What do a Navy intelligence officer, a Wall Street trader, and a Big Law attorney have in common? For Colin Ram, they’re all chapters in his unconventional journey to becoming a personal injury lawyer in Charleston. How did 9/11 push him toward service? Why did a random Supreme Court case on NPR spark his passion for law? And what lessons did he bring from chaotic trading floors to the courtroom? This is the story of risk, reinvention, and the pursuit of a meaningful career. Are you ready to take notes?

Any other job at least you can have the worst day in the world. At least you've got, you've made some money that day just from purely clocking in and clocking out. But as a trader, you can walk out a hundred grand poor at the end of the day if you're not careful.

So

Well, he started Uber Big Law in D.C. doing big time stuff. So will dive into that. But uh, Colin, welcome. Why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about you, your practice.

Colin Ram: Thank you, Jonathan. Happy to be here. Yeah, I do. I'm a plaintiff's side trial attorney, and I specialize in personal injury, civil rights, and also some fraud cases. So whether that's a key tamp fraud or business fraud based here in Charleston, South Carolina, it's a great place. We moved down here about six and a half years ago, and I opened up my firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's the cool thing about this podcast. I like to interview folks all along the timeline from, you know. Basically selling, selling their practice and doing whatever they can do to just starting. So you're on the front end. So I want to really dig into sort of your experiences there. I know a little bit, but I want to hear more.

So before we do all that, man I want to go way back, get your story before you went to law school. My understanding, you, you were in the Navy.

Colin Ram: Yeah, I was in the, I was after 9/11, I signed up like a lot of folks did, you know, back then. And I was in the Navy reserve. I ended up doing, I was enlisted, ended up doing becoming an intelligence specialist and doing a lot of counterterrorism work there. So, and that was all based in Chicago.

I was living in Chicago at the time. It's trading at the Chicago mercantile exchange. joined the Navy Reserve, ended up doing a, you know, had to go for training to Dam Neck, Virginia, and to the Intel School and and a number of other places. But it was a great experience.

Colin Ram: Yeah, my path to where I am today is definitely a windy road. I graduated college at American University in Washington, D.C. My first job out of college as a bartender. And which, again, it was a, fantastic job. It continues to pay benefits in terms of just sitting there and talking to clients today.

Right. But that was I did that for a year. I got, you know, I was trading. Don't ask me how I got involved in trading commodity futures. My brother was in that business and so he was out in Chicago and he told me, Hey man, you got to come out here, work on the trading floor before they shut it down.

And that was a uh, that was a trial by fire. I mean, if you've ever seen the movie trading places with Eddie Murphy, you know, that was the environment where everyone's just yelling and screaming and just having a normal conversation, but yelling and screaming and moving their hands around. So it took several months just to get used to the work environment, but man, it was fantastic.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you're running around yelling or, or other people yelling and handing you the tickets. how did that work?

Colin Ram: So it started out. I was the one being yelled at. Right. And eventually I worked my way up and I became a trader on the floor there and I was doing some arbitrage work. We're trading the commodity futures on the computer screen against what was going on the trading floor, there's some arbitrage you could do there and it was fantastic and actually you know, it's very intense work.

The great part about it is when the bell rings at the end of the trading day, you go home. And that's it. There's no very few times where you're, doing anything else. You're not taking work home with you. It all stays on the trading floor. So I miss those days for sure.

Colin Ram: So it it was the S&P 500 futures and the NASDAQ 100 futures. And so these are future contracts. What's the future value of the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ? I also traded you know, part of my time there I did government securities or trading government bonds or trading anything that you can trade, you know, overnight.

In, you know, the oil, coffee, sugar, cocoa, you're trading currencies. For a couple of years, I worked overnight where I was doing sort of like a third shift coming in at 10 o'clock at night, work until seven, 8 o'clock in the morning. This is off the trading floor and you're just trading worldwide markets.

And, you know, it's a young person's game. You know, it takes a lot of it's a tough lifestyle, but it was a lot of fun. There's a lot of great people out in Chicago who are doing that.

Jonathan Hawkins: So do you still keep up with markets? Do you trade now or?

But I, you know, I don't do it. I don't actively trade right now. Like everyone else, just invest. You go get your Vanguard S&P 500 index fund and just, and just go. It's the much more relaxing and less stressful way of doing. doing things.

Jonathan Hawkins: I imagine this sort of thing, you got to do it all the time or maybe not at all. I bet it's something that's probably hard to dabble in, I would think. But you tell me.

Colin Ram: It is hard to dabble in because there's so many different factors. I mean, you're trying to figure out what the fed's going to do with interest rates. You're trying to, you know, figure out what earning seasons looking like, you know, you're trying to get a beat on the economy, but you're also just looking at technical indicators.

And so you really have to follow a lot. when most of the products were trading on the trading floor and that's where the volume and all the activity was, it was a much more controlled environment and we could, you didn't have to worry about other things that were going on because everything filtered through the floor first.

So, those were fun days, but those are behind me now.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So you do the less stressful job of being a lawyer nowadays. So, uh,

Colin Ram: Yeah, a A good thing about being a lawyer. Well, I shouldn't say this because I'm a contingency plaintiff's attorney. So you can, you do take a lot of risk doing this job and you can put in a lot of money in cases. But I guess the only other job you can do that as a trader, you can walk into the morning and walk out in the afternoon with less money than you came in with, and that's the danger of trading you can.

Any other job at least you can have the worst day in the world. At least you've got, you've made some money that day just from purely clocking in and clocking out. But as a trader, you can walk out a hundred grand poor at the end of the day if you're not careful. So.

Colin Ram: Yeah, although we don't call it gambling, it was much more, you know, we managed the risk, which you can't do in a casino, but we managed the risk. So, but there's actually, there's a number of like buddies of mine who just became great poker players. It went to the world series of poker just because they knew money management and they knew risk management and poker I guess is the only game of skill out in Vegas.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, you mentioned Bitcoin. There was a guy I heard on a podcast a while back, can't remember but who grew up, I think, trading commodities, and now he does some sort of crypto type trading something, and he said that the concepts from the commodities trading really work well, or he's figured out a way to make them work well for the crypto stuff, whatever, you know.

Beyond my field of knowledge, but I thought that was pretty interesting. So, you're a floor trader, then 9/11 happens and you decide to go into the Navy, is that right?

Jonathan Hawkins: So you might not be able to talk about it much, but when you say you did intelligence, did you pick that or did they steer you there? How did you get into that? And sort of what does that mean?

Colin Ram: Yeah, so that was part of the discussion with the recruiter and they had a need at the time. They were looking for, you know, when you join the military, they tell you what they need, and, you know, they don't really give you an option, and it just so happened they had, you know, they said, hey, look, and, you know, we're looking for people like you, who can do intelligence.

And they said X, Y, and Z. And you have to take that and integrate it into everything else you're hearing. And you prepare a threat assessment for the ship and, you know, the ship has to decide how they're going to protect their sailors when they go into a port. And that's, that's just one example of the type of work I was doing over there.

I went to W&L Law School. And as soon as we got out for Thanksgiving break, I'd get in the car, drive my 12 hours over to Chicago, crash at my brother's sister's house. And then the next morning I was out, you know, in uniform at a skiff working all throughout the holidays, you know, just to put in my time.

And so I did that for a while, for several years, juggling both law school and the Navy. And it was great. I mean, I certainly enjoyed it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Sounds like, some of this intelligence assessment, whatever it is, synthesis of information sounds like that's a good training ground for. You know work in a case you got to pull in all the facts sort of create your story. What are you gonna do? I mean, is there any overlap there?

That's very similar to at least what I was doing. My role. It was sort of my role in the Navy was just trying to take all this disparate information and put together something that you hope is correct. So, there is definitely that parallel between that work. I think litigating is much more interesting and exciting than the Naval intelligence stuff personally.

So maybe that's why I'm doing, I'm a lawyer now and not an admiral, but,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, if you were still in the Navy, you'd be in New Jersey Analyzing those orbs right or the drones.

Colin Ram: Yeah, well, I'm also a pilot and I'm pretty sure that those things are just airplanes flying through the sky with lights.

Yeah. Thanks.

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh, yeah, we'll get to that too. so why law school? Well, you're on the trading floor. You're in the Navy. Why law school?

And he made, you know, 40 grand on a trade in a matter of like two minutes due to the price discrepancy. And, you know, all of a sudden everybody on the trading floor, you can be in this, what they call pit committee to figure out, Oh, you know, we've got a big problem here. The markets are way off. We need to correct this, figure out what's going to do. Do we cancel trades in that type of thing.

And I got into it, you know, you're having this pit committee. So you got a couple hundred people who are trying to figure out what the outcome is going to be, and there's a small group of people and I'm out there just standing there in the trading pit yelling and screaming, you know, we should keep the trades for all, you know, all these reasons, here's the rules, everything like that.

And I ended up the next day. I went to his office and he was great. I mean, he's the chairman of the exchange, brought on the president of the exchange, and the three of us are just sitting there. And he completely understood my position, but he said, listen, we have to protect the integrity of the markets and the retail traders at home. And so that's why we did it. It was a business decision. It wasn't a rules based decision, but he heard me out and I truly respect him for doing that.

I got into a cab and the cab drivers listened to the NPR and it was they were talking about the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which was, it was a case, I think it was two gay men who were having sex in their house, you know, and they're inside their house, their private home. And somebody had called 911 and I think the police had busted down the door and arrested them because they were violating Texas State Law.

And I remember just thinking to myself like, wow, you know, like that's what the Supreme Court does. It's a case I didn't know anything about. You know what courts do other than what you just see on tv and I thought it was a very just sort of unusual and interesting case and it ended up being like a pretty, you know major case in in supreme court jurisprudence, right?

Is it legal? Do they have constitutional rights? Do they not have constitutional rights? And so, all that stuff I just started following and just getting interested in it. And I kind of realized there's there's sort of two events. One, trading on the floor was really kind of diminishing. The volume was moving more to the computer screens or electronic trading.

And you know, I was getting more and more interested in what was going on kind of in current events with, you know, the terrorist stuff with what we're doing, you know, how do you handle all these tough legal questions that there's really no clear answer to everything from like a torture memo to, you know, enemy combatants and that type of thing.

And I said, you know what, I'm going to give it a shot. Like, I like this law thing. I'd never thought about it before. I didn't grow up thinking I was going to be a lawyer, but so far so good. I was really interested in it and kind of rolled the dice. I wasn't a great student in undergrad by any stretch.

So, I was a little bit nervous about going to a law school. Studied my ass off for the LSAT. I applied, got into Washington and Lee, and I just loved it. I mean, there's no looking back. Just absolutely loved it from day one.

Jonathan Hawkins: Did the Navy pay for this? Were you able to?

Colin Ram: I was being paid. They didn't pay the full tuition. I was getting a monthly stipend because I was still in the reserve. So I was getting some partial GI bill money, but it was basically paying for the you know, dinner outs, you know. and that

Jonathan Hawkins: go into the bar, go

Colin Ram: Something like that.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. So, so you graduate law school and did you move back to DC then and go big law? Is that sort of your first job out.

And he brought a bunch of cases with him and he needed a lot of help. And so I got paired up with him and it was off to the races.

Colin Ram: Now there was a few folks, you know, depending on the luck of the draw, really, which firm you went to. There was a number of folks who who had deferrals. I mean, there was a couple, I know there's some big firms that went down, like that went under. So people who had offers to join a law firm came back the next year to join and the firm wasn't there.

Or they let, you know, they're there for three months. Yeah. There's nothing worse than I think graduating from law school and having the rug pulled out from underneath you.

Colin Ram: It was, you know, you end up in that environment at that time period, you're just working nonstop. I mean, it's nights, it's weekends, get home 10, 11 o'clock on a Friday night. And then you go out of course, right? But It was just a lot of work and certainly the first few years. It's great because you have all this pent up energy from being in law school and you finally want to litigate and you get out there and there's these great cases, you know, you can read about on the wall street journal, the cases that you're working on or these major sec fraud investigations.

And I spoke their language. And so we'd end up having to, to go through and listen to audio of traders talking on the phone and talking to each other, going through their Bloomberg messages and. And I was the one person in the room who could speak that language. I knew exactly what they were doing and exactly what was going on.

So that was a lot of fun just sort of being in that environment. But, you know, Big Law is just, it's a different place. And I think for some people it's a great environment. It was certainly great for me for the first part of my career, because you learn from the best and you know, there's, there's great attorneys everywhere, but there's just some really good attorneys at these big law firms.

And I just, I got lucky. I worked with some name brand attorneys, got to work, see how they do it. And it was just fantastic.

Jonathan Hawkins: And I imagine, you know, getting probably a pretty good salary, living in D.C., you know, that's probably pretty damn fun too, I would imagine.

And it's, you realize you're working two jobs. You're putting the hours for two and a half, maybe, you know, jobs, and it's not as exciting as it is, but that's why they give these salary bumps, you know, these lockstep every year you go from a fourth through a fifth year, you get a, whatever the bump is 25, 35, 50 grand.

And it just keeps you there for another year, you know, in the mindset as well. I'll work one more year because they're giving me, throwing a lot more money at me and I can do that. And then I'll figure out what I'm going to do next. And, you know, slowly the golden handcuffs just start forming and it's, tougher and tougher to leave.

And I think for a lot of people, it's, it can be dangerous. You can get stuck there. There's that's why it has a reputation. There's a lot of unhappy people who are just, who are locked into the compensation and can't afford to live.

And then at that point, there was four of us in there, me and my wife, two young kids, you know, two babies essentially in a large golden retriever. And we're kind of like, okay, we need to get something bigger. And in D.C., if you want something bigger, that means you move out about. Another two hours commute wise and it became a question.

And we just had this great experience just, and we're like, man, this would be a great place to live. And of course, New Year's day, I made the mistake cause I'm still working at Skadden, right? I pick up my phone eight o'clock in the morning, we're in the hotel. I look at it and there's a message from the partner.

And it was just miserable. And that was not an unusual occurrence, but it was sort of the confluence of being in Charleston while that happens. It's like, nah, I think I just want the Charleston thing. I don't want to be sort of tethered to that. You got to drop everything whenever we say to kind of do the work that's just, you know, I got tired of that.

I mean, there's plenty of doors that are wide open. They want that experience. They want the, you know, relationships and everything that you bring with it. But for me, it was, what do I really want to do with my career? What's the next step? And I knew for a long time, I wanted to get into plaintiff's work and partially I had met Mark Lanier.

The Texas plaintiff attorney during law school, just sort of this chance occurrence. I was at I was invited to go to the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association meeting. I went there, he gave his opening statement from one of the first Vioxx trial and it was fantastic. And I got to talk with him afterwards and I was just sort of enthralled by the whole world that I saw there at this trial lawyers meeting.

I know. You know, partners who are coming up to me saying, Hey, I know this person 30 years ago. They live down there. I'll reach out to them and just connect you just so you have some people to talk to and that type of thing. So that was a great transition. And you know, the flip side for me was finding out where I wanted to go work. You know, I had my South Carolina bar card, but I didn't know any lawyers. in South Carolina, personally.

and

Colin Ram: It was a little bit of both. There was no strong connection. You know, my wife has family in Greenville and a lot of them have moved to Charleston since we moved down here, but we didn't have a close network of friends or family down in Charleston. But it was definitely the environment. I mean, if you, if you came, if you saw what we saw in on that trip that we went down and, you know, we're right here on the coast where our house is 10 minutes to order the beach, we go there all the time.

It's a great environment. We live in Mount Pleasant, which is where my office is. It's just a great place. Everything about it. Just check the boxes without us really kind of thinking like these are the boxes we need checked. It's just felt right. You kind of go with your gut instinct there. And fortunately for me, you know, I wanted to do plaintiff's work and the plaintiff's attorney community here, the trial lawyers community is fantastic.

I mean, you think about the whole tobacco litigation. And that was Motley Rice, the firm. I mean, they're right down the street from me. They're less than a mile away and they took down the tobacco industry. And so there's a lot of just a lot of great talent here in this town. And so, you know, I started reaching out to people cold. And just FedExing resumes and letters and trying to get meetings and work in my network to see if they can introduce me to folks and, just pulled out all the stops just to meet as many people as I could. And I found this great small, you know, five person plain of shop that had a great reputation.

He just moved down here from D.C. and grew my network, you know, very quickly because of them and the relationships that they had. So it was a lot of fun.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, Okay, so you, you know, you decide you want to move to Charleston, you're, I think you, by this point, you're like, okay, I want to completely switch practice areas and go to plaintiff's side. You don't know anybody in Charleston, you've got your bar card, you go down there, you start meeting with folks how long did it take before you sort of found a place?

Colin Ram: You know, I found a place. I came down here while we're still in D.C. I flew down and did a number of interviews with people and just, you know, Charleston is a very welcoming and friendly place. So if I'd reach out to an attorney and say, Hey, listen, I'm from D.C. I'm looking to move down here. I'd love to just you know, meet you, grab lunch or let's do this.

At the same time I had sent the firm that I eventually started you know, went to go work with, they had a job posting. I think it was an old job posting that they had never taken down. And so I had reached out to them and I think they were like, well, what are we going to do? With, you know, why does this guy from D.C. works at Big Law, why does he want to come down here? What are we going to do with this guy?

And you know, but I realized that they're fantastic trial attorneys. I mean, just bringing down some huge verdicts, monster verdicts. And so I said, listen, I want to go work with these guys. So I went down there and just met with them and we just had a face to face conversation. And they were like, well, you know, let's give it a go.

I mean, you were flying down from D.C. and you just meet with people and then you meet with one and then they tell you to meet to this other person. Eventually, you sort of get to a place where you want to be. And this perfect example, they probably didn't really even have a position, but they made one for you.

Right? Sounds like it.

Colin Ram: Yeah. Yeah, they did I mean there was not I don't think they had an immediate need to hire an attorney but I think it was a situation where they're like, well, you know. There's not many people coming from out of state to work down and in South Carolina at least at the time now there is but I think it was just sort of we just hit it off. We had a good connection and it was like let's see where this can go.

​

Colin Ram: It was definitely a transition but in a very good way, you know, not having to build time is it's It's amazing not having to keep track of your time like that. You know, for some cases we do where you can recover attorney's fees, you still keep track of your time, but not having to do that and not having to hit, you know, there's plenty of days when I was working in D.C. where it'd be two, three o'clock in the afternoon.

And I really haven't built time. I've done stuff, but I haven't really done billable work. And it's like, it's still in the back of your mind. Well, I need to, you know, I want to hit 200 hours this month. And, you know, so I guess I'm going to be here till 11. You know, working and that's just the mindset you just think in terms of building time because that's what's expected of you.

Jonathan Hawkins: You're like, where is everybody? We're just getting started.

Colin Ram: Yeah like so and because people you know, they work to live I guess it's people have other things they want to do. I mean, when you're in an environment like this, you want to go out on the water, you want to go fishing and you want to go, you know, go out on your boat, take the kids out, go to soccer practice, you know, which is what I do now.

And you just can't do that or you really have to twist yourself and knots if you're working at a large law firm in order to do that. Whereas, you know, down here, it's expected that you're going to live a life outside of work.

So there was this massive criminal case that was brought against a number of folks in the Southern District of New York, you know, by federal prosecutors. And we represented Brian, who is the you know, the young man who was caught up in this whole bribery scheme.

And so the question is, well, man, this young kid, his basketball career has been ruined. He was expected to be a one and done or two and two and done player and go to in the NBA draft. And he couldn't do that. And so, you know, that really caused, you know, millions of dollars in damages to him. And so what do you do? Is that a breach of contract case? Well, he didn't really have a contract with, you know, the athletic apparel sponsor. So we're kind of just trying to figure out what to do, you know, what kind of case you have, you know, somebody who's been hurt badly in, but it's just sort of a non traditional thing.

I was like, that's what this case is. And so we ended up, I went up to New York, watched the criminal trial was, you know, taking notes, trying to figure out what the theory of liability was. And I put together this 200, you know, paragraph complaint, you know, 200 page complaint really. And we filed it in federal court here in South Carolina against Adidas and a number of, you know, Adidas folks, you know, whether they're employees and representatives and that type of thing.

And we litigated that case for years, man. I mean, that was, you want to talk about going up against switching sides, going from being the big law attorney where you're one of 20 people on a case to being the one attorney on the other side, going up against two dozen attorneys, that was the case.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, hopefully that was a good result.

Colin Ram: Well, it wasn't, it wasn't a good result. Ultimately, we took it up to the U.S Supreme court and ultimately the issue became under the big issue that the court. and ultimately disagreed with us on is whether a college student athlete has a business or property interest in their NCAA eligibility.

And I don't think you can look at college sports today and say that the answer is no to that. Courts disagreed. We took it up to the fourth circuit, you know, us court of appeals. And we had a two to one panel decision against us on that. And we moved to for rear hearing on bunk. And we had a split decision, half the fourth circuit.

Wanted to rehear the case because they didn't like the panel decision that ran against us and the other half wanted to keep it in place. It was a pure split decision on that. And, you know, we had to pack up and go home. But, you know, one of the core values that, you know, my old firm instilled in me is like, just as long as you don't get outlawyered on a case.

So,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well that sounds like, you know, incredible case you know, and it's perfect example of, you know, the risks of a plaintiff's practice and maybe that's a good segue into where you are now. So about seven months ago, you decided to go out and start your own firm. So tell me about that.

What, you know, push you to do that? And you know, what's happened over the last seven months, but I can start with what gave you the push to say, you know what, I want to do it on my own.

And so I joined, you know, Ben Glass and Brian Glass's group, Great Legal Marketing. And I started going to those meetings and I joined the mastermind program, which is fantastic. You're in a room. As you know, Jonathan, your room with, you know, 20 other lawyers from around the country, different practice groups, everyone's sharing ideas, pushing each other on how to really kind of develop things.

And so I started getting all this great knowledge, but I was also the only person in the room who didn't own my own law firm. And so it was a little bit of an outsider where I was kind of academically learning all this stuff, but I didn't really have the platform to implement it all. So part of it was wanting to just sort of take a chance on myself, like take all this stuff.

Do I want to kind of pull the safety net and be responsible? for myself. And you know, it's interesting because I think there's this perception among lawyers that if you work for a, if you're a W-2 employee and you work for another firm that you've got the safety net, right? Someone's always going to bring you work or you got to bring it in, but you're going to get paid.

You're going to get your paycheck at the end of the day and you know, pay your mortgage and all that stuff. And that's important. But I think there's an unrecognized risk in there. And you know, I think just my career progression starting from the trading floor to where I am now, it's just been about recognizing and understanding risk and really sort of appropriately applying risk.

So far, you know, like I said, we're seven months and three days into the law firm and it worked out in terms of I had a number of cases that came with me. You know, by sort of mutual agreement with my old firm and they were great and gracious to allow me to continue working on some cases and on a fee split and, you know, some of the cases I'd been working on for years.

And so that helped start things out. And I've had other cases come in from referrals, just the relationships built up over time. And that is really sort of, so far it's sort of kept the hopper full maybe not full, but it's kept the hopper going, so I'm always looking at cases.

Jonathan Hawkins: A couple of things. I agree with you about the question of risk, you know, a lot of lawyers I've talked to a bunch. I hear a lot of them and they say it's too risky to leave. It's too risky to leave. Well, sometimes it's too risky to stay because you know, the client or the partner or the, whatever the, you rely on all of a sudden goes away and you have no control over what happens and then you may be on the street.

That's sort of a risky career, I would say, and then 9/11 happened, he said, all right, I'm going to the Navy. Then you're like, all right, I'm gonna go to law school. And then you move to D.C. and you're like, okay, I'm going to go to Charleston where I don't know anybody and I'm going to switch practice areas.

So it doesn't seem that far off that eventually you were going to start your own firm, right?

And then I think there's a lot of risk, you know, to being a W-2 employee there because eventually the music stops. In a practice area, like you said, somebody laterals to another firm, takes all the cases with them. Then you're stuck thinking, well, do I go with them because that's my, that's who's feeding me or not. And so I really wanted to get out from underneath all that. And I want to be, you know, I want to be responsible for myself or bringing in my own cases and not have to, you know, to depend on others for that.

I think, you know, I've turned 50 years old over the summer and, and part of it, life is short. You know, we can get, I think we get too focused a lot on just the day to day. And the month to month of the practice of law, and you know how quickly time flies at this age and this stage of your career, just, you know, years go by in a blink of an eye.

And that was a big part of it for me too. It's like, okay, I'm not the lead dog working at somebody else's firm and that's not a criticism of another firm. That's just the way it is. I mean, I'm the lead dog here in my firm. I'm the only dog here at my firm, so for whatever that's worth.

But you know, it's sort of, I get to decide what direction I'm going to go in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Let's talk about that for a minute. You're, you're seven months in. Nowadays, it may be the easiest time in the world ever to start your own law firm with everything in the cloud. You know, you can be virtual with all this stuff. You just really need a bar license. In an internet connection and you know, that's it.

How's it been over the last seven months and maybe how. Has anything changed in terms of your mindset of what you're going about sort of doing to build the firm.

Colin Ram: Yeah, it's definitely been incredibly busy. It's not the benefit of working for yourself and starting your own firm is that you control your schedule, but you don't control what needs to get done. I mean, it's just. You know, this morning, I met with the CPA to, you know, wrap up end of year stuff. On Saturday, I was in the office talking to a I use FileVine for case management.

So like getting the website, okay, the web vendor is there to design your website, but they need content from you. So you have to sit there and write all the web pages and what you're going to do. You need to, you know, go continue to go out. You know, you mentioned it before. Other people have told me, you know, you got to go out and just have lunches with other attorneys.

And sort of go out, put yourself out there, continue to make connections. And so I spent a lot of time, I mean, just website trying to get, you know, backlinks to the website because that's going to help with, you know, the position when somebody here at Google's, you know, personal injury attorney near me that I'm going to show up closer to the top of the pack.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, and I've, you're going through it. I, Still go through it but, you know, before I started my firm, I was always at, you know, I was at three firms before. I started my own, you know, they were established firms, established platforms. You just sort of plug in, all the policies are written. You got all this staff, you've got everything you need is sort of there. And it's, you know, the thing that's maybe the downside is it's hard to implement change cause all these things are set but they're all there.

So then you start your own firm and then, you know, you, you have to do all that, like setting up a website. I mean, once you set it up, I mean, you'll have to maintain it, but it's that first. Brick you got to lay and then you know, it's you know I've brought on a number of employees and every time I learned something new about onboarding the employees, you know like okay next time I learn from this mistake. We'll do it better next time. But it's you know, I think intellectually I knew all this but until you actually sort of it go through it.

Colin Ram: Oh, absolutely. And you know, the benefit for me or the one thing that I would recommend to anybody who's thinking about doing this is you've got to start putting yourselves in rooms, going to conferences to understand the marketing aspect of it. Because Jonathan, you and I know, being part of, you know, groups like great legal marketing.

I'm also in Charlie man's catalyst program. There are so many resources and there's so many folks there who are just willing to help you. And when I'm talking about folks, I'm talking about attorneys and all around the country. And so when you sit in a room full of people and you're trying to figure out, well how do I increase my, you know, how do I sell myself to people in my market?

And then you kind of realize like, okay, this has been tried and tested. This is how you do it. Here's the sort of the shortcut to doing it. Don't try to figure it out on your own. You know, go talk to this vendor. over here. So like the website person. So Rick Martin, who's an IP attorney down in Evansville, Indiana. I reached out to him and well, he knew I was trying to get the website going. He was like, why don't you just talk to my guy and I did.

And it got a fantastic website. You know, without having to sort of figure out, you know, how to do that from square one. Right. And so I got somebody for that and you just start building these relationships and you just start putting word out there, Hey, I'm looking to do this, or here's my next challenge, you know, will you help? Or do you have any suggestions? And then people just start telling you, Hey, this is what I did. This is who you should talk to.

We say, okay, this is what I'm going to do in the next seven days in my business. This is, you know, the very, the two or three discrete tasks that I need to get done to move my law firm forward. And you tell a handful of people those things and they tell you what they're going to do. And then you hold each other accountable for it at the end of that week.

And then you go to these mastermind programs, same thing, sitting in a room full of people. I mean, I was at the great little marketing mastermind and it was July of last year and it was the thought of, okay, are you going to do this thing or not? Like, what are you doing? Are you going to start your own firm or not?

I had to give them a date that I'm going to do this, you know, no later than that. And I said, okay, well this time next year, I gave myself a year, which is probably way too generous, you know, deadline. Right. But I gave myself a year and it ended up being like nine months or so when I, you know, pulled the trigger and had that conversation with my old firm.

But having people that will kind of push you forward, I think is making sure you're surrounded by other attorneys who will do that. He'll push you forward, hold you accountable. That I think accelerates growth more than anything.

Like you said, shorten the, uh, the uh, learning curve a little bit. So, yeah, well, okay. So you've been in it seven months or so. Maybe it's too soon, but you know, any, maybe lessons you've learned in the last seven months maybe something that you would not have done, or maybe something you would have done sooner?

Colin Ram: You know, I think I'm not one to look back and regret something I've done because I think there's always something to learn from it. And, you know, seven months is probably not long enough to recognize that I did make a mistake. I'm sure I did. I wish I got my website up before I, you know, on day one of the law firm and it ended up taking months to get it done and that was all on me.

And, you know, another week goes by and I haven't done it. And so I think some of those things where just life just gets in the way of, of your plans, you just have to just push through. I think that's the only way to do it. I mean, whatever has brought us here to today has gotten us this far and just kind of keep pushing.

Jonathan Hawkins: So as you're as you're sitting here today and you're looking forward over the next, you know, 10, 15 years, where do you want your firm to go? I know you're a trial law. You try cases. You know what? Where do you see it going? Where you want it to go?

Colin Ram: I would love to you know, one of the first things I did and it was a buddy of mine, Sean. He knew I wanted to try a case and he reached out to me in June. So my firm had been open for maybe a month and he said, Hey, I got a trial coming up next week. Do you want to help out? And I was like, man, I'm there.

Just tell me when and where. And so we tried a little, you know, short two day trial in Lexington, South Carolina, and you know, we won. It was a great experience, you know, just to, just to get a rep in my firm, you know, just, just doing a trial. And so it would be great to be able to do, you know, two, three small trials a year, if that's possible.

I think for me, the ideal set up is maybe having like two younger to mid career attorneys who want to get a lot of experience and having two attorneys work with me who are just anxious to get in the courtroom as much as possible and get that experience. And then, you know, just having the appropriate number of, you know, paralegals who are supporting and doing all that work, you know, so maybe about a four or five person shop.

Jonathan Hawkins: I like it. Well, it's been fun over the last and a half watching this watching you go out and watching your firm grow. So it's been fun and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, but last thing you mentioned earlier, I want to make sure we talk about it. Cause I'm curious.

You're a pilot. So tell me about that. How did you get into flying airplanes and how often do you fly?

So I did that for two months. I was out in Virginia, just flying, you know, three, four days a week, got my pilot's license. You know, it was running planes for a while, then joined a flying club out in College Park, Maryland and was flying a, you know, Cessna 172 for a couple of years. And then I got. I was able to get a, what's called a Piper Cherokee six.

It's a six seater, single engine airplane, which I still have today. And I've got a hanger down here in Mount Pleasant and I love it. I mean, I use it for work. I use it for family trips. I use it just for flying it for fun and grab a buddy of mine. We'll go fly, shoot a bunch of instrument approaches at night.

And I just love it. I mean, it's the one thing. That if you truly want to separate yourself and get a mental separation and break from the practice of law or whatever it is that you're doing, just go fly. It is simultaneously the most relaxing and most intense thing that you can do.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's awesome, man. So how often do you get out?

And just too tired. I'm not going to go fly. But you know, I try to go. We've, I've done a bunch of trips. I mean, we've got clients on the other side of the state, you know, so instead of doing a three and a half, four hour drive, I've got an hour flight. I'll go fly out, go meet a client, come back. I'll go fly out for depositions. I signed up cases, you know, client calls. They're three hours away. Okay. You know, I'll meet you in a couple hours, drive up to the airport, hop in the airplane, go out and meet them, sit down with them face to face, and I think they, they very much appreciate that. When you can do that, when you can show up when they need you to physically show up.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's cool. Well, you're going to have to take me up. I'm going to have to come out there. You gotta take me up one time.

Colin Ram: Yeah, man. Let's do

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, That's awesome. Well, cool. Colin it's been fun, man. Really enjoyed this. Thanks for uh, coming on. So for people out there that uh, want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to find you?

Colin Ram: I think, you know, go to my website, it's sctrial.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Instagram civil trial is where you can find me there. Those are probably the best places, so just reach out. I'd love to talk to anybody who's got questions. You know, maybe a year behind where I am today and they're about to start a firm and they're trying to figure out just the logistics of where you get your phone set up or, you know, who do you use for this or that?

Just give me a call. Shoot me an email. I will hop on a call with you anytime.

Jonathan Hawkins: Sweet. Colin enjoyed it, man. I'll see you uh, in a week or so.

Colin Ram: Yeah, we'll see you out in Virginia. Thanks, Jonathan. It's been great.