In this episode of Your Practice Mastered podcast, we sit down with Judge Joseph A. Marra, a successful attorney and part-time judge. We discuss his journey as an entrepreneurial attorney, the challenges he faced, and the breakthrough moments that propelled his firm forward. 

Judge Marra shares valuable insights on hiring the right team, focusing on specific practice areas, and finding balance in life and business. Join us for an engaging conversation filled with entertaining stories and practical advice. 

Our channel offers expert advice on law firms, entrepreneurship, and success strategies. Hit "Like" and subscribe to stay updated with our latest content.

Let’s Chat About Growing Your Law Firm. 

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Richard James: Dan kennedy dan kennedy used to say it like this. He used to say wealthy people get paid in advance Of the services. So yes, he did. Same point

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Welcome to Your Practice Mastered Podcast

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MPS: Hey law firm owners, welcome to the Your Practice Mastered podcast. We're your hosts. I'm MPS.

Richard James: I'm Richard James at MPS. We've got one of my favorite people. I get to see him on a regular basis and our Bible and business study oftentimes. And we get to share that part of our world, but also I've watched him grow his firm throughout the years. And he's from our neck of the woods, right?

Northeast part of the country.

Introducing Joe Marra: A Lawyer's Journey to Becoming a Judge

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Judge Joseph Marra: Rich, thank you for having me. Michael, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

MPS: Of course. It's our pleasure.

Joe's Unexpected Icebreaker and His Role as a Judge

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MPS: And Joe, we like to kick things off around here with just a little icebreaker. So to get the audience loosened up a little bit, what's maybe something that not everyone knows about you?

Judge Joseph Marra: Recently elected part time judge in my town. I'm a gritty small city lawyer and a part time small town judge. That's my thing.

Richard James: Yeah. So,

The judge, was that like, did you do it? Cause your firm's successful. Like some people become a judge cause they want to make extra dough. And maybe that was your motivation, but you're doing all right. So what was your motivation behind that?

The Tragic Inspiration Behind Joe's Judicial Aspirations

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And I was on his committee. The first time he ran, he lost. Well, He was running again. And once again, I was on his committee and unfortunately he was putting signs up one day on a state route and he was killed by a drunk driver. And I don't know, something about him and what he wanted to accomplish helped inspire me to do this.

And also I had spoken to some other people who actually served as part time judges. And they would tell me, number one, the fun they would have. And number two, how they felt it would make them a better lawyer. You know, And I'm starting to see that. I mean, you see Things from a different perspective than when you're on one side of the issue with the other, when you have to sit in the middle, it gives you a different appreciation.

And plus here's something you as a judge, you shouldn't do, but I did it anyway, but had a guy come before me and I got called on a Sunday by the state trooper. It's like, we have somebody return on a warrant, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So I go in, I look at, I get the papers, I look at the guy's name.

I'm like, I know that guy. I know that name, but it's not an overly common name. But look at his rap sheet. It's not. He comes in, see the face. He looks like a lot younger than me. So we go through, he comes in, he's a pop. Sorry, you got called in on a Sunday for me. And he's like, all right, don't worry about it.

So we go through the whole formality. Everything's recorded. After he's done, I said, excuse me. I said, was your grandmother, a great grandmother, so and a real estate broker in the fifties? He goes, Yeah, that was my great grandmother. Geez, they sold, she sold my parents their first house.

Richard James: Oh my goodness.

But I definitely won't tell them that how I met you, but that's something too. It's funny. It's like I shouldn't have done that. Why? Because if he comes out in court, but the next time the case is on, he says, Oh, at so and so says hello. I got to explain the whole thing and recuse myself. And these people literally, I haven't spoken to any of them in 50 years, literally, but it's just one of those weird connections when you live 60, never live more than 60 miles from where you grew up, there's always these interactions. So

Richard James: And, it's a very northeast thing. Not to say that's unfair. That's not to say the rest of the world doesn't have this going on. For those listening in California that just got aggravated that I put up the East Coast. But there is this thing. connection on the East coast that just doesn't happen in a lot of other places.

Continue the connections from there too. So they run deep. Joe, I'm curious, because you've got an interesting journey, obviously all the way up to being a judge now as well, but why don't you share the high point levels of your journey as an entrepreneurial attorney?

Joe's Early Career: From Law School to the Bronx DA's Office

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Judge Joseph Marra: I was especially I was like the Billy Joel, angry young man when I was younger. And my first, I worked for a guy in law school who actually was Joe Torrey's private attorney when Torrey managed the Mets. So you spend a lot of time, we'd go out to lunch, he'd take me to places and very interesting.

One day I'm at study, I'm in law school, he calls me, he goes, what are you doing? I said I'm studying. He goes, you could take a night off. I said, I really got to study. We're going down to the New York Athletic Club. There's this baseball, you know, some big baseball event. He says, I'm going to pick you up.

But he's from Western New York. He had this Midwestern nice way about him. We're talking, you know, and we spent most of the night with the guy. And now we're driving back and I says, Mr. Maglay, I says, my father was a real big New York Giant fan. And he was very, he ran very happy when you pitched for the Dodgers.

And I said, yeah, he goes, What's your dad's name? I said, Joe, the same as mine. He pulls out a picture. He goes, I only got one with me in a Dodger cap. So he writes a little note to my father, hands it to me. I go home. I say, pop, guess who I met? Who? Said, tell him the story because he gave me this to give to you.

Richard James: Oh, no kidding.

Judge Joseph Marra: And I'm like, if I screw this up, I'm never going to pass anything, and then I went, work for him. And I went to the Bronx DA's office and I grew up in the North Bronx, right? I think I'm street smart. First day on the job, right? 7. 30 in the morning in August, parked by Yankee Stadium, So I'm walking up the hill, up 161st Street.

And I hear, turn around, this guy is like twitching. I said, what the hell is this? I walk out of the way, let him pass me. He ducks into an alley. So now I'm thinking, I'm gonna get jumped. So I walk out in the street. All of a sudden, a stream of urine comes flying out of the alley. That was my introduction.

So you can imagine the volume, right? So I go in, I see this lady sitting there, . Her face looks like a tomato with slits. I'm like mortified. So I go to my boss. I'm like, Charlie, it's late. He goes, another husband and wife assault. He goes, I said, Charlie, they're not married.

Oh, you know what I mean? common law. Charlie, we don't recognize common law marriage in New York. He goes, come on, Joe. He says, after four months, you're going to be totally immune to this. So I interview her, write the whole thing up, right? Two months later, I'm in the part, meaning the courtroom, the case comes up.

And she escaped. Now she's like, well, you know, it was my fault. I want to drop the charges. And Charlie was right. After four months, became immune to that type of thing. So I thought, one more little piece about that, how life is different six miles away from the North Bronx to the South Bronx.

I'm sure you've heard of Attica State Prison, right? One of the most notorious state prisons in the country. Nasty place, still is. I'm walking by, it's getting close to Thanksgiving, and there's a placard, like a poster, in a window of a store, and there's a picture of a bus. You know what it says on the placard?

Reunite your family for the holidays. Bus trips to Attica.

Richard James: Oh my God.

Judge Joseph Marra: Yeah. So, that was like a different world.

The Transition from Public Service to Private Practice

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But because I could write, they stuck me in a motion part, which I hated. And so I'm out of here. So I go to the light Haskins and sells 101st floor tarot, one of the World Trade Center, but different type of politics there, and I bottom line is I was there for a couple of years.

While I was there, I've eventually got a 2nd law degree in tax because I figured this one going to do and I said, if I do tax the rest of my life, I will commit suicide. So I have to get out of here. So I left, went back to work for the guy, Mark, I worked for in law school. And then after a while, he wasn't paying me enough.

Richard James: For you. Do you feel like when you opened your own practice, did you realize you were opening your own business?

Judge Joseph Marra: No. Well, Just to back up a little bit, I had an offer from a guy who was a childhood, he used to run a shoe store in the South Bronx until he got robbed five times at gunpoint. Then he got out, gave it up and got into the insurance business.

And he was,

Richard James: the way, you just, I just want to stop you for a second, Joe, and just remind you're not, doing a very good job for the public relations department of the Bronx.

Judge Joseph Marra: Yeah, right Well, this is the Bronx in the eighties and the sixties, a little different now. All right. But he started selling insurance door to door and he became one of the regional agents from one of the big insurance companies made a lot of money. And he offered me an opportunity. He said, And he was on Long Island.

And I'm like, sell? I'm not doing that. I'm a lawyer. I'm professional. I'm not a salesman. Are you kidding? So that's how I went into entrepreneurship with that mindset that I'm not a salesperson. you

Richard James: So I didn't realize I was opening a business. And I'm not a salesperson. I'm a lawyer. Are you kidding me? I'm not a salesperson. Okay.

The Realities of Running a Law Firm and Learning to Ask for Money

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Judge Joseph Marra: And I learned a lot of, actually what happened is my buddy, I went to law school with who was a few years older than me. He had taken some time off in between, was in the Navy, had his own businesses, decided to go back to school. He and his partner had split. And he said to me, come in to my office.

Really it took a long time and it, quite frankly, I think when I met you guys, my learning accelerated. I mean, I already learned from the School of Hard Knocks have a lot of things, a lot to do. But going through your program and learning through you guys, it's accelerated things. And I feel like I've learned a lot more since, which I had something like that earlier.

Richard James: Well, by the way, I appreciate the kudos, but at the end of the day, Joe, wherever you get the information from, you're the one that has to apply it.

The information is there, right? And so you've got to be willing to absorb it and then apply it. And congratulations to you for doing that, Michael, which is a good transition, probably over to your next question.

MPS: Yeah. So Joe, along the journey what was that breakthrough moment or that one thing you did that really moved the needle forward and had that light bulb moment for you?

You know, And it really, you know, it was tough, and certain people, you don't really like my father was the kind of guy he was he went to World War II, right? Never finished high school. Had to drop out of high school during the depression. Worked at a factory in Manhattan when living in the South Bronx.

Was dating my mother before World War II. Was gone three and a half years. Came back at 45. They got married. He became a lithographer. He was a union guy and, I told him, I'm thinking of opening my own practice.

He's what are you crazy? You're getting married next year. I'm like, Hey Pop, what's the worst that's going to happen? I'll be in debt and I'll go back and get a job. That's how I looked at, but nobody in my family, nobody was around really had any business acumen and knew what to do.

Judge Joseph Marra: Went out of town.

Richard James: despite that, Joe, here you are. So you didn't have that grain of sand moment, or you didn't have that one aha moment, you had a grain of sand moment where it got dripped on you. And I suspect, talking to the person who's listening to this, who's an attorney, just like you owns their law firm, maybe still doesn't even realize that they own a business, or maybe it finally figured it out.

And they're trying to figure out what to do next. Correct me if I'm wrong. One of the reasons why that this was like grains of sand being dropped on you, is because in the beginning you were probably working your tail off just to make ends meet and serve the clients that you did have There wasn't a heck of a lot of other time left over.

Is that an accurate

They're not. So you would get people who wouldn't pay their bills at all, or would pay them late or within like, you know, there was something I heard about, I forget where I heard this, but it's good. You ever hear of the hooker principle,

Richard James: hookup principle

Judge Joseph Marra: the hooker principle.

Richard James: Okay, I'll bite

What's the hooker principle?

Judge Joseph Marra: Services are worth a lot less after they are rendered than they are before. All right.

Richard James: Dan kennedy used to say it like this. He used to say wealthy people get paid in advance of the services. So yes, he did. Same point, different story.

Richard James: Well, Hey, I remember I was in the funeral business for 12 years, right? So if I didn't get paid before the person was in the ground. The likelihood of me being paid went down significantly. Cause what was I going to do?

So, my standard, unless I'd served your family, my family had served your family for 50 years. You were paying before the day of the funeral. That was just how it went down because yeah, you, the service is rendered. The value of the service becomes worth a lot less after the service has been rendered. I completely agree with that.

Judge Joseph Marra: See, the other thing too, when you're starting out, who are you representing?

Navigating Business and Family Dynamics in Legal Practice

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Judge Joseph Marra: Sometimes you're representing friends and family and that caused problems. I remember being at my brother's house with my first wife and four, we had kids and they were having a Christmas party and I was representing one of our cousins,

And I'm like, is this something you want to talk about? And they all shut up and I said, I think I'm going to go. And then I get my brother lab. One of my brothers, he was a cop and no concept of business at all.

Navigating Personal and Professional Challenges

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Judge Joseph Marra: How could you try? What the fuck am I? Excuse my language. What am I supposed to do? I got to make a living. I'm doing work for the guy.

Come on. But they, just that type of stuff.

Richard James: Oh yeah, no, no, that's fair. That's extremely north northeast United States, Italian family kind of thought process.

The Quirks of Family and Business

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Judge Joseph Marra: Well, you'll appreciate this being former funeral director. There was a funeral director in the neighborhood who actually was the sponsor of my brother Ronnie's baseball team. When he was a kid for many years, there was the team picture of my brother when he was 16 in the window of the funeral home.

And that's where I came from. And that's what I was constantly getting hit with.

Richard James: No I live that myself in the funeral business. All right. So Michael, where do we go from here?

MPS: So I'm curious, Joe. Obviously these stories are great, by the way. So, thank you for sharing.

Richard James: Yeah. Right. The story is that the point we want to make for entrepreneurs is there. I mean, I want to get to it, but Joe, honestly, I could just keep asking you more questions about family stories and we could keep going.

MPS: I'm just enjoying that. I feel like I'm a right now.

Richard James: Honestly, God, it makes me feel like I'm talking to one of Maria's uncles. Cause Maria's grandfather was one of nine brothers and, lots of kids in the family and we would just go to their house and you talking to you is exactly what Christmas dinner was like every single year. It's fantastic.

And there's nothing better than the stories that are being told by you. So thanks for sharing. But Michael we probably should keep the trains on time.

Insights for Entrepreneurs: Hiring and Growth

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MPS: Yeah well, what I'm curious is for the law firm owner that's maybe in a similar starting spot or someone that's struggling right now. What is like one tangible, actionable thing that you did to move the needle forward in the firm?

Judge Joseph Marra: Very good question. It took me a long time to hire people and particularly to hire an attorney because I didn't look at it properly. I looked at it. How am I going to pay this salary? How am I going to absorb this extra cost? And that's not the way to look at it. What you're trying to do is leverage that person to generate revenue for you.

This is crazy. Why didn't I do this? So that was like, if you talk about an aha moment, the most, that was one of the first, like, this was stupid. Like If you can leverage somebody else's work, cause you're only going to make, you only have so many hours in a day, right? You could bill your billable hours.

What are you gonna do? Work 18 hours and bill it. And if you're lucky and you look at, this is another statistic. Most lawyers only bill about a third of the time they actually spend at work. So like in the large firms, oh, they're paying them 180, 000 and 60, 000 bonus, but they own them because they have to build 225 hundred hours a year.

And they are there constantly. So now you're on your own. How much of you can you have to run the business, which people don't realize. You have to take care of the administrative stuff. You have to worry about, how much time can you actually spend billing for legal services? You really can't a lot.

I have to be able to utilize other people. And you utilize them properly. So that is a big lesson, I think, for any business owner to learn. And especially professional. The other thing is too, I said, my name's on the door, my name's on anything here. It has to be perfect. That's the way I want it done.

So I'd be sitting there moving commas around and period. No, it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be good. It has to be competent. It has to be good. And maybe it's not necessarily the way I would have done it, but just get the good work done and get it out the door. Those are the two main things.

And so when you'd walk up the hill, the grass was at your eye level and it frustrated me when the grass was like this. And so I got the landscaper guy that we had was my cousin. I got him to put a little piece of wood that he would have on a stick to measure to make sure the grass was the same height all the way across. That was insane. OCD. Like. Insane that I was even concerned about that little bit of a detail, but I was so ingrained in me about paying attention to, by the way, I still fight this urge today to pay attention to that much detail.

The Journey from Generalist to Specialist

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Richard James: So when you started, you said things like small town, New York lawyer, you've done a few things. Is it fair to say when you started, you practice threshold law, like whatever came through the threshold you said yes to, or did you narrow your scope right away?

Judge Joseph Marra: No, I took a lot of different things like for example of this is a crazy case, a guy got married in Italy, but he didn't get married in front of a Catholic priest. And I basically did the research because it was a Protestant minister who wasn't authorized by the government. And I got did the research going through Italian law and American law to prove that the marriage wasn't valid.

Could you imagine the time I had to spend on this? And I couldn't bill all of it, obviously.

Richard James: You could bill. There's no way.

Like, how do I get this kid? He needs special treatment. How does he get paid? I knew nothing about education law. So I, took whatever came in.

Richard James: And now, okay. So then you hired the associate and now have you learned to develop more? I know some, you can't use the word specialist in a lot of places. New York might be one of them, but if you learn to develop specialists or focuses of practice areas that you pay attention to.

Judge Joseph Marra: Absolutely. See what I do now with the practice. I have one full time attorney and a part time attorney who basically deal primarily with the states. Okay. So I don't handle the day to day things on that. They run things by me. I will look at stuff, but most of the time they're handling it. Right. Also with real estate transactions in New York, it's different than other states.

You got all these people there. So I now have a paralegal and one of the attorneys also working on these states handling most of the real estate. Do I have to be involved to a degree? Yeah, but I hate going to closings. Even though I was an accountant for a while, I'm not very good with math, so I don't want to deal with that.

So, but the things that I still do myself which eventually I have to get out of and train other people to do. If someone comes in for a will trust I do that.

So if someone, and it's interesting too, because the techniques that you would use in the 80s for people with a million dollars, literally you can use the same techniques now for people with 20 million. So I'll do that kind of work. No other people, they don't do that.

Richard James: So, do you see a path forward now to be able to, your firm is successful you're making profit. Are you seeing a path forward to being able to start saying no, or replace yourself in those roles, one or the other?

Judge Joseph Marra: Oh, there's already a lot of cases that I don't take anymore. I will tell people, no, we don't handle like we used to. Here's an example, I started taking a lot of employment discrimination cases and one case I won't mention was a institution of higher learning. And the cleaning ladies were basically getting abused by the supervisor who would say, Oh, you want to work this day?

And at the time it was summer, I had three college kids here. So I said, come here. Cause he's threatening to weigh me down with motions. He says, you know what? See these people, they need something to do, file whatever you want. But eventually we would settle the case for a half a million dollars. And I probably would have settled more One of the people was a part time stripper and nobody knew that.

And I didn't know how that was going to fly, so I said, let me just take the money and get the hell out of here. But even with that, it was so much work with the depositions. And after a couple more of those cases, I said, I don't want to do these anymore. So I stopped doing those.

Richard James: For the person listening, was there fear in narrowing down to less practice areas rather than taking everything and saying no to some things you don't want to take? Was there fear behind that or was it just learned behavior?

Do I have to, like I was doing 15, 20 years ago, learn a whole area of law that I knew nothing about? I don't want to do that anymore. And the areas I don't touch as much, I know everything changes. See, I know enough to be dangerous. I know enough to spot an issue, but I don't want to be digging into, people already say, Oh, you do a lot.

I'm like, yeah, I do, but I don't do as much as I used to, and I have the other attorneys specializing in various things. So one attorney here, he doesn't, a big part of our revenue is a state estate planning, Medicaid planning trust. He does none of that. He doesn't know anything about it. So I have him specializing in one area, another attorney specializing in another, but I'm able to supervise them.

And unfortunately, like I said, I still am doing too much myself. I have to get rid of that.

MPS: What's got you fired up and excited today, Joe?

Finding Balance and Gratitude in Life

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MPS: Could be personal, could be business, what's got you excited?

Judge Joseph Marra: What's got me excited? you know, It's what really has me thoughtful is, honestly, I look, at my life and I'm in my mid 60s now and I'm like, you know what? I've had a pretty damn good life. I mean, There's been problems along the way, but I have a lot of good friends.

I still have friends that from literally first grade who I see. you know, I've gotten, I lost, as you know, one of my brothers, but as a result, I've gotten very close to his kids and the grandchildren he never met. and I, find myself being more thankful. My first marriage didn't end well, but you met Hannah and she's wonderful.

I'd be respectful to everybody because you never know when people are going to come around. Right. So, that's really what I feel like I have my health for the most part. We'll have a little issues we got to maintain, right? But for the most part, I have my health things are going pretty well.

Richard James: Yeah, you sound like you're really grateful for where you're

Judge Joseph Marra: at.

Yeah, I am. Yeah.

Richard James: And so for that person listening that isn't there, and maybe they're grateful for what they have because they can find something to be grateful about, but they don't feel like it's all together and they're struggling.

Advice for Those on the Path of Growth

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Richard James: And what's that piece of advice you give them as they're on this journey that you were on either from small town, big town, doesn't matter. They're going through something you're going through right now. What's your advice to them?

There is a point, Joe, that you didn't feel the way you feel today.

Richard James: Oh, you're talking about Michael Gerber.

Judge Joseph Marra: Michael Gerber. Right. The E-Myth. myth.

And

Judge Joseph Marra: he goes into how the baker couldn't really run the business and kind of Life went down the toilet, and what I'd say is you have to have balance, you have to set priorities, and if you don't take care of yourself, your business goes down the toilet, and then your life goes down the toilet.

I know too many people who were never around. Their spouses didn't want to deal with it and they found other people and their marriages fell apart. So you got to have balance in your life and nothing is worth your health because if you don't have that, you can't do, you can't work anyway.

Deloitte, 101st floor, tower one, one world trade in the eighties. What was going on in New York in the eighties? The Japanese were buying real estate.

Richard James: Okay.

Judge Joseph Marra: They bring this guy in from, California, who knew Japanese, right? And he became my office mate. And you know, we hit it off. Nice guy. We'd, go out, but every time we'd go out to a bar, he wouldn't order a drink.

So one day I'm like, look, man, what's you got an alcohol problem? What's the issue? He starts laughing. He says, I'm a Mormon, which way we do. And I looked at him. I said, you're engaged, right? I met his wife because you guys got engaged. He goes, yeah. I said, guess what? You know what? I think too. I bet you haven't gotten laid yet either.

Richard James: Ah,

We drifted apart for a while, but it's one of those things where we were really tight for a couple of years. He wound up leaving the area, but about six years ago, he calls me up, because he had gone to Investment Bank after he left Deloitte. He said, I'm coming to New York for an Investment Bank reunion.

We got to get together. All right. So we did, he came up, we had lunch, then he met my wife. We had a good grand old time. Since then, I've gone to park city twice and I've, connected with him. And I mean, we had such a good time when you were out there. I hadn't, he hadn't met my kids. So we had dinner with the four of us.

We had a great time. So that, type of stuff like, you know, I'm fortunate. I mean, A guy like him two years in my life, he was one of the finest people I've ever met, and we're still have a relationship with him. So things like that,.

No, yeah, I know that. I not that I know that. Cause people have said that. I know that because we're from these, we're from where we're from and we don't pull any punches and not everybody loves that. But by the way, Salt Lake City, Utah Park City, a lot better than Hunter Mountain, right?

So I'm sure you enjoyed yourself skiing.

Judge Joseph Marra: Yeah.

Richard James: Good. Well, Michael, where are we going from here?

MPS: Joe, I just want to thank you. Thank you for investing your time on here. Thank you for investing value back into the community and to the law firm owner listening to this, we appreciate you. Look, if this isn't your first time watching or listening, make sure to give a like down below and hit that subscribe or follow button, depending on where you're listening or watching at.

And show some love to Joe down in the comments. This was a great episode full of lots of awesome stories, funny stories, valuable insights. So Joe, thank you for being on today. We appreciate you.

Judge Joseph Marra: Oh, one more.

A Final Story and Reflections

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Judge Joseph Marra: I got to tell you one more quick story. All right.

Richard James: Okay.

Judge Joseph Marra: When Tory was managing the Mets, he bought this a Marina by

He had 460 home runs because that's all he could do is hit home runs. And he was his biggest hitter. Big mean looking guy. But I meet him at this closing, you know, we have a thing. They have a party. He's like, Hey man, how you doing? He's like real, like down to earth. I'm living on the boat in the Marina. Like I'm a, it's like totally different than when you see the guy on TV.

Fearsome hitter. And he's like, Hey, what's going on? Yeah. So yeah, really nice guy. Real sweetheart. Totally different than the image of what I thought he would be. So

MPS: Love it.

And thank you for being here today. I really appreciate you.

Judge Joseph Marra: Thank you so much, guys. Thanks a lot.

MPS: Thank you, Joe.

Richard James: That's the pod!