Why does one of the country's most accomplished trial lawyers wear a black suit to court every day with no cufflinks or frills? Because he wants jurors to know exactly what to expect from him. Tom Kline, who co-founded Kline & Specter with Shanin Specter, has won seven-figure-plus jury verdicts in each of the past five decades. Hosts Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi ask Tom how he found his own courtroom style after learning from his mentor, James E. Beasley, and why he chooses to talk up to jurors rather than down. Tom also reveals why his most heated moments in court are never an accident, and the simple math that has kept his partnership with Shanin strong since 1995.

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Welcome to Elawvate,

the podcast where trial lawyers Ben Gideon and Rahul Ravipudi talk about the

real issues that come with the fight for justice.

So let's find inspiration in the wins. Let's learn from the losses.

But most of all,

let's keep learning and getting better and keep getting back in the ring.

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Hey, it's Ben.

Rahul and I started this podcast because we love hanging out with fellow trial

lawyers and sharing ideas that can make us all better.

And both of our firms also regularly collaborate with other lawyers across the

countries in cases where we can add value.

If you're interested in collaboration or even if you just have a case or an idea

that you want to bounce off us or brainstorm,

Rahul and I are going to be hosting confidential case workshops the first

Wednesday of each month. So here's how it works.

If you have a case or an idea that you want to talk about or brainstorm with us,

just send me an email to [email protected],

E-L-A-W-V-A-T-E.net,

or go online to Elawvate.net and submit a case workshop request.

We will schedule you for a confidential 30-minute Zoom meeting where we can talk

about your case to see if we can help. If you feel like there would be good

value in collaborating on the case further, we can talk about that. If not,

that's okay, too.

We enjoy helping other trial lawyers because we know someday you'd be willing to

do the same for us if we needed your help. So again,

if you're interested in workshopping your case with us,

just send an email to [email protected] or fill out a caseworkshop request at

elawvate.net, and Rahul and I will look forward to chatting with you soon.

Welcome to the Elawvate podcast. I'm Rahul Ravipudi.

I'm Ben Gideon.

Ben, the NFL season has started. The Buffalo Bills are starting strong.

Patriots are doing all right too.

Yeah, we were just talking offline about how I still owe you those lobsters,

so you're going to get me a date. I'll ship them out.

I'm still very sore about that bet. As you may recall,

that was a game that we were up something like 20 to nothing at the half,

and I was already making arrangements to take my bet from you and then things

turned around.

Yeah, no,

I was already asking you where to ship the wings and all that good stuff and

then things just turn around. That's why there's four quarters. It was amazing.

Yeah. Well, the wings versus Lobsters,

I may need to revisit that in terms of the valuation proposition there,

but we probably shouldn't make small talk too long here because we don't want to

keep our guest waiting. We're really thrilled today to have Tom Kline join us.

Tom Kline, as everyone probably knows,

is the founder and one of the owners of one of the most

successful plaintiff's firms in the country, Kline & Specter out of -.

Co-founder.

Co-founder. We had the other co-founder, Shanin, on, so our audience knows that.

I watched the podcast so that I could take my cues.

So Tom, welcome to the podcast. As you know,

we start out by making some banal small talk.

The Eagles didn't get your own small talk.

I know. I mean, it's just not fair. They're too good.

You're well known as a Sixers Super fan, and for most of your adult life,

that's probably brought you nothing but misery and heartache and depression.

That may be changing now.

What's your prediction as to what the Sixers can hope for in this coming season?

I hope that the Super Fan thing does not end up in my obituary.

That's not what I'd be remembered from.

Although my dad once told me when I came home from a least athletic league game

that I would better than be an athlete.

I'd be better off as an athletic supporter. Hollywood comes to Philly,

so we're going to see what LeBron does for the Sixers.

There are high hopes around here.

My kind of tempering remarks to people who are soberant about it is we'll see

how excited everybody is on November 7th when they're six and four. We'll see.

I'm optimistic. It's a lot of fun.

Yeah. One of our favorite pastimes at the Gideon household with my children is

watching the games and watching your expressions on the sideline and things like

Marcus Smart goes sliding out of bounds and knocks into you or comes close.

That's always something we're focused tentatively on here.

I've had a couple of those guys land on me and they are big and strong.

Well, you're quite tall. Did you ever play basketball yourself?

As a kid played basketball,

I came home and complained one day to my dad about both the refereeing and the

time that I was given as on court by the coach.

And he told me neither of those jobs were available and that I would be much

better off if I just stayed home and studied and I took his advice.

Well, it seems to have served you pretty well. Yeah.

So one of the things we like to do in this podcast is get a little bit deeper

beyond the platitudes and the things that are circulating out there. I mean,

you're pretty well known to most lawyers and in the community,

but tell us some things about you that nobody knows,

starting maybe with how did you become this person that you are today?

What was the genesis of all this and the turning point?

I know you grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania,

and doesn't sound like your family were lawyers.

And then you started out as a school teacher and somehow you got here.

So how did all that happen, Tom?

Well, I grew up in a little town called Hazleton, PA.

I went to college actually in Reading,

Pennsylvania and a liberal arts college called Albright College.

I grew up in a small town, coal regions, hard knocks town.

My dad managed a dress factory. My mom stayed at home.

My sister taught me how to ride a bicycle.

She let go without the training wheels and the rest is history.

It was a blue collar town and it was a good place to grow up.

Something people might not know about me is that I played third accordion in an

all accordion band, Rosebud's accordion band,

and they trusted me to play chords. That's why when you got the third accordion,

it meant that you did not play the lead. You didn't get the complicated stuff.

You got to play along with the chords on the left hand. But I had an upbringing,

which is that's one kind of little element somebody might not know. I went back

home after college, graduated college in 1969. Wow,

long time ago. And I taught school for six years, sixth grade for six years.

I think that was part of the formation of what made me into a trial lawyer.

You need to learn how to explain things to young people at a level that they'll

understand, not talk above them, not talk below them,

talk to them and learn about them and feel their needs and their

wants.

These were largely deprived kids in what would be described geographically as

upper Appalachia. And it was formative.

I went back home and lived and breathed it as a young adult.

I didn't go to law school till I was

27-ish and went to Pittsburgh, Duquesne School of Law,

the now Duquesne Kline School of Law.

If you were to look around on commencement day and say which person in this

graduating class is this place going to be named after 40 years from now,

I don't think I would've won the poll,

but I guess I won the race at least as to the naming. I spent last

Friday on campus, had a great time.

There's a famous contracts case which is taught to every law student in nearly

every law school in America, Leonard versus PepsiCo.

It's the so-called Pepsi Points Harrier Jet case,

and I've turned it into an advocacy one hour. The judge was wrong. Kimba Wood,

famous judge of the Southern District of New York.

She wouldn't give the kid even a trial to get his Harrier Jet.

And I try to convince students who start off being with the judge because what

is a second week or third week law student just learning what an

offer is, let alone an acceptance or consideration in contracts.

I try to convince them that the judge doesn't always have to be right and show

them all the evidence that might've been presented at a trial and then try to

convince them that I'm right and the judge is wrong. And I usually do pretty

well.

It's currently on Instagram on the Duquesne Kline handle and it's also running

on @tomklinewalks. I run a pretty active Instagram,

as you guys might know, and I mention it all the time, like, follow, share.

I did check it out in advance of this podcast and it's pretty interesting to see

all the different people and places on there.

Did you come up with the idea yourself to become an influencer on social media?

It seems unlikely. I mean, who puts you up to that?

What's so unlikely about it? I'm a likely guy to be on Instagram.

I found that it was a great way to connect and I have had a great time with it.

I curated myself. Every lick of it is mine,

and I decided it was a great way to feature young people largely.

I run a new way in Philadelphia, a lot of Drexel Kline students. I talk to them.

I say, "You want to snap a selfie?" We talk about them.

I remember what they said because I actually listened because that's one of the

things we're supposed to do as lawyers and people.

And so I then feature them and post it and ask them to collaborate.

And the next thing you know, you have a few thousand followers.

And on any given day,

I get somewhere between 10,000 and in some cases 80 or 90,000

views. It's pretty cool and it's a lot of fun and it is essentially geared to

be nice. Shanin Specter, my law partner,

once brought home a thought from actually a Yom Kippur sermon,

which was better to be kind than to be right.

And my Instagram is kind. And that's what I have been promoting.

And I talk about everything from the Sixers to the Law Schools and

sometimes even photo of myself preparing a case that I was trying with Jason

Itkin in Chicago along with Brad Cosgrove, guys who you know.

And that even got a couple of views, just a lot of fun.

And I like trying to be an influencer.

I will not make my living at it, I'll tell you that.

What do you try to avoid when you post things on Instagram, if anything?

I don't do family stuff.

People don't need to see my grandkids and birthday cakes and I avoid anything

political and anything that's controversial.

I got a lot of that to say by the way,

but I generally try to just have things that will interest people.

Human interest is really where I've kind of found a sweet spot and I love it.

Last night, Shanin and I went to the game. He was with his daughter.

I took one of the young associates and if you look at my post is about

Wyatt Larkin, who's a young, up and coming, terrific young lawyer at our firm.

And I talked about him and I toasting the new Phanatic Phillie up and

talk about him. That's the kind of mom of the Instagram.

I think it's important to communicate.

When I start to talk to law students at either law schools,

which have my name on it, which I'm proud of,

I generally start out by asking them how many follow @tomklinewalks.

And there's usually a good number that start and it's a connection.

As I left graduation at Drexel Klein School of Law last May,

I said to them, "And remember,

just because you're graduating does not mean that you cannot continue to follow

@tomklinewalks." And it was a good laugh. It was just a lot of,

it's just a thing. Anyway, too much of.

That. Ben and Tom, I think I told you this,

but when I did my Inner Circle speech down in Laguna,

my kids were there and my middle son who's aspiring to be a lawyer,

not because I'm pushing him, but that's what he wants to do.

He was kind of looking around the room and he saw you, Tom.

And then he just asked me, he goes, "Hey dad,

who's that guy with the long silver hair?" And I said,

"That guy is Tom Kline and he just got a multi-billion

dollar verdict. He's got his name on two law schools.

He's probably one of the most famous lawyers,

if not the most famous lawyer in the country." And so he just kind of looked and

he was thinking about it. And then at lunchtime I said, "Hey, that Mr. Klein,

he came and sat next to me.

And when I played your video of you roasting me at my 50th birthday party,

he said, Oh, that kid's got a future." I go,

"What do you think about becoming a lawyer? Would you want to work at a firm?"

And he didn't even miss a beat. He goes, "I'll work at his firm." I was like,

"That's amazing.".

Consider this a job offer. Let's get him into law school. Let's get him there.

There are Inner Circle brothers and sisters of ours.

We're all proud to be members of that group,

which Washington Post once called The Hundred Most Celebrated Lawyers in

America.

My late wife asked me if 100 celebrated meant 100 best or just 100

celebrated. And we have a lot of fun, don't we?

We do. We do.

My son, like your son, wanted to be a lawyer, actually get a law degree,

pass the bar and is a playwright by profession, and I'm very proud of him.

He and I work on projects together, but I too did not say to him,

"Go to law school," nor did he do it because he though he needed to do it.

Did it out of the intellectual curiosity of it,

which I found to be really interesting.

Decided while he was going to law school, he didn't want to practice law,

but he decided that he would be well served in life if he did it.

And then when he got a law degree, he decided I'm going to get past the bar,

and he's proud of that. But we all need to find our own paths.

And it's important when you're raising kids, or I now see it with my grandkids,

life is this long progression,

as you guys know. And I think it's important to let people find their paths.

My 16-year-old granddaughter knows I'm on the board of trustees at Drexel

University. And while she would prefer as a 16-year-old to go south,

because every kid today, at least every kid in Manhattan,

wants to go south at University of Texas or Tulane or Miami.

But she said to me,

"Can I count on Drexel as a safety school?" And I said,

"I think I could work that out." Well, that's what your SATs are, Parker.

So there.

So Tom, that's a good segue. I mean,

a lot of our listeners are trial lawyers or aspiring trial lawyers,

and they listen to this podcast to try to glean some advice from

people who have been successful in this business.

You've been successful both as a trial lawyer and as someone who's built a

successful trial business,

and I wanted to have an opportunity to cover both of those topics.

Can you give some advice to lawyers who are still

grappling around in the wilderness, who are trying cases,

maybe haven't had a lot of success yet, just trying to come into their own?

How did they make that leap and what experiences and turning points did you

have that allowed you to gain success in this business?

For starters, if you want to be a trial lawyer,

then you have to be a trial lawyer. You have to get into a courtroom.

That's where trials take place. By the way,

I've been always of the firm opinion, I shouldn't say always,

but in a large part of my career,

I've been of the view that there's a trial in the courtroom and there's the

trial in the court of public opinion. Both are important in terms of advocacy.

But I start with you need to have a mentor.

You need to have someone who you look up to, someone who you can say,

this is the person I want to learn from. Not the person I want to be,

but the person who I can learn from,

the person who is there to set the standard for me, the person who I can watch.

I developed a CLE series a long time ago actually on the trademark

to Trial as Theater. And it wasn't designed to be show off-y because that's what

you create, trial as theater, show off, theatrical.

That's not what I was trying to say.

What I was trying to say is that I can show you what I do.

You can then decide what you like and what you don't like from it.

And you can then either, we all copy, don't we? Great copiers.

You can copy or you can not copy, and I'm just going to show you what I did.

I decided on that as a format for this concept of Trials Theater.

Today I've grown it actually into something called the Trialist Theater

Foundation.

And the reason that I did it that way was because that's how I learned.

Shanin Specter and I had a great mentor, James E. Beasley,

the Beasley School of Law at Temple University.

The school's named after Jim. So I went to the real Beasley School of Law.

Jim was an early member of the Inner Circle, by the way.

I went to my first Inner Circle meeting for those who are uninitiated at the

Inner Circle of Advocates, which is a great organization, which is by the way,

dominated by the concept of achievement in the courtroom, actual achievement,

not achievement in politics,

not achievement in political wherewithal in the trial community,

but rather in the courtroom. And so I got to watch Jim firsthand.

First day that I went to work,

he handed me his trial married to City Hall in Philadelphia where I

then know where to sit.

And he told me where to sit and I just learned everything I could from watching

Jim. I then made an important observation along the way,

which was I want to take everything that is so great about what this

great trial lawyer... He was a generational lawyer and I had the opportunity to

work for him as the chain and work with him and try cases with him,

but I wasn't going to be him. I couldn't do the things he did.

I didn't want to mimic him.

I just wanted to learn the things that he did well.

And then I adapted them to myself. And I say to everybody who will listen,

especially young students, law students, I say you have to be yourself.

You have to start with that.

And then you have to figure out where you're going to learn this trade that

we're in, this profession that we're in. That's my view of it.

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I got to ask, Tom,

you are the most giving person in the way that you share your knowledge.

You've obviously learned so much in your career and done so much in your career,

but at the same time, you're pretty intimidated.

How do you actually flip the switch and how do you deal with opposing counsel

and beat them into submission in the various ways?

Because if you're intimidating among the plaintiff bar,

I can't even imagine what you're doing to the other side.

I don't pick a fight that I don't need to pick a fight,

but if there's a fight to be fought, I'll fight it.

And that's generally my point of view.

And if you think I'm intimidating, I don't know if that's a compliment or not,

but I think that I do want people to take me seriously and I think that people

do take me seriously and I think that that's important.

I think that it's an interesting thing trying cases as you

like I am getting towards mid-career. But as you both know,

I've tried cases very recently and continue to try cases a lot because I

tell people I'm a courtroom junkie and I really am. And if you'd say to me,

"What do you want your legacy to be,

Tom?" I'd say in the courtroom because that's where I believe that I've made the

greatest impact. I've tried cases now. I'm in my fifth decade of trying cases.

Holy cow, where did that time all go? And I've actually tried cases.

As trial lawyers, we always set whatever the record should be that we fill.

So I've had a seven or eight figure or nine or 10 figure jury

verdict in each of five decades, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s,

the 2010s, the 2020s. And I think that's pretty cool in my view,

because last night I went to a Phillies game, Zach Wheeler,

who's in one of the aces of the Phillies, struck out the first seven batters.

So in the age of AI, the first question is, what's the record? Record is nine,

by the way. The Phillies franchise record was seven.

And I wouldn't have thought of what's the record number of strikeouts to

begin a ball game. So we as trial lawyers,

I see this all the time. I think Shanin and I invented this at least in

Philadelphia.

It's largest verdict in a wrongful death claim in Bucks County

involving less than two beneficiaries.

And then you can brag about it to the legal press. It's kind of what we do.

It sounds like the recent verdict Brian Panish got on his way out of the

courtroom,

Rahul informed us that he had called him to say that he had just eclipsed his

verdict record in that county in California.

Right. His trial record in that county. Exactly.

We have 67 counties in Pennsylvania,

so you got to go around the state and keep knocking them off.

And we have counties which are, we have one county called Elk County.

There are more elks than people, and that's why it's Elk County.

So you got to keep hitting those records.

We recently had a presentation by the judge who runs our mass tort program.

We call it Complex Litigation Program in Philadelphia,

and he put up on the screen the verdicts that had been obtained since

2014. It was a kind of 12-year window,

and I had about half of them myself,

and so I was counting them. And I don't tell you that for bragging purposes.

What I will tell you for bragging purposes is that that period of time is all

since I am roughly in my late 60s to somewhere in my

70s. And I figured, isn't that...

We started this conversation with LeBron James,

and isn't that the functional equivalent of being 42 and playing NBA

hoops? It is a young man's and young woman's game, they say.

Do you think it is though? I mean, the consistent record setting verdicts,

nothing's changed. It's only gotten bigger for you,

and I think that part of that has to be continuing to learn off of,

build off your institutional knowledge and skillset.

It's either that or trying cases with the great Jason Itkin from Houston, Texas.

It's easier to get an $8 billion and $2 billion jury verdict if you have a

really great co-counsel who's doing some really great cross-examinations and

speeches with you. That, by the way, has been a lot of fun.

If you haven't met Jason on the podcast, he's a natural for you.

You mentioned that Jared Beasley was a mentor and that you learned a lot,

but you couldn't emulate his style and you had to find your own.

What was his style and how would you describe your own style?

Yeah, it was Jim Beasley. Jared Beasley is some guy from Alabama.

The Beasley, right, right.

That's like a whole different guy.

There's a lot of Beasleys out there.

There are a lot of Beasleys. Jim was a total blue collar guy.

He was short in stature. When I say short in stature,

he was five nine or five nine or so. He was powerfully built.

He had this different presence than Tom Kline.

He was a guy in the summer in a seersucker suit and a yellow tie.

I'm a guy in a black suit and a black tie or a silver tie.

That's just the physical appearance. Although I learned some things even there,

I believe that it's important for consistency.

To get off topic just for a second, I wear a black suit every day to court,

a silver or black tie, no cufflinks, no frills,

because I believe that the message is important and I want to convey a message

and I want the messenger to be consistent.

I want the jury to know what they can expect to see in me,

and I don't want them to be looking for my fancy watch or my fancy cufflinks or

my different stripe,

a suite or shirt with a white collar. So they know what to expect.

It seems like Shanin has a different approach.

Shanin does same approach. Actually, same approach.

If you read a pretty good book by Shanin and me, if I can give the book a plug,

it was written by a former journalist, Bob Zausner,

and Bob's book is entitled Unconventional Wisdom.

And Shanin and I basically come down on that. He's just blue and I'm black.

He's a red tie and I'm a silver tie, but it's the same kind.

He and I settled in on the same concept.

On the core question that you ask so people do think that I can answer a

question. I decided that I wasn't Jim, that I looked different,

I sounded different. Jim did tell me, by the way,

one day that I was just too nice of a guy to be a real success at this business.

I didn't think he was right,

but it kind of was the same advice my mom gave me when I was headed off to law

school. She said, "Geez,

you're too nice to be a lawyer." But I just tried to adapt

his kind of powerful way and turn that...

If there was a description I'd give you in Jim Beasley,

it was he exuded power and you felt that he was fighting for a little guy.

And I just decided I was going to do it in my kind of own

inimicable way.

And I think you're seeing some of that today as we just talk because I talk to

jurors like I talk to ordinary people all the time.

What you see is what you get, and you have to convince people by logic.

And I think that if you have to make a choice as to whether you talk a little

bit above somebody or a little bit below somebody, I always pick above.

I believe that people have the capacity to learn,

and we underestimate people all of the time. I have a standing joke with my

friend Jason Itkin about Texas lawyers.

I call them cartoon lawyers because they think that, and this is all in Jason,

some of my friends from Texas probably will see this,

but you generally don't have to dump things down to a cartoon to get your point

across.

I would rather a juror think that they have been elevated and that they have

grown in intellect during a trial.

And I believe that actually jurors see that and think that when they leave a

courtroom. They think, "I've learned something. I'm a better person.

I'm a better citizen." And that's also important. I mean,

we all believe in trial by jury and that it's a fundamental bedrock,

but I've actually built a building that has engraved on the carpets of every

room. Article one, section six of the Pennsylvania Constitution,

which says that the right to trial by jury shall be as heretofore and shall

remain inviolate. And people who come to the courthouse deserve to

come away a better citizen and a better person as a result of the trial.

And that's not always the case, is it?

And I think that they don't need to see and don't want to see fighting and

arguing, and judges don't want to see fighting and arguing. But damn it,

if you have to do it, then you're going to do it.

And we come to persuade people,

but persuasion doesn't have to be raising your voice,

and that comes from somebody who occasionally raises his voice,

but tries not to.

When you do choose to raise your voice,

is it a conscious decision or is it an emotional action?

Well, I believe that all things we do in the courtroom should be conscious,

that we should be in total control of ourselves.

So to suggest that it just happens and I'm overwrought with emotion and I get

angry - no, you have to be able to control it. I watch,

as we started out this conversation, a lot of NBA hoops,

and I've never gotten how coaches just get so out of control that they can't do

it.

Or hockey players are so out of control that they get into fist fights all the

time. It's like, come on,

we have an ability to regulate our emotions and we should regulate our emotions.

Is there a time that you want a judge to know you're angry? Sure.

Is there a time that I express anger, frustration in front of a jury?

Damn right. But by and large,

I would confess I know what I'm doing. It's not a show.

And I have the same problem with emotions.

I confess to being emotional.

I superimpose my own experiences. If I'm trying a death case,

I've lost people dear to me in my life,

and I think that we all translate that, and I think jurors translate it too,

if you're trying a death claim and they know and understand that not only did

this hurt like it hurt me when I lost my mom or my dad,

but this happened because somebody else did something or didn't do something

that they should have done or shouldn't have done.

So I think this all boils down to core human

factors.

When you hear all kinds of bottling and packaging of

what we do into reptile theories and other

theories, it's nice to be able to try to figure it out.

I admire psychologists for putting labels on things,

but at the end of the day, we all kind of know what we're doing,

how we're doing it,

and we should be able to figure it out largely by ourselves if we're the ones

who are in charge of captaining the ship.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about the law firm.

So you're obviously passionate about the trial work and trying cases.

Are you also passionate about the business side?

You've built a very successful business.

Yes, I'm passionate about our law firm, that's for sure.

I'm passionate about what Shanin Specter and I have built,

60 plus lawyer firms, six of whom are physicians,

a lot of talent in this place under this roof at 1525

Locust Street in Philadelphia. There's no doubt.

I believe that our success has been,

or I should say a hallmark of our success has been sticking to our knitting and

spending most of our time, a large, large majority of our time practicing law.

As the world has become more complicated,

the legal world has become more complicated and our firm has grown,

there's been demands to pay attention, more attention,

maybe a percentage of time more attention to the,

I think you described as the business aspects of it,

but I like to focus on the professional aspects of it. Yeah,

we have to make decisions on what new AI platforms to do. Ben,

you and I have talked about things like that and what software to buy and things

like that. But at the end of the day,

you need to make sure that the people who work with you,

I like to think of them as people who work with me, not for me,

that they actually are satisfied not only in their professional lives,

but their personal lives. So yeah,

there's a business aspect to it and getting business is important and business

acumen is important, but it still all boils down to,

at least in our business model, accomplishment.

We celebrate the achievements of every lawyer who gets a

jury verdict here,

but we also celebrate the paralegals who went along with them and not just the

lead trial lawyer, but everyone who's worked on the file.

Rising tide is really important in especially a larger

wrongful injury law firm like we have.

I mean, I know in my own experience, because I started a firm with one partner,

you have a two partner founder firm.

The firm is only as strong as that relationship of you and your partner that has

endured in your case for decades. And I mean,

I've been so impressed in seeing how that relationship is.

You guys still seem like extremely close,

very good friends throughout this process,

which must have been very stressful and difficult at times.

Can you just talk a little bit about what makes a good partner and the right

partner for someone who's trying to figure out a partnership situation?

I think that's a great question, Ben.

Enduring partnerships are hard to accomplish. It's a work every day.

There's an old saying that you should try to achieve 60% of the job

as a partner because the other person thinks that they're doing 60% of the work

at least. So you should always try to do 60%.

And Shanin and I have just had a remarkable partnership and it's

built on trust and love.

We are close friends and close partners and we always

reach a consensus.

The one thing that's really interesting - the most interesting thing about a

two-person partnership is that no one has 51% of the

vote. And so you reach a consensus and we have reached a consensus every time.

He and I have a rule that either of us can veto something.

There's a veto power, if you will,

and I don't think it's ever been exercised. We have a saying where one of us may

not a hundred percent agree, may not agree at all. And I will write,

I defer. I defer often means, I don't know if I agree, but your call,

man, your call. And we do that.

But there's another aspect of a closely held corporation, if you will,

as a structure for a wrongful injury firm.

And that is that it'll actually eliminate a lot of the

ranker and income infighting and political

issues that arise when you have a management committee or a

compensation committee or some other structure.

We are it and we treat people with dignity. We treat people fairly.

We treat people responsibly.

We look very carefully at compensation at mid-year and at the

end of the year. We do it in a constructive way. We do it in a uniform way.

We've developed systems in our firm which are regulated and which

are known and which are expected and dependable and

they're reliable. And so you know where you stand based upon

all of the construct that we have around the firm.

It's very important to be able to run a law firm that has

set expectations, set parameters, and set policies, practices,

and procedures, all of which we've worked on.

And it's a continuing work in progress.

It's continued from the very beginning when we started this firm in 1995

and had the two of us, first year associate,

two paralegals and wires on the floor to connect the temporary

phones.

One of the few high-end successful plaintiff's firms that also is successful at

marketing directly to consumers. Why did you decide to go that route?

And is that something you still feel good about?

And in the changing landscape now with other entrants into the marketplace and

I'll know who those are, how is that business changing?

Are you adapting to those changes?

We're constantly adapting. We are constantly evolving and changing,

but we made the fundamental decision that we weren't going to leave advertising

to the advertising lawyers, the lawyers who only advertise and then place cases.

We weren't going to leave it to the aggregators of cases.

What we were going to do was present a narrative through television

ads and through SEO and through social media and other aspects to

tell people how to find us and what our accomplishments are.

Our whole message is about our accomplishments.

We have some of the largest verdicts in the United States,

the largest verdicts in many different areas of practice distinguished by

six physician lawyers and other accomplishments. And we like to talk about that.

And of course, recently we started a campaign.

It was the brainchild of Shanin Specter,

but I'll take full credit for it since I'm allowed to, which I don't deserve,

which is our new billboard. We're billboard lawyers now. Did you guys know that?

And our billboards say don't hire a lawyer based only on a billboard.

So our message isn't that you can't consider that as a starting point.

Our point is hire a lawyer based on an accomplishment. And now, by the way,

we've turned that into a TV ad and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's all covered by the First Amendment and we're long past all of that.

The question really is how do lawyers like us get our

message to people who are in need of representation and have

them understand that they can come directly to us? We try to convince it.

It's actually the power of persuasion with dollars behind it. And yes,

it's a business, but it's also a messaging opportunity.

And we're trying to actually elevate the message,

elevate the profession through what in some instances I have

referred to as pollution of the highway,

where you think there's nothing else for sale in America,

but legal services for people who are wrongfully injured. That just can't be the

case. I hope I didn't offend anybody.

No, I mean,

we've actually modeled our communications efforts on your firm to a large

extent.

And Shanin was kind enough to share some of your experiences with me and it

was extremely helpful and I really appreciate it.

But we're trying to do kind of the same thing to elevate the message,

to talk about accomplishments, to talk like you guys do in your commercials,

talk just directly to people,

explain what we do and let them make the decision for themselves. And I agree,

why do we want to seed the market to the people who are aggregators and don't

really practice law? It doesn't serve anybody's interest.

It doesn't serve the profession's interest and it doesn't serve the client's

interest.

When those aggregators, if that's actually a word about people who are injured,

but when lawyers who advertise or in some cases companies actually

advertise to attract clients,

we actually do a service when those clients come to our firm, firms like ours,

because we know how to handle those cases and we know how to prosecute those

cases and we know how to achieve justice for those people.

They happen to end up in our hands in a circuitous way.

But my point about direct advertising is why not do it ourselves?

There's nothing unseemly about it or dirty about it.

You have to communicate a message and that's what we do.

And I think that it's important what you're trying to convince people of.

I don't view it as trying to sell myself.

I see it as making ourselves available. Yes,

it's all packaged in branding and marketing and it's part of the life of

lawyers who are in this world,

but there's a way to do it that's constructive. And my view is that we have to

do things that are constructive because our image matters. By the way,

every juror who comes to City Hall in Philadelphia or the courthouse

in Bangor, Maine or the Los Angeles County Courthouse, wherever they're coming,

they're influenced by what they see. And what they see is an endless jurors,

an endless barrage of lawyers who are trying to

attract their attention and sometimes with just kind of silly stuff.

And I think it's a constant tension that we're going to have.

It's only going to increase.

We now have enormous amounts of money from hedge funds and

Wall Street that's poured into the marketplace, especially in mass torts.

And that's all something that will end up sorting itself out.

Hopefully it won't sort itself out to the detriment of our profession,

to the people who have tried for decades,

all of us on this podcast included,

to better the lot of people who are catastrophically injured and along the

way try to do the right thing by them and by the profession. But it's a

struggle. It's a daily struggle that we have to be involved in.

You can't ignore it and you can't dismiss it and you can't just be angry about

it. It's here and you have to do it.

This tension continues to exist and it comes from different places and now it's

the new sources of potential private equity and whatever else is out there.

How do you think it's going to sort out in the next five or 10 years?

I think there's somewhat of a backlash to the private equity now.

If you were to ask trial lawyers what they think of it and whether there should

be legislation in their state against it,

you might get a surprising result if it were a closed ballot vote than if you

had to stand up in a room and talk about it. I think that it's problematic.

I think that it kind of goes against what we think of

as a profession that's sacred. Pardon me for being old-fashioned.

And I think that we are on the verge of some real

hard decisions to be made, not only in practices like ours,

but in big law. You see it in big law.

Private equity owning law firms that are 2,000

and 3,000 people under a management agreement to run their back office. Huh?

What? What's that all about? For me, no thank you. Count me out.

I'm going to continue where we are and I would bet the same for the guys who I'm

talking to.

Well, Tom,

we want to be respectful of your time and we're so thankful that you agreed to

come on and do this with us today. As a Celtics fan,

I'd like to wish you good luck this year,

but having stolen Jaylen Brown from us and LeBron and everything else,

I really can't go that far, but.

We're going to see how this works out. Come to Philly and we'll go to a game.

We'll hang out when the Lakers come or when the Celtics come.

I think it's going to be a fun season. I love hoops. When I was a kid,

I went to watch them with my dad. It's a long story,

professional basketball players who were playing in bullshit towns in the coal

regions because they were banned for the NBA for point shaving.

And I watched some of the best players that could have been in the NBA.

And then I turn around and I see all these decades later,

the influence of gambling. By the way,

I think one of the next great torts that's going to come our way using addiction

like tobacco companies. We're just seeing the tip of that spear.

But I enjoyed being here.

I could talk to you all day. Don't be respectful of my time.

I got all the time in the world.

You're the best, Tom. This is fantastic. I think, Ben,

we've got to have Tom back a hundred times because this was way too much fun and

I think we're just scratching the surface.

Yeah.

For sure.

Let's continue to scratch the surface. I enjoyed myself. I hope you guys did.

I loved it. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you.

Thanks, Rahul. Thanks, Ben.

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