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The Effective Lawyer teaches ambitious trial lawyers how to grow their skills and create a prosperous law firm. Using lessons learned by accomplished attorneys from around the country, we discuss lessons learned through their trials and tribulations. Our discussions cover a vast range of topics sought out by attorneys looking for advice, from depositions to how to market your law firm.
The show is hosted by Jack Zinda, Founder and Senior Trial Lawyer at Zinda Law Group. In less than 15 years, Jack and his team have grown Zinda Law Group from 3 attorneys to over 30, spanning several states and handling a variety of personal injury cases from gas explosions to truck accidents.
Jack and his guests share their knowledge and skills that they’ve acquired through the process of building one of the most successful plaintiff’s law firms in the country.
In each show we cover a new topic that an ambitious attorney would want to better understand, while providing practical skills to improve their legal practice.
For more information, visit https://www.zdfirm.com/the-effective-lawyer
00:00
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda and I'll be your host. Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Effective Alert podcast. I'm Jack Zinda, along with one of our top young lawyers, trial lawyers, Max Massey. Hey, Max.
00:32
Speaker 2
Hey, Jack. Honored to be here. Happy Friday.
00:34
Speaker 1
Happy Friday, man. It has been a really fun, busy week. Just got back from spring break with the kids and now back at it.
00:42
Speaker 2
So I gotta ask, and you do a great job of figuring out the schedules, how do you dive into each case, manage the business, and then manage the family?
00:52
Speaker 1
Well, first you have to have an awesome spouse, which I do. That's like 99 of the game, and the rest is pretty easy. You know, I read a really good book a long time ago called Getting Things Done, and he had a really cool process of how to manage your life. And one thing I like to do is kind of break up my life into chunks of time and really try to cordon off family time for personal time. Man. When I first started practicing, I would work till 8 or 9, like every night. And I realized I was not being super productive. That six to nine frame, because you're worn out, you're tired, you're kind of staring at the same thing for hours on end. And that was like super not healthy.
01:30
Speaker 1
And so I started like really coordinating off my time between my family work and then having a plan of like, when I'm going to leave work, when I'm gonna take care of the other stuff. But having a really good partner is really helpful in that's such a good shout out.
01:43
Speaker 2
And when she listens, she's gonna be.
01:44
Speaker 1
So happy if she listens. I. I tried to get my kids to listen once and it was like 12 minutes and they're like, no, dad, can we please turn it off? And why do you talk like that?
01:55
Speaker 2
So when you first started, though, when you were working the long days, you didn't just do personal injury though, right?
01:59
Speaker 1
So I had an interesting story. So when I came out of law school, I first. Well, to rewind, I went to Baylor and I was a summer starter, which meant I start like two days after college. And so my first year, I went all the way through for four quarters. And then my second summer, I started looking for some clerkships. I had one lined up in East Texas. I have one lined up in Houston. But my girlfriend at the time, now wife, lived in Austin still, or Georgetown, kind of close to Austin. So I Just like turned those down. I said, I'll just find a clerkship in Austin and do that for the summer. So I get to Georgetown and I could not find a clerkship to save my life.
02:39
Speaker 1
I didn't realize that it is the toughest job market in the country for lawyers. As you probably know, UT graduates, like 400 lawyers a year. Nobody wants to leave the city if they're there. And so I was applying to firm after firm and I was waiting tables and I'd swore, like, I was done waiting tables, I was done with restaurants. So I'm like depressed waiting tables at this place called Wildfire, which made good tips. And I applied to probably 150 different law firms, like just cold applying, calling people. I had this one criminal law attorney that showed a little bit of interest, and I must have called this dude like 83 times. I was like stalking him because he said I might need some help. And then I went on to LexisNexis and I cross referenced Southwestern University graduates with Baylor Law School graduates.
03:26
Speaker 1
And I emailed them. And one person, really nice, great attorney, she's still a really good lawyer. Wendy Lester Mason put my resume on the Williamson county listserv. And then a guy reached out to me and offered me a clerkship for eight bucks an hour. And it was him and two other people. And they did some family law, some business law, and a little bit of personal injury. And he only had about 15 cases. And that summer I was their receptionist, I was their paralegal, I went to court with them, I organized discovery documents, I took his son to get registered for college. Like, I did everything. And at the end, you know, I really like the personal injury kids. They're really cool, they're really fun to work on. And I, I did almost all the work on those.
04:10
Speaker 1
And they offered me the job to come back 100%, eat what you kill. And all my friends who were getting these high paying jobs making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, I was like, you guys are suckers. I have a, I have a limited income, right? And so that's how I ended up there. And in the beginning, I had to do a little bit of everything, so I did just a little bit of family law. But I realized I did not like that real early on. I really disliked it. And so then I also did some DTPA places where like this one guy, his bulldozer didn't work. I represented him. Another person got screwed out of a car. I was a lemon. And then I was trying to build up personal Injury practice.
04:50
Speaker 1
And so I had to do those things for a while until I got it to a place where I was making some money. And then when I started my own firm, I had an attorney that did business law and attorney did family law. And those were both hourly and was a good supplement to the personal injury income. So, you know, lesson I took away from there is like, you have to have a way to have cash flow. You're gonna do this business. It would have been tough for me to just go out on my own without a big bank. You know, a lot of money to. Or at least some money to. To hold off, because you don't get paid till then, as you know.
05:20
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I have a couple friends, new law school grads, and they are kind of like general practice, but they do have a lot of PI cases.
05:28
Speaker 1
Yeah.
05:28
Speaker 2
And so, for lack of a better term, how did you kind of fail forward in terms of, like, learning how to talk to adjusters, learning when to go to court, when not?
05:40
Speaker 1
That's a great question. I mean, you know, how are your friends doing? They just started the firm straight out.
05:45
Speaker 2
So they're joining, like, sole practitioners. I'm not going to throw out any names here, but, like, you know, here and there, suburbs of Austin, some in Austin, and they have some PI cases. We'll talk about them. And they're like, well, why can't I just do this and this?
06:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, so I think one thing, the first thing I would tell people is to figure out what you want to do. You know, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like, having a plan. Because if you don't have a plan, you won't know how to get there. And in the beginning of my career, I made a lot of errors on trying to diversify what I wanted to be. So I always thought I needed two practice areas. So I tried to learn bankruptcy law, and I hated that so much. I went to bankruptcy court, and this is like. It just could not stand any of it. It was so boring. And people were super nice. And once I decided just to make the commitment to personal injury law, I treated it like law school.
06:36
Speaker 1
I made a list of all the different things I would need to know as a personal injury lawyer. I looked at. There was a few different things. One is, what does the law say then? Is, how do people advise you do this area, like, as a practitioner? And then third, how do the best do it? So, for example, if I was going to look at a UIM case under insured modus, say, okay, what does the law say in Texas, then how do people generally say how to do it now? How did the best do it? And I had a list of things like that. Like, and there was like 15 or 20. And then I also did the same for the techniques I wanted to work on, like depositions, deposition preparation for dire trying cases, going to hearings.
07:14
Speaker 1
And I got a bunch of cles that would be helpful to learn those things. And every day I would spend an hour learning that information. And then I was really fortunate to learn about ttla, which was just a godsend because all of these great attorneys were willing to help me, give me advice on what to do and what time to. I learned the hard way, you can't take everyone's advice because just because they're old and post it doesn't mean it's accurate. And then there's like the secret knowledge that you don't know. Like, were talking about that policy the other day where the adjuster might be lying about it. You don't learn that in a book. You. It's kind of like trial and error. And then I developed these principles. You know, for example, I trust nothing an insurance company tells me.
07:55
Speaker 1
You know, trust but verify or don't trust get in writing. And I actually got almost burnt on a couple cases where they lied about policy limits, they lied about exclusions. So that was a big lesson. And luckily I never got, you know, burnt on it. But so those types of things really helped develop the scars to figure that stuff out. And the other thing is, people don't do a good job of documenting the things they learned. So I had a spreadsheet, which you'll be surprised about, right? Everyone knows I love spreadsheets.
08:23
Speaker 2
She said, organizes.
08:26
Speaker 1
My wife will just laugh at me. She's like, what are you even working on your lawyer? You've had this spreadsheet open for like three hours. Like, no, there's a lot going on here. It'll have topic. So I did this for like four years. I would have topic, subtopic lesson. And it would be like, judges, Judge Smith. Judge Smith doesn't like when you do this deposition, preparation of client. Always make sure you do this. And every time I had that thing pop up, I would sort it. And then I started creating playbooks. And I was like, hey, what would be the best way to do this? To remember it. And that's where the checklist come into play to keep track of that stuff.
09:02
Speaker 1
And I also had it, like, I called it lessons learned to be like, hey, you know, I remember this one case, it was against a grocery store. And this is before I realized you, if you want to win, you have to be very aggressive in litigation and they have to be afraid of you trying cases. And this adjuster just would not call me back. And I kept calling him and calling him and calling him. And I was like, looking back, I'm like, what was I thinking? Like, like, why didn't I just file a lawsuit and just get over with? And so I always tell young attorneys that, like, you don't know what you don't know. And, like, keep a list of things you remember from each case you learn.
09:35
Speaker 1
If you'd like a copy of any of the things you heard about here today, or to set up a time to talk one about one of our team members about a case, please go to Zendalaw I.O. And we have amazing resources, downloads, guides, and you can set up a time to talk to us if you want to talk about how we handle things or any case in particular.
09:59
Speaker 2
So when did the checklist. So internally we have a series of checklists to progress us through all almost to. To charge ahead towards trial.
10:07
Speaker 1
Yeah.
10:08
Speaker 2
And to your point, if the adjuster thinks that you're going to trial, they're more likely to settle. And if you are progressing forward, like you're going to trial, you're more prepared for trial.
10:16
Speaker 1
Yeah.
10:17
Speaker 2
So when did that really start?
10:19
Speaker 1
You know, it started like, actually in law school. The idea they always told us at Baylor is like, treat every case like it's going to draw. I think Professor Pal told me that one time. And so the idea of trial being the finish line and that really brought it together in my head. I was, okay, if it's the finish line, settlement is a way for them to get out of the trial. And so I was like, okay, what's. What do I not want? Well, the longer a case takes, the worse it is for my client. So I want the shortest amount of time possible. I also don't want to not settle a case if it's a good number and it helps the client.
10:50
Speaker 1
So the first is trying to decide what the case's value is really important to that because you work your way backwards from there. Now, you don't always know the value of the case, especially early on. It could go up, it could go down, but I want to have a general idea and then knowing the source of recovery, because that can determine how much you can spend on the case. A lot of times when I see a case get pushed further than it Should. And people spend more money than. Than the case can afford. I mean, for example, if you have a case and it's worth $1 million and you spend 400,000 on case expenses, well, that's not going to help the client. Client. Right. Because then all the money went to the attorneys and case expenses.
11:28
Speaker 1
And their job is to get the money at the end of day so you can get back their life back on track. It's because they're not looking at what the end game is. Like, what can I actually get out of this case? What's the source? Recovery? What are my likely outcomes? And so that's when the idea of these processes started. And I had originally, like a case checklist that was like trial and work my way backwards. And I said, okay, well, each one of these kind of has its own thing to. That it takes to be successful about it. And so let's break off and. Okay, now let's create one for the hearing for mediation, for, you know, just. You just had a focus group, right? We have one for focus groups. And that's where the concept started.
12:06
Speaker 1
So really, since the beginning, I think also may have gotten idea because my first law firm had no resources, like, no research materials. And I don't know if I should say this. Like, I copied the entire Dorsanios litigation guide from my Westlaw subscription, and I, I spent 30 minutes a day when I was in law school my last year cop. Because I knew my firm had nothing. They had no books. So I, I used that like crazy for the first year. Then my Barbie books and my outlines. I remember calling a torch professor and asking him a question. I was like, we have those.
12:36
Speaker 2
Felt really good about it, to be honest.
12:38
Speaker 1
And we have those resources here. So we do have research stuff.
12:41
Speaker 2
Now when we do talk about, you know, insurance policy limits and then the end game, at what point do you look at a case and you're like, we need more than the policy limits? Or is that for people who are new to practicing this or still trying to, you know, grasp the numbers aspect of it? Because a lot of this is numbers. Yeah. You know, how do you determine that endgame? And if they refuse to tender policy limits?
13:07
Speaker 1
That's a great question. You know, first, every case is different. So what I like to do is I develop these principles, and then every principle can be broken. You know, there's an. There's an exception every rule. So in general, we don't take money that's not insurance money. Like 99.9% of the time. That being Said we just got a three plus million dollar verdict last year where we're getting paid out of a company's assets or not of cash from the company. So first you have to play it out. If let's say I have an individual who has a half a million dollar insurance policy and it's just a person that I'm going after their insurance policy, they were involved in the wreck. If I go and get above limits or I don't accept limits and they don't have any assets, they could just declare bankruptcy.
13:54
Speaker 1
You know, you can't take someone's house, you can't usually take their retirement benefits. You can't take a lot of. It's easy to hide money, hide cash and just transfer it to their spouse. So post judgment remedies are very difficult. So I start with that general rule of mine. I'm not going to get more than the policy most of the time. Now if the insurance company convinced bad Faith, I might be able to get more than policy limits because they let their insured down by not selling when they should. So the whole time I'm trying to figure out what's the source of recovery and what's the maximum amount I could get. So if you have a small source recovery and they won't pay it, you're going to look at third party bad faith. That's what in Texas we call it stowers.
14:31
Speaker 1
It's the case that it's based on. And you say something.
14:34
Speaker 2
Yeah, I was actually about to bring that up because we've had a few cases referred to us from attorneys who didn't want to go to litigation and kind of hit that.
14:40
Speaker 1
Yeah.
14:41
Speaker 2
That point. And so they had sent us all the information. I've looked over a couple of their demands and there was no source language in there. One of the cases to a point where it ended up getting filed.
14:51
Speaker 1
Yeah.
14:52
Speaker 2
And I was talking to the new lit adjuster and he was like, yeah, if you can send me a Stowers demand, I think we can get something done.
14:59
Speaker 1
Yeah.
14:59
Speaker 2
And it's crazy how powerful Stowers language and that bad faith threat can go.
15:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. When the reason it's so powerful is insurance companies, the way they make money is they set reserves and that's based on the policy premiums are getting paid. And every case, when a case that goes into their little, you know, evil jar of cases that they're looking at, they decide what it's worth and it's never more than the policy limits. If you can put pressure and they have to pay more than the policy limits which Stowers allows you to get. Then it comes out of their operating funds that's not set aside. So that's going to affect their bottom line and ideally they've done the math so they know roughly how much you're gonna have to pay and that's how they get the profit they get on cases.
15:38
Speaker 1
So Stower so's it for mix and so does bad faith because that comes out of a different pot of money. And that's why people lose their jobs is if they don't pay out and they should. I mean, what's your lesson? You take away from that like that with that, you know, your buddies or referral sources that are sending those that you know when you're looking at a.
15:55
Speaker 2
Case, it kind of goes back to what you were talking about earlier where you're almost trying to practice so many different types of law. You might not be hyper focused on personal injury and frankly, you could be doing a disservice to the client.
16:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, 100%. Like, I used to help out all my friends with different types of areas of like family law, probate. And I stopped doing it because I was like, y'all, I may not be the best person to be helping. I may actually do more harm than good. And also this is stressing me out. Like drafting a will once a year from somebody is like stressful. I don't remember all the rules from that. And I think especially what we do too. A lot of people think it's easy money and it's not. It is hard work. And there's really nothing in life where you can make a lot of money and it's easy. Like if it is, everyone will do it. You see how many people try to practice personal law.
16:39
Speaker 1
And I always think, you know, I would never want a client leaving our office getting less money from us than they could have from someone else.
16:49
Speaker 3
That wraps up another episode of the Effective Lawyer. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you've got a minute, a quick rating or review goes a long way. Want more tips, insights and stories from the field? Head over to Zindalaw I.O. To learn more. Thanks for listening. Until next time.