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Welcome to Quirky Podcast, where I reconnect with inspiring individuals from my circle and beyond to explore their unique journeys. This podcast isn’t just about talking to the elite 1% but about connecting with relatable people who’ve found success on their own terms. Through these conversations, I hope to uncover insights and advice that can resonate with anyone navigating their own path. Whether you're seeking inspiration, guidance, or just an engaging story, you’ll find it here.
Join us as we explore the diverse paths to success, share a few laughs, and spark meaningful conversations. Don’t forget to subscribe, engage, and be part of the conversation!
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How do you balance life, work and fun? How do you do all that? As Mark Cuban said, sharpening, if you're talking about work-life balance, you'll never be sitting up here. I may have made this up. I don't know, or I may have read it someplace. No, I made this up. Once you realize your own insignificance in the world, you're going to be happier and freer to help others. That is a very powerful statement. I like the idea of humility because we are all just little specks on the earth.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of Q's quirky podcast. I sat down with Roger Orlando, an attorney out of Atlanta, Georgia, and boy did we have fun. We talked about his experience, his love of life, his love of food and wine. Sit back, relax, and prepare to be wowed by my man, Roger Orlando.
Hey, good morning. Roger, how you doing? Good morning, sir. I'm doing quite well, thank you. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining me. I had the introduction through one of my last podcast, Margarita, and she told me to introduce you as Roger the man, the myth, the legend. So with that billing, why you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got connected to us? Sure. I'm Roger Orlando.
live in the Atlanta area and have my legal law firm headquarters here. I'm also of counsel to one of the largest law firms in New Jersey and New York City and I fly back and forth. I've also got five dogs around me. So if you hear barking and yelling, I apologize. We rescue dogs for a living. No, we do it for a hobby. No worries. We have two dogs here too, not rescues, but so we're competing with dogs.
So, I handle personal injury work, truck and car accidents, the standard stuff, workers compensation, any pharmaceutical liability cases. I handle those nationwide. I just finished as lead counsel of a large MBL multi-district litigation in San Diego. So, I can't get government deductions to fly to San Diego anymore, but it was fun while it lasted. It lasted a long time.
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I got a house up in New Jersey as well and I fly back and forth. But most of the time my wife and I go into the city and use the New York office and that way we can write that off and get great meals and my wife shops as well. Much, much better food than Atlanta. Well, I hear Atlanta is quite the growing and thriving scene. So it sounds like you have all the bases covered.
It is it and it's a it's a good place and it's nice and cool today. Thankfully we had a storm come through last night was fabulous and now it's back down. Yeah, it's back down about 50 degrees and I like it cold so that's good. Well, it's a good thing you have New Jersey in the winter to keep you cold. So the multi district litigation. What kind of cases are those and what was the one in San Diego that you just wrapped up? Multi district litigations are put together by the judicial panel on.
JPMDL of multi district litigation and I'm involved in one in New Jersey right now for one drug. I have cases pending in the San Francisco area and the one oh, and I'm admitted in the Northern district of Illinois as well. And we have the concussion cases NFL and and and CIA concussion cases there. The one in the one in.
Believe it or not, the one in San Diego started in 2009 and I just wrapped it up in the last year. And that involved hydroxy cut diet drug litigation. And the gentleman who owns it, a single person lives, I believe in Vancouver and funnels profits into Vancouver every day and then funnels them overseas the same day. And he had a healthy amount of insurance coverage except.
In his insurance coverage, it said if you have X degrees amount of both natural and synthetic green tea extract, then the coverage drops to $2 million. Oh, no. Yeah, we had about 400 cases of liver failures, liver replacements, kidney damage, that type of thing. And it was a wasting policy, which, as you know, means that the attorney's fees come out of it.
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So the defense attorney stayed involved until the fee was gone and our coverage was eroded as well. And I finally just through dealing with the man up in Vancouver, settled it. It was terrible, but 22.5 million and got it resolved and helped to liver transplant young men because it was used a lot in the military.
and in fitness programs get their liver transplants in those last maybe 15 years and they have to do it again. And they were young. So we got it all resolved finally. was a great judge, the chief judge in the Southern District of California, great man. And he was very patient with me. What I did not realize is that after litigation goes that long, how hard it is, difficult it is to track down those 400 and some odd people to get them paid.
And that took another two to three years and adding that the pandemic. So it was, was, it was some nasty bit of work, but it was all the lifting. kind of did myself. The defense lawyers wouldn't help me at that point either because they weren't getting paid anymore. They got paid and then they wash their hands of it. Right? Yeah. That's really, really nice to hear that you're helping out people and, having fun and making a little bit of money in the process.
What led you to get into personal injury and particularly into the pharmaceutical drug multi-district litigation cases? Interesting that you asked that. I was, started out, I wanted to be a criminal lawyer, a district attorney. And I had the connections. I went to Emory University here in law school here in Atlanta. And I had the political connections to get in the Somerset, New Jersey, Somerset County.
District Attorney's Office, but they had seven positions, I believe, and all were filled. And I would do intakes for two to three years until an opening occurred. So that didn't work. That didn't work for me. So I went into the insurance defense industry in New Jersey. And I worked that for about two and a half years. And my wife at the time was from Columbus, Georgia, and she couldn't speak New Jersey language.
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So we moved back here and I began doing insurance defense work here. And Atlanta has what we call the connector going through it where interstate 75 and 85 connected go through town. And I'm sitting, I remember in a Nissan Pulsar in bumper to bumper traffic and I got hit. I hit from behind. And I'm like, I get out, shake the guy's hand, no problem, tiny, doesn't hit my bumper, I don't care.
I got home and about four to six hours later, I was in the emergency room with unbelievable amount of neck pain. Yeah. And I said, all of these years, I've been denying people recoveries because of lack of property damage, all of this type of stuff. And it's true. It hurts. I started my own law firm back then, just me, and grew it from there up to a
I I had a high down here of 18 employees, including lawyers. And I have three right now, or four, counting up council. Because I'm slowed down a little bit, just a little. I still got five or six years. But that's what made me change directions from a staunch, funless insurance defense lawyer to running my own business. And I can do whatever I want. I love it.
That's awesome. And then multi district litigation and pharmaceuticals came around and one of the country's famous lawyers, John Morgan, he and I teamed up on cases and I forgot the first case, but it was up in Chicago area. And then I owned 5 % of Morgan and Morgan in the state of Georgia. wow.
was not a fun experience. So in 2015, John bought me out, thankfully. And the tax losses were incredible. So that made it profitable. So that's how I got into multi-district litigation. And then I came up onto leadership and I would get on steering committees. And about a year ago in the Atlanta area, Conyers, Georgia, there was the second bio lab.
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chemical company explosion. 20 years ago, there was one I was liaison counsel in that case, and that we resolved up in the city for seven million, I believe, and then by all that went bankrupt after that, as did the insurance companies. And once the insurance companies, the federal government funded them again under President Obama, we were able after three additional years to settle it. So that was a seven year ordeal.
So the plant blew up again and a federal judge committed me onto the executive committee from a year ago litigation. have like 1,700 clients plus common benefit time and expense. So I'm working that as well down here. I'm the local guy because nationwide there's attorneys from all over the place and I'm the local guy. it's very competitive to get into those cases. You know, you see the national firms advertising on TV all the time.
So how is a local guy, how do you get appointed and how do you compete with that in such a competitive space? It is a competitive space and in all candor I'm pulling back on these type of things. BioLab happened to be in my backyard so that's why I came up to it and I know the players so we have meetings we call I'll fly to Chicago take one guy to dinner and tell him I'm available and
I want to help and give me some work and or people ask that of me as well. And that's how you get involved in it. It's who you know, how you know. I like to say, you know, I use social media, great deal to both market myself and stay in touch with people. And they got to hear from you at least twice a year, if not more, or they'll forget about you. Sure. And that's how I get involved and I stay involved.
Excellent. So you talk about social media and you've kind of seen the gamut of the evolution of advertising in the personal injury space. It used to be the phone book and then the billboards and the billboards are still in play. How do you, how have you been so active and on top and be able to evolve with the times and still remain prominent top of mind with people? Well, in the state of Georgia, used to be one of the TV lawyers.
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and I spent two to three million a year on television and billboards. And slowly when the larger players came in, know John Morgan, when he came in, we had a fight because I had his tagline for the people. And he debates that this to this day, but he said, no, for the people's mind. said, John, we were in your office in Orlando. I asked you if I can use it. You said, yes.
We had litigation and all sorts of stuff. So that all worked out. Now I have lifetimes I can use for my lifetime for the people, not the powerful, but I was on television and I slowly pulled back because one of my exit plans was that 2 million a year now comes to me and I don't spend it as much, but I still have about 20 billboards. Billboards are not a direct response media, but they keep the cross branding alive.
So it's my name, it's my website and my picture. Those three things are it. It's funny, I'm going, Georgia puts on a CLE and they spell it S-E-A-L-E every year. And I run the program for them and there's usually about 25 lawyers on it. This year we're out of Seattle and through Canada and coming back Alaska. And I'm gonna teach exactly what I'm talking with you.
right now about and then I'm teaching at AHA in Chicago the next month after that. no, right before that on the same topic. So the thing now with all these large firms, both local and national, I'm just starting to do some social media where I said, hey, those people care about you. Three of them live in Florida. One lives in Alabama. One lives in San Diego. They don't care about you like I do and I've been with you from the start.
The key to marketing these days in, as you say, this world of marketing, especially for lawyers, is to be personal. Sure. So I have sticks I use in social media so that people are drawn to the social media and know me personally. My wife and I are amateur chefs.
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And we have quarterly wine dinners where we have judges and orthopedic doctors and defense lawyers over. And I get to know them all personally. have, I will bet the best wine cellar in all of the state. mean, it is, it is just nothing but diamond ranked wines from California and Bordeaux and around the world. It's huge.
And when I have these quarterly wine dinners, I open the wines the night before that morning. And my wife knows when she's going to prep a salad or something like that, that I take everyone down to the wine cellar. And they're just like, wow, this is in your house. The selling point. Another one of my avenues is I started a series called This Is My Wife. And then I do it with her permission. She's not on social media, but...
This is my wife and today I happened to look down when she was standing on a scale and she immediately started to defend herself. She didn't need to, she's beautiful. But she started saying, no, no, that's my weight with my bones in my body and things like that. So I write this stuff. I'm up at night, you know, watching below deck on TV and on my phone writing these things, some thinking funny things to say. And the final thing I just started, I have a grandson.
just turned five, I believe. And he now calls me on social media, Grandpa Orlando. It had a graduation picture. This is one I used a couple of days ago, him with his thumbs out like this in a cap and gown. And I turned that into Grandpa Orlando wins again, suck it insurance company. Yeah. So it sounds like you got a clever sense of humor and you're using it to be authentic on social media. Yeah.
And one of the things I would say about that is I use this sense of humor in court. Juries love it. They love it. I have some standard things I'll say. Mr. Jones, juror number three, I put an in a circle for you. What's that mean? What did I mean? And they love that. Or I get a flurry little bit sometimes and I get juror number six, you intrigued me.
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And she's like, really? Why? Because if I lose my law license because I say something too bad, I get to retire early. Get the gold handcuffs removed, right? And I'm also a politician. So it's funny. I would see people and I can't remember names to save my life. So I always have someone with me to get names.
and I said, I'd make a horrible politician. I'm sorry. And now I am one. And I was just elected to a second four year term as a councilman for the city of Tucker, Georgia. And I get work that way through all the staff and notoriety and things like that. I put up my billboards during the two campaign seasons I've had four years apart and their vote for Orlando, whatever Orlando for Tucker is what I went by.
And as soon as the election was over and I won, I replaced them with full billboards of my work. So the connection's right there. And I'm always trying to think of ideas like that. Yeah, it sounds like you're leveraging not only your charismatic personality, but taking the opportunity to remain in front of people and make those connections every opportunity you have.
So for some people that don't have the cache that you have that might be getting into this space, that might be a solo that are competing against larger firms or out of state firms like Morgan and Morgan and these bigger firms, do you have any pieces of advice in today's space on how to be able to use what they don't have yet to get to the point you are? Absolutely. People ask me a lot of younger lawyers. And I think
The number one tip I ever give people, was the best thing I've ever done. I'm from New Jersey, but I'm down in Georgia and I've passed the Georgia bar first. So what I would tell a younger person is to take the bar exam in a non-contiguous state, state far away from your borders. Me, it was New Jersey and I took the bar exam and then passed that. And then you join the trial lawyers association in that state and you watch their listserv.
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And minute Georgia or Atlanta came up on that listserv for years, I'd hit me. I'm one of you and I'm right down here. And I had a reputation grow that way. watching that listserv for two years, the next logical step is I go to the president's installation dinner or CLEs up there. And this time I had my wife with me, a wife.
I go in the room already to meet these people that I've known for two years and I suddenly realized I know their names from emails. I don't know their faces. So my wife said you stay here relax and she went around and read name tags and there's a good friend of mine up there now. Amos Gern in New Jersey who she came back to you know Amos Gern and I'm said yeah that's him.
So I walk right up to him, Amos, how you doing? Roger Orlando, great to see you. And we're like yucking it up. And eventually I became great friends with the folks in my firm up there. And we were, I know we were in Montreal at an AAJ event. And I asked one of the guys, I said, who heads up your mass tort department? He said, well, I do. And I said, aren't you just med malpractice? Yes. I said, you ought to think about.
maybe bringing me on and within a year we had inked a deal that I promised them six years because they knew I was looking to retire even that far ago and now it's been eight years with the firm. So that's my number one tick. You watch that listserv and you get on it immediately because initially people are going, I know Adam Malone is the go-to guy in Atlanta. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. I'm one of you. I pay my dues. You know me.
I'd appreciate it. And I think by now I get somewhere about 90 % of the work that come from New Jersey and New York City and some Philadelphia that comes here. And it's grown from there in that manner. Wow. Congratulations. Let's need to see all your success. Do you see social media as an avenue for some of these younger attorneys? I was talking to Margarita and we called it the democratization of legal advertising because everyone could get in the space.
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Is there any tips you can use or suggest for younger lawyers on how to leverage social media in addition to watching the listserv and going out and meeting people? Well, it's sort of as I said earlier, you really have to stand apart from the other people. I watch a firm closely down here that does funny things with their staff and they walk through at Friday with a baseball bat and a helmet and
I'm leaving for the day. do the things I told you with this is my wife, grandpa Orlando, and I make it as personal as possible. I'm about to start the phase where I'm going to go a little bit crazy in the same school. And that's where I'm going to be pointing out and not to use John Morgan as a continuous bad example, because he's a decent guy. He's a brilliant businessman. But, you know, he lives in Orlando.
And then we have the two lawyers that live in the Miami Beach area. We have the guy in Alabama who's also a nice guy who fed me mass tort work. And the two biggest advertisers other than John Morgan, they are from Atlanta, but they both live in Jacksonville, Florida. And I'm going with the who's been with you from the start, nearly 40 years in this business.
the first decade as an insurance defense lawyer, wouldn't you like to know what I know? And I signed up two incredibly bad for them cases the last two days in a row, yesterday and the day before, both with punitive damages. And it's because I was personal. One said, I'm interviewing a number of people. I said, that makes me happy. Good, do that. And she said, I'd like to meet you. And she goes, I'm staying in Tucker right now with my mom.
because she was hurt really bad. And I said, you're up and about, come meet me. Where would you like me to meet you? At your home? Coffee? What? goes, City Hall would be fine. So I got the key to City Hall. And I let her in City Hall and I meet with her and she says, what about this guy? And I said, he's good. And he's really nice. And actually he's very funny. And do you know how I know he's good? I trained him. He used to work for me. And she's like, okay.
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Why go to the calf when I can have the bowl? Yeah, right. Yeah. And, and we covered everyone she talked with and I was honest with her and she got home and she still didn't sign and she got home and she goes, all right, send me the contract. They've decided to go with you. I'm like, thank you. How neat. I like that lesson. Always be personal and authentic and the business will follow. If you try to be someone you're not, people see right through that and it's, it doesn't work out well in the longterm. might.
If you copy someone that's not your personality, it might warrant some short-term success, but in the long run, it's not gonna stick, you know? Right. It's, I have another job. I'm in charge of food and beverage at my country club. And that's at least one full day of a week. So between politics and food and beverage and the law firm, I keep busy, but it's the same as with jurors in a jury trial. If you're pretending or you don't believe in yourself and in your case,
they could see that a mile away. Totally. So you kind of hit the nail on the head. You're involved in a lot of different stuff. There's a lot of lawyers that are struggling to find balance in their lives with all your full-time law firm and your other jobs. call them side jobs. They can be full-time jobs. How do you balance life, work and fun? How do you do all that? As Mark Cuban said in Sharp King,
If you're talking about work-life balance, you'll never be sitting up here. But these days, to answer your question, it's silly, but these days, my wife came to me about a year and a half ago and all the kids finally moved out of this house, thankfully. And she had, I don't know if you've ever heard of these, I had not, a weighted blanket. It weighs 25 pounds and I sleep hot.
So during the summer, I got to pay hundreds of dollars more a month to keep the temperature around 66 degrees. And I have my work phone and my city phone. And I lay under that blanket in the morning. She brings me coffee and I usually get up at 430. I'll go back to sleep around 630 and then get up maybe eight. And I just sit there working. My work is answering the 600 emails between AIJ nationwide and all the other emails I get on all the other listservs.
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every day and you know it's easy to erase them you see what you don't need real quick and you respond to the other ones and that's my balance so far because I lay under that blanket it's like a big hug from life and I get I put on a below deck that's that's our guilty pleasure on Bravo TV and I just answer emails and stuff and sip my coffee
The other thing we're doing is my wife and I are in the market for a condo in New York, but depending on how this new mayor works out taxes. And it may be cheaper for us just to fly up the 4 or 5 times. We do a year and we like to walk about 5 miles a day up there. I don't do that down here. We have, we have our gym and our trainer down here.
So we'll walk two and a half miles in any direction and see the sites past the Guggenheim up to the Upper East Side and then we find a wine bar and we sit down and have some snacks and a couple glasses of wine then we walk all the way back and we check on the pedometer or whatever did we go five miles and we did so that's a relaxation up there I love the city I like the sounds of the city I know people say drives you crazy after a while but
I grew up every Sunday going into Little Italy or what was Little Italy with my parents and getting our bread for the week and our gabbagool and having a great meal and driving back into New Jersey. That's really cool. It's neat that you are able to enjoy a little bit of everything, work and then get some exercise in there. I'm curious about the food and wine side of you. How did you become such a, I'll call you a sommelier.
I'm not sure if you have training, but how did you get into the wine and the food side of life and you're able to marry those passions together? It's funny, every question you've asked me so far, I have a story for you. Hey, that's why you're on here. Okay, one of our favorite wineries and they're going to be in town next week and I'll be seeing the sales reps there is Jarvis wines in Napa Valley.
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Okay, they're the road for me. Yeah, they're truly. okay. They're true friends of ours. Now they go out of the way. They call just to say hello. I know it's sales as well because I do buy a lot of wine from there every year. Sure. But I went to a, God, it's a national steakhouse chain. Capital grill, capital grill in Atlanta once and it was with my wife and we, at that time I had to order wine from the right side of the menu.
I couldn't afford it, right? Now I have bottles that are like six, $7,000 in my cellar. But back then, I remember the price being around $55 and it was a Jarvis wine Cabernet Franc. And I loved it. I loved it, loved it, loved it. So I kept saying, I started to buy wines here and there. Then one day I ordered something.
We drove the price of the wine through the ceiling. My wife likes the Jarvis Winery Finch Hollow and Finch Hollow is right along the road. It's the only vineyard you could see a Jarvis wine from the road as you're going up that mountain. And I ordered a number of cases because the bottles were like $45 a piece at the time. And I hit enter two or three times and 11 cases showed up at my office.
And I called my guy up and I'm like, Rob, what am I going to do? Send it back, don't worry about it. Send it back, just what you don't want. We'll credit you. And I thought about it I go, hell, I'll keep them. And I got them all home and we enjoy them to this day. And then we had renovations done here and I put in a wine cellar. Found a great price for one. The guy who was putting in our whole basement, new kitchen, we got a second kitchen down there. And within two years,
that entire 55 degree space was stacked floor to ceiling with cases of wine. Wow. same guy come back and build the mirror image attached to it. So the outside door moved out to the outside and then there's an archway in the middle. That's now floor to ceiling, but my wife, she won't let me get more wine cellar. So you better start drinking more wine, right? Yeah. So that's how the wine thing started. And, and as I remember my first trip,
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I was in San Francisco for AHA and we took a car service up to Napa and I remember going, my God, we know this wine or we know this wine. And we'd stop and have tastings and we just loved it. Now we go twice a year, usually harvest season and then when things are calm there. In terms of the food, I had a professor in college who had a cabin up at one of the lakes and he brings students up there.
And he taught me little items of how to cook. And I learned it was my relaxation during law school, during exams. I don't study. So I get in there and I cook at night to calm down and ease everything up. And then when the pandemic hit, we started to get calls from restaurants saying, hey, you come here all the time. Our purveyors are looking for home-based clientele because
we're not taking as much product from them. Do you mind if I give them your name and contact information? And a number of restaurants in New York and in Atlanta did that. we got, Dart and Yon was one of them. And then there's a fish place that's actually based here in Atlanta. So we started to get real quality ingredients. And my wife and I would do the research and we learned very quickly how to make the most of that.
So on a Saturday, and I'm told this weekend is gonna be one of them, I sit right where I am here on the corner of my kitchen counter, and this is where I go in the office one day every two weeks now. And I start a stock. I start a chicken stock, and usually a beef neck is the best bones to use. And I start a beef stock, and eight hours later, I'm here working. Every 30 minutes, I get up to stir it. And then after eight hours, I get down and I reduce it to a demi-glaze. We freeze them as cubes in the freezer.
and use those all the time as the core of our dinners because it's so much flavor and whatnot. And that's how both wine and cooking came into play with our quarterly wine dinners. One more quick story. Talking about personable on social media. On Facebook, I'm friends with who now the chief judge of the Supreme Court of Georgia. And I get a private message or instant message from him one day on Facebook. He goes, hey, are you there? I said, yes. He goes,
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Do you really cook all those dishes? I said, yes. He goes, is that wine, cellar really in your house? I said, yes. And that's where it stopped. And I'm looking, I'm looking, waiting and go, would you like to come to a quarterly wine dinner? Yes, with an exclamation point. He was waiting with a bated breath. So he came over and to this day, when he sees me at Georgia trial lawyers events or something, he's like, Roger, come over here. And of course he's surrounded by other lawyers.
last meal I ever had was at guy's house. God. He goes on and on and he's a good friend now. I had the chief judge of Fulton County over two weekends ago. had a quarterly wine dinner and my wife and I will pick and then try and we get the people lined up for the next dinner and then we come up with the menu based on the season. So that's how it works. How cool. So the two things that bring people together, wine and food. You can't find a better option than that, right? Right.
I did read somewhere. Do you are you owner of a part part of a restaurant called carve? I Was owner of car was owner. Okay, garb kitchen crashed and burned The managing partner of it I met when he was six years old when I first came to Atlanta and I was with my parents and I remember His dad we went into a Greek restaurant
And I remember him playing there and we became friends, which is why he's not part of a lawsuit with my name on it. And we had one other partner as well. And the other partner and I agreed, just leave them alone, let them go. So it was really good. It was Greek food. We worked on sauce recipes for nearly two years for dipping type sauces. The best one we came up with was beet.
tzatziki sauce and we never never used it because it looked like Pepto Bismol. Chimichurri type sauces and tzatziki and its other stuff and we had a special oven we bought in California that had the heat source and it wasn't real flame that would have been nice but real flame isn't as constant and regulated as electronic and the meat's way way down here and underneath the meat is a pan of water.
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So it's slow cooked for hours. And as the juices dripped in the water, the steam would begin to rise. That meat was so flavorful, tender and juicy. Incredible. And he just let the thing fall in the toilet without telling us. So, yeah. Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but I think you can rest assured. I'm going to leave this podcast super hungry and wanting to drink a glass of wine, even though it's only nine o'clock where I'm at. Well, you get to Atlanta, Logan, you have a standing invitation for a wine dinner. Well, I appreciate that.
Definitely going to take you up on that invitation. You've talked a little bit about retirement and I'm not approaching that age yet but there it's on the horizon for people that are now getting into the middle or the twilight part of their careers. How do you look towards retirement? How do you gear down your law firm? What's your succession plan for that? Okay that's a great question and
I told you I'm in charge of this annual CLE program and people have been asking me to do a program like that. And I'm on the verge where I actually could do it myself. So I have two law firms looking at buying me and buying my caseload that's in place, my name, my IP, Atlanta.law, Orlando.law, MartiniLawyer.law, all these things are .com for that.
my trademarks, their registered trademarks. And they can get that, phone number that's been a law firm phone number for 30, almost 40 years. Yeah. And they can buy all that. And I told them I'll stay on if they pay the right price, I'll stay on because you'll get those clients. I only want Roger handling my case. That's fine. Or wait, you're not Orlando. And if I need to come in there and measure it that way.
So that I will not have to sell stock, especially in this crazy market to buy my New York condo. I'm asking for X amount of dollars upfront that will buy that condo and then X amount every year for four years as they slowly transition away from me and into their own name. So that's one thing I'm looking at. I told you I only go into the office one day every two weeks on average now.
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And every 2 weeks, I have a city council meeting as well. So that's the only times I really get out of the house. So I sit right here and I do my work in comfort or under my heavy blanket. And that's the other succession plan is I'm going to let a particular associate who's been very loyal. And I told him about the potential to sell the firm take over.
because as a lawyer, you and I don't really have to retire as in shut off our phone number and stop. You know, I could sit here, I love this thing. And I could be on here all days, you know, responding to questions. So my ideal retirement is my son bought a house about four minutes from my house here and he wants this house.
And I said, you know, you've got to wait Vinny until I die. And he goes, take your time, take your time, dad. And then one of my daughters was here and I said, you know, you're going to have to split your inheritance with Savannah. And she goes, I'll tell you what, Vinny, if you take the house, just give me the wine cellar because you don't drink that much. He agreed. They shook on it. That's their plan. He has no clue that the wine cellar is worth more than the entire house.
1.2 acres of land here. So we will let him take the master bedroom. We'll take a suite of rooms and we'll spend half our time in New York, half our time here. And if I got a putz around in the law, I'll do that as well. I don't see, if I live this long, I'm not the most particularly healthy person, but if I live another seven, eight years and turn 70, then at that time I can see putting it down and I'm gonna give it to that associate.
And he can, I call him partner now, and he can make certain payments along the way as I recapture expenses, things of that nature. But otherwise I'm done. I rewarded loyalty. I had a rewarding life and career and I'm relaxed. I'm relaxed now. That's neat. I think one nugget I took away is the power of people and the people that you employ around you. You have to have good people in order to make your law firm better, yourself better. And then
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at some point you want to reward those that have been loyal to you. So the power of putting the people in the right places is magical and can turn into some really amazing results. Yeah. The three people who know about the potential sale of the firm. I said, if for some reason that doesn't transfer to you, I'm going to take care of you. You're going to get a golden parachute out of my pocket. And I mean that. I will not be disloyal to people who've been so loyal to me.
That's amazing. There's not a lot of employers that have that degree of loyalty anymore. So kudos to you for taking care of your people. As we round the corner, when you do eventually get up to New York, what are two or three restaurants that you would recommend for people that aren't quite into the restaurant scene? The one I send most people to because the owner and his humongous history is Patsy's.
236 West 67th Street or 68th Street. Sal Skognamillo is the third generation owner and I just text him, hey, I'm sending someone there. We take good care of them. I sent the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court there. He has bodyguards. They took care of them as well and he loved it. His family were there. He loved it. So Patsy's is definitely a go to for me every time we're up there.
We stay at 64th and 6th at the Warwick Hotel when we're there until we get our own place. right down 64th on the same side of the street, half a block down is a place called Il Gattapardo, the Black Leopard or the Leopard. And Il Gattapardo is upscale Italian food. It's really, really good. And that's usually where we go to our first night. So Pazzi's, Il Gattapardo are the two musts.
Then there are, if you want steak, there's American, Italian beef, American beef, and then they have American bistro. Three places that are all within a few blocks of each other. And they're wonderful. There's a place across the street, one block up. It's a Greek place and the name escapes me now, but they have this open display of fresh fish. Can't believe it.
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And they'll salt and crust it for you, which is the best way and marvelous and the final place I would recommend we do our five-mile walk sometimes in this direction, but we'll take a car if we have to. Italy, Italy. It's down by, it's past Bryant Park and it's down on one of the dog walk parks, but Italy is a place we always sit in the same two seats at the counter and they have different restaurants in it.
and the produce and the fish and everything is so fresh. We sit at the Italian counter and we just order what's on our mind. They have good wine, affordable wine lists and that's the other place. So Pazzi's, Il Gattapardo, any of the three big places, the Greek place or Italy. Excellent. I'm going to put those on the list. It sounds like you have a preference for Italian food. I'm not sure if that's true or not, Well, I'm half Sicilian, half Italian.
Okay, well that makes sense then. I just got back from Italy, man. I ate like a king over there. I probably, we could talk a whole nother hour just about the food from Italy. As we're rounding the corner, I want to know, are there any resources or people that you rely upon to this day to kind of help you get motivated or is it all self motivation for you and your career? I'll tell you more and more. I shamefully admit.
I'm lacking more and more motivation. I really am. I'm up, I put on a fresh face, I shaved, I put on a jacket, because I'm taking another lawyer to lunch after this, who I want to feed me business. So I lack motivation these days. So the way I'm getting motivated is I still go to the gym and that trainer's not easy on me. And I know.
that I make my gym appointments at four o'clock. That way, if I'm at the office, I get to leave the office early. My wife and I always fall asleep with a bottle of wine and some glasses next to the bed. And if I wasn't gonna go to the gym, like I will today, I'd be sipping that wine all day. And that is demotivating, as can be. I mean, I'm not the town drunk, but you know, I'd sip wine all day. And I'm not gonna do that. So that's what kinda keeps me motivated and...
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When I'm making money and when I get good cases in, like the two I got incredible cases, unfortunately for the people, that gets me motivated because number one, it's something for me to dig my hands into and I'll handle those big cases personally. I assure clients that. number two, it promises fulfillment for me down the road. And number three, these people really need me. They really need me.
because I hooked them up with doctors, I advised them on their care, I've done everything in my life. So I was a paramedic at one point. wow. Yeah. Life experience can bring a lot to being a lawyer. But the one thing I like from that answer is you still get the thrill of helping people and seeing the positive result. And it's not only getting them money, like you said, it's providing them the best quality access to care and making sure that all the details are finally handled. And I think with
the proliferation of volume law firms, a lot of that personal touch has been lost. It has been. And I have lawyers coming from those big settled law firms asking me for jobs. And I talk to them and some of them are immediately visible as unqualified. Immediately. And I'm thinking you're running your own pod, as they call them in the big firms. Another one of the big firms here.
has two levels. has the pre litigation and post litigation level. So free litigation does not settle the case. They lose their percentage. And so they're going to be trying to convince their clients to take whatever so that they get paid. Yeah. My lawyers, pay a good salary and maybe 10 % so that they're not basing their living on catch and settle of cases.
It's quality, quality work. Yeah, you want you want quality versus quantity in my opinion, and that's something that I've tried to try to implement in my firm. So thank you for reaffirming that couple more questions. I always ask this out of out of all my guests. Five dinner guests past, present or future. Who would you have at your table? I'd only need my Lord and Savior. So that's a great answer. Yeah.
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That requires a good deal of thought. I wouldn't mind our current president, but I don't want to hear him talk about himself all through dinner. Maybe someone with the purported wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn't mind President Zhu from China.
as long as we had an interpreter course and I can ask the tough questions myself that we scour the news and try and see if Taiwan or we are in danger. King of England, possibly, just the dish and dirt and my wife. Those are solid guess. That would be an entertaining conversation amongst all the fronts.
get out of law, you looking to get more into politics? I know you're on the city council. Do we have any further aspirations? No, none whatsoever. The first year and year and a half I was on the city council, I hated it. can do everything you do, every decision you make, 49 % of the people criticize you for it, 51 % like you for it. also, if I had, I couldn't live my genuine life if I had more political...
aspirations because one of things margarita can tell you is that i'm crazy and I can be myself and I can be authentic and you know I had a trial recently where I said to the jury panel I said interesting fact when I was first in front of Judge Jones I was 29 years old and now I'm 63 years old and he's still my judge
And he mad. He got mad over my age. I'm like, I was just trying to be interesting to the jury. Yeah. Like I said, I'll say whatever I want now. If I don't have to care anymore because I could be forced to retire, that'd be nice. Or I don't have to worry about politics any further. Yeah. How nice that would be. Marguerita told me to ask you about a story involving a bra. What's that story about? A bra? A bra.
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bra, a woman's bra. think you had on your social media. Dovetail right on to what I just said before. There are plenty of apps now that let you create with AI certain things. And one of them is had, you can be steal a chicken, you could steal a pack of bacon, or you could steal a bra and it's the security camera angle. So
Not always, but most of the time they've been getting my face accurate on these things and body shape. So it's me looking around and putting the bra in here and then walking on. And I use that in marketing and people think it's funny and it's incredible. Yeah, that's, that's neat. The power to have fun and do marketing and the ability to leverage all the applicable tool content generation tools we have. AI is phenomenal. I envision it doing a lot of
It's going to allow a lot of people to market where they otherwise would have to spend a lot of money. So it's neat that you're using all these different avenues of marketing to live your best life and have fun while you're working. So thanks for- And I'm having a ball. Yeah, well, that's great. I look forward to getting some more stories at your wine and dinner party. As we wrap up, what's one message that if you could get out to everyone, what's one message that would be?
I may have made this up, I don't know, but I may have read it someplace. No, I made this up. Once you realize your own significance in the world, once you realize your own insignificance in the world, you're gonna be happier and freer to help others. That's it. Wow. That is a very powerful statement. I like the idea of humility because we are all just little specks on the earth. While we're on this earth, we gotta have fun just like you are.
I go to church once a week, I'm Catholic, and I just realized I had to go to Dallas this past weekend for a deposition of a truck driver, and there's this little chapel across the street. And I went for vigil mass on Saturday night. And I realized sitting there, and I just wrote this to everyone in my church as well online, that in the power and the moment of prayer and the solitude and the bone chilling honesty of prayer, because
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You know you can't lie to yourself or your savior or God in prayer. And that's where truth can really reign in and guide you. So that's that's the other thing I'm going with these days and I feel it. I really, really appreciate that. Roger, we went over our time, so we'll maybe have to do a part two. But thank you so much for joining me today and we will definitely link this to your social so you can be your authentic self and.
We'll have to do this again, okay? Thanks pal. You take care and I'm glad to meet you. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Corky Podcast. I hope you enjoyed diving into another inspiring journey and found some nuggets of wisdom to take with you. If you love this episode, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a conversation. You can find all our episodes on your favorite podcast platforms and on YouTube.
Until next time, stay curious, be inspired, and keep carving your own unique path. Catch you on the next episode of Quirky Podcast.