I mean, so absolutely, there are a lot of, you know, and the head of my mom's school was absolutely flabbergasted to find out that there were actual fees in the plan. When we've been doing. We do, you know, we did a little project to try to gather as many 404A5s as we could. And when my mom asked for hers, they're just flabbergasted. And so, yeah, you know, and there are still people that don't really know how the plan works. I mean, imagine how much worse it would be if there wasn't sort of the threat of litigation. So fair enough. But I mean, I think at this point, look, it's just on. It's just on the continuum, which is that at the very biggest plans, everyone is not necessarily on top of it. I mean, they make different types of bad decisions, but less the same sleep at the wheel type. But in gradually, the smaller the plans get, the higher the percentage is going to be of plans who are just not on top of how much fees they're paying, aren't really aware of it, et cetera. And depending upon the scruples of their service providers are going to be overpaying by some amount. And so I don't think that there's a point where it becomes terrible. It probably just gradually gets worse the smaller you get. [56:03] Justin: I like the way. I like the way Daniela puts it. There's money in that hillbilly heroin. All right, let's go to Chat Bar Champion. Justin, your vote for Chat Bar Champion. [56:15] JD: I'm gonna go Bill Shores tonight. [56:18] Justin: Okay. Didn't say much. I'll bet you he's been banging away on that keyboard. Pissed off Chad. [56:26] Chad: I'm going Jeremy. Jeremy crushed it tonight. [56:30] Justin: Okay. Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. [56:35] Mark: Can I. Can I ask a question before I get my vote? So if we call Schlichter the Boogeyman Carl, what do we call you? Do you have a moniker or can we. Can we officially give you one? [56:48] JD: We'll just call him Baba Yaga. Everybody knows what it is. [56:52] Carl Engstrom: It's Crazy Carl. [56:54] Mark: So, Crazy Carl, I'm just gonna start calling you Nick. [56:57] Carl Engstrom: Do you die here tonight? [56:59] Justin: Sir, yes, sir. [57:00] Carl Engstrom: Blue. You're my boy, [57:03] Justin: Crazy Carl. I like that. [57:06] Carl Engstrom: I mean, I've had four different groups of people in my life independently come up with that as my nickname for, you know, so sure. [57:15] Justin: All right, Crazy. Crazy Carl. Who's your vote for Chat Bar champion? [57:20] Carl Engstrom: My answer is that I can't. Haven't been able to keep up whatsoever with the chat bar because I'm just trying to follow the conversation. [57:28] Justin: I am sticking to answer. How about you, Nick? You got to vote for Chat Bars Champion. [57:32] Carl Engstrom: As Carl's proxy, I'm picking Gregory Greenfield. [57:35] Justin: Nice. [57:36] Carl Engstrom: And has the most porn sounding name I've seen in a while. [57:40] Justin: He's a multiple winner of Chat Bar Champion. Many consider him to be the. The greatest of all time. Although Daniela might argue with that. [57:50] Chad: I'm going to be there as well. [57:52] Justin: I'm going with Hackler. Just based on. [57:55] Carl Engstrom: I think it. [57:58] Mark: I never actually. I never actually voted. [58:01] Justin: All right, Mark, what's your. [58:03] JD: I've been there before, Mark. [58:05] Mark: Jason L. Jason L. He said. [58:08] Chad: First time watching live too, so he's been active. [58:12] Justin: Okay, Brandon, you've got your. Your plate is full. Hopefully you caught all that. You've never let me down yet. Look at him go. Brandon's on top of it. All right, people, vote for Chatbot champion. And if you win, you know what you get? You get your choice of mug. You get to choose Silent J, nerdy Chad Robe guy. Whichever mug you want. It's looking like a tight race. [58:40] JD: Or maybe someone in the chat earlier said Nick should get a swag bag just for being on here and drinking. [58:46] Justin: Yeah, we'll send Nick a whole retireholics package for sure. [58:53] Chad: You guys closed the voting quickly there. Way to go, Bill. [58:57] Justin: Bill. Bill Shorey's chat bar champion. You know what to do, Bill. Let me know in the chat bar what mug you'd like. And I'm pretty sure I have your address. If you think that that's true, then you don't need to private message me your address. [59:13] JD: I think we should start keeping track of whose votes win. Like, who, not whose nominations win the votes. [59:19] Chad: Oh, like, yeah, like the NFL. [59:21] JD: Like they do in, like, NFL. [59:22] Mark: Yeah, just more work for Brandon, guys. [59:25] Chad: Mark, are we out of Acro Cent? Jess and I have to drink for the football league. [59:29] Carl Engstrom: No, I think that's where the focus should be. Because this hasn't been enough about the panelists, so we need another. [59:36] Justin: We're gonna. We're gonna head to the after show. But I want to first thank you, Crazy Carl, for joining us as our guest. We'd love for you to stick around in the after show so we could talk to you more. Otherwise, we just talk a bunch of shit about you next. You for sure can stick around you out there in the audience. You guys, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Retireholics. Next week we have Scott Buffington from 401k plans.com, which is kind of a cool little record keeper benchmarking tech tool that I was blown away by. And I'm going to do something we've never really done before. Maybe we did it once, is we'll do a mini, like product demo, like five minutes. Because I want you all out there to check it out. Because I was like, wow, this shit's kind of cool. So, Scott, [1:00:31] Carl Engstrom: can I flag a question? You should ask him whether he's ever been hired as an expert witness or if anyone's ever approached him about it. [1:00:40] Chad: Okay, [1:00:43] Mark: I don't know. [1:00:43] Justin: We'll talk about that. [1:00:46] Carl Engstrom: Buffington, a real name. That's. I mean, how did I get stuck with Carl Angstrom when I could have been Scott Buffington? [1:00:52] Justin: All right, Brandon, play us out. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Thanks to you, Nick. And I'm going to the bathroom. And I'll see you on the after show in about a minute. [1:01:02] JD: Me too. [1:01:04] Mark: What's in the box? [1:01:06] Carl Engstrom: What's in the fucking box?