What do you do when your very first case is one you’re not trained for, unpaid, and the stakes are someone’s freedom? Steven Goldstein leaned in, admitted to prosecutors “I don’t know what I’m doing—help me,” and turned vulnerability into strength. From hustling PI cases by walking Broadway, to playing basketball on the Knicks’ court, to winning a multimillion-dollar “jaywalking case” after a client was wrongfully jailed—his story left me asking: is the real secret to success in law about skill… or about hustle, humility, and connection?

Steven Goldstein: I started out as a PI lawyer. I had no formal training as a criminal defense lawyer. I was never a legal aid lawyer. I was never a prosecutor. I was never mentored by a criminal lawyer, but in New Jersey, not New York. So this happened to be in New Jersey and I didn't have an office there, I was just admitted.

So I get what they make you do is you have to do one free case a year and they don't care if you don't know what you're doing. So it's either gonna be a criminal case or like a family court case, like a domestic violence.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We'll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you're in the right place.

Let's dive in.

So, Steven Goldstein today. Welcome to the podcast. Steven is a lawyer in New York and New Jersey. He's got a practice. He does some PI work and he does some criminal work. But Steven, welcome to the show. Why don't you sort of give us some background on you. Tell us about your firm.

I also don't really have. I've only had one associate in my career, which is 30 years. So the way I operate is I use a lot of contract lawyers, a lot of independent lawyers for court appearances, depositions, writing, brief writing, anything you could think of. I kind of thought of myself as like the general contractor.

So instead of going right to law school, I started a journey on jobs. But going backwards my grandfather was an entrepreneur and he did, he had an incredible business. What he did was, so, you know, when you throw out your clothes in the bin, you know, and you see like the Salvation Army bins or whatever, and they say it's for charity, and you throw out your old clothes.

Well, what he taught me is actually what happens to your clothes is they don't go to anybody. They get thrown into giant warehouses where people like my grandfather, starting in the fifties and sixties would go and they would pick out the best stuff and they would buy it for five or 10 cents a pound.

And he had always told me don't ever get a job. He said, it's the worst thing in your life you could do. He is never worked for anybody. Get yourself a job. So I didn't follow his advice in college after college. And I'd worked in various jobs. I'd worked, I'd done sales, I did public relations, and then I got a job at Madison Square Garden, which for any sports minded person who grew up in New York like I did, was the dream.

And he was getting really mad 'cause he had, he was a little drunk. And then, you know, after that I decided I wanted to go to law school. And the reason I went to law school is at the time I was working in a pharmaceutical advertising agency on Madison Avenue. And it was a small agency. And one day some strange guy walks into the office, goes to the three corner offices, basically goes to these people who were all in their late forties and fifties.

I think I, I graduated when I was 28, 29. I went to law school for the sole purpose of having my own law firm. Like it was not, I want to get a big job. It was, it was none of that. It was. I had a plan of about one or two years I would work for somebody, but I'd better be able to try cases and I better get to court immediately.

And I was able to do that and that.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I, I find there are, there are people like you that, that knew, always knew that you're gonna start your firm and then there are others that sort of fell into it or were pushed into it for whatever reason. But I remember, so I wanna talk about your firm in a minute, but I remember you telling me before you started your firm, you, you're working for a guy that basically you, you as an associate, you, you basically had to, you know, eat what you kill or pretty close to it.

Steven Goldstein: So it's actually the backstory to this is so when I was outta law school, my first job, I worked for AIG defending liability cases. And it was downtown in Manhattan. And early, early on in my career, I'd say three months, four months I was doing a deposition at a guy in Brooklyn at a storefront.

And after the deposition he takes me in the back and he says to me you know what, can you get me on this case? And I'm like, I don't know. Well, well, what do you, what do you demand? He goes, well, you know, you know, I'll give you 10% or whatever you gave me, whatever you get me. And I'm like, what do you mean you'll give me 10% or whatever?

I wanted to see what it was like to work in New Jersey. And I grew up in New York. I grew up in Brooklyn. I didn't grow up in New Jersey. And I somehow got a job at a firm that did commercial real estate and I pretty much hated it. And I remember the day I knew I had to go back to the city was, I was sitting outside, I was sitting in my office and a deer walked under my window and I was like, what the hell am I doing?

You know, I grew up like done. I need to get back into the PI world. I need to get back into the go to court everyday world. And so for some reason I had the brilliant idea of calling that guy and saying, by the way, I'm looking to get back into the city. Do you know anybody? And he wound up telling me, I kind of do, I know this guy, you know, who's looking for an associate.

And he was like, really? I was like, yes. I was like, I'll do the work now, but I intend on. And that

Jonathan Hawkins: First of all, I love that attitude, man. That's, that's, that's badass. It probably took him a little back there.

Steven Goldstein: so my grandfather had taught me, whenever you go on a job interview and somebody asked you questions, you basically tell him, you should hire me 'cause I'm gonna make you money. It doesn't forget about the, you know, and I see how it resonates now as an owner that, you know, listen, if I interviewed somebody for an associate's job and they came to me and said, hire me because if you hire me, you're gonna make money.

And he had been a PI lawyer for 30 years and never tried a case. He was afraid of his own shadow. He was afraid to spend a dime. And the first our salary negotiation was like this. I think your first year you will make $45,000. Your next year you will make $35,000 and then the next year you'll make 20,000 and the next year I'm not paying you a salary.

I was not afraid to go out and sell. And the first year I was with 'em, I made over a hundred thousand dollars. And I would do things that are hard to do today. I mean, I would go to every IME and at that time there were a lot of insurance brokers on Broadway in Manhattan. Uptown, like above 96th Street.

And I would go out once a week and I would literally walk the pavement and I would go in and I would give my card, I'd give my spiel. And from doing that I got three or four guys who actually started referring me cases. And within two years I had a bigger practice than he did and he was older. And I had then partnered up with my first partner, Ed McGowan, who is now the head of he's probably the best trial lawyer I've ever seen.

And that

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. Wow.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's awesome. You know, a couple things there for, for any younger lawyers out there may, maybe you don't literally hit the pavement like you did, but, you know, get up from behind your desk. You gotta do that. You gotta meet people and don't be afraid to ask. Ask for cases, ask for work. You know, a lot of lawyers just scared to do that.

Seems like.

Steven Goldstein: Thank God. Thank God. And you know, I do still do a lot of this kind of stuff, so I do a lot of flesh to flesh. A little later on in my life, I became the mayor of my town, and that was an interesting story. I, I had moved into my town I think in 19 93, 94, whenever it was. And I just had some brilliant idea.

So I went to my first meeting, and you gotta understand, I'm like 30, 31 years old. Everyone else in the room is 60 plus. So when I walked in it was like gasps, like, who is this person? And they're like, what do you do? I'm like, I'm a lawyer now. Like the gasps are getting even louder and, you know, meet the people, sit at the meeting the next day I get a call.

You know, I can say, okay, now look, I'm a, I'm also the library board lawyer. Fast forward two years and there, every year there's an election. The way the government of my town works is the township committee. So there's five people on the board, and those five, they choose who the mayor is. So there were two seats up and they come to me, they're like you are running for township committee?

And I'm like, well, wait a minute. I mean, I've been here for three years. I don't know anybody. And the guy I was up against was a probably 70 years old, had been on the town council 15 years. And I start now thinking in my head, okay, so they need me to go in and lose. But now when I do this, I think the way it works in politics is once you're the sacrificial lamb, they owe you.

And, and the other thing I told them is I said, you know, by some miracle if I actually win I'm playing in a basketball league and our games are Monday nights and that's when the meeting zone. I'm like, I'm not blowing off my basketball league to be on the township committee. I mean, this was the attitude I had.

So if you are a golf fan or a golf fanatic, that's one of the top 100 courses and we get the the PGA championship every 12 or 15 years. Just so happened we got the PGA championship when I was the deputy mayor, and it was in 1998. And my picture is in the PGA championship guide the program.

And that was the tournament where Phil Nicholson won on the fifth day because it was raining on the fourth day. And it was pretty cool. And literally one of the perks I, that was one of the reasons I kept running is literally 'cause the perk of I got to play at Baltar role, which in a million years I would never get to do.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's, that's awesome. That's awesome. So let's talk about your firm now for a minute. You sort of said, you know, it's unique. You've got contract attorneys. I can't remember the name, but I feel like there's some name for it. Like the bench attorneys or something in New York per diem.

So explain how that works. You know, that's, that's unusual to me, at least in Atlanta.

And in New York City alone, there's five courts, you know, so I could [00:20:00] have a case in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and I can't be everywhere. You know, just one person. There are lawyers, literally in New York City and New York state whose sole practice is to cover court for other lawyers. And what they do is they charge a hundred bucks.

So if you are sitting there, you could be sitting there waiting for your defense attorney till 1130 for a nine 30 call, and none of the judges will call them on it 'cause they know what's going on. Everybody's out hustling. So I determined pretty quickly. I would go to court, but I would go to more of settlement stuff because it, and unfortunately you don't get it as you don't get it today, like I did when I was a younger lawyer.

'cause I really got to develop really close relationships with defense lawyers. 'cause I would see them every day and we would go to lunch and because we're sitting there for three hours waiting for one case, you know, you're BSing and you're really getting to know them, you know, how they work. And it really, really helped resolve a lot of cases.

Because they want their lawyers in the office, you know, producing discovery or doing depositions. But I also used lawyers to do depositions. And one of the reasons I did, and especially I'd have 'em do defense depositions, and I would use X defense lawyers to do it. You know, a I was a small firm and I always found that it was great to have a second set of eyes on my case.

The way to make money is a plaintiff's PI lawyer is to get the case. And then any other factor of the case, you could always hire a better lawyer than you to handle. So there's better lawyers at me at discovery. There's better lawyers than me at doing depositions. There's better lawyers than me at doing trials.

There's not a lot better than me at getting cases. I'm sure there are, but that's where kind of my ego goes to, you know, I'm really good at getting business. But if, and, and the way I discovered a lot of my deposition lawyers would be the ones who I would be opposing. And if they impressed me, I would say to them, if you ever go out on your own, keep me in mind.

The malpractice insurance is next to nothing. You don't have office staff, you have no overhead. You work when you want. And I found that financially and economically, it really, really worked out. Well for me, and I still do it to this day, my New York cases, I don't go to court. I have other lawyers cover court for me, pretty much almost do everything at this point.

Literally all I'll do is get the case and get the medical records and if I got a file suit, that's kind of the last I I see of it. Until it's

Jonathan Hawkins: it, it, the thing that's crazy to me, the per diem, and I guess all the courts, everybody's on board with this, but like I just imagine down here a lawyer's makes an appearance at court and then they're scared they're in the case and can't get out. But I guess

And I've been doing it for 30 something years. Like nobody even thinks you know that they are in the case 'cause they're appearing. It's just like an associate appearing on behalf of a firm. They're, it's the firm and somebody's just appearing on behalf. And that's how all these per diem lawyers would enter their appearances.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, so I wanna go back. I wanna, we're gonna jump around a little bit, but I wanna go back to Madison Square Garden. You know, I understand you're, you're a huge grateful Dead, dead fan.

Steven Goldstein: Love

Jonathan Hawkins: and they used to play there a lot. So, you, you, you get to see, tell, tell me about that.

Steven Goldstein: So I, I, so I saw them 'cause I worked at Madison Square Garden four years and the dead would be there at 12 to 15, maybe 10, 12 nights a year. And my office was literally so Madison Square Garden is a weird building if you don't know it. The actual arena where they play is on the fifth floor of a building.

One day, I don't know what came over me, but I wandered into the arena at about four o'clock in the afternoon and. The Dead are doing their soundcheck. And the only people in Madison Square Garden at that time are me, about five or six cleaning women and the Grateful Dead are doing their soundcheck for that night's concert.

And

Jonathan Hawkins: bet. I

Steven Goldstein: I got to play basketball in the arena on a, whenever the you know, whenever the court was laid down, whenever the Knicks were playing, if there was college basketball. And that occurred on my first day, on the job. Second day I got a call from the CEO of Madison Square. And at the time, this guy's name was Alan Fields.

And Alan Field was a very interesting character. He was a very, very intense guy. And I was, you know, 23 years old and I'm like basically a gopher for the boxing department. And, and Alan Fields calls me directly. He goes, Steve, this is Alan Fields. And I'm like, why the hell is this guy called? Like, is he welcoming me?

And then Madison Square Garden hired him to run the department. And I said, Bob. Alan Fields just called me to play basketball tomorrow. What do I do? And he said, you go play basketball. And that started, you know, four years of playing against. And I, again, this is in the mid eighties, so this is when, if you're a basketball fan or this is when the Knicks had, you know, Mark Jackson, Patrick Ewing, Oakley.

But I was making $18,000 a year. So at some point I figured, okay,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you were saving a lot of money on the tickets you

Steven Goldstein: I was saving a lot of money on the tickets. Yes, I was. But. One thing it did do is, you know, when I was introduced I met a lot of fighters, a lot of boxers, and I think it started me on my sort of the way I handled people in as a lawyer now because boxers are the most humble of athletes.

Unlike, you know, if you're a good basketball player at eight, nine years old already you are being catered to. And boxing too is a very humbling endeavor. I mean, you're getting punched in the face, basically that kind of humbles people. And I don't care how good you are. And I said to myself when I became a lawyer, I was like, if these guys can be humble in the face of what they face, like who am I?

When I'm dealing with a client who, you know, doesn't come from any sort of background privileged background who am I to have heirs or to think I'm any, any better? And I think that was a big part of why I do get cases and repeat cases from people is I'm really not phony. I really try and talk to them like they're just people like me.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so back to, to basketball. I mean, did you, did you, you played growing up, where did you play professionally? Was

Steven Goldstein: I played, yeah, I played in England one year. So I had gone my junior year of college. I studied abroad in London and, you know, I was playing at co I was playing four or five, you know, days a a week. And I was looking to play, and again, this was, it was only magazines. There was no online stuff. And I, there was an ad in a magazine for a team that was looking for players.

And he went to Vision Three and Mar Stefan Marbury's brother played in high school with me

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Marbury, by the way. Yeah, so I'm George Tech guy. He came down his freshman year and changed the team. We, we were good.

Steven Goldstein: right. So yeah, Stefan Marberry went to my high school grew up in the neighborhood I grew

Jonathan Hawkins: I.

Steven Goldstein: in, and so I made the team and got a stipend to play, traveled all, and I, I was 19 years old at the time and traveled all over Europe playing basketball for nothing. Saw, you know, I went to France, Greece, Italy.

I was, I was really cool. And then, you know, I had to grow up.

Jonathan Hawkins: that, that's awesome. We, I mean, you got, you got all sorts of good stuff. You, you, you've been in a movie, right?

You know, I guess when you watch documentaries, you don't realize it, but there's all this stuff going on in the background and there's all this music. And he gave me a piece by a Polish composer [00:34:00] from the 1930s. The name of the movie was They Survived Together. And I played the piece for a minute and 10 seconds in the movie.

And I'm on the credits at the end where, you know, you know how the credits, they roll slow, slow, and then they start moving so fast you can't even read 'em. That's where my name pops up. But the guy who produced it was a guy I'd known for a long time and he won the Emmy Award, the film won it, and his name was John Rokosny.

And I said, John am I allowed to say that I won an Emmy award? And he goes, yes, you could say you won an Emmy award. So. When I've had a few drinks in me and I'm trying to impress people at a bar, I'll always tell 'em I won an Emmy award for playing in a movie.

Jonathan Hawkins: And every few years you get a royalty check for a few cents.

They were the only family in their town. And it was it was a great, I mean, it's a great movie. I mean, I would recommend anybody Netflix, on Netflix, Amazon Prime. I, I think it's all over, but it, it, it was a really good movie. But that was, you know, quite an experience. And, you know, I'm a little older and I'm kind of looking back at my life and I'm like, wow, I really did do a lot of cool stuff.

But again, you know, I think. It makes you a better lawyer. I, I think the more round, well, the more rounded you become. I think it really, you know, does help. You know, people say they love the law and they're really hyperfocused on it. I mean, I, I love being a lawyer. I mean, I, I love what it's given me. I love the freedom I have.

So I'm trying to develop these other things. So I started taking piano lessons again. I, I'll look into maybe teaching. I do for the last 15 years, I go up and I lecture at Cornell. University, my friend, the guy who introduced me to the guy who produced a movie, he's a professor at Cornell for the last 20 years.

So I go up and I lecture his class and it's interesting what I do with them. So he teaches a law class in the hotel school at Cornell, and I basically for the last 10 to 12 years have been using them as a really, really, really smart focus group. And so literally they, he has a hundred kids in the lecture hall and he brings me in to talk about tort law.

And there were technical issues and Uber was defending the case on these technical issues. And I said to the class, I said, here's their defense. Because either they couldn't figure out that the guy maybe had a criminal record, whatever it was. I can't remember. But I do remember these kids start laughing and saying, oh no, they can't say that this, it's so easy.

They could have done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, what? And I mean, I had hired experts to look at this and these kids at Cornell, obviously, and I wound up going back talking to the Uber lawyers and I settled the case for a lot of money. And I said, whoa, this is pretty cool. Let me start, I'll tell my war stories.

But boy did I get a lot of great stuff from them over the years when I would have trials. So I mean, one of the things you could do if you're a younger trial lawyer is, you know, go to your local college and, you know, go to one of the departments and say, you know, I'd like to come in and just talk to your class.

You know, if they, if there's a pre-law class, let me go in and tell a war story. And what it also could do is, so they were in Cornell, I was in the city. But if you do it at a local college, what a great way to find an intern, or what a great way to find someone to work for you. And, and, and have like, you know, use community relations and you know, that.

I wanna do my focus groups in the pizza place on Monday nights. Like, great. So I hired a mom from town that I knew. She's a, she's a paralegal at the defense firm locally. She took over and she went out and she would find me just by ads on Facebook. She would find me people to sit on my focus groups.

I now have a waiting list of about 200, and people call her all the time, can I be on the focus group? Can I be, and what I do is I just literally, I get 10 people. We go to the pizza place, they get there we email them with the menu, they pre-order, they sit down at seven. I give 'em dinner, but I give 'em a thick, you know, heavy Italian dinner.

Because if you think about it, I've now presented trials probably in the course of all that I've done, probably about 300 people. So now these are 300 people who've kind of seen me in action. They have an affinity to me because I've given them something for nothing and I feed them and then I give them each 50 bucks.

So, you know, it, it's a win-win and I, I really enjoy it because I like the guy and I, I wanna see him do well.

Jonathan Hawkins: That's awesome. That's a great idea for people out there.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you're getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let's, circle back to your practice real quick. So you know, you do criminal and PI. Did you always do both? How do they, you know, what's the interplay is one, do you do one more than the other? You know, something it's, do are they good complimentary practices in your experience?

So I get what they make you do is you have to do one free case a year and they don't care if you don't know what you're doing. So it's either gonna be a criminal case or like a family court case, like a domestic violence.

And I got mine and the first one I got was a guy who I'm still really good friends with to this day. He was accused of, he was having trouble with his wife, you know, she accused him of assault so he had a criminal case and he had a domestic violence case, a final restraining order. And you know, I kind of dug into it. It wasn't getting paid, but I found it like pretty interesting. And I said, you know, this is really kind of good for me to be a defendant to help me be a better plaintiff's PI lawyer.

So if somebody, if you, if Jonathan Hawkins gets the notice to appear pro bono for somebody, he could have somebody else do it for him. And Jonathan Hawkins gets the credit. So I would go to people like Jonathan Hawkins and say, Hey, if you got a pro bono case criminal that you don't wanna do, give it to me.

They would say, you should make a suppression motion in this case. You should. Because, you know, part of being a good lawyer is being a little vulnerable. And a great skill is to admit when you don't know what to do. Because what happens is, I think most people. Are wired when somebody genuinely sincerely comes to you and says, I need help.

I'm trying to do my best, but I really just, they do it. And even bigger help are legal aid or public defender attorneys who will go out of their way to talk you through a case. Because the people who do it full time, they really are zealots in the belief that, you know, they're the last bastion of defense against, you know, the system.

You're not negotiating money, you're literally negotiating. People's time in prison or probation. You know, I think there's a lot more at stake, but as a criminal defense lawyer, your job is to just poke a hole everywhere you see it potentially to occur. And I know as a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer, a lot of times, you know, I'll be on listservs or I'll talk to others and they'll say, yeah, this insurance defense lawyer, he's a pain in the ass.

They're doing a job, and if their job is to poke a hole, in my case. Why would I get angry at that? Or why would that frustrate me? All it means is if I can un, you know, if I could stop them from poking that hole, it's just gonna help my case get better. And the criminal defense made me a much better PI lawyer.

It also really grounds you on how important it's when you're representing somebody. And I've developed very close relationships with my criminal defense clients because I think if you care, that's generally the nature of what should happen. You know, you really should care at a gut level, at a personal level if you're gonna go in there and, you know, represent somebody on a criminal case.

But you know, this is why I believe, you know, even if it's a limited amount, if you are a younger personal injury lawyer, even if you got a volunteer, take a criminal case, see it through, and I, I promise you, it's, it, it's going to affect your ability at trial and it's going to affect your ability at empathy for the your, your client.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, the other thing another story you told me sometimes you need to have both skills. So is I, I'll call it the jaywalking case, which was both a criminal and a pearl injury case. Right? That, that's an incredible case.

Steven Goldstein: Yeah, that was probably,

Steven Goldstein: I'll try. That was the most memorable case I've probably had in my career. So the long story short is we get a call from a guy that his 70-year-old father is sitting in Rikers Island, which is a notorious place in New York City. It is awful. It is the worst place. It, it's scary to go there as a lawyer.

The officer who hit him, charged him with endangering the life of a police officer. So they haul this guy off to jail. They came, he was there until he retained us. He was there for five days. He was in so much pain and he [00:49:00] got no medical attention. He was in so much pain that what he told us is the other inmates would take their sandwiches and they combined their sandwiches to make a pillow for him.

Now you're talking about a guy who never had been arrested. He was living here his whole life, lawfully Spanish guy, didn't speak English. And I suddenly realized like, wait a minute. I've got. A PI case here. The long story short of it is the guy had a broken neck and he wound up getting two fusions.

So I had to, I was defending the criminal case and I had a personal injury case going along, and they kept prosecuting the criminal case and the district attorney, and this was in Brooklyn. They kind of don't know what's happening on the civil side. And the civil side has no idea, but as they keep, so I, besides the personal injury case, I have a malicious prosecution, false arrest.

Thank you. My unborn grandchildren. Thank you. My unborn great-grandchildren. Thank you. And my unborn great-great, great-grandchildren. Thank you. And he had no idea what I was talking about. So cut to the cut to, they wouldn't dismiss his criminal case. They insisted he take a plea of some sort. I said, it's not happening.

There's no way. And we get to the trial of the criminal case. And the way it works in in New York when you're going to trial on a criminal case, is again, you have one judge and there's a billion cases on and they're just cycling through and everybody's getting these, what they're called adjournment, contemplation of dismissal, where basically stay outta trouble.

And at that point they then said, okay, judge, we will reduce it to jaywalking, which is now is just like a ticket. I said, no, we go try the case. The trial judge has the same attitude. Oh, and 10 seconds before they do their opening statement, they say, oh, we have to disclose to you that we're not calling the cop because he was fired two years ago.

I mean, I could have asked. And so what I did, I was able to get great deposition stuff because it's a trial also because I had the criminal case going. So what the city of New York does is they're notorious for holding back discovery in civil cases, but in the criminal case, they don't hold back anything.

So we go to the civil side and we go to the first settlement conference and we're all sitting in there and I say to the, now the lawyers representing the city of New York, I'm, you know, are you aware that your guy was fired for, and all these things that they have no idea. I'm like, how do you know that?

I was like, well, you guys didn't know that my guy was criminally prosecuted for this. So I have all this juicy discovery that I'm not giving you because it's yours. And the judge kicks them out, kicks me out, and you know, we, we eventually came to like a multi multimillion dollar settlement. And the crazy thing is, is had they been honest from the jump.

It had everything. And this guy was brilliant. Took his money, moved back to, I think Ecuador, bought a house on the beach and lived happily ever after.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is, that is crazy. I love that story. So, so we've been going at it a while, so I wanna be respectful of your time, but you mentioned earlier that you're sort of getting to the stage of your career where you're starting to think about what's on the other side.

So you're developing the, you know, redeveloping your, your hobbies and whatnot. But as you look back over your 30 plus years and if any young lawyer was coming to you are there any pieces of advice maybe you'd give them about starting a firm, starting their career, marketing, whatever it is?

Now, I'm not saying don't go out and study how to be a great trial lawyer and don't, you know, obviously you gotta do your CLEs and learn, but so you need to take an interest in sales. You need to take an interest in marketing, and you need to always be curious and creative on how can I make myself put out there so I could learn how to market, you know, how to sell.

I actually did a post on LinkedIn this morning because on my listserv everyone was complaining about Morgan and Morgan, which I'm sure everybody, you know, they spend all this money then blah, blah. I said, and I said on my post, I said, look, nobody could compete with you. You are a unique person.

And when you, now I was lucky 'cause I had that mindset from the get go. 'cause I had an entrepreneurial grandfather. I didn't go through the growing pains of I'm gonna be a good lawyer, and then all of a sudden, oh my God, what do I. Do. I took an interest in that stuff before I even went to law school.

But you, you almost have to, because anybody who studies this, anybody who's in the world of lawyers who are entrepreneurial knows just because you do a good job at something, you know, doesn't mean people are gonna recognize you or find you. I have a buddy, really good friend of mine, I went to law school with about eight, about five, six years ago.

Mm-hmm. No, no. Now could he have packaged that content into. A great video a great blog posting on LinkedIn every day to how I did this. You really, really have to understand that even if you're an associate, you're the owner of a law firm. That's what you do for a living. You are the chief marketer for a law firm.

Actually doing the legal work is sort of like the deliverable. It's be the difference between owning the bar and being the bartender. And you could be both, but to me, if you're a young lawyer, get out there and learn how to market and sell and you'll be guaranteed. Nobody will ever be able to walk into your office and say, you're out.

You're out. You're out. And if they do, you say, great new opportunity.

Steven Goldstein: My website is www.gh, like goldstein handwork law NY nj.com. Just leave us a message there. You could fill out a form. Our, our phone number is there (212) 679-1330 is the general number and you know, happy to talk to people about any cases or just talking about if anyone's interested about talking about marketing or sales.

I like, you know, Jonathan too. Love, love talking about,

Jonathan Hawkins: And if they want to come up there and play golf, you're, you're always

Steven Goldstein: I'm always getting, I'm, I'm going to be playing Alpha in about one half hour after we're done with this. On this beautiful day at the Jersey Shore, or a beautiful afternoon.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Steven, man, this has been awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Steven Goldstein: Thanks so much for having me.