How do you transform rejection into reinvention? In my chat with Adam Rossen—the renegade “damn janitor” of criminal defense—we dive into how he left a secure prosecutor career at 26 to build a high‑performance law firm from scratch. From radical ideas like hiring virtual assistants to reimagining internships during Covid, Adam challenges everything you think you know about law, leadership, and legacy. Ready to ask, “What if everything could be different?”

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I mean, it's, really sounds incredible. I mean, it is, like you said, good way to give back a good way to find, you know, find people for the future, for your firm. A way to get your branding out there, really across the country, it sounds like more and more it just sounds, a lot of work, but really cool.

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.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Hawkins. Today we're talking with Adam Rossen of the Rossen Law Firm down in South Florida. He is a founder and I'm not sure what his role is exactly now. We'll, we will talk about that, but it's a criminal defense firm a growing criminal defense firm.

And want to get his perspective. He's done a lot of cool stuff. He's been on a lot of podcasts. I gotta see him speak few weeks ago. We'll talk about some of that too. So, Adam, welcome to the show. Why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us about your firm.

Adam Rossen: yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on, Jonathan. I mean, I own the Ross and law firm. I don't know, it could be CEO, founder, visionary. We got a few not safe work names that we affectionately like to call me. I don't care. Call me the damn janitor. It doesn't really matter. But I started Ross in law firm 17 years ago.

Jonathan Hawkins: You got a lot of wisdom too. Right?

Adam Rossen: Oh, I've, yeah. You know, and there's, wisdom comes with age, but I think it, it comes with making mistakes mostly of just being unafraid to try something. And if it works, great. If it doesn't, well that's okay too. What did you learn from it? And so with that barometer then I'm pretty wise.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know the interesting thing, I wanna ask you this, so I know you're in a lot of groups. I've been in groups and you know, part of the benefit of groups is you get, to learn from others and hear perspective, but on some level you can hear something over and over and over, but until you do it and you make the mistake and learn the lesson, it just doesn't stick.

Have you found that to be the case for you?

One in particular, I'll tell you was about three years ago, actually it was April, three years ago, we were at a GLM Mastermind. And finally it clicked that we can have virtual assistants. Doing legal work in other parts of the country before we were so against it. Oh, maybe intake, maybe a little bit of marketing fine, whatever, but not for legal.

No way. Blah, blah, blah. And then Mandy and I were sitting there in, in the GLM mastermind and somebody brought it up and I said, you know, it was like an epiphany moment. I was like, I think you're right. I think now's the time. And they're like, Adam, we've been telling you that for six months. I'm like, I know, but I we're in.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is funny. So have you written a book? Have you got a book out there?

Adam Rossen: Yeah. I have one now and I'm in the middle of finishing three more.

Jonathan Hawkins: Nice. So that's another one that I've known of. Like, people have been telling me they gotta do it, you gotta do it. So I've sort of started and stopped it, and now I'm in the middle of it, so hopefully I get one. So what was it like before the book and after the book, any discernible difference has, did it help from your So credibility?

Adam Rossen: Oh, absolutely. So ours is a DUI book. well we have a direct mail campaign where we send that with the boxes and different things, more of like a shock and awe package. Jail mail in South Florida tends to be cheap and hire me because I'm cheap. Right? So it's, a postcard, it's a flyer and it's hire me 'cause I'm cheap.

It's not a little tinny thing. Like it has field to it. It's a real thing. And so that has helped us tremendously, I would say, in that sales process.

So, you know, how are you able to fit into that process? Here's the book, here's the, this, here's the, that.

Adam Rossen: Yeah. Well, well, speed is so important. It is so important. A lot of times it's family members calling for their loved ones who got arrested. A lot of times it's the women in the men's lives who are doing the research, finding us. Most people though, call us after they've already gotten out of jail, but the best thing you can do is actually call us while a loved one's in jail, because then we can go to first appearance court and negotiate better terms of release, usually faster, easier, cheaper, and all that.

So that is really good. But yeah we have more of that urgency, the Stop the Shop, which is what I learned from Ben through GLM. And so our, sales process definitely is fast. I mean, we want to get people on the phone or in, or a butt in a seat in our conference room the same day, usually immediately. We found that anything after. Two, three days show up rates just nonexistent.

Adam Rossen: Yeah, I was, I was a prosecutor in Fort Lauderdale. Loved it some of the best times of my life.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you know you were gonna eventually start your firm and switch sides that something that evolved?

Adam Rossen: It evolved and it evolved quickly. I originally, I wanted to be a homicide prosecutor. I wanted to get to homicide within 10 years, which at that time for that office was unheard of. I wanted to be one of the best trial lawyers in South Florida. Those were my goals and I don't have a problem with authority when it makes sense. I do have a problem with authority when it doesn't make sense, or I don't feel as though I'm being valued or cared about. And very quickly I learned that I was just a cog in the wheel. Nobody cared about me. And I'm sitting there going, okay, well I'm barely making any money. I can't pay my student loans.

So we didn't need to make a lot of money to survive. And you know, we kind of stumbled through for about eight years and, you know, here we are now.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. In some sense that's maybe the best way to do it before you've got all the, all right responsibilities. Just do it. So, so you guys go out how did you start getting clients? Were your colleagues referring people to you? How,

Adam Rossen: Well, so that, that's the thing. I mean, if we were public defenders, we could have gotten, I think, more referrals faster and easier. But we were prosecutors, we didn't have any clients that we could have brought with us. So we had this plan. It was maybe three to six months in the making, and it was terrible.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I'm gonna ask you about that in a minute, so put a pin in that. We just got lucky. We stumbled in a few things, you know on Friday, you know, our last day was a Friday and just randomly one criminal defense attorney that we were friendly with came over and said, Hey guys, come by my office at 11 o'clock on Monday. I got a case for you. We're like, what?

Like, we're not expecting this. And so one of the big things, if there was this lawyer who just out of the goodness of his heart just helped us totally unexpectedly. And I don't know if we would've made it without him. I really don't. And so I still have so much gratitude towards him for what he did. We never asked.

I never expected it. And that really got us a good jump. We also stumbled into some things, so one of,

But I was court ordered to go to traffic school. I got a really bad speeding ticket when at the end of my term as a prosecutor, and I got court ordered to this, go to this school. It was a comedy school. I show up, I'm there for eight hours. Nobody wants to be there. There's only 15 people in the room.

And for maybe the last hour or two, the instructor, she starts talking about DUI. And I raised my hand and I was like, well, you're wrong about this. And this is the way it really is. Oh no. This is different. What you're saying is not that accurate. Here's what it's, and then everybody's like, okay, well are you the class jerk?

You know, there's always somebody, right? And I said, no, I'm a prosecutor. I'm starting, I'm gonna be starting my own criminal defense firm. Here's what it is. And the next hour or the final hour turned into kind of an AMA before an AMA was a real thing. Everybody was asking me questions and I let it, and I had so much fun.

You know, we're leaving, start our own firm. So we did. And they were like, oh, do you want to come in lecture for an hour and a half every Saturday? Every other Saturday? I was like, hell yeah. So we did that and it generated almost instant revenue. It was crazy. And so that, that was one of the things that really got me into lecturing.

And we had fun with it. I mean, and,

Nice. Nice. You know, You talk to a lot of lawyers we both do, but you know, there are pros and cons, all different types of practice areas, you know, if you're gonna go and contingency practice. One of the pros is you can conceivably make a lot of money, but one of the cons is you gotta wait 12, 18 months before you get, you know, from when you sign a client to when you get paid.

One of the pros for criminal defense, I would think, is you sign a client, they're paying you like that day, right?

Adam Rossen: Yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so you're getting cash in the door. If you're signing clients, you know, cash flow is probably not an issue as long as you're getting clients early on at least.

So I, it just depends. But I've heard a lot of people in the space really talk about that they believe that criminal and immigration are a lot faster to scale because of that immediate revenue coming in.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I wanna talk about how you're scaling your firm. But before we get there, so you, started your firm with your partner, I think you said Manny. At some point you guys decided to sort of go your separate ways. Uh, Tell me a

Adam Rossen: was my old, yeah, that was my old partner Bill. So Manny's the managing partner now of the firm who you got to meet, you know, at a variety of places he, you know.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so let's talk about Bill. So your, first partner at some point. You guys parted ways, so you maybe give a little background there.

And that's, I think why it was, it went so well for 78 years. We had no staff. We never had staff. 90, 95% of the revenue went directly into our pockets. So we didn't have a business. We were just two young good lawyers. That was it. And so we worked out that transition. And for better or worse, it was, you know, me saying, okay, well, on one hand, you know, I don't like, I'm the one bringing in a majority of the revenue anyway, so that's pretty good.

So at least the second go around, I made up for it.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you saw it coming in? You know, I always tell people, in my opinion, at least, you know, you can sort of grow organically, affirm, but at some point, if you really want to grow, it's a decision. You gotta decide because then you gotta start, you gotta start making decisions. You know, you are gonna, you got limited resources and you gotta allocate them in a certain way, and you can put all the cash in your pocket, go home every weekend.

Or you can say, all right, I'm gonna reinvest it. We're gonna, we're gonna grow this baby. And you decided to grow up. But before we get to that, so Covid, you said you thrived in Covid. How, tell me about that. 'cause a lot of people esp,

Adam Rossen: right,

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, you got trials, you know, you're not having them. So how did you do it?

Now, it didn't really affect us because we had no business anyway, you know, like we had no business, no expenses. So it was fine. But I learned the old Warren Buffet adage, which, you know, I'm sure I'll butcher it, but it's basically it's sell when everybody's buying and buy when everybody's selling.

Right. Do the opposite. And so I saw everybody putting their head in their sand cuts, you know, all, all over the place, people getting laid off and people slashing their marketing budget and everything. And I said to myself, I'm like that, look, this is gonna pass. Either we're all gonna die or it's gonna pass.

We had, it was two lawyers, we had a marketing director and we had three kind of do it all legal assistants slash reception intake. You know, we weren't segmented and so we just said, all right, all six of us are going into marketing right now. That's it. I had a lot of marketing plans, a lot of things that I had wanted to do, a lot of projects.

And we just did 'em. We just said, screw it. And like, y'all want a job? We're all marketing now 'cause we don't have any real court to handle. So we're all in marketing. And we did, and then we took on 13 interns and they, we gave them a great experience and there was this big SEO project that I wanted to do and we got about 30,000 words on the website.

Jonathan Hawkins: so let's talk about growing your firm. And you got, I think, what, six attorneys now or so?

Adam Rossen: so we, yeah we have six. We've had as many as eight. You know, just kind of shuffling caseload and different things. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so, you know, going from one attorney to six attorneys, that's a lot. That's a lot. And I mean, I know personally, I know lots of people, you know, growing a firm in terms of again, another thing, I believe it, I think it's almost easier to get more clients than it is to actually build a team of lawyers.

Especially when you're small. Lawyers are risk averse and they look over and they're like, Adam, it's just you. Why would I join you when I could do something else over here? So how did you know, what challenges did you face in trying to recruit and attract attorneys?

You know, I was think 23 in law school and I hated law school. And I went back to my alma mater to be the head JV basketball coach. Manny was 15 and he was one of my players and he interned for me. It was just, you know, it was a great relationship. And at his wedding we were both kind of drunk and we were just talking about it and I convinced him.

And then we had a few meetings afterwards and I convinced him to join. So that first hire was. It wasn't just luck, but in order to get that first hire, right, like if I didn't get that first hire right, I don't know where we would be, right? So we knocked it outta the park with that one which made it so much easier.

And it was one of those kind of things where like within three days I was like, you know, hiring her is gonna get me out of production, which will allow me to continue to grow the firm and do all the other things. Screw it, doing it. We did. So that was a bit of a leap, but hire lawyers three and four. I mean, were so badly needed because of just that hockey stick growth.

And we got lucky too. So, I mean, lawyers three and four, David and Susan, they're still at the firm today. They're both doing amazing. And again we got, I don't wanna say lucky, but we learned enough with our coaches and mentors and being in masterminds of hire slow fire fast and getting the enrollment or the buy-in is so important because my firm is not an easy firm to work at.

Making sure that we're aligned is so important in the vision of the firm in the day-to-day stuff, because a lot of people could be, especially now that we have this great reputation and there's so many prosecutors and PDs that wanna work with us, it's different. We don't really need to recruit. We, you know, the firm sells itself.

And we do a lot on social media too, with the firm selling itself. But a lot of our hiring process is really of, look, what do you think this is? And let me tell you what it really is. And through behavioral testing and open and honest conversations, a lot of it's like, look, I would hate for anybody to come here, be with us for six months and go, that is not what I expected.

Like you don't even know if I'm a good lawyer or not. You know? And it's funny because Manny and I looked at each other and this, was like the third or fourth interview we're in office. We're like, yeah, like we, we will get to that. Like, you know, you are a homicide prosecutor, you've had your own firm for a while, like being a very, an excellent lawyer.

That's the floor. It's all about culture here all about. And we interviewed her three or four times all about culture, our culture. And for a lot of now it's to the point where whether it's a lawyer or not, my part of the interview, especially with non-lawyers, 'cause I just kind of come in at the very last step and my thing is, alright, here's like the 30 ways you're gonna hate working here at this place sucks.

' cause you're not gonna like it. You know? And you're gonna you're gonna be unhappy. And I don't want anybody to be unhappy. I want everybody to be here and be happy. So we've evolved quite a bit.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love that approach. I think you're right. You hire the wrong person. It's bad for you, bad for them, and it's just a waste of time. So that's good. You know, repel the people that don't want to be there. So you mentioned basketball coach and that you run your firm sort of like a team.

Is there anything from your coaching experience that you apply now in your role at the firm? Is there some overlap at all?

Adam Rossen: Oh tons. And I still screw this up too. And look, and I try to stay outta management. I try I really want to be in the biz dev. The marketing we're looking at acquisitions. Growth by acquisition, the planning, the plotting, the scheming. You know, that's really where having conversations with you, right? Going to masterminds and conferences.

One of the things I really learned from coaching basketball, look I'm sure it won't be a surprise, like I was a hardcore tough coach. I've won at every single place I've been. I've improved every single team that I've ever coached. I've coached at four different high schools. Every single team and program was better off, you know, after I got there than before I got there.

And I'm very proud of that. In fact, even though I was never a head coach, I was, you know, an assistant. But coaching very high level one, a state championship. I've learned one of the number one things that I learned is that you need to treat people differently. You should treat people differently.

And so it's about reaching and motivating people and so you have to know your people. Also a lot about being, you know, working within a coaching staff is very similar to a leadership team in any business. And seeing, well, how does the head coach approach it? Is the head coach more of the CEO and delegates a lot of different things to the assistant coaches.

I've been pa a part of a few programs that did it that way. And then there's a few others where the head coaches disorganized and just basically a, a good trainer. Who happens to have the title of head coach? Right. And you know, is it more strategy or is it just more motivation? Right. Based. So I mean, I've learned so much through, through coaching.

Right,

Jonathan Hawkins: That's cool.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let's talk, let's go back to your firm. So you've got, you've built this thing, you've got six attorneys. You've got, I look at your website and you're in South Florida, but you've got multiple offices. I don't know if those are true offices or, or not. You can explain that. But, you know, talk about what it was like building out sort of the different locations and how do you manage that?

And then maybe the next step what's next? Are you gonna start moving up, up Florida, or, you know, what's your vision there?

Adam Rossen: Right. Great. Great question. So right now we have three real offices or staffed offices and six satellite offices. The plan is, yes we definitely wanna grow. We're going to go deeper in the geographies that we're at, and we also wanna grow by expansion and acquisition. So we have a lot of cases in Miami right now, but we don't have a physical office there.

Same, you know, with up through Palm Beach County, you know, we have an office in Boca. We have an office in Fort Lauderdale and Sunrise, which is West Fort Lauderdale. Do we go to Naples or Fort Myers? Yes. I want to. Just, when do we go up to the Treasure Coast? Yes, I want to, when do we go to Tampa? You know, different things.

We handle federal cases nationwide, so how can we get more cases in other geographies and in South Florida? So I look at it as, when you, and this is me that, you know, I'm a Florida boy, not a, a Texan. But when you think about it, if you got those oil rigs in Texas, you gotta drill deep to get oil.

And for us the quality of lawyering and. The quality of relationships with our clients and their families are so important, and our culture is so important that we're only gonna do it if it's the right fit. You know, we're not a high volume, low fee chop shop. We're not charging $3,000 for DUIs and you know, pleading people out at the first or second court appearance.

It's actually easier to scale a statewide law firm that way. But that's not what we're doing because I have no interest in doing that because I want us to be the best. So we do have a good amount of volume, but we've slowed back on the volume and the growth to make sure that the quality is nothing short of Excellent.

Jonathan Hawkins: I would imagine Miami is somewhere you can go very deep.

Adam Rossen: Yeah. Yeah. Especially in the Spanish market. Well, it's, well, but it's also saturated. Criminal is very saturated. But you know, when you have personal relationships with people and you happen to be a good marketer, tho those things matter a lot. And you know there's certain things in the Spanish market that we want to do.

I mean, there's so many ideas and yeah. Miami is ripe. You know, they're just going hard into, so we are,

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I'll make a statement here. You know, lawyers you and I we are in sort of the people we hang around with are different in, in terms of lawyers. Most lawyers are not business people. They don't thinking about that. They, some love the law, some just sort of, you know, they're just sort of.

I don't know if you've sort of looked out at your quote competitors you don't have to name any of them, but what's your sense about your, the opportunity for you to really grow this? baby?

Adam Rossen: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many opportunities and that's why I think it's a lot of, it's gonna be growth by acquisition too, with people that are good lawyers that just don't, or they're overwhelmed. They're trustee sidekick. Right? 'cause most criminal lawyers, you know, it's better called Saul or the Lincoln Lawyer, and we've turned it into suits.

We have a firm. We want to be strong and powerful and stand for something. We are a mission-based business as well. I mean, we really do believe in our mission to help good people and bad things happen.

And to defend and protect people's rights against the government. We're all kind of, you know, we, we have people on, on all sides of the political landscape here, which I love, but we all do have a little bit of that libertarian screw the government you know, whether we lean left or lean right.

There's, they're not running EOS, they don't have departments, divisions, they don't have a mission statement. They don't have a core values, a one, three and five year and 10 year plan like we do. So a lot of them is we'll just grow to make more money, put more money in the owner's pockets. And so when we have these dedicated plans and a different culture, it's different than any other firm.

But again it's by, you know, acquiring, I mean acquisition there. There's still a lot of baby boomers that are coming upon retirement soon, and there's gonna be a lot of older Gen Xers that are coming upon retirement soon. And so we think it's, we're in a perfect position to start building bridges with them and say, look, here's a way for you to continue to make money in your later years while you slow down.

But it's also been a little challenging because we've seen a lot of people who overvalue themselves, which I'm sure you deal with quite a bit in, through your mergers and acquisitions. Because you know, when you don't have a sellable asset that, you know, they don't have a good website. Like what's, what are the assets?

The assets are usually the cell phone number, the business number, and the referral sources, which it's all random because of course they don't have a client list. They're not nurturing the list through an e through an email sequence, social media or a mailed monthly newsletter. It may be contacts in their cell phone that literally we're gonna have to pay somebody in the Philippines to go through and figure out and categorize who is this?

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, and we talked about this, but you know, I think it is a compelling win-win for the right people. You know, especially when you're young, you have energy and you can deal with the client work and sort of barely managing, you know, you're spending plates basically, you know, you're doing some client work, you're doing some business work you're doing paying the bills, but at some point, you know, why not get into a well old machine where you get to just do the client work, which you're good at and all that other stuff's taken care of.

And then you have an opportunity really to grow the pie because you're not. Doing all that other stuff that you would be doing. I think, you know, you just keep sending that message out there. I think you're gonna get some takers on that. Let's shift gears a little bit and the thing that I, I last saw you on was you gave a little talk about your summer internship at your firm which sounds really cool.

So why don't you talk about what it is, the history of it and all of that, because there's some really cool stories you told outta that.

So I always, you know, loved it. So I would take people on and that was kind of version 1.0 and 2.0 for the, you know, really until covid it was just come and hang out. Manny was an intern. He just came and he hung out and we had little things here and there from to do, but it was really just shadowing.

We're just wasting our time unless it's a client who needs to get outta jail. Other than that, it was a big waste of time. And, And then we did a lot of depositions on Zoom, so that was good. And we just, I had a little time to be creative and the George Floyd murder happened. And so I took our interns and I said, all right, guys.

Next Wednesday, block off from one 30 to five 30, we got a special project and they all hop on. And I had it all prepared. I said, all right, guys, the law school final exam, you got four hours. And what we're gonna do in this law school final exam is we've been hired to represent Derek Chauvin. Here are the three charges that he's been arrested for.

Because there's a curve. And we did, and it was awesome and they loved it. And number one was a law student, but numbers two and three were not. And I was, so we had some people in high school, we had some people in college. We had some people in law school and you know, we gave 'em the grades and we went through it with 'em and it was just so much fun.

And we had a lot of time to debrief about the depositions. You know, we prepare for them before and then they would be on. And it was also pretty nice when you can kind of be intimidating to an officer, a cop on Zoom when you have 13 people sitting there watching you on Zoom. So that was cool too. And it really got me thinking.

And I had the help of two very good employees at the firm one of which is on Harvard Law Review right now. She's at Harvard Law School. And we worked it out and we said, okay, I want this to be an actual program. I want this to be, you know, so what did we do? We made a, webpage on our website.

We SEOed it up and boom, here we are on the first page of Google, right? Our website, our webpage about our criminal defense, criminal justice internship. So we're like right under indeed for a bunch of searches. So we come up organically. I said, great. We're gonna take maybe like six to eight interns.

They get assigned, you know, to our, we have four lawyers that are primarily in production. I'm not, and Manny has, you know, Manny's caseload fluctuates. So Manny and I don't get an intern. But we tell 'em, I go you, you're gonna get a worse experience if you're my intern. So I run the curriculum. I, you know, we just, last year I added in a book club component.

They're in motions to suppress. They're in court every day. It's rigorous, it is rigorous, it's hard. All this for an unpaid internship, and last summer we had 10. It was amazing. And now we're in 5.0 version, which I'm really proud about. Over Thanksgiving I had some time again to be reflective and just think, which as you know, for the law firm owner who's really busy, it's hard to come by. And I said, all right, how can we make this even better? How can we niche down? Right? A lot of our mentors, and especially in the marketing space, the niches are in the riches, or the riches are in the niches, and you gotta niche down even more. So I said, all right, we're gonna make this criminal defense focused.

Okay. And I'm looking at this as a way to niche down even more. We're gonna attract better candidates who are even more passionate and we can start partnering with criminal justice organizations across the country. You know, we have partnered with the Innocence Project for a few years. They've always spoken to our interns, but how can we do it with more and really use it as a way to build the internship?

You know, when you're a solo lawyer and your gross income is 150, 200 K, I've always had the opinion of anybody selling you on branding. They're selling you. They're robbing you blind. You need to hustle, market sell. You need cases, not a brand at that level. But now we have a brand, we have like a 50 page brand guidelines book uh, you know, thing.

And also it's great for getting back links to be able to get back links from criminal justice organizations and writing blog posts and different, you know, news media articles and public relations that are really difficult for other. SEO vendors to get for my competitors. So again, I look at this as an entire flywheel ecosystem.

I always say it's like eating all parts of the pig for, from a Cubans down here in Miami. That's what they do. And just building that. And by niching down it's so much more authentic and real. And it is a big part of our core values and our, our value beliefs and system.

We're only gonna take one at a time. And it might be somebody who's in vocational school or in a career college, or maybe somebody who, who's been in and outta jail or went to prison and can't get, wants to get into criminal justice, criminal defense. But Public Defender's office just can't hire them because they're still a government agency, right?

So that's something I'm we haven't, I'm starting to tell people that it's gonna happen starting in about January, but we still have to work through the logistics of it. But I'm, I'm just so happy and proud that we can do something like that. And I could never do that if we were still a four person, you know, total law firm, you know, if we didn't build the 25 person law firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, there's so much to unpack there. I'm not gonna be able, we don't have time to do it, but that is just so cool. I mean, the thing that I really like is, you know, your first version was just come hang out. Where now it's like, it's a real structured program which is a ton of work. I mean, and I know it evolves, it gets better every year, but that's a shit ton of work to build.

Then you gotta go through the process of how do you pick 'em? Right?

Adam Rossen: Right? Yeah. So before when we just really marketed through just organic SEO, we would get anywhere from 30 to maybe 50 applicants for 6-8 spots. Now we're getting over 300 applicants for 10 to 12 spots. And we use Wise Hire for our hiring and that pushes it out to indeed LinkedIn. A lot of the job boards, like kind of the legacy job and career boards, you know, and so, and we've, pushed some money behind it on LinkedIn and other avenues of our social media.

What I really want to know about is your passion and why are you gonna be good for us? And I think, I don't know who's teaching people how to write cover letters, but then again, maybe it's just me being non-traditional. It's like I see the same boring stuff over and over and over again. And I can tell when it's plug and played, you know, from one job to another, or one internship to another.

Show me passion for criminal defense. Show me how you are going to be a benefit to me and how the firm is gonna benefit from having you as one of our interns. Right? I already know what I'm giving you. Okay? And so I care a lot about that. We have a writing sample. Money cares more about the writing sample 'cause he wants good writers.

I don't have the time to give everybody who I want to speak to an hour or 30, or a full 30 minutes. So we'll usually do an hour and a half up to about five or six people. And then from there we can get a pretty good idea. And I do try to group them. So we'll try to go law school together, college together.

And then as we go through that process, then we get more and more Kenneth, then I'll kind of bunch them together. And if there's a few people where I'm not so sure about, but we're intrigued, but we want more than we'll do maybe a two at a time where we even have done 25, you know, 20 to 30 minutes individual.

But the high school is only limited to American Heritage, which is a local school down in South Florida that I actually also teach at. And so we have these kind of slots and we go through it and we, but we tell them in the beginning, we say, look, if you need to get paid, this isn't the right place for you.

If you don't have reliable transportation and you want a hybrid, this isn't the right spot for you. If you want to, and again, wisdom trial and error. If you're, you can be here three weeks and then you can, you need to take off too. And then you'll be here, and then you're for three more, and then you're spending 4th of July in Spain.

And we can't, you gotta let us know. Because if we offer, it's, you're signing an integrity statement and, and your NDA within 24 hours, or we revoke the offer and why? Well, we've had people sign or say, commit verbally, commit in January or December, and then they get maybe a paid internship or they get a judicial internship.

Which the law schools are pushing as if they're better. And there's, there is no better, it's just different. It's what do you want? So again, it's like our employment, like, like our hiring, it's, we attract and repel. So I tell 'em, I go, if you can't meet this criteria, let me know. And it's totally fine.

And so anytime you niche down and you tie it in with your core values, it's gonna be better for you, it's gonna be better for them. It's gonna be better for the business, the company, everything. Our lawyers, I mean, we have some brilliant interns. Oh my God, amazing. And yeah. So that's how we do it. And live and learn.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I mean, it's really sounds incredible. I mean, it is, like you said, good way to give back a good way to find, you know, find people for the future, for your firm. A way to get your branding out there, really across the country, it sounds like more and more it just sounds, a lot of work, but really cool.

So as you're sitting here today, can you throw out, you know, a few things that maybe for people out there that are, or, you know, behind you in the journey, what are some pieces of advice you'd give them?

Look, Google runs everything, but now there's AI and there's different things that are really coming in into play. I think building relationships is key with your clients. I think listening to, you know, get developing mentors so important and get mentors from in and out of your space. You can get mentors completely out of the law space.

So a lot of other things that I want to be involved in and do. So for me it's no. But if that's for you and you say, look, I still really like the law. For me case work is like and good, but it's not love and great anymore. It used to be. But the business is love and great. So if your love and great is in the law, then grow a little bit. But you don't, don't be like me at all. That would be a huge mistake for you. And I think a lot of people can go to some of these fancy conferences and see the ones that are like rock shows where they're paying a hundred grand for a comedian, or they're paying for, you know, a, an r and b group, or they're giving away major cars and prizes and those are great for rah rah.

Jonathan Hawkins: Great message. I think we end with that one, but Adam, this has been fun, man. It's been great. I love what you're doing. For anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you or maybe get more information on your internship, what's the best way to find you and that?

Adam Rossen: Yeah, so now it's LinkedIn. I'm trying to be committing, committed to really using LinkedIn a lot more. So LinkedIn's great. Find me there. We're all over the place. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, my email is adam@rossenlawfirm.com, R-O-S-S-E-N law firm.com. Email me if I can help in any way. It would truly, genuinely be my pleasure to help.

Jonathan Hawkins: An internship. How do people find that?

That was something that we had last year's group film and we produced it in December, and I'm, I'm very proud of it. I think it's a really cool video. And yeah, definitely we we're still, as of this we have about one or two slots left, so if you are hearing this, please apply. If there's anybody who's, who's listening to this that has a connection with the criminal justice organization, please, we want to partner with more and more of them.

So I would be so appreciative if anybody can make an introduction for that. Actually, I was on Ben's podcast three weeks ago. He made an amazing introduction and I'm very excited about the partnership that we're gonna have with the Institute for Justice. So they have a, they're based out of Arlington, Virginia.

They have a major field office in Miami and we're, we have big things ahead with them, so. Thanks Ben for that and anybody else listening, we really appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.

lawfirmgc. com. We'll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.