Sex Trafficking Cases, Jury Psychology & Future of AI I Robert Simon DSH #388

find the best of the best nationwide so the way the consumer wins it's like you can easily find the best lawyer for you because they're working on our percentages right and then and then they split it so interesting but that's what you have to watch for like all these billboard lawyers they put up this we've never lost or 99 success rate and then ask them like have you guys ever like tried to win

yes they only go for the settlements right that's how it works yeah yeah that makes sense

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All right, guys, we got one of the hottest lawyers in the game right now, Robert Simon, here today.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for coming on.

That wasn't describing me physically, though.

So I appreciate it.

Could be.

Depends on who's watching, right?

Sure, sure.

What you been up to, man?

You got some cool AI companies going on?

Yeah, I'm up to about 215 pounds.

So weighing in at that.

But yeah, doing a lot of AI for lawyers.

We're trying, I mean, as a trial lawyer,

I try a lot of cases still.

We have a lot of lawyers at our firm that try a lot of cases, all consumer-directed.

So mostly catastrophic injuries.

We're doing a lot of sex trafficking cases now.

And then we're trying to do things a lot more efficiently using artificial intelligence for lawyers.

I own a legal tech company as well, so we integrate a lot with artificial intelligence.

Nice.

Yeah.

You posted in the chat.

10 seconds of audio is all you need or two minutes, right?

Two minutes.

Yeah, I created my own AI chat bot to help.

I do a lot of mentoring mentoring for lawyers, either how to build their companies or how to be trial lawyers or be better at acquiring cases or whatever it is.

So I was trying to scale my availability.

So we have a lot of lawyers on our Slack communities through Justice HQ.

And I'm dropping my AI chatbot in there to ask, to answer questions on a scale.

You can even ask it personal stuff and see if it gets it right.

But it's pretty fun.

So it could give legal advice.

It can give legal advice with a disclaimer, but it's mostly advice for other lawyers on how to be better.

So it's like, give me an example of an an opening argument.

I call it argument, but an opening argument on this type of case.

And it tries to bullet point it for you.

But it's only based on my stuff.

So it's like

it pulled all of my trial transcripts, deposition transcripts, all my podcasts, all my interviews, all the articles I've written.

I'm going to be launching a book soon on trying spine injury cases.

So you drop all that data in, and that's what it learns off of.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

What are some common things lawyers are coming to you for help with?

A lot of times they come in on life advice.

Hey, I want to have a quality life.

How do I do that?

I want to start my own firm.

How do I do that?

I want to actually generate referrals from other lawyers.

How do I do that?

And then on the practice side, it's like, hey, man, how do I take this expert deposition?

Or what experts do I need to use?

Or how do I effectively argue my client's damages story?

Like people are always like, oh my God, how do you get these eight-figure verdicts on these cases people say no to?

And it's usually those types of dialogues in education.

Nice.

When it comes to starting a firm, is it similar to business where 95% of them fail?

It's actually a lot lower for lawyers

because your skill set is so specialized that

the worst that can happen is what do you do?

You can go back and work for another law firm.

A lot of lawyers, when you create your own firm, you have instant business because you generally know where it's coming from.

So if you do things the right way, and it's so much less expensive than it was when I started and started my firm in 2010.

Wow.

Yeah.

Just me, a copier, my little brother was like,

we were just trying to figure it out.

Now we have 25 lawyers in three states and

it was 100 employees.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Crazy.

But you were at a big firm prior?

I was at a small boutique firm, and I chose a small boutique firm because they only had three lawyers at the time.

And I turned down a six-figure job to make, this was 20, 2005.

I made 55K a year, but a third of what I brought in for business.

And I made by my third year, third year there, I was making a quarter of a million dollars as a young lawyer, right?

That was a lot of money.

Until 2005, yeah.

Yeah.

And this is 2008.

I was like, this, I can go.

Can we swear on here?

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, we were about to be in trouble.

So I was like, well, F this,

I'm generating a lot of business and how to try cases now.

I have that skill set that just do this on my own.

So in my industry, we get a percentage of everything that we win.

So we're incentivized to win.

There's a lot of products out there now that can help you carry your costs because litigation is really expensive.

Yeah, just a lot, a lot easier now to start your business than it was 15 years ago, five years ago.

Right.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So if you win, you get more than if you lose, basically.

If I lose, I get zero.

Zero.

Man, if I lose, I get zero.

And I also have to eat all those costs.

And I've had, I had one trial.

I tried against Honda.

We were over a million dollars hard costs into it.

Holy.

Yeah, bro.

But I think of every case, there's like one individual that we have to help.

And it's almost like running your own company.

For that, you have to see how much are you going to invest?

What assets can you put into it?

How much time are you going to devote to it?

And treat it that way.

Dang, that's crazy.

So you thought you were going to win that one.

Yeah.

I actually lost that one.

Against Honda.

Yeah, man.

But it's, I mean, we have a confidential, but

it's one of those cases that I was so passionate about.

My client, she was a quadriplegic from being on an ATV.

She was eight weeks pregnant, ended up carrying that baby full term, which was crazy being quadriplegic.

Yes, crazy story.

And I was so inspired by her that we took this, knowing we had less than a 5% chance to win.

But after a six-week jury trial, the jury was out like four days.

We got our first offer from Honda, and we ended up negotiating what's called a high-low settlement where it capped the exposure if they got hit for a giant number, but it allowed us even if we lost that we would have a security net.

Yeah.

Um, and I'm glad we did that because I knew we had a five percent chance to win.

But at the end, the client did a very, very, she did very well in even though we lost that trial.

Oh, so you settled, though?

We did a high-low settlement.

So the jury doesn't know, the judge doesn't know.

Got it.

Yeah.

So it's kind of cool.

I mean, people don't know this exists, but you can settle a case

up until the jury comes out.

Oh, I don't know.

Yeah, you can.

Wow.

So we do a lot of those high-low settlements baked in where I'm going to ask for a lot of money.

So if I win, the insurance companies, almost always insurance companies, they're freaking out because, oh, my God, if they say that number, blah, blah, blah.

So they're like, okay, you can't get more than X amount, but you can't get less than this.

So it's like, even if I hit that very high number, it goes back to the cap on it.

Yeah.

What goes down in the jury selection?

I've never done it.

Is it all random people?

All random people.

They give you the list.

Depending on your jurisdiction, sometimes you get the list of people a a couple of days ahead of time.

Sometimes you get it live.

You could hit them up before, though.

No, you can't touch it.

You can't talk to jurors.

You can't talk to them.

You're not supposed to engage with them whatsoever, even through an investigator.

You can't talk until after the verdict.

That is fair game.

So you have to be very, very careful of how you do jury selection.

It's a lot of psychology.

It's a lot about how you pose the question.

It's more, I call it jury deselection because you're trying to see which ones you don't want, which you would the poison.

I say pick the poison and get them out.

So you get the sheet.

The sheet comes in.

We usually send that sheet back to our home office of lawyers that are researching as much as you can.

The judge usually asks a series of basic questions to get a little bit of a feel for the jurors.

And then if you're in a jurisdiction which allows the lawyer to ask questions, you go up there.

Sometimes the judges give you 30 minutes.

Some good judges let you have free reign.

And you have a limited amount of time to get to know 30, 40, sometimes 80 people.

Interesting.

So you got to be able to read these people really well.

And you don't ever want to be writing stuff down.

You have to be engaged.

So I always have, usually I have a jury consultant there and I'll have my second chair and then usually somebody that's a lay person that works at the firm that doesn't know anything about the case sitting in the back getting a gut check feel as well.

Wow.

Yeah.

But it's fun, man.

It's like, I could probably get you off any jury if you wanted to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I might need that one day because I'm pretty sure you have to do it at one point, right?

As an American citizen.

You're supposed to get once a year.

They might.

They have the ability once a year to let you come.

And look, I'll tell you what, I would love to serve on a jury.

I think it's fascinating.

It's awesome.

This is my industry.

And everybody that actually serves is like, man, this is awesome.

It is your civic duty.

I mean, it probably does feel a little empowering knowing you contributed to the decision.

And civil juries do more policy writing and good in America than politicians.

Wow.

That's a statement right there.

Well, think about it.

I mean, look how slow the bureaucracy of politics move.

In a jury, in a courtroom, I mean, this is what put safety standards first with like the Ford Pinto back in the day.

It was jury trials that were in there saying, we don't, this is not acceptable.

We can't do it this way.

And then policy ends up following.

Wow.

Yep.

That is insane.

So lawyers aren't allowed to be on the jury.

We are,

but I always get kicked off.

Oh, yeah.

Every time, man, they're like, I usually know a bunch of the people in the courtroom too.

I'm like, look, I could be fair, guys.

I could be fair.

And they're like, but you love people.

Yeah.

And the other side is like, you can't be fair because you love people.

I'm like, it makes no sense to me.

That's hilarious.

What do you think about these lawyers on billboards that talk about how they've never lost?

They've never, you know why they've never lost?

Because they never tried a case, which is crazy.

All these billboard lawyers you see around here, we're in Las Vegas.

most of them have never even taken a deposition.

Most have never even been inside a courtroom.

Wow.

And that's almost a lot of the

it's false advertising is what it is.

And I do, I do appreciate because there's two different sets of lawyers.

There's ones that actually

do the work and try cases, usually in a niche.

And there's other lawyers that are great at marketing and generation of cases.

And look, there's a world for both of them.

And there should be because those lawyers that almost every billboard lawyer I know has referred me their cases.

And we usually do a rev share or a split on those.

Oh, wow.

So that's why like we, one of the legal tech companies I have is called Attorney's Share, where we have all these lawyers that generate a lot of cases on one end of our marketplace.

They can send it to the best lawyers on the other end where they could track the referral fee, find the best of the best nationwide.

So the way the consumer wins, it's like you can easily find the best lawyer for you

because they're working on our percentages.

Right.

And then, and then they split it.

So interesting.

But that's what you have to watch for.

Like all these billboard lawyers, they put up this, we've never lost or 99% success rate.

And then ask them, like, have you guys ever like tried to win?

Yes, they only go for the settlements, right?

That's how it works.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

The car accident or the injury ones.

Yeah, the injury ones, they're usually settling most before they even file a lawsuit.

And usually they're doing it if they're doing a volume practice.

How could you do it?

I know firms are doing 10,000 cases a month.

Yeah.

How in the world are you paying attention to an individual at 10,000 cases per month?

It's not sustainable.

So if you're able to find a specialist, that's why I always tend to refer other lawyers, well, other consumers to lawyers that are solo practitioners or small firms who have a smaller caseload that can concentrate on that person.

Yeah.

How do you balance the stress of all these lawsuits at first?

Lawsuits at my firm?

Yeah.

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So building, it's like building any company, right?

Like we had so many cases in litigation, I just had to scale.

I brought in my twin brother, who's now my law partner.

We split everything 50-50.

And my twin brother, Brad, operates the firm.

He made the calculated decision to, we call he runs the, runs the empire from his underwear in his closet.

That's what he does.

And my little brother's a partner at our firm, too, but we literally were hiring lawyers around skill sets that we were not good at.

And that I, so I can concentrate what I want to do was trying cases and doing the business development type side of stuff.

Yeah.

And then my, one of my brothers runs a litigation team.

The other one does the operation of the whole firm.

And it seems to pair very, very well together.

Those litigation lawyers are sharks, man.

They are.

Man.

My first time getting sued, I was sh ⁇ myself, to be honest.

It's not a fun experience, dude.

If you ever get sued, just call me.

I will shake them down.

They call me the fixer.

Oh, yeah.

I can usually fix any problem for you.

Oh, I love that, man.

Because if you get a guy that's an actual trial lawyer to threaten them, they're like, well, we better back down.

Because at the end of the day, there's somebody to be calling.

There's levels to the game, right?

There are levels.

Yeah, people respect when you're actually going to trial.

Yeah,

it's a different, it's funny, but it shouldn't be that way.

Like, there's a different conversation if a lawyer writes a letter as opposed to a consumer.

We see this all the time with insurance companies, like they're just screwing around somebody that was in a car crash.

And as soon as they get in a lawyer, like, okay, we'll take you seriously now.

Like, why did it have to be that way?

It shouldn't have to be that way, but whatever.

I remember my apartment got, or my car got broken into in LA, and uh, I used lemonade at the time.

I don't know if you've had anything.

I know exactly.

Yeah, so that used to be, yeah.

So they stalked my social media for months, man.

And then they found out that I was like doing business.

So I didn't get the full refund, basically, because they only covered personal.

But man, they're on your social media these days, these insurance companies.

Yeah, that's messed up.

It's pretty crazy.

But they do anything they can just to not pay you.

They're never on your side.

It's just, look, their only thing they do

is money.

Right.

They take in money for premiums and they try not to pay it out.

It's the only thing insurance companies are built on.

Right.

So you think they're really going to take care of you if something happens?

Look,

there are some ones that are better than others because insurance companies have what's called a duty of good faith and fair dealing with their insured.

So if you buy a policy,

your insurance company is supposed to take care of you.

And if they f around, you can sue them directly, usually for punitive damages, which they want no piece of.

But you just got to bark really loud.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

From a business point of view, I get why they do it.

It's just unethical for sure.

Agreed.

I noticed you don't kind of specialize in one field.

You do the spinal stuff.

You do the sex trafficking.

Yeah, mine is

in our area.

I only do consumer litigation.

I only represent people.

And I primarily personally only do spine injury cases and the sex abuse cases for me specifically.

Other lawyers at our firm do traumatic brain injury cases.

They handle a lot more product liability cases.

I mean, I'm very good at those, but like

the product liability cases, when you try them, are multiple, multiple weeks and usually out of town.

So I got three little girls.

I got my family.

And it's very, very hard to be out of town now in this point in my career that long and away from my family.

And when you're home for the weekend, you can ask my wife this question.

I can't shut it off.

Like she'd say the blank stare on your face because you're thinking about that trial that you've, you know, you're invested into it.

Right.

In a lot of different ways.

So.

Any trials you still think about that you wish you could?

I do.

I still think about even the ones I won, how I could feel better.

Wow.

Even my record verdicts, I'm like, well, shit, I probably could have done XYZ better.

You're a perfectionist, huh?

Yeah, to a point.

But I think perfection does stall growth.

So, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I used to aim for it, but it's one of those things, right?

It's a balance.

I always remember, like, as a business owner, I mean,

law firm owners and my legal tech companies too, we're entrepreneurs, right?

You have to realize you can't be perfect at every little thing.

You do as good as you can 80, 90% of the way there.

Use some tools to be able to grow things and do things faster.

And then you have to learn to scale and delegate and trust.

And if people, the lawyers that I have have found to be the worst at business that make the least amount of money are sometimes great lawyers, but they have no idea how to let it go.

Interesting.

It's their ego that controls everything they do.

They got to be the person on the billboard.

They got to be the person that gets the verdict.

They got to be the person taking a picture inside of Ferrari, right?

Yeah.

Instead of delegating and picking up everybody else at their law firm, because when clients, a pivotal moment in my career is when clients and other lawyers that brought me a lot of cases were picking another lawyer at my firm that I had trained instead of me.

And that was when I was like, well, it's finally working where I don't have to be everywhere.

Right.

Because you were doing everything at first, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

From answering the phones to doing the photocopying to the mail.

Yeah.

I love that.

You really focus on passionate cases now.

I mean, the stuff you're focusing on now is serious stuff.

Correct.

Legacy stuff.

Yeah.

Sex trafficking and man, spinal, that's paralysis pretty much.

Yeah, most of the spine cases I do.

are actually just people that had an injured back and maybe had some sort of minimal spine procedure or fusion Because I've seen that in like our own lives and how it affects somebody lifelong.

A lot of times, insurance companies have devalued those claims.

And I started trying a lot of those

and hitting them for seven and eight figures every single time.

Damn.

Yeah, dude.

Yeah, eight figures.

Yeah, dude.

I've had four eight-figure spine fusion verdicts.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

And paid too, not just a billboard verdict.

No, but I think that's because you change the pivot.

The story is not somebody's, the surgery that they had.

It's the effect that it had on them.

Yeah.

Right.

And it's what's that hook, that emotional hook for the jury.

Because once you pick 12 or 8, depending where your jurisdiction is, that's your audience.

You're talking to that audience.

So when you do jury selection, these are the new people that you're trying to show the value of the loss to a human being.

Yeah.

So you better know a whole heck of a lot about those people in the box because I pivot, I change my argument.

based on who they are because you're going to make it real for them.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So if like juror number one, I remember that she was, she used to restore cars with her dad.

And that was in my toolbox.

I knew my client had liked to do that and go to car shows with his dad.

It wasn't part of the whole thing.

I made that front and like front and focus of the trial.

Wow.

She ended up being our best juror and gave a lot of money.

I didn't realize how much went into the personal side of it.

Yeah.

You think you're getting stock by insurance companies from lemonade?

Imagine if you're on a jury.

Wow.

That's brilliant.

Yeah.

But to be able to relate to each juror individually is huge because people, their emotions are controlling their actions, right?

Every time.

Yeah.

And they call that, they teach psychology for lawyer lawyers.

It's called the reptile because it's like the reptilian part of your brain.

And it's like fight or flight type thing.

And you usually do things based on emotion or do you want to fight or protect something?

And if you can trigger that emotion for a juror, it's very, very difficult for them to get off of it, just psychologically.

Right.

So if you if you strike a chord with them in their heart, they're going to fight for you.

If you find a way for them to fight for you, you can win.

And the good lawyers can control their emotions.

Correct.

That's what I noticed with the good lawyers because some lawyers get too angry.

Anger is a bad emotion in front of a jury unless it's calculated.

I smile and laugh a lot.

It's just about who I am, but I will try one little anger moment.

This is a litmus test, just to make sure the jury's on my side.

And if they start shaking their head, like, you should get mad about that.

Wow.

So these eight-figure settlements, is it because their income levels are high?

How do they adjust it?

No, all these folks have no, it was no high-income earners.

Wow.

They're usually laborers, a lot that do not speak English.

It's all medical care costs, future medical care costs, and mostly all of it is pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, anxiety, depression.

That's crazy.

I was in an Uber once and we got, we were ended.

The next morning, I got texted from a doctor asking if my back was okay.

No way.

I was like, how'd you get my number?

That's illegal, man.

Now that I think about it, I think the cop gave it to him.

That's probably, so there's, and that's a dirty part of our industry.

There's so many kickbacks going on.

And usually the kickbacks are paid by the lawyers that are really bad because that's how they have to compete.

So you sign up with them, and all of a sudden they're just treating you like some sort of widget that has to be sold.

Yeah, it was super weird, man.

Very weird.

Yeah, it was either the cop or the driver because how else would they have gotten my number?

Uber wouldn't have given me.

At least the driver had your number.

That's strange.

I don't know if he did.

So it was the cop then.

If you filed a claim somewhere with insurance company, there's scoundrels that will pull that information too.

I didn't file anything.

Damn.

It just happened like that night.

The next morning, I woke up to it.

It's actually some pretty good marketing.

For real.

What got you in the sex trafficking stuff?

I mean, so I tried one big sex abuse case and it was really rewarding, but it's very, very emotionally taxing and tolling.

Right.

And most of my business comes from other lawyers that bring us in on bigger cases.

And a group of lawyers came to us and they said, hey,

we think this is the next civil right that we can wrong.

And I still think you could do a lot more civil jury trials.

And they gave us this opportunity.

They said, hey, we want real lawyers, real trial lawyers to be the ones that are at the front of this because you're the hammer at the end.

And let these,

what we call these people that are setting the stage for the bad actors.

Yeah, in the criminal world, they got the pimp.

They can hold that person accountable, and that's low-hanging fruit.

They're going to go do that.

But what about all the people that literally set the stage for that person, right?

The people, the hotels, the motels, sometimes the banks, these people that are benefiting financially and just trying to look the other way or sometimes just getting money up front.

Why aren't they being held accountable?

Because I truly believe that

it's not a red or blue issue.

It's a green issue.

And if you stop the people that are getting a lot of the green, it stops a lot of the problem.

And my wife and I do a lot of work with adoption and foster kids.

Our oldest daughter's adopted.

We talk about this all the time.

And foster kids are like the number one target.

Wow.

Dude, it's

60, 70%.

Damn.

People in trafficking are

in the foster care system.

Wow.

Yeah.

Now, a step further, so kids that people that get pregnant,

when you age out of foster care at 18,

there's usually no support for them.

They don't have a mom or dad.

They don't have anybody to take care of them.

They literally load your stuff up in a garbage bag and say, good luck.

What do you think happens to that person?

Who's a target for that?

Now they're targeting kids that get aged out.

And if they do get pregnant, if there's

I think it's 70% of girls under age 21 that age out of foster care,

those kids end up back in foster care.

Babies that are born eventually end up in foster care.

Wow.

So now you have this cycle, the circle that keeps happening repetitive over and over and time again.

So if you, it's like, as anybody that's watching or listening, if you want to do something easy, if you can't be in the civil courtrooms, if you can't be rescuing kids and knocking down doors, which I know some people are doing that, help kids in foster care.

Like donate, like.

Be a mentor for them.

Be a crutch.

These people don't have anything.

You know, that's

probably the easiest cure to be able to do.

They're underfunded.

They're understaffed.

And a lot of times what we see is they have

somebody that they've targeted then goes into foster care and starts targeting other kids about how much money they can make doing XYZ.

Interesting.

And there's no mentor.

There's no support system.

Yeah.

Yeah, they'll target these foster care homes basically and then bring them into the trade.

Yep.

And

most of the sex trafficking stuff we see is in America.

Really?

Yep.

It's in America.

I thought it was in poor countries.

No.

I mean, that does happen there, but most of the stuff that's going on in America, it's not a lot of people coming over the border that's trafficked.

It's much more heavily prevalent on Americans getting targeted.

And it's almost always

foster kids and people that don't have parents in their lives.

And I was talking to someone that was, he was the one that actually prosecuted most of the ones in L.A.

County in the past 15 years.

He said, if you had a dad that was involved in their kids' life, it's almost a 0% chance that they're targeted.

Zero.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

Just by having a dad.

Just by having a dad.

Right, because they don't want to get in a fight.

Exactly.

That is crazy.

So parents ask questions.

There's like little things you can see or do.

There's hashtags they put on social media.

A lot of these kids will have their pimps' name tattooed on them as their property.

Yeah, man.

Damn.

Did you meet any of these pimps?

I know who they are.

A lot of them are incarcerated now, but we have to keep, since they're likely defendants, I can't talk to them individually.

Yeah, you're involved in a big case right now, right?

Correct.

Several.

Like

a lot against state and federal,

there's a federal trafficking statute and there's different state ones.

So it just depends on where the survivors can file because a lot of states have opened up the statute limitation.

So like if you're in a car crash, it's usually one or two years before you have to file a lawsuit.

We saw the stuff with Bill Cosby where the people were coming out 40 years later.

So what happened is a lot of states and even the federal government opened up for sex abuse or sex trafficking multiple years.

Because it takes survivors a lot of time to tell their story.

And sometimes they've moved on.

They have a family of their own.

And who wants to bring that up again?

Right.

A lot of people are afraid to speak up.

And a lot of people don't know that they have a civil right or a right to, you know, getting money from the people that did this to them.

But they open up the statue of California.

It's up to the age of 40.

And they're trying to change.

We're working with them now to change it indefinitely.

Arizona, they opened up indefinitely.

Federally, it's 10 years after the trafficking took place.

So it opens up the time in which these people can speak up and do something about it.

Yeah, 10 years probably isn't enough to overcome that trauma, man.

Not enough.

And that's where like some states are like one year.

It's like,

you know how many calls we get and it's like, sorry, but your state says that you have no right of action.

That's that's bad.

That doesn't help anybody.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Have you ever been able to petition to get a law changed?

Many times.

Oh, nice.

We do a lot of lobbying, primarily in the state of California.

I live in Los Angeles County.

Part of a lot of consumer lobbying groups.

We've had the attorney general over our house for one-on-ones.

Wow.

Yeah.

I didn't know that stuff worked, to be honest.

I thought it was just.

No, I will tell you, right?

If you become

the right people, if they're politically involved, they have like I've written bills.

Like we've had a group of our lawyers

that

would write the bill, give it to the lobbying group, our lobbying group, work back and forth with the state senator, for instance, and then come with a piece of legislation.

We had two pests this year.

Everyone on the civil side for like discovery issues.

or like a thing for trial with what experts can say or do that we wrote those bills.

Wow.

Yeah.

With our group.

Because I always see these people attempting to change stuff on social media and it never pans out.

Well, that's we have to get to the person that can actually make the change.

Right.

Right.

Like we could do it in the courtroom, but you can also do it.

Look, a lot of politicians, not a lot, but some, are idiots.

Like they're literally, like, I meet them, like, how the hell is this person representing anybody?

And you have to like spoon feed them issues.

But you can see how easily they're tricked by some powerful lobbying group that says, oh, these are the real statistics.

Like, come on, man, did you fact-check this?

But if you make a real relationship, and look, it is a civil servant job.

Like, it is, politicians don't make a lot of money, especially once in state politics.

It's for the passion.

They want to try to change something.

Really?

It really is.

I mean, there's some people that are bad players, but think about it.

They hardly make any money.

They're going back to the state capitol once a month.

Sometimes they're in season.

It's a lot more.

It's not,

unless you like love to do it, it's not something that's glamorous.

Yeah.

Sometimes it seems a bit antiquated.

Like they seem really behind on crypto regulations, certain industries.

And this is what we're going to see with, we see that with NFTs that should be seen as securities.

You have it exactly with what you talked about, crypto.

And we see coming up with they want to ban TikTok or force the sale of it.

They feel if they don't understand it, they just want to do something like that, right?

Rather than getting to the heart of the issue, talking to people and see what good could be made of things and regulate that way.

Right.

So, yeah.

There's a lot of good that could come from crypto.

100%.

I know a friend of mine that's doing, it's called K-12 Crypto, and he was a principal at Compton in Los Angeles.

And they created a cryptocurrency to help kids earn credits to pay for college.

Wow.

I know, right?

And that's the good of something that can happen.

But by attendance, buy different type of things.

They earn different, and they partner with some universities that will actually accept this as currency.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just feels like as a consumer, you have some control.

I don't know if you saw James O'Keefe recent video on the IRS, but they basically have access to all your bank accounts.

They can can see how much money you have.

So you really don't have control over your own money.

It is crazy.

I mean, I had a few run-ins with the IRS myself.

Everyone has.

I mean, I mean, the old WWE guy, remember the IRS, was Case.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

How long you been in LA?

Since 2002, I came on for law school.

Okay.

First plane ride was to go look at law schools, went to Pepperdown University in Malibu, and I said, yep, I'm going to go here.

Met my wife three years later.

No, sick.

So I graduated in 2005, met her in 2008 2008 at a bar in West L.A.

We both found out we were from Pittsburgh, our hometown.

We've been together ever since.

Love it, man.

Yeah, man.

So you're kind of seeing this downturn right now, though.

Downturn of what?

L.A.

Nah.

That's what I see on social media, but you've got to be a little bit more.

I heard you.

I mean, like, people always say the things they see in social media are real.

It is.

I love Los Angeles.

We live in Manhattan Beach, which is one of the best community-driven places in.

in California, but we're never going to leave that area, I don't think.

But everything's glorified.

You see everything on social media is polarized.

And it's like, I've seen ones where like

people are doing like this big thing at City Hall.

And it's like, oh my God, look how angry these protesters are.

And they take a wider angle and it's like three people pretending to do it.

Do you know what I'm saying?

They've actually done a lot better in LA.

San Francisco has been a little bit of a struggle.

LA has been pretty good

with cleaning some stuff up, putting a lot more resources in places that they need to be.

But it is not like when we go down to Lakers games, like we, my firm sponsors the LA Kings.

We have a suite of crypto We go down there a frequently amount and it it's much better than it was a year ago or two years ago, but I think it's more of a product of The disparity between earnings between working class and other folks.

This is the way that I see things

and I generally believe that the higher the wages are for the working class the less crime and and things you see like this interesting.

Yep.

So you want the minimum wage raised basically?

I want the minimum wage raised.

I want people I would rather you know my wife and I came from that.

My dad was a truck driver.

Her parents was a teacher, right?

And it's like,

if you

we didn't come from any money and now that we have a lot of it, it's like it'd be a lot better if having you're never going to be able to tax effectively.

I know people say tax billionaires.

They're still going to have tax loopholes, loopholes, no matter what you do by starting companies that fail, whatever it is.

But if you make them pay higher wages to their employees, the working class, that's my mind, their way of them paying their fair share of taxes.

But then it picks up the working class.

Right.

Yeah.

So that's just the way that

I see things.

That's a rare take from someone with your income level.

But I think that's the way that most people should be less selfish about their viewpoints.

Yeah.

But whatever.

I think there's a balance.

I think there is a right number.

I'm sure there is.

Yeah.

And it varies geographically, too.

It varies.

Right.

I don't think it could be a set thing across the country because some states like Iowa, I mean, shout out to people in Iowa, but you don't need a ton of money out there.

No, you don't.

I was, have you ever been there?

It's pretty cool.

I haven't, actually.

No.

We had a case out outside of Des Moines.

Spent a lot of time.

A person had passed away.

He was the breadwinner of a home.

And we were out on the farm.

Literally, the grandpa was like rocking a chicken to sleep, which was very...

I mean, dude, it was, I was cool.

I didn't know that was the thing.

But I won't go there during the summer.

And we came out of Pittsburgh the same thing.

I'm not a humidity guy.

Yeah.

You live in like Vegas then?

No.

Or Miami.

Nope.

You're right.

Not in the summer.

Not in the summer.

I saw you on another podcast.

So you visit the clients in their home.

All the time.

Yeah.

That is pretty unique, right?

Well, again, you have to find that emotional hook.

You have to love your client if you're going to advocate for them as a lawyer.

And you have to know everything about them, especially if you're going to try their case.

So we mandated,

and I do, if I'm trying the case and at our law firm, I require all of our litigation teams to meet them, but meet them in their home, figure out, and I always tell them, I'm going to snoop around your house.

I did one a couple of weeks ago.

And I take my phones like I'm going to look in your medicine cabinets and I just take pictures of how they're living.

Cause that's how you make it real for somebody.

If you're on a jury, like you could show them family photos and albums.

But one that I remember, I had one for an eight-figure verdict.

And I just opened up

his mirror in his bathroom.

I took a picture.

It was all this pain medication.

Damn.

Yeah, dude.

And it was sad, right?

And then, like, there was, we went to his garage and this guy used to play basketball all the time.

There's literally cobwebs on his basketballs.

Wow.

Now, he didn't think about that.

It's not something in the story.

He would tell.

I just took a picture of that.

That becomes an image for the jury to be like, man, this guy's lost everything.

That's deep, man.

It is deep.

So you're getting me emotional, see?

No, for real.

I play basketball and that hit me deep right now.

But see, that's where I would research you as a jury, and and I would know that.

I say, well, this guy's tall, maybe he plays basketball, but I would do a deep dive.

And if you did that, I'd pull that out, like probably an opening statement and get you right away.

Wow, I love that.

Robert, it's been fun, man.

Anything you want to close off with or promote?

Nah, man, I appreciate you having me on.

I just want to like,

you do a lot of good for people, teach them how people, other people are successful.

And I think what we talked about with the foster kids and anybody in business, if you have the right mentor or right circle around you, you really can lift everybody up.

Because generally people like to help people,

but it's about being in front of them and making it easy access to them.

So, absolutely.

Appreciate you, brother.

I love that.

Thanks for coming.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

See you next time.