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Hosted by Montana Funk, Young Lawyer Rising covers issues pertinent to young lawyers, from newly minted attorneys to lawyers 10 years into practice and beyond. From dealing with the daily grind and career management to social issues and financial, mental, and physical wellness, this show features the voices of young lawyers from across the country sharing their stories and advice to help all lawyers navigate their careers and rise to where they want to be.
Montana Funk (00:13):
This is Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the ABA Young Lawyers Division and produced by Moraine Media. Welcome back listeners. This is your host, Montana Funk. Today I'm joined by Tristian Shannon. Tristian is the founder and owner of Primus Video Group, specializing in helping law firm owners generate high quality leads through video marketing, social media, and YouTube. As Chief of marketing and business operations at a top Boston immigration law firm, his strategies have fueled rapid growth, client acquisition and brand expansion, setting new standards in legal marketing. I'm so excited for this episode today. I kind of want to just jump a little bit right into this, and you have a bit of a different background than the guests we typically have on this show, so I want you to give a rundown to our listeners of who you are, what you do, what your background is.
Tristian Shannon (01:09):
My name's Tristian Shannon, I am the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief of Operations Officer at GMR Law Firm. It's an immigration firm in Boston, mass. We also do personal injury, and I am in the process of opening up my own law firm under a BS in Arizona where I'm probably going to be opening up three or four more law firms.
Montana Funk (01:33):
Geez, good for you. Okay. And it sounds like from what my understanding is, is you actually have a bit of a real estate background. Is that accurate?
Tristian Shannon (01:40):
Yeah, I did real estate before and then I decided to make a career change because there was a good amount of things about real estate that I wasn't a big fan of, and I just felt like I, like I can do more. I wanted more things about it. It didn't make sense to me and I was thinking about how do I switch it to do something that's more enjoyable.
Montana Funk (02:02):
Okay. So when did you actually make that decision to switch and how did you decide, okay, law is the realm? I'm going to go actually into,
Tristian Shannon (02:10):
Oh man, we're going to get deeper on this one. So in real estate, so for me, I guess it's important to say for me, I come from a poor background and for me financial stability was really important and I did a lot of things. I was a teacher, I was a coach, I was a personal trainer, and I just never really felt like I was getting ahead on those things. So I jumped into sales for the gym I was working at, it was called Title Boxing Club. After a while I was training somebody, he's like, Hey, you should probably look into real estate. You're real good at sales talking to people. That's something you should probably do. So I jumped into it. I jumped into real estate, started seeing success pretty early in my career. And then I just started figuring out, okay, if I'm going to be doing the same work, I might want to just focus on where property values are higher versus where they're not higher. I was doing that for a couple years, but I still felt like off there were things about real estate. I didn't like the fact that you have to constantly be chasing and convincing clients to come to you, and I didn't like the fact that the busy seasons are the summer seasons,
(03:21):
So you have nothing to do in the winter seasons. Business is slow, and then when summer comes, you don't pretty much have a summer showing houses and listings. And then I hit a period where I was kind of getting not frustrated, but I wasn't closing listing appointments I normally would. So this all happened in a span of a month. Honestly. I had a couple listing appointments that I thought, yeah, I'm definitely going to close these. And they told me that they decided to go with a different realtor. So as competitive as I am, I'm always asking was there something that I did just to always improve my game and my sales pitch? And they're like, no, you were great. We decided to go with Redfin. And I heard them twice that week because they guarantee 2% commission that's as high as they charge, so can't really be mad at somebody going the summer for a financial benefits. So that's when I started really thinking like, okay, I'm seeing this change. Now you have this new brokerage coming into our field. They guarantee only charging 2%, whatever it is, that's going to be a problem for me. It doesn't matter how value your services are, but from a financial standpoint, you can't really compete with that. If I'm charging five or
Montana Funk (04:34):
6%,
Tristian Shannon (04:36):
That's when the idea started happening. And then I lost the deal. It was a foreclosure deal. I had a property in Lexington, which is a pretty wealthy town. It was listed for two point something million. I represented the seller and the investor, the buyer. So I was going to get a nice change of the commission. And during the foreclosure process that we were dealing with an attorney, a bankruptcy attorney on something, and he had messed up and not filed something properly. So I ended up losing the deal and I was very, very upset. So I just thought to myself, if this idiot can pass the bar exam and be an attorney, then it really can't be that difficult because he was doing it a lot longer than me. But he wasn't really good at the business side of it. He wasn't good at communicating. He wasn't really good at taking suggestions or advice.
(05:31):
He wanted to do everything himself. He thought he knew everything, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. So literally after a couple days I was like, okay, I'm going to go back to school. I don't want to be chasing the clients. I want leads and clients chasing me and I want financial stability. And it pretty much came down to two things. You either go back to school to be a doctor or you go to law school to build something and have leads chasing you. So law school was the easier route, the faster route than going to become a doctor. So I literally applied and I got in two weeks later and I just jumped in.
Montana Funk (06:07):
Wow, good for you. I mean, it's interesting too because, so for me, I knew I wanted to go to law school since the 10th grade. So I think a lot of people have kind of similar paths as me, but there are those people like you who are in an area of life and they're like, I'm not super happy here. What can I do? And I think being very personable and someone who can, I don't want to say market themselves well necessarily, but someone who's outgoing and passionate and can get along with people. That's super, super helpful to have in the legal world. And I think a lot of times people see lawyers as just stick to the books, quiet, reserved, follow the rules, get their job done, but people like you, it's like, no, that's actually really helpful. Even if you're not chasing the clients, it still is helpful. So I guess when you were in law school, what made you think to yourself, I actually want to open my own firm and I want to expand this so that it's not just me working for a company, but I'm going to actually just take that huge leap and just go right to the opening of a firm?
Tristian Shannon (07:07):
That's a good question. I knew right away that I was going to work for myself. It never crossed my mind that I was going to go work for somebody else because that was one of the reasons why I left teaching and training, training. I left because when I was closing people in packages, at some point I went to my management. I said, Hey, I like a little bit more. I'm the highest closing trainer here. At the time, at the gym that I was at in title Boxing Club, we were the number one sales gym in the country for title boxing club. And that had a lot to do with me. But then it got kind of weird when I asked for a raise and then when I went into real estate, I actually enjoyed the freedom of picking my own schedule and working at my own terms.
(07:48):
So I knew right away that if I was going to do something, if I can be somewhat successful in real estate, which is a hundred percent commission, I was just going to jump in and open up my own business because a lot of the frictions that I would have with other people was just that when I brought ideas and different creativity ways to generate new business or what to do, they were either outdated and didn't want to do that, or they would just completely dismiss it. So in my case, in real estate, they encourage you to door knock. They encourage you to send out mails and flyers and at the time put ads in the newspaper. I'm 22 years old, I don't know any other 22-year-old buying the newspaper, right? Yeah,
Montana Funk (08:27):
No. So
Tristian Shannon (08:27):
When I started doing it was actually Snapchat how I started getting a lot of leads in Facebook's. When I started making those social media videos, that's when I started realizing, wow, this is easy. I wake up every day and I've had people that I went to high school college with, Hey, me and my significant other are looking to buy a house. We saw you do real estate. Hey, my parents want to move down to the Cape, they want to sell their house. Hey, we're looking for a rental here. So I started heavy leaning into that, my strengths and what gave me momentum quick in real estate, in law school, people look down on that. Everyone has the vision where, oh, I want to go corporate, I want to go big law. They don't understand that it's just a small percentage of people who are going to get those jobs.
(09:10):
And no offense to my law school, we're not the best law school in the United States. So it's very unrealistic that we're going to get those. And when you talk to people, especially in law school, everybody cares about the image and there's a lack of business sense on what it is to run a law firm. And there's a lack of confidence because you don't learn these things in it. So when people were pushing back on me as, oh, that's not professional. I'm not going to use social media, you want to do it this way. You need experience first. You need to work at a firm and get experience. I knew that for me, you get experience by doing the work and making mistakes. And if you really want to limit the experiences, then you find a mentor that you pay to guide you in what it is that you want to do. But I was early enough, you got to remember, I went to law school before the pandemic. I was already trying to build something. I didn't know how I, I was going to do it, but I knew that I could do something where it was a hundred percent remote, which was pretty much not a lot of attorneys were doing that before the pandemic. I think now that we have the pandemic, it's more open, but you still see people fighting it.
Montana Funk (10:19):
And there's a lot of firms now, I feel like even going back and saying, okay, we were remote for a couple of years and now we want to get back into being in person. And I want to split up, you said two things that I think are both important. So one is the social media aspect and kind of being this newer generation and kind of leading away with a different path than I think a lot of older practicing attorneys do. And then the other obviously is what it takes to actually open a firm. So I want to take a break and then I want to split those two sections up.
(10:53):
So I want to start first with the actually opening of a firm. And the reason I say that is because I know, and I'm sure a lot of listeners have felt the same where you're in law school and you have people who are judging you when they hear that, right, they're like, oh, you think you're going to leave law school and just open your firm? Do you understand how hard that is? And then it's shocking, right? A lot of people are like, yeah, you're right, I'm an idiot. Why would I do that? I can't do that, which isn't the case. So from your perspective, what do you say to those people who maybe aren't as confident or outgoing and they're like, I've thought about this, but people judge me and I don't know that I can do it. How would you say to them to push past that?
Tristian Shannon (11:33):
I mean, everyone's going to judge you, right? If you say you want to be a personal injury attorney, they're going to say that you're an ambulance chaser. If you say you want to be an immigration attorney, they say you want to help out illegals. If you say you want to be a criminal defense attorney, they say you want to help out criminals. If you want to be a bankruptcy attorney, they're going to say, you deal with deadbeats. No matter what area of law you want to do, there's going to judgment and stigma behind it. I think the biggest thing that helped me out is that you have to understand that you can find the right support people in the team, but you have to keep pushing. Don't let somebody else's negative feedback or opinions matter on you because that's exactly what I had to deal with in my law school.
(12:13):
I know other people and all the interns we have, bring it up to me. First thing, Giselle, when she said that she wanted to open up an immigration firm, you go to class the next day and you see that people are acting different once they hear that. I think what it is is that especially in law school, a lot of people lack the entrepreneur and the image of what it is that they want to do. And because it's not such something to be publicized easily, they think that it's unrealistic and that's just not the case for it. I know plenty of other people who did the traditional route and some of 'em are happy and there's nothing wrong with that, but a lot of them are not happy, but they lie and they don't talk about the burnout and they don't talk about how they really feel.
(12:54):
I think when you want to do anything, especially in the legal field, you're going to get a lot of pushback. But I can promise you this, when people start seeing the results that you're getting, those same people come back and ask you for help. And I think that's the thing that I'm keep focusing on. I get a lot of pushback because I'm young, giselle's also very young. We don't do things the traditional way and we got a lot of hate for it. We got a lot of people taking shots at us or people trying to belittle her because she's a woman, she has no experience, there's no way she can be successful. And now that we're one of the fastest growing immigration firms in Boston and we're killing it on social media, their tones have changed. But I think you just have to always believe in yourself and just find the right people that will believe in whatever it is that you need. And if anyone's listening, if they ever need any advice or anything, point in the right direction, just reach out to me because a real, it's hard. It's intimidating and not a lot of people are going to agree with what you want to do, but you just have to believe in yourself. If your body's telling you that this isn't the way you want to do things, just listen to your gut.
Montana Funk (14:06):
And I think that mean I'm definitely someone who, if someone tells me I could never do something, I'm like, now watch. I'm going to go do it because I'm like, right. And I think you're probably the same where it's like you're going to doubt me or underestimate me, which then fuels the fire to do better. And a lot of people aren't like that, and that's okay. But I think it's important for 'em to hear from people like you who maybe are like, okay, but the judgment, it's too much for me. It's too overwhelming. But I kind of like what you said was you're going to get judged no matter what you do. We have one opportunity on this planet and one life to go do what we want to do, and there's no point in focusing in an area that's not going to make us happy. Life's too short for that. So if there is somebody who's like, okay, I'm going to put this judgment aside, I'm going to do this, and you're talking about finding the right people, the right team, how do you actually go out and start finding those people?
Tristian Shannon (14:58):
You just have to reach out, man. Honestly, that's just what it is. So when we first started, you have to understand, I never imagined for me to be in the role that I was going to do. My imagination was I'm going to take the bar exam, I'm going to pass it, then I'm going to open up my own real estate firm. I never imagined that I was going to say F you the bar exam and not take it and go the a BS route. I never imagined that I was going to work in the immigration field. And I think what happened was is that with Giselle, in her instance, she did a lot of internships. She knew from a very early age that she wanted to become an immigration attorney. She has a story and passion behind it, whereas I was just trying to figure it out and figure out how I'm going to make income to live the life that I want to live.
(15:39):
She did an internship at Harvard Immigration and won an asylum case, and she spoke highly of this attorney. And during the end of her internship when she explained to him that she was going to open up her own law firm and this is what she wanted to do, he completely belittled her in 360. That image, I didn't like that because I'm a very confident alpha person. Giselle is a woman's very caring, very, very sensitive, does her best passionate. And I just told her there's certain things that we can do to blow up. And what we have to do is we have to find an SEO person. That's the first and foremost thing. And we have to find a mentor, a coach, someone that's going to guide us to run the firm the way you want to run the firm. The only way you can get those things is you just have to reach out because the truth of the matter is, and this is our experience, and I don't want to scare any of the listeners, nobody really wants to help you or support you when you think about doing something.
Montana Funk (16:41):
We
Tristian Shannon (16:41):
Reached out to 14 alumnis, none of them replied back. And we had one person that said they would help us and then they completely ghosted us. We reached out to professors in our law school, got ghosted. Everyone, other attorneys in our field that we looked up to got ghosted. And I think something that threw me and Giselle off is your competition. At the end of the day, business is business. And when they see young motivated attorneys who are going to put in the work, they don't want to help you unfortunately, but you can find people who do. You just have to continue reaching out and understand that you're going to get a lot of nos and a lot of crickets, but you will find someone, you just have to keep picking yourself back up and putting yourself out there, whether if it's reaching out through LinkedIn, reaching out through email, through a Google search because you found something going to Mass Bar Association, a networking events, you just have to keep, don't let it dim a light in your fire. You have to keep pushing. You will find that, but it's going to be a lot more nos and roadblocks, but you have to keep pushing through that.
Montana Funk (17:50):
Are there any challenges that you didn't foresee that you came across? And then on the flip side of that, are there any things that you started this process and you were like, oh, this is actually a lot easier than I thought. I mean, what were the challenges versus those that surprised you that maybe weren't actually as challenging as you expected?
Tristian Shannon (18:08):
I don't know how deep I want to get here. I think the biggest challenge I had is how much women are not respected in the legal field. I just have to say it.
(18:17):
Giselle has to deal with a lot more BS than what I would have to deal with. And in the beginning when we open up the law firm, I use, it's her firm, she's the face of it, I'm behind the scenes building it, and I quickly had to step out from behind the scenes because of how other attorneys would try to belittle her or talk down on her or even try to give her the wrong information so that way she gets in trouble. And those are the things that really caught me by surprise. And I guess I was a little naive to it, but being a confident alpha, whatever it is, I didn't like that. And I quickly became very defensive with that. You have a law degree, you have a law degree, you are equals, it doesn't matter if you've been practiced within 20 years or someone just passed a bar exam, you start off here, everyone should be respected.
(19:05):
And I was really caught off guard with how when she was growing her firm and we were growing the business, how the reality of it was women are not respected in the legal field. That caught me off guard. The thing that I found out was more easier is when you do things that are non-traditional and you stick to it, people respect that and will come to you for that. We decided to market directly through the clients, through social media ads. We have videos that have millions of views. We have videos that only have a couple hundreds of views, but that one video still generates us six figures a year in revenue. You start seeing other things that I didn't anticipate. People start calling the law firm, asking the law firm who does your marketing, not knowing that it's me. So now I have other law firms trying to hire me to help them get their law firm up.
(19:59):
That wasn't, I wasn't anticipating that. My mindset was just, we're new, we got to get clients, so we're not going to be in business long. So that was something that was easy and I didn't anticipate. That's how I open up one of my company's prime. And then it's just the younger generation now. We have younger people who are about to graduate law school interns who come in from other countries. We had an intern come in from Germany, we have an intern finding in from Arkansas. We had another intern finding in from Brazil, other countries and states because they feel the same way that me and Giselle felt. They didn't want to do it the traditional way and they didn't feel respected by it. By us putting our videos out there, I wasn't thinking about generating these things. And with having interns, they bring clients. I wasn't anticipating that, oh, my friend over here, oh, this person over here. So it's just, you never really know what's going to happen until you try it, but there's always something that comes left field. That's just another opportunity for you to help and push forward.
Montana Funk (21:05):
No, I love that. And I do want just to quickly intervene here, I want you to give a quick rundown about who Giselle is to you, just so that our listeners can understand what you're saying, who she is to you, what she does, and how she also with you inspired you to get into this work.
Tristian Shannon (21:20):
So Giselle is my girlfriend and my partner. We met in law school. We've been together since our one L year. We're going on nine years together. And she is somebody who is very passionate for her firm. She has her own firm called the Law Offices of Giselle and Rodriguez. And by me seeing how caring and passionate she was, I realized that that's really easy to market and find clients who are desperately in need for her versus where I'm more of the business side and the marketing side of how we should do things. So it was just pretty much a perfect balance and a perfect combo for what we're doing.
Montana Funk (21:59):
I love that. I want to take a quick break, but when we come back, let's switch gears into the social media side of this and kind of the new generation moving forward. I think something can be said, and this is no offense to anyone who's listening who may be isn't as social media or tech savvy, but a lot of times, like you said, people who are around our age, LinkedIn's really important. Even such Instagram, you can find people, you can reach out on Facebook and a lot of these ways that maybe older people or generations before us would say, that seems really unprofessional. You're going to message someone on Instagram. No, I would never hire someone or I would never work with somebody that way. And I don't think that's the reality anymore. I think we're in this shift that's kind of switching away from the traditional ways of building business and networking to kind of opening the door to a lot more opportunities through social media. So can you elaborate on how you have used social media to market and at least why you think that it actually has been successful when there are a lot of people out there would never think that that would work.
Tristian Shannon (23:11):
I mean, social media is it, it's kind stupid not to use it, right? It's free. It's organic. If you use it to educate people, let them know. Not everyone can afford an immigration attorney. Not everyone can do certain things. So I feel like when you use social media, it really humanizes you, brings it down to your level instead of always being in a shirt and a suit shirt and tie intimidating using legal terms instead of simplifying it. I think it's real easy to distinguish yourself from a lot of these law firms that use social media because people want to feel connected to someone that's just normal like them and doesn't seem to intimidate them or belittle them.
(23:54):
So one of the issues that we did, and a lot of attorneys didn't agree with it, is we would post our clients, we would post a photo or video of our success story once they got their citizenship or their green card. And then we would embed that on YouTube and we would embed that on our page. And we got a lot of people taking jabs like, oh, that's unprofessional, that's cringe. Why would you do that? But some of our clients, it's important for us to put their stories and what happened because there's other people in a similar situation and sometimes it's hard to, it's the best way to make someone feel like, wow, this person really understands what I'm going through. Because they help someone in a similar situation. You don't really know when or how you can track the data. You can look at the metrics, but you're really not going to know who your video is going to touch and see.
(24:45):
So for example, we do a lot of social media on TikTok. A lot of the clients that we get on TikTok are elderly senior citizens. It's their grandchildren that found us. So it's also, I started thinking about, well, I can't just market where I think my clients are going to be. I have to start marketing to the people who influenced the decisions, which is the younger generation. And that's how it works. Oh, my daughter, my granddaughter saw you on TikTok. A friend of hers follows you on Instagram. So we search you on TikTok. You just have to put as much content out there to be seen. You never really know when or why someone's going to need your services. They're only going to remember if you come off authentic and genuine.
Montana Funk (25:32):
And it kind of sounds like taking what typically would be what people see as a transaction, whether it's a business law, criminal law, whatever. You're just a number, a transaction and it's actually humanizing, which we should all be working to do that the people who we work for are humans with real life stories who are going through struggles a lot of the time seeing a lawyer, it's the hardest time in your life. And I kind of like the way you put that because you're not just a number, you're not just another person that's in the machine, you're not another case. You actually are a story. And I'd never even thought about it until you said it, that you're marketing to people who know people who maybe wouldn't find you in that traditional way. They can say, Hey, look, grandma, mom, dad, whoever it may be, these are people I trust and I'm curious, what do you say to those people who maybe look at you and go, I don't think that you have the smarts or that you can be successful because you think that this is an appropriate way of doing things?
Tristian Shannon (26:32):
I say keep a good look. I hope you save enough revenue. Your revenue is going to dip significantly. I don't really think that it's an option anymore. I think every law firm in person needs to be on social media. And for an example, when we hire an attorney, it's mandatory. You make social media videos because people connect to you. I can make social media videos and I can send 'em to Giselle, but the people coming to me, they're connected to me. For me to pass off Giselle, it doesn't even matter what it is. And a perfect example is we don't do criminal defense. We don't do real estate transactions. We don't do anything with wills and trusts, but people still reach out to us daily, Hey, do you guys do this? Because they don't understand that no, we only do immigration, but they're coming to us because they trust us.
(27:21):
They trust whoever we pointed to. And I just don't really see, and there's a lot of them. There's a lot of people I try to talk to law firm owners that are just, well, I don't really want to be on social media or I don't want my face on social media. You're not going to have a long lasting brand. You have to. It is just where it's going. And if you don't, like I said, you're going to see the revenue. Do people need to know who's behind the brand? The brand is you, the owner of the firm, be charming, be smiling, be positive, share stories, share case results. And if you're consistent with that, the universe has a funny way of repaying you. You'll find the right people. But if you keep fighting it, fighting it, you're just going to wake up one day and realize I had all these years to gain momentum and now I'm starting from scratch. And the younger generation of attorneys who take advantage of that, you're not going to be able to catch them.
Montana Funk (28:12):
Do you have any advice for people who maybe are shy and they're not sure how to have a strong online presence, but they want to and maybe they want somebody else on their team who can lead that? What would you say to those people who are like, I don't want to be necessarily the face, but I still want to be shown. I still want to market that way, but how do I start that?
Tristian Shannon (28:33):
Maybe just try figuring out anyone. I would take a good look at your staff. Do you have anyone that's comfortable on social media? Because there are a few law firms that I know of where the founders and the owners of the firms are not on social media, but they have their paralegals making videos and things like that. I would just start off like that because then it just goes to show, I like to think as businesses, as the firm, as a family, we're just one big family and once we bring on a client, we want to treat you like family. You just need one person in your firm that the clients can relate to and then they'll come to you because the trust has been established there.
Montana Funk (29:11):
I also think it's important to kind of touch on, and I think it would be helpful that you did take a different path right towards where you are right now. When you went to law school and as you said, you didn't take the traditional route, and I'm sure we have people who, whether they're in law school, debating going, they already are lawyers, however they went might be saying to themselves, I don't know that law is what I want to do. Or I don't know that I actually want to pass the bar and be practicing, but I still want to be in that realm. What advice can you give them to kind of get past that discomfort of going an alternate route that's not traditional while still feeling confident in their decision and understanding that it is okay to take the non-traditional way?
Tristian Shannon (29:54):
I mean, I think it's a two part for me. When you go to law school, and this is something that I had to deal with and it was really challenging for me, it is so much stress you're dealing with when you're graduating and then you have the bar exam over you. And then when you take the bar exam and maybe you don't pass, you just feel like your world's over because so much time has coming into that. And I didn't really like that feeling of the anxiety and the stress and you have family and friends that say, oh no, we know what you're going through, but nobody actually really knows what you're going through unless you've taken that route. And if you don't pass the bar exam, it's not really a big deal, but you are waiting six months to take it again, results and all that stuff.
(30:35):
The thing for me is just having a jd, you don't know how many opportunities you have. You don't have to be stuck on passing that bar exam. I would've loved to taken it and passed it, and a lot of my friends and family thought I was crazy when I improved by 27 points and just missed it, I decided to pivot. But I think you have to find out what it is that you truly want to do. Having a JD not to be biased, I think is the most flexible best degree you can have. There's so many other things you can do. You can work in hospitality, you can work in entertainment, you can open up your own marketing business. You could be a consultation for somebody. It's not the end of the world, but you don't understand that when you're in that process. There's so many other ways that you can be valuable.
(31:21):
I never thought that I would just be helping out other law firms market their firm to generate leads. You don't technically need a law degree for that, but because I have a law degree, I don't really have to convince or close they trust me because I've been through the same process and I think I know what's important to them. They want to give more clients, they want to increase revenue. So I think that's the thing for it. And I think it's sad that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves with law school and things like that, but there's so many other things that you can do and it's just, again, you don't have to follow the traditional route. And I don't see a lot of people taking the route that I'm doing, so I'm trying to be more vocal about
Montana Funk (32:00):
That. I'm happy you are, and that's kind of why I wanted to make sure that we touched on that because I think it's so important for people to know that passing the bar, taking the bar, that is not the end all, be all. The goal of law school is not to pass the bar and work at the biggest corporate firm. The goal of law school should be to get the education that you want and then to use your skillset with what you've learned to just go make a difference however you want. And I think it's so important that you talk about that because I think so many people go into the bar and if they don't pass or it overwhelms them, they think it's the end of the world. I'm never going to be able to use my jd.
Tristian Shannon (32:37):
People
Montana Funk (32:38):
Are going to look at me and say, oh, well what? You're not a practicing attorney then what was the point? And you're a perfect testament to ignore that, right? Ignore those people and I appreciate you saying that. And if you could, I think it's important to elaborate, if you could give, I dunno if it'd be advice necessarily, but words of wisdom to those who may be in that position or obviously it's summer, they're starting to prep for the bar, who may be really worried about what am I going to do if I don't pass and I don't want to write it again. What would you say to those people?
Tristian Shannon (33:10):
I think the biggest important thing is, and I say this from experience, you have to put your health first. It takes a toll on your health, your mental health, your spiritual health. And that has to be number one. And I think what's important is it's a reality that you might not pass the bar for the first time and it's just knowing your why, holding onto your light. And I feel like with a lot of people, go back to why is it that you wanted to be an attorney? Some people, for me, I wanted to be an attorney. I wanted revenue. That's what I cared about. And then when I really looked at it, I don't really need to be a practicing licensed attorney to own a law firm now with a BS, I also don't need to be licensed if I want to split fees with attorneys now through a BS, there's certain things that it's like, okay, so I'm pretty much just taking the bar exam to go and practice law, you honor, and that's not necessarily what I want to do,
Montana Funk (34:03):
Right?
Tristian Shannon (34:04):
If you want to practice and you have no choice, just take your time and really do your best not to put more pressure and stress on yourself than what it already is, because I understand the feeling you feel alone, you feel isolated, you feel embarrassed. Hey, did you pass the bar exam? And those things, it's a hard pill to swallow to say no. And I feel like it is okay to pivot and it really isn't the end of the world. You're going to feel the pressure of it, but it's not the end of the world. And I feel like I'm a good starting point for that. I feel like as the years go on, there's probably going to be more and more people that take my path or a different path and not do it. But I think as a whole good foundation honestly, is probably in law school to just educate and let people know that it's okay that I think going to law school, there's so much demand. Well, you have to pass this and you have to pass this in the first try and this is what you need to do. And it doesn't have to be like that. There's other ways to be successful.
Montana Funk (35:08):
Well, I appreciate you offering that and being vulnerable in that. Like I said, I do think it's really important. I do see so many people who, whether it's they didn't pass or they're still studying, it does take over people's mental health. It takes over their mind. You're sitting there worrying, not sleeping, what if I don't pass this or whatnot? So I appreciate that. And I know earlier you had mentioned that you could be reached out to, if people want to ask you some follow-up questions, are you comfortable sharing just some couple places people be able to reach out to you, ask you if they do want to pursue kind of a route you took where they could find you?
Tristian Shannon (35:42):
Yeah. Yeah. They can probably reach through my LinkedIn. It's Tristian Shannon, jd, and then my email is Tristian, T-R-I-S-T-I-A-N, at gm rodriguez law.com.
Montana Funk (35:58):
Perfect. Well, I appreciate you joining. It sounds like you have a lot of very exciting things that are going to be happening here, and you have an exciting day. You're going to go sit and enjoy this beautiful weather, I'm sure. So thank you for joining us today. I do really appreciate it and I hope that everyone listening can just understand that it's not the end all, be all. Whatever happens through law school, even if you start law school and don't want to continue law school at the end of the day, like you said, it's about finding your why and focusing on that. So I appreciate you spreading that message and I wish you all the best.
Tristian Shannon (36:29):
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Montana Funk (36:31):
Well, listeners, that is our show. I want to thank Tristian for joining me and I want to thank you for listening. If you like what you heard today to recommend us to a friend and you know where you can find us. Until next time, this is your host Montana Funk, and you've been listening to Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the ABA Young Lawyers Division and produced by Moraine media.