Jay Ruane: Redefining Success in Law & Mentorship

Join Ben Glass in a captivating discussion with Jay Ruane, a visionary in the legal field and the mastermind behind the innovative Criminal Mastermind initiative. In this episode, we delve into Ruane's transformative journey from a hands-on legal practitioner to a strategic law firm owner. This conversation is not just about his personal growth but also about his impactful role in molding the future of legal practice.

Key Highlights:

Adapting to Change: Discover how Ruane's early foray into digital marketing and web presence in the 1990s set a precedent for embracing technological advancements in law. His experiences offer a roadmap for integrating innovation into traditional practices.

The Art of Specialization: Learn about the strategic shift that led Ruane to focus exclusively on criminal defense, and how this specialization has been pivotal in building his firm’s reputation and expertise.

Client-First Philosophy: Uncover the secrets behind maintaining high client satisfaction in the challenging realm of criminal defense. Ruane's client-centric approach provides valuable lessons on enhancing client relations.

Team Dynamics: Explore how Ruane’s unique management style fosters a supportive and empowering environment for his team, and how respecting and valuing staff contributes to a thriving workplace.

Resilience in Crisis: Gain insights into how Ruane’s firm adeptly transitioned to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating the importance of flexibility and preparedness.

Growth through Data: Understand the role of data-driven strategies in law firm expansion. Ruane’s methodical approach to growth is a lesson in making informed, strategic decisions.

Mentorship and Community: Dive into how Ruane’s dedication to mentoring and community building through Criminal Mastermind is shaping the next wave of legal professionals.

This episode is more than just a story; it's a treasure trove of lessons and strategies for any lawyer looking to navigate the

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA.

Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

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One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
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There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So I said back away from everything else. I'm gonna focus on being the owner of a criminal defense firm. I'm gonna hire people that are committed to criminal defense and that's what we're gonna go all in on. And even in the last year we grew 27%. I mean, we're still growing, you know, seven figure growth year over year is astounding, I think, to us. But I think it's also proof positive of if you find your thing and you do it well and you're committed to it, things work out for you.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Well, we call that a life by design. So create the life you want, then create the firm that supports that life and then go market for both the clients and the team members who will support that firm that will support that life.

Speaker 3: 0:39

Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation. ["ben GLASS"].

Speaker 2: 1:18

Hey everyone, this is Ben Glass and welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where each episode, I get to interview interesting people inside and outside of legal who are dinging the world. And today I've got another great guest, Jay Ruane. Jay's a linked in body of mine. He's a criminal defense lawyer in Connecticut. He also runs something called the Criminal Mastermind, which maybe put you on some watch list or something. Yeah, of course. Yeah, Jay, it's got a really interesting setup, a long career, but now terms himself the owner of the law firm and not doing a lot of legal, doing a lot of mentoring, including mentoring of his own team, which is coaching of his own team, which I want to get into and helping the next generation of attorneys, some of whom are operating. As you said, Jay, we're live with a cell phone and a body, right, Right, I'm trying to start a practice and get a practice going. So welcome to the episode. Thanks for taking some time, my friend.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Ben, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about this. I've been looking forward to this day. In fact, it's the only thing on my calendar today.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Yeah, that's cool. I don't have too many things on my calendar, and so let's start there, because one of the things that I find with highly successful people whether they're lawyers or they're running other small businesses that get there is that the founder leader grinds it out for a long time and then reaches a spot where he or she is able to say things like this is the only thing on my calendar, and sometimes those founder leaders then, if you're talking one-on-one with them, jay will express some level of guilt about hey, I'm not working as hard as everyone else is around here anymore. Have you experienced that? Did you walk through that journey at all?

Speaker 1: 3:03

Now? I don't think so, because the type of work that I'm doing now in my firm is the type of work that only I could do. I have a mindset that's a little different from most traditional criminal defense lawyers. I took to digital marketing early on. I had websites in the 90s, that type of thing, and really my team also appreciates that by me having the freedom to do the stuff that I can do and I can do well, it's going to help them because it's going to increase our revenue. That's going to mean more money for them, more job security for them, and I tend to sort of at least I think to. I tend to attract people that are committed to the area of criminal defense, and that has been the biggest challenge for me, I think, because probably about seven, eight years ago, I said well, I've kind of got this stuff button down.

Speaker 1: 3:52

And why don't I open a divorce practice? And my heart's not. I was able to brand it, market it, get cases in. My heart's not in that work, it just isn't. And then the same thing about PI. You know we had a decently ranking PI website. My heart's not in PI, I just not. I'm a street lawyer. I do better with criminal defendants than I do with other lawyers and those are my people. So I said back away from everything else, I'm going to focus on being the owner of a criminal defense firm. I'm going to hire people that are committed to criminal defense and that's what we're going to go all in on. And even in the last year we grew 27%. I mean, we're still growing. You know, seven figure growth year over year is astounding, I think, to us. But I think it's also proof positive of if you find your thing and you do it well and you're committed to it, things work out for you.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Well, we call that a life by design. So create the life you want, then create the firm that supports that life and then go market for it both the clients and the team members who will support that firm that will support that life. So that's great. Tell us a little bit more about your backstory. I know that you started practice with your dad and I imagine how a fairly typical criminal defense, maybe even general practice but tell me about your journey.

Speaker 1: 5:09

So I took the bar in 1998 and luckily passed it on my first shot. I got a job as a per DM public defender Back in 98, my friends come in our law school. We're starting at six figures I mean low six figures 100, 125 and stuff. I got a job making $100 a day and so in my first year I made about $23,000. So I took that job. All I wanted to do was be a public defender. I loved my job.

Speaker 1: 5:34

I got passed over for a permanent position and felt that it was I was misled. So I quit on the spot, marched on down to my dad's office my father was a solo criminal defense lawyer at the time and I said I just quit and he goes. Well, I don't know what you're going to do because I don't have any work for you. I'm hanging on myself. And he said there's an empty desk in the corner and the guys I share office space will let you stay there for free because it's broken.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Figure it out, kid. And that's what I did. I put my mind to figuring it out. I built a website. I built a website because I called the yellow pages people immediately upon quitting, because I was told that's what you need to do and I was told good kid, you're out of luck. They closed the book last week, so you've got to wait a year before you can get in the next book. And I was like, oh shit, what am I going to do? Well, sorry. So I said, oh, let's build a website. And if you go back on the internet archive and see some of my first websites, they are horrific, but it's turned into something for me. And then we continue to rank. Well, and that's really my journey. And my father then became my partner about a year and a half later, when I had brought in enough work that I needed help, and we've been growing ever since.

Speaker 2: 6:46

It's interesting because I'm a little bit older than you are and I practiced about 12 years and started my own practice in 1995. And I got in the yellow page because the deadline was coming up like the next week and the only thing I could afford was a little dollar bill size ad for personal injury medical practice that said you know, we care for you and we're aggressive. And of course mine was at the back of the book and in those days, as we remember, I was 40 and 50 and 60 pages probably in the yellow page ads of lawyers. But I too learned. I went to one of my first websites. I went to Errol's. Errol's had a class in HTML back in the day and I designed mine myself.

Speaker 2: 7:24

And you can go back and do the same thing with the web archives and see they were great. They were great at the time because they were the only ones standing and of course by today's standard they're very primitive. But back in those early days those of us who were first to digital didn't have to be really good because they just weren't a lot of people there right? And today of course it's so very competitive, not only with other lawyers but with other lead generation sites and lots of money in web marketing. So tell us we're recording this and near the end of November or in late November of 23,. What does the firm look like in terms of number of people under roof, lawyers and non-lawyers, staff?

Speaker 1: 8:02

So we are right now. We are 10 lawyers, a total of 33 staff. They are some are full time, remote, some are in office, some are overseas, and we've really sort of blended the best of utilizing technology we had. I had always built us to not go dark when things like a New England winter came up, so we invested early on, gave everybody laptops and stuff.

Speaker 1: 8:32

And I can remember March 6 of 2020, everyone was talking about COVID, but nobody was really taking any action. And I just said I don't have a good feeling about this. And I know a friend of yours, ryan McKean. We were talking and I said you know, I think I'm going to make my people work from home until we figure this thing out. And so I literally sent out a Slack message at four o'clock saying effective immediately, we're going remote, pack up your stuff and check in tomorrow at your normal start time. And it was seamless, I mean because we had prepared for that moment. I nobody could really prepare for COVID, but we had prepared for instances like that.

Speaker 1: 9:06

So we've been able to then utilize our, I guess, ability to be nimble. We weren't looking for a VoIP phone system. We weren't looking for computers. We had a robust enough internet at all of our key players' houses already, so that really didn't bother.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So we were able to keep going and then, utilizing digital technology, even when the courts shut down entirely, I was able to get creative and say hey, you know what we can pivot into? Pardons and expungements, which is something that was tangentially related to criminal defense. And we have a mailing list of 12,000 people who never hired us. So I sent out an email to that list saying hey, if you didn't hire us, you might have gotten a conviction. Now that you've got your stimulus money, do you want us to work on your pardon? And that kept us alive in the first six months of COVID, because I was able to pivot and utilize the stuff that I had been amassing for years, not knowing what I would use it for. And that's one of the big takeaways, I think it's you never know what's coming down the line. So when you have opportunity to store data, make yourself more flexible, you should be taking it.

Speaker 2: 10:14

Yeah, I was shocking in COVID in the early months of COVID, how many on lists serves, email lists serves. There were lawyers asking about like, what's a good laptop to buy and how do we move our server, that's on a hard drive in the office to the cloud or something like that? Well, how do we get into a to a desktop that's not, you know, at the office? Yeah, so so good for you. So talk to us a little bit about, because that sounds like a pretty substantial criminal defense firm. That's a big firm. I mean, if you were in Fairfax, which is a big, robust, lawyer-filled area, and have a criminal defense firm with 10 lords, that'd be a fairly large criminal defense firm.

Speaker 1: 10:54

I think we're probably the biggest in the state that handles private practice. I know, having spoken to some of my colleagues that are still in the public defender space, our firm opens more files in a week than some of the local public defender offices. Although we handle statewide, they handle a three or four town location. But yeah, I mean we've been able to build it on the back of great, great teammates here that really give phenomenal customer service. Our biggest thing, I mean we have an NPS at 8.6. Right now we focus on that and that's over the last.

Speaker 1: 11:28

I think I checked this morning it was over the last thousand surveys we were at 8.6, which is pretty good for a legal services business, especially one that doesn't deal with some happiness in a person's life. Not that most lawyers don't deal with happy points in people's lives. Right, it's a divorce, it's an injury, it's an arrest, I mean, other than maybe adoption, where people are happy to be paying the money to create this beautiful family. There's not a lot of happiness with hiring a lawyer. It just it doesn't happen. And so we strive very hard to make sure that our clients get top level service and so that we can welcome their referrals back to our firm over the years and our numbers for referrals continue to grow, and that's something that we take very, very seriously here.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Well, and I want to talk about that in a second. So you said statewide. So do you have physical office space in more than one place.

Speaker 1: 12:21

Yes, we do, I've got. My main office is in Shelton, which is in the north end of Fairfield County, so that we can service two counties. We don't have county government here in Connecticut but, for the people who are listening, we were basically on the corner of a county so we can handle stuff in both counties. Out of this one courthouse, out of this one location, We've got another of staffed office location up near the Capitol, and then we have five or six un-staffed meeting spaces for people that are across the state that my lawyers can work out of if they need to meet with a client, Like, for example, we've got a number of correctional facilities up in this one area of the state.

Speaker 1: 12:59

So we opened a little office there, right, and so if it's in between visits and the lawyer needs to go somewhere, they have a place to go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee and then, if they got to go back to the jail later that afternoon or evening, they don't have to drive all the way home and back. We're now looking into opening offices out in the eastern end of the state by the Naval base, simply because we have a new lawyer who's phenomenal, who's a US Army veteran and he appeals to men, women in the service because he has some shared life experiences with them. So we're constantly growing and we do it somewhat relying on data. We look at records and town populations and our competition to see who's got the most Google reviews and how quickly we can overtake them in an area that we're going to open up. So it's a strategic and tactical approach.

Speaker 2: 13:49

So who is managing the overall marketing for the firm? Do you do that? Do you have an agency that you have making recommendations to, Because you're doing a lot? You've alluded to a large list number one, a large, robust digital presence. Are you the brains behind all of that?

Speaker 1: 14:09

I mean, I guess you could say that I have an in-house marketing department that is comprised of four people.

Speaker 1: 14:15

I have a web designer developer. It happens to be my brother, who worked for me for a while, but sometimes brothers aren't the best to work in close confines, so he's spun off his own company and we employ that company to build our websites and maintain them. I have a director of marketing who's been with me for 12 years now. She came out of college with a English degree and her father told her that what can you do with an English degree? You should have been an accountant. And she happened to be the daughter of a lawyer that I knew and I said well, I actually am looking for somebody who can write. So I brought her in. She has learned so much in the, you know, she's gotten a pubcon and tons of conferences, so she's my director of marketing. She has a full time videographer on her team now, and then they also have a social media and administrative assistant who runs with the posts and that type of thing. You know it's funny.

Speaker 1: 15:13

We're kind of I hate to say we're a family firm, but if I go down, all the people in my firm, so it's me and my father. My other partner is Teresa. She's in charge of intake and sales. She's my sister's best friend from college. Krista is is my oldest serving paralegal. I've known her since I was 17 years old and she worked in another firm and then came to work for me when she got laid off by that other firm. I hire her on the spot because I knew her work ethic. She brought in her mother's her mother's friend's daughter, emily, who's now my HR person and has been with me in a couple of different stints but is back now full time.

Speaker 1: 15:52

My marketing director, jen, was the next door neighbor of my wife growing up, and so that's how we know her. Her videographer photographer is the son of my mother-in-law's boyfriend who, similarly, was being told what can you do if you love video? I said I got a job for you and so he's been crushing it for us. So we're really sort of a family based law firm and it's very important for me to make this thing grow. I mean I could step away from law entirely and step away from this firm, but I'm committed to making it a functional operation because I want to protect them. I mean I really care about my people and it's important for me that they have a job that's flexible enough for their family, so that's really why I'm still committed to it. I could walk away tomorrow and retire, but I still keep my. I dip my toe into it because I want to see them secure.

Speaker 2: 16:43

Well, with all of those family and friend connections, that's actually a lot of pressure on your shoulders.

Speaker 1: 16:49

Yeah, that's what my wife tells me.

Speaker 2: 16:51

Yeah, I was going to ask you about your hiring process, but after going through that tree of connections there you have a secret sauce that others would say it's hard to duplicate. But I would say this I mean, it looks to me like you're hiring for talent and enthusiasm and people who are behind the mission Of the firm right, and then figuring out oh, we'll find a place for you. Like you really good at this thing, come on over, we'll find a place, we'll insert you. Well, it's a perfect example.

Speaker 1: 17:18

I have a new hire that's starting today actually and she is the mother of my 10 year old son's best friend, who just had to move from Connecticut back to Nebraska. And we were talking to her at Halloween as our boys were off trick or treating together, and she said I hate the idea of starting a new job. I'm good at what I do, which is appointment setting and intake, and I just wish I could not have to keep moving around. Her husband is in the service and I said I got a job for you if you want to work on intake at my law firm and you could work anywhere in the world. And she's like, are you serious? And so she starts today working as a member of our intake team. It'll take a couple of weeks for her to be trained, but when we find good talent, we don't let them go and I will find a job.

Speaker 1: 18:06

And if it means I make less money, I don't think of it as me making less money, because right now I'm good on money. I mean I don't live an extravagant life and I'm good on money. What I want is more time and so by adding the right people, even if I don't have the right spot for them. Right now they're buying me time and I love that. I think that's very smart.

Speaker 2: 18:31

My son, brian, and I often have these discussions about well, how can we further remove ourselves from the day to day doing a legal? Because neither one of us is out fully. I'm out a lot mostly, and our discussion is exactly that, which is would you take less now if in two years you could have whatever your design of perfect is we both go? Yeah, of course we would right. So that's very smart to do. Hey guys, this is.

Speaker 4: 18:54

Ben, if you like what you've been hearing on this podcast, not just about the marketing and practice building strategies, but the philosophy of the art of living your best life parts. You should know that my son, brian, and I have built a tribe of like-minded lawyers who are living lives of their own design and creating tremendous value for the world within the structure of a law practice. We invite you to join us at the only membership organization for entrepreneurial lawyers that is run by two full-time practicing attorneys. Check us out at GreatLigahMarketingcom.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Talk to me about the management structure, because you've got 10 lawyers, 33 staff spread out not just in Connecticut but in Nebraska.

Speaker 1: 19:40

So, similar to a lot of PI firms, we follow a pod model. The one thing that we do differently in our pod model is that the lawyer we don't have a managing lawyer in charge of the pod. We actually the pod paralegal is in charge of the pod, and the reason why I did this is because my pod paralegals had been with me 15 years plus and so they have a lot of experience in handling courthouses and they have relationships with clerks and that type of thing. And, unfortunately for me, years ago we had turnover inevitable and we would hire right out of law school and people would say at two years, in those I don't want to do criminal defense, I want to do PI, or I want to do family or I want to do something else, and so there was turnover at those early positions.

Speaker 1: 20:23

We've subsequently done better, I think, of hiring and looking for people who actually want to do criminal defense lawyers. We're not able to pay above market when we have people because we want to retain them, and so we have five pods of lawyers and their staff. It's two lawyers, a pod leader and a pod assistant in every pod and they focus geographically around the state. So we've got North, central South post-conviction, which is a pod unto itself. And then we have our intake and reception pod, and I guess marketing is a pod too, although they don't really have pod responsibilities daily, they just work on the tasks that I slack them in the middle of the night and say, hey, this is a great idea, let's do it.

Speaker 2: 21:03

And so the legal pods. Are they responsible for P&L? And hey, if that pod is doing fine, jay is not getting involved. And if the pod is maybe falling behind its peers, then there's more active Management of the pod.

Speaker 1: 21:23

Yeah, so each pod has a weekly meeting Unto itself. The pod leaders also have a weekly meeting and and we have sort of you know because we started you know, unfortunately I started a long time ago, before they had a lot of Legal tech. You know, before there was cloud-based stuff and so we wrote our own management software, our own CRM, based on file maker, which was an Apple product. Now it's its own standalone thing. So we have our own file maker database so I'm able to extract data. I can see minutes a minute, how many cases each lawyer is carrying, what phase they're in, and so we try to balance it out, to keep it roughly the same across the pods, because I don't want them to be overworked, I want them to have a nice balance in life. That's important to me because and the flip side to that is when we have situations that people need to step up, sometimes the pods they don't even involve me. They work it out among themselves to help with coverage and the like.

Speaker 2: 22:19

One of the things that you talked about earlier was that you have a very high level of customer service Right now. I say often that from the consumer standpoint they really are poor judges of who's a good lawyer, who's a bad lawyer, because you don't usually split test your lawyers. But they are looking at and they will remember you because of your customer service. So talk to me a little bit about what that looks like and what sort of it seems to me. If you have this family atmosphere, it the customer service part might just come naturally, but you might also have to train on it to keep we definitely have to train.

Speaker 1: 22:50

We definitely have to train, and one of the roles that we're talking about adding next year is is this firefighter role, somebody with experience, who can jump in when things go awry, and that's because it's in the nature of criminal defense practice. You could be going along, humming along fine, and next thing you know, the FBI raids one of your clients and they're freaking out and you've got it. You've got to be able to step up and address that and you're dealing with high emotions and anxiety and that type of thing. Customer service has always been something that it's been important to me. I try to use as much automation as possible for outbound touches. We have somebody who reaches out every every month or so just to check in. I have a member of remote member of my team who's an auditor, whose job it is is to make sure that lawyers are, you know, making file notes, sending out client correspondence, making sure that they're updating clients with outbound communication and when we get those negative, those negative Knox on.

Speaker 1: 23:44

So I didn't like this part of it. We then all come together in a leadership meeting me, my partner Teresa, my HR person and the pod leaders and we talk about how Do we avoid this from happening again in the future. So we're all very much, very much focused on making sure, because what I found is, if you take a little initiative and focus on the customer experience, the client experience, and be proactive, right, you're gonna save so many phone calls and fires and screaming people like you're just gonna avoid those things. And so when you do get that one crazy client, that's another thing too. I mean, inevitably.

Speaker 1: 24:21

We have a two-strike policy. That's baked into our CRM. Anybody can give any client a strike at any time that they have to be able to justify it with a file note. But I, you know you get two strikes, you're done Well, we'll fire you as a client, and it's amazing how few strikes are given out. But I've empowered my people to know that you can do that and I think that helps them be honest with us about you know, do we want this person as a client, or can I solve this problem for them?

Speaker 2: 24:48

Well and that it's a great Thing to have your team know that you have their back and that you absolutely the firm will absolutely not tolerate people being Disrespectful to. Yes, you have a stressful clients out right facing loss of liberty and Fines and all that but, but you know that's a great retention tool to know that when the irritating client, disrespectful client, emerges out of the pack, that your teams empowered number one and number two you have given your team, like the authority in the autonomy yes, I have your back. You, you can make the judgment to give a strike or to strike somebody out and I, j will have your back for that.

Speaker 1: 25:35

Oh, absolutely, I'd rather fire client give you doing any way?

Speaker 2: 25:39

Yeah yeah. Well, that's the other part. Like, do never get into a pissing match. Like, just like, no, you're gone. Here's the yellow pages. Here's the whole list of other lawyers in town. Here's all your money back. Well, good, the lawyers do stupid things when clients break up with them. So are you doing any legal now? Have I followed you around for a week or so? What would I see you doing?

Speaker 1: 26:05

So once a month I do part and representation before the part and sport and it's something that I just I enjoy doing because, having been on the other side pleading people out, especially back in the 90s, early 2000s, I've pledged so many people of color out to really crap drug charges because they couldn't risk perhaps going through emotion and suppress and the stakes were way too high at the time. And of course, now that stuff is legalized and it's frustrating to me. So I've really found a passion doing some part and work. So I'll do that once a month for about two hours, first Wednesday of every month and that's really it for me, for legal. Now that doesn't mean that I don't have meetings with my lawyers. They often slack me for advice on cases, given my experience, and if they're prepping a trial I'll sit down with them and say okay, what's your theory of the defense and how are you going about your cross-examination?

Speaker 1: 26:57

I've been lucky in my entire career to have some really good friends who are just phenomenal trial lawyers across the country. I mean just like DeAndre Grant out of Texas, justin McShane out of Pennsylvania, josh Lee out of Oklahoma. I mean they have, they're so good that if I get stumped I can turn to them and get their answers to my people or make the connection, and I am in awe of their skills. So, really, what I want to do is I just want to act as a conduit to getting my people the best education, whether it's me or somebody else, so that we can provide top-level service.

Speaker 2: 27:37

That's another thing we've noticed With lawyers that we hire as laterals out of sort of traditional. We hunt through the insurance defense firms. It's shocking how little autonomy they have, but how little these firms are investing in these younger lawyers' education. Because we're like, hey, if you find a conference you want to go to and tell us about it, like we want you to go, we want you to become a better trial lawyer. And so many firms are like here's your $250 credit to go for your whole CLE schedule for the year. Go, have fun with that.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Talk to me a little bit about. We do that across the board too. I mean, like a month from now I've got whether it's Carlton people are coming in to do a training for my entire office on customer service. That was 10 grand, but it was worth it to bring them in and do a training for my. So we'll shut down for the afternoon and everyone will participate, and those are the types of things that we can invest in to make everybody better.

Speaker 2: 28:34

What you talked spoke earlier about a tremendous growth over the last year or so. What is 2024 looking like? Do you have any new initiatives? Are you continue to do the same, but do it better? Do it more? What's coming up?

Speaker 1: 28:52

So we're in the process of sketching out a re-theme of our website, and that's a big project because it's got 2,000 or so pages of content on it, and we have another website that we want to put up. I've got three regional offices that I think we're gonna launch in the year and I've got a book that I've been working on. I've got a bunch of books that are out there Tiger Tactics 2 just came out, and so I've got that. But one of the things that we actually had as an in-house resource was a trial handbook that I would use, which had here's all the objections and here's the answers to all the objections. Here's what you can ask and can't ask in jury selection. So and these were all materials that I had accumulated over the years that I had in my own personal trial notebook Well, I hired a law student a year ago and I said let's turn this into a real book.

Speaker 1: 29:41

It's up to like 300 pages now, but it's not long on prose. It's here's the foundational questions you need to have. If you're stumped on how to offer a social media exhibit, ask these five questions. Boom, it's in, and so we're gonna try to get that book out and then I'm gonna use that as part of my plan for developing more referrals in 2024 from the legal community as one of my missions, because I really wanna focus. Yeah, I'm happy with the digital stuff, but I think there's more opportunity as the boomer population retires to become known in the greater legal community not of criminal defense, but I'm gonna go to family lawyers, personal injury lawyers, trust the state lawyers and educate them so that I can be the one that they refer to, as people tend to niche down now more and more.

Speaker 2: 30:28

In our conference this year a few months ago, we talked a lot about the human capital marketing. Because the digital space is both unpredictable and very, very crowded and I think lawyers often time take a shortcut of whooping out the credit card and paying someone to do something digitally versus doing really the human capital work, of getting in front of lawyers in other practice areas, sharing with them some of the things you know about business building growth. We have a mastermind member of ours and his niche is representing whistleblowers in the Medicare fraud space. Right In his whole marketing he does CLEs for big law associates and comes in. They have lunch for an hour. He does a presentation, a lot of those cases they may see but they're conflicted out of, so he helps them.

Speaker 2: 31:15

That's a great. I think that's a great plan for 24. Talk to us a little bit, because I know that you were big on mentoring the next generation. You've got a mastermind group the criminal mastermind and I think what's lacking in the profession one of the things that's lacking in the profession is good mentorships like lawyers who are willing to say hey, if you got a practice like you can come hang with me, you can have access to me. I like to do it with people who will go and do things, who actually like move the ball forward. I don't like to do it just as a formality at all. What are you doing in that space?

Speaker 1: 31:45

So for me, I can remember being a young law firm owner, young DUI attorney, and I would work all day running around handling cases, hearings at the courthouse, and then I'd come home. I was a single guy, came home to my dog and I would then use. The second part of the day would be how to figure out this business thing. So I was reading things like entrepreneur, smart business magazine when it existed, inc. I would buy every book that was out there in the business section, because there wasn't a legal business section of Barnes, noble or Borders, there was just a business section. So I would go, I'd buy a book and I'd devour it saying there's gotta be business principles I can apply to my business to make it better, make it run smoother, take the burden off of me. And I was really lonely, like ridiculously lonely, worrying about if the phone is going to ring, worrying about how am I going to make this thing actually survive so that I can actually pay my student loans off. And so what I decided to do was just focus on building this mastermind, and I've been part of other groups on Facebook of like-minded lawyers that are focusing on the entrepreneurial lawyer and that type of thing.

Speaker 1: 32:57

But criminal defense lawyers are kind of a weird group of people. So much what we do is not about the money. It's like a sort of I just want to fight the man type of mentality. And it's funny. I even talked to some people in the PI space and they're like what do you mean? You don't get out of cases if you don't get paid. I'm like no, I say okay, well, screw you, I'm going to try the case anyway and I do it for nothing and I lose money because I'm not going to go down without a fight type of thing.

Speaker 1: 33:21

And so because we're so weird, because we don't have any business training and so many lawyers in this criminal space would really go out of business if they left their own devices I wanted to create a safe space for them to get together.

Speaker 1: 33:34

We bring in speakers, we talk about best practices, we share ideas and it's really been great for me because I get to talk to people who are beginning their journey and help them avoid some of the colossal mistakes I have made, just like monumental $100,000 mistake when I didn't have $100,000 to spare. I mean, I don't know anybody who has $100,000 to spare, but that's the thing, if I can help one person avoid that problem. I'm happy to do it because I want to be like Johnny Appleseed the more I give away, the better I do. And I mean my biggest referral came in by way of me chatting up the guy next to me at a hockey game and offering to buy him a beer to thank him for his service, and he wound up bringing in a PI case that I referred out that's going to pay for my just at the end. The more you give away, the better you wind up being.

Speaker 2: 34:22

We are philosophically aligned on that. Like, just put value into the world without expectation of return. You will actually get return. But it's actually so much more fun just to find, I believe, right, just to find ways to not impress yourself upon someone else but to say, hey, have you ever thought about this? Or do you need a connection because I can introduce you to somebody? Or here's a book or a podcast or something, or, in the old days of CD, to go listen to Jay, if someone is listening to this, perhaps a young lawyer wants to get in contact with you. What's the best way to show website? What do you want to do? I'm on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 35:00

I'm on Facebook, just look up attorney Jay Ruin. You can get me at the criminal mastermindcom or Ruin attorneyscom, you can, I'm out there. I'm not hard to find. If you know my, if you know how to spell my name, j A Y R U A N E, you'll find me, although there is a guy. Unfortunately for him, there's a contractor in Florida that has the exact same name as me and I feel so badly for him that if he searches up his name, it's all me. So if anybody's in Florida and they're looking to give a guy a break, it's called Papa Bear construction. There's another Jay Ruin out there it's not me, but I can vouch for how good he is, but he's looking for business online too. So if you're in central Florida, look for him. I just know you're not getting me, because I should not be swinging a hammer, that's for sure.

Speaker 2: 35:48

All right, that's right. That's not your gift and talent to share with me. There is it mine, which is why we're doing what we do here. Jay, thanks for spending the time with us this afternoon. I hope you have a fabulous end of the year. It sounds like we've got a really great program going, with people like your team, like they like coming to work, sounds like they like working with the people that they work with and working for the people that you work with and for those who are listening. When you can put all that together and it's absolutely possible to put it all together it really makes this practice of law thing just a part of life, like a positive part of life where we can serve, we can make money, but we're just building lives around us. My son and I say we were built a place where people will thrive. It sounds like you have certainly done that up in Connecticut.

Speaker 1: 36:31

Yeah, that's what it's all about for us. We want to give people the life they want from the practice that they love, and so that's what we're all about here.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Well, keep doing it. My man, it's been great to catch up with you. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3: 36:43

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