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Deep conversations with underrated lawyers.
This is Horam with Horam's Quoram. My guest today is Vishal Shah. Vishal is the founder of Shah Litigation, a plaintiff's side employment law firm. I've been friends with Vishal for years, and he and I both launched businesses at the same time. This is a really unique opportunity to hear how a big law lawyer launched a plaintiff's side firm.
Khurram Naik:We'll dive into the business and the strategy law firm. So if you have any interest in in launching a law firm or just curious about how that works, this is a great one to listen to. So here's Vishal. Vishal, you're one of my good friends, and so I'm very happy to have you on here because your story is very compelling, and we both started businesses at about the same time. And so I've been excited about your growth.
Khurram Naik:You've been cheering me on. And so I am really interested in diving into how you're running the business of your law firm, the business of law, and we'll get to that in your approach in litigation as well. But first, I wanna start with you are would you say you're a good old boy from Alabama? Is that fair to say?
Vishal Shah:You know, good old boy comes with certain connotations, so I might not accept that, but I'm definitely a southern boy at heart. You can I'll definitely agree to that.
Khurram Naik:Okay. So I I wanna hear how a Southern boy from Alabama ended up in Boston with his own law firm.
Vishal Shah:Yeah. Well, Coram, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to to be here and to to speak with you just about my journey as I've gone gone through this whole process. And, you know, coming from Alabama, I didn't really have a choice. My parents moved there for their business.
Vishal Shah:I grew up there. I spent the first twenty six years of my life in Alabama in a small town called Dothan, and just before that, a a town called Eufala, which was about an hour away. And I had an incredible childhood. I lived in a community where there were a lot of South Asian people, believe it or not. And my parents were heavily ingrained in that environment and in that community.
Vishal Shah:So we were heavily ingrained and involved in that community. And a lot of it was family, but there were other folks too who have become really, really close friends of of mine over the over the years. And when I was probably 14 or 15, that's when I really decided that I wanted to be a lawyer, and I was really interested in it. Not because anything in particular had happened and that I really, you know, was driven to the law, but it was just always something that interested me. I loved courtroom scenes, watching Matlock, watching movies where lawyers were on TV, and I thought it was really it was a neat job.
Vishal Shah:And so I always told my parents I wanna be a lawyer. And so I went to undergrad down south, went to law school down south. And then after I worked at a place for about a year, a small litigation boutique in Birmingham, Alabama, I moved to Philadelphia for work at a firm called Drinker Biddle. They've not changed names, but it's a Amlaw, I think, 100 or so firm at that time. And I was doing commercial litigation within the insurance space.
Vishal Shah:So life insurance policies, long term care insurance policies, dealing with litigation surrounding those. And worked there from about 2015 to 2017. And close to that twenty seven seventeen time frame, I decided that I wanted to change. And I had a friend who was working at Morgan Lewis. He's actually still there now in their employment group.
Vishal Shah:He was also a commercial litigator like I was, and we were just talking about potential opportunities over lunch one day. And he recommended that I apply. I never wanted to be an employment lawyer. I'm not specifically drawn to that field by any by any means, or I wasn't at the time, but it was litigation. And I knew I liked litigation.
Vishal Shah:Morgan Lewis certainly has an incredible brand, and there's some great lawyers there. And so I made the leap and, you know, was at Morgan Lewis from 2017 through 2023. And then in 2020, moved from Philadelphia to Boston for a variety of reasons. But been in Boston since 2020, and it it's been fantastic. Certainly much, much different than small town Alabama.
Khurram Naik:Well, so I'm imagining that at some point became aware that your of course, you I'm sure you recognize early on, hey. It's unusual to be, say, South Asian in Alabama. And, yes, sounds like sounds like there's a community there for sure. But what do you what would you say you know, now that you're, like, now you're in Boston, you're in Philadelphia before that, urban areas with plenty of diversity, maybe plenty of South Asian lawyers, certainly in in in Boston. What would you say in your trajectory shaped your worldview in a way that maybe some of your peers who grew up in maybe more like, I grew up in Texas first ten years, from there, New Jersey went to college in Pittsburgh, and both where I went to high school and college was had a large was very diverse, large Asian population.
Khurram Naik:What would you say is different about your worldview in that way than you think some of your your other peers?
Vishal Shah:There's probably two points to that. One is that I am what I'll call stupidly optimistic. I I realize that there are risks in certain things, but I try to look at the positives and try to focus on the positives more than anything. And the second piece is that they we we as people certainly have way more similarities than we have differences. And so I think at an early age, I just that was something that I believed in.
Vishal Shah:I still believe in it today. But that that sort of approach, that stupid optimism and this view of having more similarities than differences, I just jumped right in. I played sports. I was really active in school. I had friends come over.
Vishal Shah:I went over to friends' places and just really, you know, tried to make my life for what it was. I didn't view it as a black thing or a white thing or a Hispanic thing or an Indian thing. It was just the way life was. My friends would come over. We would play, and we would hang out when we got older, and it was just it was just part of growing up.
Khurram Naik:So tell me about the the path that took you from, you know, Morgan Lewis' very strong labor employment on defense side, what took you to to to jump to the other side of the v?
Vishal Shah:So my plan since I was in law school was to always be a partner at a big law firm. That was my goal. And ever since I well, even before I graduated, that's what I was working towards. You know? Getting the right sponsors internally to say your say your name in the rooms that you're not in.
Vishal Shah:Getting the right exposure to clients and other opportunities so you can elevate and build your brand both internally within the firm and externally. And then the third was having the right clients. You know, partnership, especially at a place like Morgan Lewis, timing plays a big part of it. You know, the clients that are your key clients as you're coming up, where are they from a business perspective as it relates to the firm? Are they one of the head hot are they one of the head firms really giving a lot of work to the firm or head companies giving a lot of work to the firm, or has the work dwindled over over time?
Vishal Shah:And I think that's a really important thing. And so I was always trying to make sure that I had a diverse set of clients that no matter what happened, I could kind of bulletproof the timing issue as much as that was in my control, and a lot of it wasn't. And so in the 2022, I had had a number of of really awesome successes. We had won a two week jury trial in an 8 figure employment case in Delaware against a lawyer from California who was probably one of the best trial lawyers I've ever seen. And it was the first case I was assigned to when I started at Morgan Lewis in 2017, and it's one that I handled from stem to stern.
Vishal Shah:It was me and and the partner primarily doing the work for five plus years. And so in in that summer, we won the jury trial at the June. And then within two or so weeks, I received a decision from a federal court where we had won a motion for summary judgment, which basically says, hey, judge. There's no disputed facts here, and given the law, we win. And it basically ended the case right there.
Vishal Shah:And it was a case that we were not expecting to win summary judgment on. And so the client was ecstatic in myself. I was on a really, really on a professional high. But we know that with that life isn't just all peaks. There's valleys that come with it.
Vishal Shah:And so just two days before I got the summary judgment decision, I learned that two close family members had passed away. And that happened on the same day at the June. And then, you know, that was kinda very surprising, but then we had two more deaths in the next two months. So in at the August, my cousin's daughter, a super smart young woman who was traveling on a study abroad trip in Costa Rica, had an unfortunate accident and passed away. And she was just incredibly full of life, incredibly hungry for changing the world and making it a better place and all of these idealistic ideas that you have.
Vishal Shah:And she was going after it, and she was super, super capable. And then within a month, my first cousin, who I was extremely close with, he's much older than I am. My family is my dad there's a wide range of ages on my dad's side, and there's a wide range of ages on my mom's side. So he's much older than I am, but he passed away from an unexpected heart attack. And so, you know, he he was a very successful businessman.
Vishal Shah:He was just starting to kind of enter into his, what I'll call, cooling out period where he was gonna start traveling more and and doing the things that he really wanted, but he wasn't able to. It was just all sort of tragically taken away from him when no one expected it. So when all of this happened, we're now 2022, it just so happened to coincide with the end of the fiscal year at the firm I was at. You know, I was well beyond my hours requirement because of the trial, because of the summary judgment issue, a briefing. And so I decided to take a short leave.
Vishal Shah:And, you know, I wasn't in this state where I where I thought I needed the time. I wasn't feeling down or depressed. I could still focus. I still had the same hunger. I could still do the same work.
Vishal Shah:But something inside of me said, just take just take some time. Take a couple weeks. It's not gonna change anything in the grand scheme, but you might be in a state of shock, and you need to just have a little time to yourself where you can think and sort of process what's just happened to you because it's not these kinds of things don't happen often. And so you make sure you wanna appreciate them for what they are and and not just breeze past them because that would have been my other natural tendency. So, ultimately, I took the time off.
Vishal Shah:And during that two weeks, I started thinking about where my priorities were, where they should be, and where there was alignment. And I realized that I no longer wanted to spend eighty hours a week on the road bouncing from airport to conference room to hotel and back. I wanted to do something where I was in control of my destiny more than anyone else. And so, you know, this this leads to the to the next obvious question. Well, why plaintiff's employment law?
Vishal Shah:I didn't wake up one day just thinking, hey. I should sell a law firm today. Nobody does that. Well, maybe some people do, but nobody I know has done that. And it wasn't like that for me.
Vishal Shah:I started thinking about the the various things I could do. I could go in house, which is what most of my contemporaries do after they leave the firm life. But I know that I love to litigate cases, and I love to go to trial. So I knew that in house would not be the right fit for me. I could move to another law firm, but I still but I I quickly realized that the same set of challenges would be attendant at any law firm in terms of being at a being at a certain place at a certain time or having others in control of your destiny.
Vishal Shah:And so that wasn't an option. But then I started looking at the plaintiff's side, and I knew a few people who had made the leap from the management side to the plaintiff's side, and they were doing great. They were enjoying it. They were practicing law at extremely high level. And, look, I had been trained by one of the best employment law firms in the world.
Vishal Shah:And if I could leverage the training that I got to help level the playing field for individual employees, that was really neat. And I could try cases. I could do things the way I wanted to do them. And so I just quickly started to learn more about it.
Khurram Naik:And Can I ask you something about the going back to the realization that you wanna have more control? Is there something about it in the is there something about the other experiences you had with your family members or contextualizing their experiences that made you reflect on your trajectory? Like, say, mentioned your cousin who, you know, had success professionally and then was now looking to shift to, you know, experiences and focusing on himself and and other things that are important to to to him, and then, tragically, he got cut short of that. Is there something about that discrepancy that influenced you to say, hey. It's it's really all about control for me?
Khurram Naik:Because I'm trying to understand where that motivation for control over your destiny came from. Because, you know, you were doing well at the firm, you know, making great progress, had, you know, a huge win that was tribute to your hard work. So, you know, what was it in that in that that system was working just fine for you? Tell me some more what went into that realization there's a value gap for you.
Vishal Shah:Well, I think I quickly realized that life is short, and you might have your own plans for what you want your life to look like, but the universe will punch you in the mouth and tell you what your life is supposed to look like whether you like it or not. And when I was facing these experiences, I realized that, you know, I could sketch out the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty years of my life what I want it to be. But if I don't take some active control of that, it may not ever get there. Oh, and by the way, I might not make I might not see tomorrow. Anything could happen.
Vishal Shah:Mhmm. And so I think by by understanding the fact that, you know, being at a big firm, there's a lot of institutional parameters that you're living by and navigating. And things don't happen in terms of what's best for you. Things happen in terms of what's best for the firm and what's best for the brand. And so when we were talking about having the right clients at the right time, right, that's something out of your control.
Vishal Shah:But if the client that you've invested and poured hundreds of hours into for years suddenly gets a new GC and they change their law firm and they they go to another law firm, well, what's your business case then at that point? Now none of that happened to me, but I realized that I wanted to to drive my career more than riding the bus of the Big Law brand.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. Yeah. That's that's helpful.
Khurram Naik:Okay. So then fast forwarding, realizing that, hey. The skill set is that I have from the defense side is gonna be very valuable on the plaintiff side. What did you then? Like, what was the next step?
Khurram Naik:Okay. You had this realization. What was the the the the the step from realization to action?
Vishal Shah:Well, it went into a deep research period, and there's really two parts to that. I would listen to articles or I'm sorry, read articles. I would listen to podcasts about just the business of having your own law firm, how to start, what does marketing look like, what does client acquisition look like, all of those things. And then I would speak to other lawyers and just vet my ideas and try to get their you know, use them as a sounding board to get their real thoughts about what it would look like to start a firm. Do you think this is a good idea?
Vishal Shah:Do you think it's a bad idea? For the people who had already started their own firm, I wanted to learn from them. You know, what would you do again? What would you not do? What is something that you wish you knew when you started that you know now?
Vishal Shah:And I collected all of that information from about 35 or 45 different people and put it into a document, and then I just started bulletproofing all of those things. And so it was it was really helpful to kinda get everybody else's failure is not the right word, but get everybody else's challenges and then try to navigate them in my own in my own approach. And I thought that was super helpful, and it helped me frame out a a really decent and solid business plan for when I started.
Khurram Naik:Alright. So tell me give us the insights. What what what were the key findings you made from those conversations?
Vishal Shah:The I still remember it vividly sitting on a on a Zoom call. A plaintiff's lawyer in Alabama told me when I asked him what was the most important thing you wish you knew when you started that you know now, he said, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. You gotta make sure that every month there's some money coming into the firm because that's what keeps the lights on, and it made a ton of sense. You know, my practice, most plaintiff side practices, and I'm talking about personal injury or employment, they're a lot of it's focused on contingency cases. Right?
Vishal Shah:We don't get paid unless you get paid type of advertising that you see all around town. But I took on a good segment of hourly and alternative fee work and maybe even some hybrid work that could help some cash come into the firm as some of the bigger, fuller, more lucrative cases, the contingency cases were working through the process. And so by sort of having these two tranches of of of matters, right, the ones that you're in there for the long term and then the others that are helping you kind of the short term engagements you're in and you're out, but they're continuing to have some money flow in, I think that was really, really helpful. And money is money is a necessary tool. It helps alleviate a lot of stress on a business owner because when you're not worried about where the next paycheck is coming from or where the next check is coming from, you can focus on how to do things the right way and how to do things in the in the way that they should be done.
Vishal Shah:And I think overall, that provides for a better experience for everybody. I don't wanna be flippant and and make it sound like money doesn't matter. It is super, super important, but it gives you that free when you're not worried about it, it gives you the freedom to focus on things that really move the needle.
Khurram Naik:So what were other strategies that you considered or at the time of launching? You know, like, what what what were some different jumping off points that you vetted in that period of time, and and what was kind of the consensus view on on on how to start?
Vishal Shah:Well, one of the big one of the first questions I would get when I told people I was starting my own law firm is well, after, well, why are you leaving? The first question I got was, well, how are you gonna get clients? And that is the first question my dad asked me. That is the first question most people ask me. And so there's a number of ways to skin the cat.
Vishal Shah:You have folks who are marketing in traditional ways. Think billboards and radio advertisements, commercials, things of that nature. You have folks who are using the Internet a ton, and they have Google Ads and other sort of ad campaigns that are going on as well as search engine optimization or SEO where they're trying to make sure that their firm comes up on the first couple the first couple of hits on Google when somebody's searching for for their type of law firm. Both of those require a lot of money. And so when you're starting the firm, you have to be very smart about where you're spending your dollars.
Vishal Shah:And for me, number one, I didn't have the infrastructure to deal with a high volume of intake calls. And number two, I didn't want to spend a lot of money doing that and getting it set up at least initially. Now we will start doing that at some point. Maybe not the billboards, but certainly the the Google Ads as well as the SEO. But that stuff takes a good amount of foundational investment from the firm, and we weren't prepared for to do that at the very beginning.
Vishal Shah:And so we trusted our network. And it could be a personal network. It could be a professional network in terms of people that I know, but it could also be something like LinkedIn where I'm connected to so many people just because I met them at a conference, and then we've just stayed in touch. Or they've come across my profile, and we've connected that way just through an informal Zoom or whatever the case might be. So I think client acquisition and and marketing were was was a big piece of what what I was focused on in those early days.
Khurram Naik:And then what was the potential strategies for subject matter to take? Was it, you know, you knew it was gonna be exclusively employment litigation, or did you consider other options? And then there too, what was the consensus view on on how to approach that?
Vishal Shah:I wanted to eliminate variables to the extent that I could. And so I could certainly I'm I'm not a personal injury lawyer. I've never handled a personal injury case on the plaintiff's side. And I certainly could learn it, but should I learn it? Should I spend the time to open open my practice up to a different different area?
Vishal Shah:And for me, the time value proposition wasn't there to learn a different area of the law at that stage. So I wanted to focus on employment law. I had that background coming from a place like Morgan Lewis. I had the training, and I thought that there was a real value that I could provide to folks because I've seen it on both sides now. And I think being able to look at look at something from all angles really gives you a great perspective.
Vishal Shah:And so that was why I stuck with employment law.
Khurram Naik:And so is there anything about the early days and how you thought you would build the law firm that your perspective today has changed on?
Vishal Shah:How I thought I would build the law firm and how that perspective has changed. You know, I don't think anything nothing is coming to mind immediately. I think there is a significant amount of investment coming back into the operation side of the law firm itself. So, you know, we are we're always talking about we're always thinking about how do we improve the experience for our clients. What makes it better?
Vishal Shah:What removes obstacles to communication? Because I think the number one complaint that individuals have who hire lawyers is that we don't hear from our lawyer that often. And so, you know, we have a really robust, awesome legal practice management software called FileVine. It's incredible, and it's super customizable, which is really great. And everything that we do is run through that from cases to administrative to payments.
Vishal Shah:You know, we're now working on putting together a client portal for our for our clients. So they can just log in and see where cases are, see where their matter is from time to time and what's coming up. We're we've also just signed up to revamp our entire intake system. So it was just being much more streamlined process from our end. We're also upgrading our website.
Vishal Shah:So it's a constant focus on how to be better, how to improve, how to reinvest, and just make the firm as operationally sound as we can.
Khurram Naik:And so what makes you I guess we're diving more into the business of the law firm, which I think probably is under discussed. I think plenty there's plenty of outlets that'll talk talk about, you know, the substantive aspects of of of passing law or of subsidy of of of opening law firms. So I really appreciate how we're diving the business of this aspect. So how did you know that now it's the stage to allocate resources, time, capital to, let's say, the website and building out your your your SEO presence? Like, how how did you make that determination?
Vishal Shah:It's it's all an iterative process. So I knew when I started that we would be as lean as possible. Right? I didn't I this is, I guess, an entrepreneur story and a small business owner story, but I didn't even sign up for Westlaw when I first started my firm because that comes with a significant cost. And until I was making some money, I didn't want to to to just sign up for something that would be a constant overhead cost.
Vishal Shah:But I did sign up for something called the Social Law Library here in Boston, which for $455 a year as opposed to a month, you can have access to Westlaw, LexisNexis, a bunch of different online resources. They've got a ton of books that you can check out. And I thought that staying lean in those early days was really, really smart. I think within two months, I realized that this is ridiculous, and I don't need to be traveling downtown every every week to go research. And so I quickly bit the bullet.
Vishal Shah:But that's just one example of of how, you know, we started off lean, and then we did kind of what we had to do in the space. And then as we progressed, as we got some more matters under our belt and resolved successfully, we just took those funds and started putting them back into how to improve the firm. So it's always been a plan to do it iteratively.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. Okay. And so with the the work you take on, you know, if you think of it as a portfolio, you were you broke down this concept of portfolio of contingency cases versus cases that are are alternative fee or or, you know, some sort of hourly fee. Do you have a rough like, a rule of thumb for how much you wanna have in in terms of any given month of of the breakdown between those? I mean, recognize it changes month to month.
Khurram Naik:No one can per se say, I want it's gotta be exactly 20% this and and 40% that. But, like, do you have a rule of thumb for how you're allocating your time to those different kinds of work?
Vishal Shah:Well, once the cases are in, it doesn't matter whether it's hourly or contingency. You know, we we work up the cases according to our standard, and that doesn't change just because of the way that the the financial model is structured. But in terms of the actual breakdown from month to month, I like to do a 60% contingency and then 40% on the hourly or flat fee side, and that shifts depending on, you know, what's coming in and what's going out, a lot of which is not in my control. But, ideally, I think that breakdown is a solid one because you still have money coming in every month, but you still have tremendous upside in those cases that you're taking on a contingency because it's just an investment. It's an investment in that case that you're putting in, quote, free time into until the the case is resolved, if it's resolved.
Khurram Naik:And then help us what can you talk about with the way of the financials of the firm and have an understanding? Like, how would you help somebody who's prospectively thinking about this to under wrap their head around the financial of the law firm and and and and what you can expect?
Vishal Shah:You know, you can start a law firm today for very, very little money. There's only a handful of things that you really need. You know, you need the correct corporate structure for your given state. You need to make sure your bar licenses and whatnot are active. And malpractice insurance, which which even if your state doesn't require it, you should get it.
Vishal Shah:And, actually, you should also get cybersecurity insurance, but that's a topic for another day. And I think from a financial, you know so so there's not a lot of money that is outgoing if you don't want it to be outgoing. Right? You can be lean if you want to. And then you just need to decide, well, based on the value that you're offering, what types of clients do you want, and how are you gonna structure those engagements with them?
Vishal Shah:For me, it's easy. It's a litigation focused practice. It's either contingency or it's hourly flat fee or some sort of hybrid among the those three options. But if you're doing something different like counseling work or IP transactions, it's just really thinking through, well, what the folks that are coming to you, what do they need? And then how do you offer that in a way that makes sense and that people want to to go to you when they when they need some legal advice?
Khurram Naik:And then apart from the breakdown of contingency versus hourly, is there some breakdown of of the are there some other way that you're thinking about how your work is structured as far as diversification goes? Are you thinking about having diversification of clients geographically in different industries? Like, how how how do you think about that aspect of your business? Because, you know, it it could be a risk to say, hey. I focus all on Boston life science companies, and that's my expertise or something like that.
Khurram Naik:And I I I don't have the expectation that an employment lawyer is is focused subsequently on an industry, but I'm using that as an as an illustration of this concept of of the risks of being specialized in one area and then there's a downturn or whatever, then you're you're really tied to an area or an industry. How how do you think about that aspect of your business?
Vishal Shah:Yeah. I think in on the management side, there's certainly that specialization that you have within, you know, being the IP tech transactions lawyer within x industry. That certainly exists. On the plaintiff's side, you have people who niche into certain practice areas. They might be medical malpractice lawyers.
Vishal Shah:They might be toxic tort asbestos lawyers, or they might do employment law. And even in within employment law, they might focus on the wage and hour laws that are available at the federal level and sometimes state level. Or they might do discrimination cases where, you know, there's federal law, but then certain states have their own law there too. I don't have a certain specialty in terms of, well, I take only wage and hour cases or I only take discrimination cases. I take on cases that I think are really strong.
Vishal Shah:And, you know, I think that we are not a volume shop. We will never be a volume shop. That's not our goal. That's not in that's not related to our vision in any way possible. So we look for strong cases, and there's a very rigorous process that we go through where we're looking for certain key indicators of a case.
Vishal Shah:We're looking at the merits of the case, of course, and making sure that it meets the elements and that it's gonna pass certain stages within the litigation where they could be challenged. And, ultimately, if it passes that summary judgment test that we were talking about earlier, if I think that there's gonna be a way for us to survive that, that's a great marker for me. And that's something that I really that I really focus on and love to have in all cases and really strive to have in all cases. The other is who is the actual defendant themselves? Who is the company?
Vishal Shah:And where and what do they do? And where do people view them within just normal day to day living? Right now, given recent events, the insurance industry is not really looked upon kindly. And so, you know, that might be a defendant where you wanna think about a little bit of all these external pressures that are ongoing as you're going through in in evaluating a case. I also look at the the individual plaintiff themselves and think about, is this a person I like?
Vishal Shah:Is this a person that I would go and have coffee with? Is this a person who can tell their story convincingly? That doesn't mean that they're the nicest person ever or that they're just all warm and cuddly. No. They might be kind of prickly too.
Vishal Shah:But are they telling their story in a convincing way, and is this person likable? Because, ultimately, what you're going to ask a jury to do is believe your client over a whole host of defense witnesses and defense employees who are gonna say your client is a liar, a cheat, and a steal, and a thief. So I think kinda thinking about the cases that we're bringing as a whole is really impactful because it needs to meet those markers for us to take it on. Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense.
Khurram Naik:And so you're focusing more on on the quality of the case and not so much on any sort of perspective specialization. So you're you do you do you expect to ever specialize, or is that is that a product of what's coming in the door today, or do you think there could be a payoff to focusing on, say, wage and hour work or or something like that?
Vishal Shah:The the answer is I don't know. I mean, I do a lot of sexual harassment assault cases within the workplace. I do a lot of discrimination cases of any type, whether it's race, gender, disability, any of the protected characteristics. And I do a lot of cases involving pay practices of companies, whether they're paying folks the right way or paying them on time the way that they need to be paid. So those are the three buckets of expertise that I have, and those are those are the same types of cases that I handled at Morgan Lewis.
Vishal Shah:And so handling them for so long, you get some insights and and some trends into how these cases are worked up, And I think that's really helpful. Would there be a day that I branch out into the personal injury world or I branch out into, you know, civil Rico cases? Yeah. Maybe. I think if the right opportunity presents itself, I'm always open to that, and I'm not necessarily wedded to only being an employment firm.
Vishal Shah:You know, the firm is called Shah litigation. It's not called Shah employment law. And so the the view, the vision is for it to to be nimble and be open to any opportunities that come along.
Khurram Naik:So on the topic of shot litigation, tell us about litigation. Tell us about how you're approaching, you know, getting yourself switching yourself from, hey. I'm big for a lawyer to, I'm a trial lawyer. How how is that process of self education training coming along?
Vishal Shah:So this is the absolute best part of the job. Litigation and preparing for trial is what I absolutely love. And as it relates to litigation, I see it as something that's far more nuanced than than just filing complaints and going through the typical process of most cases. You know, employment, aside from your health and your family, is the most important thing to most people. Right?
Vishal Shah:It represents a person's dignity, their sense of purpose, and often their entire identity. I think we all have folks that we know whose profession is really their personality. And so for us, every case that comes through the door represents someone's life story, their professional journey, and it's usually a pivotal moment in their career. And it's a moment that's if they're reaching out to me, that hasn't been a pleasant one. And so, you know, the way that I approach litigation reflects this understanding.
Vishal Shah:And I think many firms on the plaintiff side take what I call the assembly line approach to cases. You know, they're filing similar complaints with slightly modified details, and they're filing them and just going through the motions. We have a have a completely different philosophy. We we believe in something called strategic precision, and it's like we think of it like a chess game where every move is carefully calculated and considered, it's not just considered for that immediate impact of that move or the next move. It's considered within how it shapes the entire trajectory of the case.
Vishal Shah:If we take this position, how does it affect these other five things that we're not thinking about? And so it's really it's it's using. By the way, this is the same thing that the really, really good defense firms do. And that's that's one way where the training hasn't changed. I still absolutely love the the nitty gritty details of a filing in terms of, like, how to make it look pretty.
Vishal Shah:And that's something that I've just taken from Big Wall that was really important to some partners that I work for, and it's become important to me. And I think it reflects reflects well in the firm. But going back to kind of our litigation process, before we even file a complaint, you know, we are really diving deep into the intake process, and it's something that I call the blueprint for each case. It's the pre litigation analysis that we do. You know, we're looking at documents.
Vishal Shah:We're talking to folks who we think matter that might be an expert, that might be a witness, and that helps us understand the actual human story. And it helps us understand, well, what are the dynamics going on between these people at this workplace? What are the facts we know? What are the facts that we don't know? What should we be asking for?
Vishal Shah:Just gives us a bigger holistic view of what's going on. And, you know, I think when you couple that with legal research and you can identify these theories that have landed and stuck with courts, you know, I think that really makes the difference in employment cases. And I think this this process is a little surprising might be a little surprising to people. I think I haven't looked at the exact numbers yet, but we turned down, like, 95% of the intakes that come our way. And that's not because we're some big, bad, exclusive firm.
Vishal Shah:No. It's not it's not that at all. It's it's about being effective. And when we can focus our resources on what we need to do for that particular case, it is a much better outcome for everybody. And I would much rather focus my time on a handful of cases than have hundreds that I'm trying to corral and and trying to just get to the next stage.
Vishal Shah:That's not really my I'm I'm I'm not geared geared towards that shepherding type of process.
Khurram Naik:And so when you're thinking through these cases, what kinds of how are you doing research to figure out how to position these cases and find precedent for cases that are really on point? Like, what how are you it's because it seems incredibly factual. And so then how are you researching cases based on on on on on those kinds of fact patterns to really build the case for for because I'm assuming part of what diligence thing is, hey. What sort of legal precedent is there for prevailing under some similar circumstances? So maybe you can speak to, like, to what extent you're you're you're valuing that versus going with your own intuition.
Khurram Naik:And if so, like, how do you how do you find that alignment of of of precedent?
Vishal Shah:The good news for employment cases is that there are many, many jurisdictions where the law is very very similar. Now the way courts interpret that law and the way judges, you know, implement it, it can be different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But at the federal level, you have a ton of laws that apply in every state. And then some of those states have state specific laws that largely track the federal laws, or they might be more protective, like Massachusetts. Massachusetts state law is super protective on discrimination, retaliation, harassment issues of employees.
Vishal Shah:And so there is a lot of law out there, a lot of circumstances factually that could be similar to the ones that we're evaluating. And so we're looking for key terms, you know, just doing general Westlaw research about, you know, hey. Some person, you know, refute some person had a check come in that they were supposed to get as their final paycheck, but they said, don't bring it to me. I'll come pick it up later. But Massachusetts law requires that you get that check that same day, the day that you're terminated.
Vishal Shah:So a lot of it is trying to find similar situations just by researching it on the legal platforms, but a lot of it is also just discussing the issues with other lawyers, other plaintiff's lawyers. And I do it with plaintiff's lawyers. I do it with management side lawyers. It doesn't really matter to me what what side of the v you're on. I just want somebody else's take to kinda brainstorm how do we attack this certain issue that we're facing.
Vishal Shah:And whether that's at the intake stage or whether that's something that comes up later on that we don't know about, it's usually just trying to leverage the resources that you have, whether that's Westlaws or or people.
Khurram Naik:Tell me more about the people component because I think long history business can be very lonely. And and then also, you know, your your big law friends are just they're just not gonna understand the process you're going through just they haven't experienced it. So then how are you finding a network of plaintiff lawyers or, you know, other people or or other business founders, you know, maybe that pool as well to to kinda run these ideas by?
Vishal Shah:It's funny you say that because when I left the my old firm, my mentor said, when you go out on your own, it's gonna be lonely. Make sure that you find times to meet with other lawyers and go to lunch, go have coffee, go to dinners, do all of those things to maintain a social professional life. And I took those words to heart because that guy is one of the smartest, strongest lawyers I've ever met. His name is Steve Wall at Morgan Lewis. And when he told me that, I took it to heart.
Vishal Shah:And so I try to go have coffee or lunch or dinner or go grab drinks with people just to check-in. It serves a dual purpose. One, it helps me stay top of mind whenever an employment issue comes up for a plaintiff. That's kind of a secondary piece of that. The other one is the social interaction piece of it.
Vishal Shah:I really like hanging out with folks. And so meeting with people, learning about what's going on with them, bouncing ideas that I have off of them and getting some insight is really, really helpful. So aside from having these one on one meetings, I will also try to go to bar association events, South Asian Bar Association. We have a Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association, MELA, and then there's a national level as well called NELA, National Employment Lawyers Association. And I'm really involved with those as well.
Vishal Shah:So I'm going to conferences and trying to just, you know, meet people and make sure that you're not on this solo island of of one.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I think that sounds very essential. And then tell me about how you know, for as far as what's the role that referrals apply in your business and what for so we'll start with that, then then talk about any any co counseling that you're doing with with other lawyers. So let's start with referrals. Like, what what role has referrals playing in the business, and what role will that change, you know, prospectively?
Khurram Naik:Like, how how do you think about that channel of of of client development?
Vishal Shah:So I mentioned earlier that we don't do any traditional advertising, and we don't do any Internet advertising or SEO at this stage. So what do we do? And what we do is focus on our network. So referrals play a massive, massive part of that. They are essentially how I've gotten every single case that I have have ever had at my firm is through somebody that I know who has said, oh, you have an employment issue.
Vishal Shah:You should talk to my buddy, Vishal. He's an employment lawyer, and he can possibly help or direct you in the right place. So referrals are the lifeblood of my firm. That's how we operate. That's how we get cases.
Vishal Shah:I don't expect that to ever change. I hope it never changes because to me, a referral is even a stronger connection to the client and your network than any of those other methods that we were talking about. Because number one, somebody that they know, like, or trust has had an employment issue, and they have thought of you as the person to help resolve that issue for that person that they like, know, or trust. And so there's a there's a feeling there's a personal feeling of responsibility there that, oh, Quorum has referred me referred his buddy to me. I need to do a good job for the buddy, and I need to do a good job for Quorum because he's my boy.
Vishal Shah:And, you know, we like you said earlier, we've gone through this entire business building process basically walking hand in hand together. So I think I I I hope it never goes away. It's a vital, vital source, and that's that's what we're always trying to focus on is, you know, making sure that referrals in the networks stay alive.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. That, yeah, that that makes a ton of sense. And and, yeah, for my business, referrals are enormous. And, yeah, it's just also just like you said, there's that social connection and obligation that creates this, like, triangle of obligations that everyone is aligned on in in making this a success. And then like you say, it's just also gratifying to just help people that you know or people in your network.
Vishal Shah:Well, look. I think we all have moments of self doubt, and we have moments of fleeting thoughts and maybe not so fleeting thoughts of, can I really do this? Did I make a huge mistake? And I think when people you know send you cases because they trust you to be able to handle it, that is reassuring. And it does more for me personally, mentally than it does for me financially.
Vishal Shah:Because oftentimes a referral doesn't even play out into something that's actually generating revenue for the firm. But every referral, regardless of whether it's a legit case or not, is a stamp that, hey. I trust you. I trust you to take care of my buddy. Go do it.
Vishal Shah:And and I know you can do it. And maybe that's not what they mean. Maybe it's more simple than that. But that's how I like to think of it because it helps me sort of process and and and and keep keep going. Because for the reasons you explained, it can be lonely.
Vishal Shah:It is somewhat like an island at times. And so to have to look for those little bright spots is really, really important.
Khurram Naik:Tell me about on that point, you're talking about personal satisfaction both of servicing the client and the professional competence of taking something to trial and prevailing. You know, those are two sources of gratification, and then there's the money. That's another source of gratification. So three sources of gratification. How do you help someone let let well, let's say on the we we can talk about the connection between these three, but let's let's talk about let let let let's talk about through the lens of money.
Khurram Naik:Would you ever counsel someone that a strong reason for going to launch your own firm is for the income potential? Is that itself a reason to do it? You'd have to have the other two, I think. But, you know, if someone's if the lens they have on it is financial, would you say, all things considered, launching your own firm is a is a strong financial move? Tell me about how you think about that or advise other people on that.
Vishal Shah:I think that it can be extremely lucrative if done the appropriate way. I think plaintiff's practice on a general are feast or famine. There are people who are scraping by to make it month by month, and that's you know, there there's could be multiple multiple reasons for that. And then there are folks who are really, really crushing it because there's a manner to their madness. There's a method to their madness in terms of how they go about litigating cases and how they handle it.
Vishal Shah:I've been really fortunate to see how some really great firms litigate, and I've just taken those tools and put them in my pocket. Both I used them when I was at Morgan, and then I use them now. And so I think learning from others can be really important in terms of how you're going to drive your own business. But I think I I would never just say, hey. You should go be a plaintiff's lawyer because there's a ton of money to be made and go do it.
Vishal Shah:There is money there, but there there are easier ways to make money. And I think that the money is not always there because it depends on a lot of circumstances that are outside of your control. You know? For example, I was vetting a case last month where everything looked great. Some really I say I put great in quotations.
Vishal Shah:Great from a client intake case intake perspective. What happened to this individual was extremely terrible, and they had suffered a a lot of both financial and emotional damages. The defendant would have not been a likable company, neither would the the the the the lead wrongdoer. But that company was not doing well financially, and they were about to file bankruptcy or they had already filed bankruptcy. I'm mixing the the details now.
Vishal Shah:And so even if we took that case and worked it up all the way for three or four years and put our very best foot forward as we do in all of our matters, there may not be any money at the end of the road. Now some folks have bad luck. And knock on wood, I haven't had that bad luck yet, but anything could could happen. You take on a case. You've invested all this time, and then you get popped with something that shows that you might not get paid for all of your work.
Vishal Shah:So there's a significant amount of risk. But I think if you're thoughtful and methodical and smart about your approach, I absolutely think that there is a way to make more money having your own firm than you would ever make at a big law firm.
Khurram Naik:Tell me about my set shifts in moving from largely billable hour work to larger contingency work. Because I've observed, you know, as a legal recruiter, our work is contingency as well. You know, you only make money upon placements. And so I've observed that I think a some a misapprehension that a lot of lawyers have. When you're at a big firm, you know, you're largely getting paid by the hour, and you're getting paid to do hard things.
Khurram Naik:And so here's here's a difficult fact pattern, and so the skill in your work as a lawyer lies in your ability to prevail despite, you you know, bad facts, let's say. As a legal recruiter or anyone working contingency well, I shouldn't say anyone, but in my case, contingency, really, the hard work you're doing is in finding outstanding people to work with that have strong credentials, a strong story of what they're looking to accomplish, are are personal people that our our law firms are excited to work with.
Vishal Shah:You're talking about your candidate.
Khurram Naik:Yes. So that's the hard work up front is to get that talent. And then when you have that talent, then everything's easy from there. And that's not to say there aren't challenges on the way, and and and talented talented lawyers can have very particular needs, or, you know, maybe they they're in a really strong position and then, you know, really getting a firm to to meet them with with what their needs are. There's a skill in that negotiation.
Khurram Naik:So there's definitely challenges involved when you have the when you when you have the very best talent, but largely, the challenge is getting the very best talent, and then things are easy from there. But what we don't do is, hey. Here's this edge case person where I understand there's a narrative of what this person's trying to accomplish. Maybe they've made a few more a few moves, and I can maybe help, you know, help at the next firm understand why they need to make one more move. Or maybe their credentials aren't very strong, but they've got really strong experience that can really showcase like, hey.
Khurram Naik:Maybe you don't understand the significance of this work they've done here, but here's the significance of this work they've done there. So but that's a much harder road to go, and you get paid the same either way, whether you take the outstanding candidate that's easy to explain or or this this really hard person. Therefore, you don't take the person with a really hard story to tell, which I think is really counter to how maybe, let's say, litigators in particular think where, like, hey. I'm getting paid to do take on some really hard facts. So that's something I've encountered in transitioning from big law, maybe litigation, to a contingency model that's in legal recruiting.
Khurram Naik:I'm curious if you've encountered any challenges in in in in either yourself or getting other people to understand that that the difference between contingency work in that way and and largely hourly work?
Vishal Shah:Yeah. Look. I think on the management side, the benefit is it doesn't matter what the facts are. They could be absolutely terrible. You're getting paid every single month.
Vishal Shah:Bills go out. Bills get paid. Your salary your check has come your your check is hitting the bank account on its regularly scheduled days no matter what. On the plaintiff's side, the case really matters. If you have a dog of a case right?
Vishal Shah:Take the functional equivalent of the defense case we were just talking about. If you have a dog of a plaintiff's case, you're not getting paid because it's a dog. And so you really have to be smart about the case selection process. That is the most important thing on the plaintiff's side. And that's where, you know, I think you hear a lot of times that, oh, you're just you're just this case is super weak.
Vishal Shah:You're just filing it to file it, and then and then they try to offer some lowball amount, you know, $510,000 to settle a case. And I always laugh at that approach because there's one law firm in particular that it does not matter what case I bring. I brought four or five of them against the same firm, different offices, and every time I get the same response. This case is weak. We don't see any merit to it.
Vishal Shah:Here's 5 or $10 to go away. And at first, I used to get pissed off. And it was like, what do you mean this case is meritless? Are you serious? Like, look at all these allegations.
Vishal Shah:They're well detailed. Here's some supporting documents. Here's some supporting evidence. And then I realized that it's just a it's it's two things. One, it's a tactic to get me to say, okay.
Vishal Shah:I'll take it because other people have taken it in the past. And two, I think it is part of a playbook which underscores a bigger problem in that management lawyers are too busy, and they have too much to do. And so they're not really looking under the rocks like plaintiff's lawyers do, and they're just going through the motions a lot of the times. Now the really good management firms don't do that, but the vast majority of firms just play through the playbook. And it's a matter of knowing what that playbook is, and thankfully, I do have a good sense of that, but also making sure your own plan as a plaintiff lawyer kind of preemptively addresses those issues so you can go about them.
Vishal Shah:And so I hope that was a long winded way of answering your question on on contingency fee versus billable hour type approaches to cases.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. Yeah. And I and I maybe the conscience I had in mind to what to the extent that, you know, lawyers are referring you matters and maybe not comprehending that component because they, you know, they're so stuck in that billable hour mindset that they can't really appreciate, hey. Like, the case has to be strong. I don't get paid unless the case is strong.
Vishal Shah:Yeah. So I I tell all of my network whenever this comes up, send me anything you have related to employment law. I don't need you to vet it. I don't need you to take a lot of time to do an investigation or have a discussion with somebody. It's an employment issue.
Vishal Shah:Okay. Here's my buddy Vishal's information. Give him a shout. And then I can take it from there in terms of evaluating whether it's a strong case or not a strong case. You know, that that's my feel.
Vishal Shah:You know? If I had to do something with recruiting or recruiting legal professionals, you're the first person I would go to to talk about what that looks like. And so I don't want referral partners to go to have to feel like they're obligated to only send me good cases. The only thing I ask is if it's employment, think of me and send them my way, and I'll take care of the rest. Whether I can help them or get somebody else to help them, I'll do I'll do whatever I can to make sure that they are taken care of in the best way that I can do it.
Khurram Naik:And now tell me about co counseling. We you co counseled any other lawyers? And and if so, how did that come about?
Vishal Shah:Yeah. Absolutely. So plaintiff's work is different from the management side in a lot of ways like we've talked about, but one of the ways is the firm size and structure. Plaintiff's firms on the employment side are necessarily much smaller than a lot of their defense counterparts. And so there is a ton of collegiality among the plaintiff's bar, much more than on the management side.
Vishal Shah:Right? There's collegiality within the firm, but firm a is not going to firm b to talk about issues that they're having or what they're doing on, you know, AI, for example, in most cases because that is your competitive advantage. If you're sharing that information with the competitor, you're losing it. And then, you know, you're vying for the same clients. The same is not really true on the plaintiff's side.
Vishal Shah:And so there's a much bigger, warmer sense of let's work together. Let's go through this entire process. And, oh, you need case law on this issue? Happy to provide it. You need a draft brief?
Vishal Shah:Happy to provide it. Whatever it is, there's a lot of open hands there that are willing to kind of help you when you need when you need that help. I think I just
Khurram Naik:wanna pause there on that because that is that is extraordinary and rare to have that. Because, I mean, I'm thinking just on on as a plaintiff's side, employment law, your you know, the potential number of people you can work with are in the hundreds of millions. And so just like the odds of two people literally chasing the same lawyer are, you know, infinitesimally small. And so that the the structure you're describing of being able to communicate, collaborate, learn from peers, that's gotta be really rare to have to have a small universe of professionals that are all highly trained. You you all have, There's any number of people who have defense side training or not.
Khurram Naik:Maybe you've only ever done plaintiff side where it doesn't matter. But just a bar. There's still a bar of these people. So it's not like an indefinite pool of people. So it's enough where there's a collegiality, and you can get to know a lot of these people, and yet you are almost guaranteed to not be chasing after the same people.
Khurram Naik:That is a really unique structure of a kind of work to fall into, and and I think that itself is high if I was choosing different lines of work, I wouldn't have thought about that in advance. And even I think sitting here today as a professional is not specifically something I would have thought about, but that is a huge differentiator in choosing this line of work versus other kinds of work.
Vishal Shah:Yeah. I think one of the things I thought I was gonna miss leaving a institution like I left was we had this internal, basically, message system, blog system, where you can put up questions. Hey. Does anybody know so and so as a mediator? And you get feedback from your clients within the or from your colleagues within that one firm.
Vishal Shah:I thought I was gonna miss that because what am I gonna do? Message myself and try to get some information from from me? But the plaintiff's bar has a organization, like I said, it's called NELA, where there is that same type of message board where you can say, does anybody know this mediator? Let me know what thoughts you have. And people are really, really happy to share insights because I think one of the fundamental things that drives the plaintiff's practice in terms of collegiality is this concept that rising tides raise all ships.
Vishal Shah:And so if I do better in my case because somebody gave me some information, that's great. That sets the precedent for them to then use what I did in my case for their next case. And it just sort of builds and builds and builds on top of each other, hopefully resulting in better outcomes for everybody on the plaintiff's side.
Khurram Naik:Mhmm. Yeah. It's vague.
Vishal Shah:But so you were asking about co counseling, and I do co counsel because there's that collegiality. Sometimes you need the help. Sometimes usually, I am jumping on to other people's cases to help them. And so for whatever reason. So in Mark, I have a trial in the Eastern District Of Pennsylvania, and that is with a really, really good friend of mine whose wife and I worked together at Morgan Lewis for a while.
Vishal Shah:He was also a big law lawyer who left and started his own firm a couple years before I did. And he and I are gonna try this lawsuit together, which is gonna be a ton of fun. And then so that's a co counseling situation. I have a co counseling situation in April, which is when my next trial is. That's in San Antonio in federal court.
Vishal Shah:And that is a situation where a guy that I know through this organization says, hey. You really like to try cases. You really know this stuff. Do you wanna come try this case for me? Now it's it's a little crazy going back to back, I guess, in in trials that are, you know, far apart in the country.
Vishal Shah:One's in Texas and one's in Pennsylvania, but this is the stuff that I absolutely love to do. So I'm more than happy to do it. Just a lot of fun.
Khurram Naik:And you you mentioned co counseling. Just something that came to mind is fees. So then how, is there a typical fee? Like, is it typically a third for recovery of of of any funds from, from from prevailing? Generally speaking, how do fees work?
Vishal Shah:So generally, how fees work on the plaintiff's side, assuming that it's not a flat fee or an hourly arrangement, it's contingency. And so when the case resolves at whatever stage it resolves for, a certain percentage of that amount, and it depends on the jurisdiction, depends on the types of cases, depends on the market, that percentage can be anywhere from 25 to 40%, maybe even more in other jurisdictions of recovery. And then if you're layering on a co counseling piece to that, there's a certain percentage of that contingency percentage that gets allocated towards lawyer one and then gets allocated against lawyer two. So those again, that allocation depends on where you are on the case, where everybody's expected to pitch in, and how much time is going to come into play. And a lot of it is just it's an upfront agreement.
Vishal Shah:I like to have it all in writing about, hey. This is what we're doing. We're gonna work together on this, and here's how we're gonna split fees because I don't want to have any confusion later on in the later on where we're we're having a fight over over money that that we shouldn't be having.
Khurram Naik:And then help me understand, I guess, just two parts to the question I have on on how employment law has changed and the trajectory that it's on. Because, you know, what's top of mind for any lawyer is what's happening in my field. Like, am I in a field that is gonna be growing and rising? Are there any threats to it? You know, right now, we have an administration change, and so areas have been very busy in the past number of years, things like antitrust or energy.
Khurram Naik:There's some questions about what that looked like in in with the with with this new administration. And so or or aside from administration change, there can be changes to, let's say, in patent law. You know, I was a patent litigator, and so there's been a lot of changes in in in how patents are adjudicated and and some of the challenges around bringing certain kinds of cases that's that's impacted, I think, in particular, the pat the plaintiff's bar. So can you give us a sketch of generally how employment law has changed in the past five years, which incredibly now is you know, encompasses the time of the pandemic? So is there largely speaking broadly speaking, is have employment laws been become have rights for employees become strengthened in the past five years?
Khurram Naik:Like, give us a sense of the trajectory of federal and state of of of of what that looks like. Because the the the following question I have is, hey. Like, what are the risks that you're anticipating or facing as as a plaintiff's lawyer, you know, on the employment side?
Vishal Shah:I think that's a really good question. You know, employment law is similar to alcohol in that when times are good, people drink. When times are bad, people drink. And the same thing is true with employment law. There are issues that come up when the economy is booming, and there are issues that come up when the economy is struggling.
Vishal Shah:And so, for example, when COVID hit in 2020, most of the world was shutting down. M and A deals were shutting down. People didn't know what was gonna happen in the near future. You know? We were still trying to flatten the curve within those first couple of weeks in March and April 2020.
Vishal Shah:But we were incredibly busy as employment lawyers. We were monitoring every single court closure, every single stay in place mandate, all of these new things that were coming out hour by hour, we were super busy. Companies were laying off employees, so we got busy helping with that. When the economy is bad, companies lay off folks. There's certain legal attention that's needed for plaintiffs at that time.
Vishal Shah:And then when you're hiring folks, it's the same sort of deal. You're reviewing employment agreements and compensation packages and structuring things in a way that makes sense for your client or or trying to make it make the most sense for your client. So generally speaking, we're really, really busy and have enough to do on our plates. Knock on wood. That's a great thing.
Vishal Shah:What we're focusing on changes over time. And so for what used to be you you said five years. So 2019 to 2020, you know, there was a change and shift in the culture of the American people where it felt like there was a bigger anger towards big business. There was a bigger skepticism towards what companies were telling us, what the news was telling us, and how people were navigating those issues. And there was also a rise in being more sensitive and being more mindful of of people around you and how you approach those conversations with certain people.
Vishal Shah:And I think the law tracks some of those changes. I mean, there were some implementations of local laws at the state level that covered certain protected covered hairstyles, covered weight, covered all sorts of issues that weren't traditionally thought of as protected characteristics like race or gender or disability or age. And so there were evolutions in the law that came about in that way. Most recently, you've seen a lot with the NLRB and them striking down certain provisions in certain types of agreements like noncompetes and stay and play or or pay and stay type agreements. And so it shifts and it changes.
Vishal Shah:And so I think staying on top of those trends is really, really important. And the EEOC does a great job of that. There's a ton of people on LinkedIn that post about great developments in the law. And just saying you know, reading the news and looking at publications like Law three sixty and things like that to just make sure that you're seeing where the trends are. I mean, there's all kinds of reports showing what type kinds of cases are up and down from years prior and just trying to focus on those.
Khurram Naik:But then what do you think is the biggest existential risk to plan? So it sounds like, you know, basically, everything's really strong, and it doesn't seem like there's any gonna be any rolling back of protection for employees. It just it's been a ratchet upward of more and more rights granted and and and the expansion of what we thought were protected characteristics.
Vishal Shah:I think I think one of the biggest threats to the plaintiff's side employment practice is this concept of damages caps. So, for example, under title seven, which is the primary discrimination law at the federal level prohibiting all sorts of discrimination, all sorts of types. There are caps on how much money you can receive and how much money from a lawsuit. No matter what a judge says, no matter what a jury says, if you have this type of claim and the employer is of a certain size, it's capped at a certain amount. And so the highest level for the biggest employer is $300,000.
Vishal Shah:That figure has not changed since the nineteen seventies. Hasn't adjusted for inflation. It hasn't accounted for really, of, inflation and the value of money and how people in the types of experiences that they're having. And so I think you there's most people don't pay attention to it because it's not relevant to their practice, but you will see these massive awards against companies who have done really bad things. And a jury has found that they've done really bad things and in in awarded multiples multiple millions of dollars to plaintiffs who have suffered through this.
Vishal Shah:Remember, these are the folks who have seen the documents, listened to the witnesses, sat through a trial, and then come to this decision while this company is telling them to do the exact opposite. So it's a considered approach. They value the case. They sign off on the number of damages, and then a judge then comes in after the fact because they're required to. This isn't picking on judges.
Vishal Shah:But because they're required to, they have to lower the amount and limit it. And I think $300,000 sounds like a lot of money, but when you factor in the cost of an attorney, when you factor in what happened to you, and $300,000 just doesn't go the same length that it used to back in the seventies. And I think that's one of the biggest fears and biggest threats to the plaintiff's practice. Because in Massachusetts, we're fortunate to have a state law that doesn't have cap damages in that context. Some states don't have it.
Vishal Shah:So my friends in Texas and my friends in Alabama are when they have a big verdict in a case that deserves a big verdict, it gets punched down because of these caps that haven't been adjusted for fifty years.
Khurram Naik:So let's let's switch gears here. Tell me about how you are thinking about counseling other people. Like, because yeah. I'm sure you get people reaching out to you all the time from Big Law. Curious about the path that you've struck because it is unusual to to walk away from from BigFirm in that way to launch to jump to the other side of the v.
Khurram Naik:So big picture, how should someone if someone's maybe their first year associate at a big firm, and they're thinking about, hey. Like, do I really prefer the platform of big firm? Because there's plenty of great things about big firms. You know? I I think you have the credibility that you have now and confidence in yourself because you've been a big firm, not to mention, you know, some financial capital that you've, you know, been able to set aside over the years that's contributed to a nest egg.
Khurram Naik:So there's a lot of the things in favor of of spending time in big firm. I certainly wouldn't have the credibility I have as legal recruiter or confidence and mastery without that. But, of course, there's plenty of opportunities outside of it. You and I are both operating. You know, we were in a big firm, and now we're not.
Khurram Naik:And so we are we are thriving in environment outside of it as well. How do you counsel someone on the path, you know, through big loss success there, or how do you say, hey. If you wanna go plan aside or or or, you know, launch your own firm, you know, here's the path to that. Like, how do you counsel those two paths? And how do you even discover in yourself?
Khurram Naik:And recognize, of course, it's not something you can know necessarily a first year. So you didn't know as a first year associate that was gonna be your goal. Like you say, life punches you in the face and and and clarifies your values. But to the extent that, you know, you are thinking ahead about the future and and trying to understand criteria today that you can apply consistently throughout even if and if the values change, you still apply that criteria to determine a different path. What what criteria do you say, or or how would you think about success as a big law associate success launch your own firm?
Vishal Shah:So I think there is a ton of hate on, I think, big law generally. And maybe that's just the LinkedIn people that I see and follow or maybe it's on Reddit or whatever the case might be. But there's a lot of hate, and I think some of it's deserved. I think a lot of it is not. I think big law is a great place to cut your teeth and to learn how to do things the right way and to learn how to how to do things in a way that moves the needle, both from a business perspective for for corporate clients, but also from a litigation perspective.
Vishal Shah:Because the fundamental difference is that we were talking about Apple, so I'll use them as an example here. No no particular reason to use them except for the fact that we were talking about them earlier. Apple doesn't care about miss Jones' discrimination lawsuit. Apple cares about the portfolio of discrimination lawsuits that it has within certain geographical jurisdictions. Right?
Vishal Shah:So, like, in the New England area, we have a lot of gender discrimination cases, for example. I'm making all this stuff up. In Georgia, we're having a lot of age discrimination cases, or in the Southeast, we're seeing a lot of age discrimination cases. So most companies tend to think of cases as a portfolio of risk as opposed to this is miss Jones. Something terrible happened to her at work, and now she's trying to seek some sort of recovery for that, some justice for that.
Vishal Shah:And so the way that you view it is fundamentally different from when you're on the management side to the plaintiff side. I think going back to BigLaw in particular, there if you're at the right firm, they should be investing in you. They should be pouring into your development both as a business person and as a litigator or a transactional lawyer or whatever your specialty is. So, yes, you should be learning the nuts and bolts of an m and a transaction and the things that you need to be looking for and things that you need to be wary of. All of those kinds of things on how you do your job day to day, you should be, number one, learning that on the job, and number two, getting this specific training towards that.
Vishal Shah:The second piece is the business side of it. Right? What are the measures? The law is one piece of it. The business is another.
Vishal Shah:So how is the business functioning? How are we structuring this case on a financial model? Why do we do it this way? How do we make it the most profitable? What the hell is utilization, and how do we use that?
Vishal Shah:What is leverage? All these terms are things that are floating around in big law business departments, but they're not being explained to the individual associates because we don't want you to worry about that. We don't want you to worry about leverage. We don't want you to worry about utilization. Do the best job you can do on the task in front of you, and that's that.
Vishal Shah:But I think that's shortsighted because when that person makes partner or is getting close to that senior role, they have no idea what the hell any of this means, and you're learning it then as opposed to whether you learn it on the front end. And I think there's a lot of great training opportunities that you can get in big law. Less hands on in most cases, but still train. I think when you come over to having your own firm, it's deciding what you want to invest in. So in my case, you know, the day to day nuts and bolts of litigation, I don't need that type of training because I've done it for so long, or I don't need that much of the training.
Vishal Shah:What I do need more training on is how to take my trial practice to the next level. What are cool ways, effective ways that some of the really, really successful trial lawyers are implementing, and how can I take that and put it into my practice? And so just kind of sort of thinking of it in a more nuanced approach, I think, helps in terms of how you're developing.
Khurram Naik:Yeah. I think that's those are great observations. Yeah. I I I remember I I had a client call with a partner and got the client call. So I said to the partner, hey.
Khurram Naik:What what comes next for you today? What are you working on? And he said, you know, some non billable stuff, some business development. And I said, you know, do you enjoy that? He said, not really.
Khurram Naik:I didn't really have any experience with that. Then I said, well, I guess I should start learning that now. And he said, nope. You should just focus on doing good work. So she's like, lesson not learned.
Khurram Naik:Right? So, yeah, so the the that's those are great things to be thinking about ahead. And well, yeah, I I see that we're we're at time. This time flew by, and I think there's there's still so many questions I had to learn more about your business because it's fascinating me and to dive more into into your trial prep approach. But, yeah, best wishes on those coming trials.
Khurram Naik:I think you're gonna crush. And thanks for sharing your story about how you got here, and hope we we can revisit this a year or two from now and and talk about all the other successes you've had.
Vishal Shah:Man, from your lips to God's ears, I I really, really appreciate the time. I've learned a ton in just talking about this whole process with you. So I probably gained from it as much as you gained from it or the listeners gained from it. So thanks for having me. Really happy that we did this.