Ep. 208 – One Life, One Law Degree: Designing a Practice That Serves You

In this special episode, Ben speaks to a room full of law students about something most law schools barely touch: the business of law—and the freedom it can create.

At nearly 68 years old and 42 years into practice, Ben shares the unfiltered truth about building a law firm, surviving the hard years, and ultimately creating a practice that funds both wealth and freedom.

This isn’t a lecture about billing hours or making partner.

It’s about:

• Why “work-life balance” is the wrong framework
• How to reject the myth that lawyers must be stressed and miserable
• The power of niche practice areas (including his ERISA disability machine)
• Why marketing is an ethical duty
• How AI is transforming the profession (for those willing to embrace it)
• Why asking better questions is the most important legal skill
• How to think like an owner—even before you become one
• And why it’s okay to say: “I want to build something big, make a lot of money, and help people.”

Ben also shares:

• The early struggles of starting his own firm
• The moment he realized legal conferences were boring (and entrepreneurs weren’t)
• How relationship-building beats big advertising budgets
• Why there’s massive opportunity buying practices from retiring boomers
• And what he’d do if he were starting over today

If you’re a law student, young lawyer, or anyone questioning whether the profession has to be stressful and small—this episode is for you.

You get one life.
 You get one law degree.
 Design accordingly.

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

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers. 

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

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.

Transcript

Welcome & Who This Is For

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glenn, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work that still make it hope for good. Each week, Beth brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the test flow. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_07 1:02

This is another special edition. This is my presentation to a classroom full of law students at the Seattle University School of Law. So this episode really is for you. If you're in law school, if you're thinking about going to law school, I trace my journey 42 years through the profession, talk about some things I've learned, and answer some questions about sort of best practices as you move from law school out into the world. So I hope you enjoyed this. If you're listening to it and you know of someone who is in law school or thinking about going to law school, forward them, share this podcast episode with them because I think it will help them as they make decisions moving forward in life. All right, here we go.

Meet Ben And The Renegade Thesis

SPEAKER_04 1:48

All right, everybody, we're gonna have to run the starting. We have uh Ben last is here with us. There he is. Um just like last week, Ben's gonna half hour 30, 20 minutes or last questions. I might fill the end at some point, and uh try and help you. Um I I advise them all that it's a little bit should go on.

SPEAKER_07 2:22

Cool. So how many uh students are there in the room, Jason?

SPEAKER_04 2:26

Uh one five, six, seven, twelve, thirteen.

SPEAKER_06 2:30

Awesome. Welcome.

Joy First: Rethinking Legal Culture

Early Career, Mentors, And Grit

Three Tech Revolutions In Law

Marketing As An Ethical Duty

Leaving The Firm And Hard Lessons

SPEAKER_07 2:32

Um here we're in uh 15 degrees, Virginia, with a foot of snow on the ground. And uh last week I was biking in the uh Florida Keys, as Jason probably knows. So I'm the old so here's the fair warning, right? I'm the old guy in the room. Next month I turn 68. I've been practicing for 42 years. I've run my own firm for 30 years. I think uh Professor Jason would tell you that I am one of the biggest enthusiasts for the practice of law and the business of law and and getting a law degree and you know creating a great life from all of that as anybody in America. So contrary to what you may hear from a lot of lawyers who've been around in the practice as long as I have, that it's a pain in the butt that you shouldn't go to law school. I think it's great. I think it's a great place to be. I think there's so many opportunities for someone when they get a law degree as their first graduate degree or add it on to something else. There's just so many possibilities. And you know, we'll talk about this, but in part of my practice, I've represented a number of big law attorneys who are for some reason unable to continue to practice a law or practice at the schedule and the number of hours that are required in my disability work. And you know, one of the saddest things that in talking to these very, very smart people, Harvard law, big law, making a lot of money coming out of law school. But in talking to them, like and telling them, you know, there is a way to make as much money as you're making in a sane, happy environment for you, they challenge me on that. And they say, no, there isn't. Um, and and I'm gonna tell me what you mean. And you know, the what I've discovered over the years is that, and not a critique of your law school at all, because I don't know anything about your law school, and the fact that it actually has this class is amazing because there are few law schools, it's growing. There are few law schools that have a class to the business of law, the entrepreneurship of law. But these these young folks who are all very smart have never ever seen the alleyways of small firm practice, of you know, joining small firms, building your own business, whatever it is, and really the freedom and the money that you can make, but the freedom most importantly to live your life the way you uh see fit. So my thesis is you have one life to live. No control over when you were born, who you were born to, into what circumstances you were born. You have some control, we believe, over how many years we get, uh, but you never really know how many years you get, how many days you get, when it's gonna be your last day. I believe, and I've attracted a number of lawyers from around the country, hundreds, if not thousands of them, who now sort of agree with this, that life is meant to be lived for your joy first, right? And that when that happens, then you serve the world. All right, so so much of what you hear in the profession, and and I run a podcast called the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. So almost everything that the standardized bar says about the practice of law, I disagree with because most of them would not agree with a thesis that your life is primary. Your own happiness is primary. There's a lot of moral and ethical reasons why. But when you are financially fit, mentally fit, physically fit, you've got great relationships, then you are going to be good for the world and you're gonna be good for your clients. It is a stressed-out, burned-out lawyer who is not good for society, not good for clients. So, and what I my my warning is as you launch into the world and people find out you went to law school and now you're a lawyer in a couple of years, and you hear people talking sort of badly about the profession or saying things like the Virginia State Bar ran an article a few years ago that said, of course, it's normal and expected that lawyers be stressed out. And I wrote a long letter to the editor back saying, that's bullshit. I'm sorry, but you guys are crazy. As you, as you hear people talk about the legal profession in these negative ways, run from them, and know that there are people like me and people like Professor Epstein and the people like he's bringing to your class as guest speakers who are like, no, that's wrong. Like, we're all happy. Like, we we like what we do. Doesn't mean that the entire journey is like just full of fun and you know, eating fruit and drinking drinks and bars and stuff like that. It's not like it can be really hard, and especially for those of us who have built practices. Like, I know, and I've known Jason for a long time, and from my own space, like that was really hard work because nobody had classes like this for us. There were no books, and I'll tell you a little bit about my journey. There was no books back 42 years ago or 30 years ago when I started my practice. I said, here's a model for building a practice that's really cool, like nothing, didn't teach us anything about business in law school. The profession doesn't teach us much about business at all. And so it was hard. That journey is hard, but it I would tell you this that it is worth it because you can create, I believe you can create whatever you want to create for your own life, design your space in the legal profession that fits what you want for your life, and then what I've sort of become semi-famous, I guess, in the world about is like figure out how to market to attract those clients to that practice that is serving your life. Um, and again, uh my friend Jason is just a great example of that as well. So you are you are fortunate to have somebody like him in leading classes like this. So, my story, I went to George Mason University School of Law, Antonin Scalia School of Law today. Very hard to get into. When I went there, it had his ABA accreditation for one month. It got it in the summer, and I went there in August of 1983. But this is brand new friggin' law school. It is in the it is in a renovated department store. Um, we had no famous professors, we had no famous students. It just happened to be in in Northern Virginia where I lived, and they're fortunate I was able to get in after uh um going to Wayne Mary, and I grew up playing soccer, so I played on scholarship at Wade Mary. You know, it was just a place where we worked hard and thrown out into the world. And um, you know, the thing that the opportunity that I had in law school was to create some relationships with lawyers that allowed me to get my first job as a law clerk, probably making$10 an hour, working for some pretty good trial lawyers in Northern Virginia at the time. At other times, I worked in this, I volunteered. Like nobody was hired from my law school, especially a first year student. Like I volunteered. I had a friend who uh had a general or very general practice in Northern Virginia. I said, Cameron, like let me just follow you around. I will do anything. I just want to follow you around to court. He showed me how to do land records, uh, how to do wills, divorces, mall trials. Just let me do it. I did some legal research. By the way, he actually had a microfiche machine. I don't even know if you know what this is, Jason. You may not. All of these books are on little plastic cards you put under this huge microscope sort of thing and go look at cases. Um, and so I was very fortunate in that I had I had mentors that said, yes, you can hang out, or yes, you can come work, and I will show you what this craft is all about. And in when I was in law school, like I was, I don't know if I ever told you this, I was really good at tax law. Like I could have been a tax lawyer for sure. For me, it was very black and white, very logical. Um, but I also liked, even though I was very, very shy, I liked the the sort of the litigation stuff, the advocacy stuff, the trial ad, the uh appellate advocacy competitions. So I didn't write for law review or anything like that, but I did participate in those competitions that allowed us to do trials or appellate advocacy. So got out of law school, and for the first 12, 13 years I worked for this uh small firm here in Northern Virginia. They were mainly doing insurance defense work. So their clients were insurance companies. We were defending uh both automobile cases, uh, but also uh medical malpractice cases. And so again, I got very fortunate in that, particularly in a medical malpractice case, it might be multi-defendants, number defendants, and if it was a kind of a lesser, lesser defendant that was included in the case, I would oftentimes get to do a lot of stuff in those cases. So I would travel around the country watching really experienced trial lawyers take depositions of witnesses and experts. I got to participate in trials with experienced lawyers, and the guys that I was working with allowed me to, they said, doesn't matter what the insurance company says, we're gonna give you a chance. So I got to try cases early on and get to stand up in front of juries and judges, and I always felt like I was the dumbest guy in the whole room, which is a very, very natural feeling. Everybody is older than you when you start, and certainly everybody's more experienced than you when you start, and it just makes you work really, really hard. So I worked hard. And I grew up in the era, so again, old guy in the room, right? I have lived through three major sort of revolutions in law. Number one, the revolution of online legal research. We had these huge um stations where you could get onto Lexus, which printed out on like long paper and with uh little green screens that print had orange type on it. That was like brand new and really cool. And you had to book time on the computer. Other than that, you did everything by uh you did all your legal research by trolling the library, reading cases, photocopying cases, and then going to the other little books that showed you like what cases cited back to this case, shepherdizing cases. I don't even know if you guys get taught that anymore. And that was that was that was uh revolutionary change when we had uh online legal research at our desks. Then I realized that you started practicing like kind of pre-internet, it was the dawn of the internet, but certainly it was pre-the time that lawyers began to use the internet for marketing purposes. So I had one of the first websites. Marketing on the internet was uh easy when I started because nobody was doing it, no one knew what they were doing. And so that was uh was a fun place to play. And now I'm living through one of the greatest revolutions in law ever, which is this whole artificial intelligence world. And uh again, AI is one of these things where if you kind of read the legal literature and you read the headlines of the legal press, it's like the only thing they ever want to talk about is case hallucinations. That's like one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny bit of the use of artificial intelligence in law is doing legal research with AI and getting hallucinated cases and then not being smart enough to like know how to go verify your cases. But that becomes the big headline. And so, just so you know, like in in the legal profession, like there's many, many lawyers are like, I can't touch AI. You know, don't even, I don't want to hear anything about it. It's scary to me. Um, and then there's the ones that are like if you go to traditional CLE seminars, all they want to talk about is the warnings about hallucinated cases, and then there's a whole bunch of us that are like, oh my gosh, this is freaking awesome. Like today we use a case management platform where everything we do in a case is in a secure environment, including now if I have a call with a client, the entire transcript of that call is instantly uh communicated to my case management system. Every document goes in there and is read by this wonderful product. And so when I uh if I'm involved in a case, I'm involved in fewer and fewer cases now because I'm the CEO of the firm. But if I'm involved or I need to know something about it, I just talk to the machine, and the machine is accurate, and the machine is smart. And my team and I, we well, I'll tell you a little bit about the firm in a sec. My team and I are like, God, this is this is absolutely fabulous. So three big, three big revolutions. I think at at each stage, you know, the established legal profession was saying, this stuff isn't like good for us. Like, how will we bill ours when we can do research online and we don't get to bill people for driving to the library? I actually had lawyers ask me that or tell me that, right? Marketing on the internet. Oh, marketing is like you shouldn't shouldn't market, shouldn't have to market your services. By the way, my philosophy on that is I ask you two questions. Three questions. Are you a good lawyer? Yeah. Is there somebody in your town right now for whom you would be a perfect match? Yes. Well, if if it's yes and yes on the first two questions, then why the heck would we let them wander aimlessly into somebody else's law fit? That's my thing on marketing. You have an ethical duty to get the word out, be good at something, and then let people know what you're good at. So worked for these guys for 12, 13 years. I was a partner in that firm, but I was also growing my family. So today we've got nine children. They're adults now, the youngest are adults, uh, 10 grandkids. But back then, when I was up to about four, I was coaching three soccer teams at once, and my commute was kind of long. And so that was my business plan. Hell, the commute is too long. I need a shorter commute, stop working here. I'm getting good results. I'm getting jury verdicts, I'm getting good settlements, I have a good reputation with the courts, with claims adjusters. How hard could it be to start a law firm? So I said, screw it, we're out, and uh opened up a firm closer to where I lived. And that was pretty good. I took some cases with me, and for about a year and a half, it was good until those cases all resolved. I'm like, hmm, actually, I don't really know anything about running a business. I don't know anything about marketing, about hiring or scaling or anything like that. And so then it got really, really, really hard. And there were some really hard years there when I was in this space where I was a good lawyer, but didn't have any or any appreciable business skills. But I was a student and I was curious, and having looked inside the legal industry for advice and found almost nothing, almost nothing on growing a profitable, fun law firm. I began to look, I began to hang out with entrepreneurs outside of legal, and that was again another sort of big break for me. I was introduced to a guy named Dan Kennedy, and uh, he became a guru and a mentor of mine. But importantly, I began to hang out with men and women who were running businesses in other industries and began to ask really good questions and began to say to myself, if this works for you, like how does the bagel bakery attract clients? How does the hairdresser keep clients for years and years? How does the newspaper sell subscriptions? And began to say, well, G, that's interesting. How could I take the idea that I just heard over here in a different industry and bring it into legal? And again, there was opposition to that because legal thinks it's very special. Legal thinks the only thing that's like if you do something the way we've done it for 50 years, that's like a good thing. And I was now hanging out with people that said, no, as entrepreneurs, we're always looking for the idea from outside our own box, so to speak. And that changed everything for me. And I began to learn how to market. So I became a became a student of marketing. I bought and read everything I could on the subject. I hung out again and went to so I started I stopped going to traditional CLE seminars. Now in Virginia, we have to do 12 hours a minimum every year, so you do that. But I stopped going to the big kind of traditional annual conferences of the Virginia State Bar and Virginia trial lawyers. I found them boring once I went to my very first conference of entrepreneurs. And I thought, oh my gosh, these people are so excited about their lives, they have so many ideas, and they're willing to share stuff. So I then spent, that was, you know, let's call that 25 years ago, then spent the next 25 years both starting a new and different business called Great Legal Marketing, where we began to teach solo and small firm lawyers. First, we began to teach them how to advertise better, but then over the years, that organization morphed into a company that teaches lawyers how to build firms that makes their families happy that they became law firm owners. And so through that, fortunately, get to speak uh around the country. I'm still a full-time practicing attorney. Harvard Professor Jason um knows this because he's been hanging out. We've been hanging out together for a number of years. But Jason, one of my goals was by the end of 2026 to have my name off of any litigated case that has a schedule imposed on me. And um, of the three cases I had on January 1st, two are now done. So I'm I'm almost to my annual goal, and we still have a few days left in January. Which actually is interesting because it leaves me a little bit like, now what do I do? Now what do I do? Uh a little bit irrelevant. But um, but the good the good part is we have built a great team. So our our practice, our firm, Ben Glass Law, we have about 26 or 27 people, I would say, under roof. We employ about six, I think, in the Philippines. Um, so that and that is something that is new to legal, like looking out of country for employees who work who work for us on our time zone, who are fabulous employees and who make more money working for Ben Glass Law from the Philippines than they would in their local economy. And so they're learning skills, they're hanging out with guys and gals who are, you know, fun, we believe are fun to hang out. Uh, we have one remote paralegal in Texas. She's married to the United States Marines, so they get transferred around the country. She worked here first several years ago, got married. Um, and our marketing director is remote from about three hours away. We only do two things. And this is one thing I'd just like to impress upon you. I think in your early years of figuring out what do I really want to do in the law? If I'm going to use my law degree to become a licensed attorney to do something in the space, is like, again, there's so many different ways to create a great life for yourself that I would really encourage you, even if you have a job like in one space and one vertical, to really create relationships across both the small firm, litigation, transaction. Transactional, working for a company, being in house counsel, all those things. Like create as many relationships as you can. I think that's one of the most important things. We believe that you are the average of the five people you hang out with most. So when I see someone who's not very successful or not very happy, and ask them, like, who do you hang out with? They're usually hanging out with people that aren't very successful and aren't very happy. So we encourage people, even in my children, like pick your friends wisely. But, you know, you have the when you're young in the law, no matter how old you are chronologically, when you're young in the law, you have an opportunity to try out different things and see different practice areas. And then I think, you know, going forward from 2026 into the future, like the world is going to be run or won, won by the lawyers who get good at something special. It's tremendously hard to be a, you know, I'm I'm just a personal injury attorney, all right, because there's a bazillion of them out there. It's hard to say, well, I'm a family law attorney. Bazillions of them out there. But try to find something that you can excel at. So Benglass Law does only two things. On a really a northern Virginia, not even a state, a northern Virginia area, we've got a very strong brand in the personal injury space. And my son, Brian, who who's a uh owner with me in the firm, he runs that division. And the two things, two things that we are really, really good at in that space is not the lawyer skill, because we're good lawyers for sure. There's a lot of good lawyers, right? And a consumer can't tell the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer. They they really can't. But we're really good at relationship building. We're really good at talking to, in that vertical, healthcare provider, potential referral sources, and starting a conversation that begins something like, what do you hate about lawyers? Like, what has been troublesome for you in dealing with lawyers? And kind of, and Brian, very smart. He went on a kind of a listening tour. It wasn't, he had lunches, he wasn't pitching anything, hearing their stories. And he found out what irritated them about our comrades out there in this in the personal injury space. And then we developed marketing pieces, direct mail. We are we are kind of famous for uh we're running, we're actually running a seminar in two weeks called the analog marketing boot camp. It's the anti-digital marketing bootcamp. Not that we're anti-digital, but we believe there's this whole space using real, real mailed materials. But we then developed a direct mail campaign to, in our case, largely chiropractors that said things like, I'll bet you're really frustrated about one, two, three, four, five when you deal with lawyers who are taking care of your patients. And because we'd done the listening tour, we knew what one, two, three, four, five problems were. Uh, we hit that. And every time we mail that letter, we pick up new referral sources. So we're good at that. And then we're good at cultivating what I call the care and feeding of these folks. Like we we employ a happiness director here, a woman who's her name is Susie, whose sole job is really is to she's our relationship manager, but is to make sure that everybody who works here, this is a happy space for them. We have formal HR, but we also have a happiness directory. You have a certain kind of snack you like, boom, that snack will show up here. You uh deliver for UPS or FedEx here to our office, you know every single day you can walk into our office, walk back to our kitchen, get your drinks, get your snacks, whatever. Like we embrace you, and Susie's in charge of that. Um so we're good at the cared feeding of referral sources in the PI space. And then we're we are this. We are providing, we believe, the very, very best level of customer service, of client service of any law firm in our area. And we say that boldly. And it's one of those things, even with all the ethical rules about marketing out there, marketing has become a lot more um, I say liberal over the last 10 years in terms of what you can and can't say. But when you're when you're saying things that aren't about really the quality of the legal service, you can say anything. And so we we said inside, we want to be able to say, we're the we're the very best at customer service. Like you're never gonna have to call here wondering what's going on in your case. We're gonna go above and beyond. It's one of our core values. We're gonna be listening when you talk to one of our team members and you're having a bad day, or you or your family members heading for surgery, or maybe like we've had in the past, like folks who weren't gonna have Thanksgiving because they didn't have enough money, right? We represent folks from all over the state. What can we do about that? And we empower our team to make decisions about how to make other people happy without having to come to the owners. And when you when you hire correctly and you understand what your core values are, and you team understands your core values, everybody just gets energized around that. So again, we're good at those two things, like finding our referral relationships and creating these relationships, and then then keeping the relationships by going above and beyond has nothing to do with being good lawyers. Again, we are good lawyers, lots of them out there. So that's our PAI practice, and that's how we differentiate ourselves in the sort of large personal injury space, which is we're in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C. So all the big advertisers are in and around and on all the TV. We don't do anything on TV, buses, we've got a website, obviously, but most of what we do is like direct mail that shows up, bypasses every email inbox, um, and makes you know, makes an impact, makes a difference. The other practitioner, and I'll tell you about the second practitioner, and then we'll stop and hopefully you'll have some questions, is um about so the space is this. It's called long-term disability insurance claims under ERISA. Well, I'll explain that. So most every employer you ever work for will offer you a health insurance, life insurance, and a type of insurance that will protect you if because you get sick or ill, get sick or get injured, you can't work. And so long-term disability insurance provides a portion of your wages different from workers' comp, which protects you if you're hurt while working. This is if you're hurt, can't, or get sick at all. Um, it'll provide a portion of your wages. And it's ERISA, E-R-I-SA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, because most of the policies in America that people have are group policies issued through their employers. So you don't really need to know that, but it's it's kind of federally regulated over and above any state insurance law. People can go and get private individual policies, and that's sort of an adjunct to what we do. But that's the space, all right? And we make money, you you make a claim under your policy, the claim gets denied, you come to us, we get you back on claim, so we get paid a percentage of your benefit, and then we keep you on claim for 10 or 15 or 20 years, and so in every single month of those 10 or 15 or 20 years, we're getting paid, you're getting paid. So it's uh there's a huge annuity sort of potential there. But we're really good at this, and we're the biggest player probably on the mid-Atlantic in that space. But 21 years ago, in my personal injury practice, now I was let me pause there too. So in my practice, I was doing general personal injury, I was doing plan of semantic amount practice work, and kind of any kind of insurance dispute thing that came by, I would look at and try to make sense of. And about 21 years ago, one of these cases, one of these ERISA long-term disability cases, came by. And uh, I look at it and I go, well, all right, looks like an insurance claim, a straight-up bread and butter insurance claim. Let's go do it. And I didn't know anything about ERISA. This is, and it's if you're familiar with PACER, which is the online filing system for federal court where you can go in and you know look at other people's work and look at other pleadings. We had none of that. Like if you wanted to look at a file, you had to go to the courthouse. But I filed a case and I learned. And for at the end of that case, they they settled and they paid us. And I started somehow just to get more of these because it was a rare, it's an underserved market, by the way. If you're looking to start your own practice and you're looking for a practice area that's underserved where you can make money, like this is it. This is it. And I'll teach you how to do it too if you want to, if you want to learn after you uh after you're out practicing. And I started to get these cases. And in the beginning, for the most part, I was getting schooled by the defense at the by the defense attorneys who knew a lot more about this than I did because they've been doing it a few years longer. But gradually started to learn it, um, taught judges about it, um, and and got and got good at it. Uh and this is uh, again, it's a niche practice even today. And because it's ERISA, we pretty much can do most of that work anywhere in the country. So when we litigate, we'll get local counsel. But when we're doing some of the preliminary work that you can get paid on because of the federal regulations that say you don't even have to be a lawyer to do this, like we can do that work across state boundaries. And so my competitors are all national, national brands in that space. Today we have a machine uh that just in the sort of cases that we have one, clients are on claim, and I've got a team of two who keep them on claim forever, generates over seven figures a year, just that. So we have seven over seven figures of very predictable income. Uh, and every year that figure grows, but not incrementally, arithmetically. Like it's amazing. A lot of work, learned it, went to seminars, dedicated a lot of time to being an expert at the craft, which which goes back to my point of like find and be extraordinary at it. So even like the family law practice, a lot of lawyers, you know, they're divorced for men only, or divorce for women only, or I only represent dads who are trying to get custody of kids, right? So um, all sorts of places to go with that. Now, let me let me just let me pause there because now I've been monologuing for half an hour. Who has some questions? And I will tell you that I believe that the lost art in America is a skill of asking interesting second and third level deep questions. So, Jason, we're gonna see whether that skill is high. Yes. You can allow that with my question.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Just kind of an additional question was uh how did you kind of balance the area of law you wanted to practice, what you found interesting with you know the long-term disability, which sounds like cash cow in like an unassert market, right? Um how do you personally you know balance that?

SPEAKER_06 33:18

So I think that I think it's really interesting, right?

Learning From Entrepreneurs Outside Law

SPEAKER_07 33:21

So um let me let me say uh this generally, and then we'll get down to that question. The mantra in law is that you signed up for an unbalanced life and you're supposed to devote your slave to the client, slave to the firm, blah blah, all that stuff. And I reject that. Although certainly, when I was younger and running my own practice and had no money, I worked my ass off, right? And so there was there was definitely trades there. So if I understand the question, like would you pursue something that you can go and make money at even if it wasn't turning you on? For me, I've never been able to do that for very long. I have to I have to A, be interested in it, and B, think that I can be successful, if not extraordinary at it. That what that's what drives me. So I don't know if I'm answering this very well. I and I I would say this too, when you're young in the profession, a lot of times you don't, you know, you're working for somebody else, right? And so you don't have time flexibility as much. But what I would say is there's a ton of employers out there, right? I mean, the largest market in America is a solo and small firm. And so this now goes back to who am I hanging out with and what relationships do I have? My son Brian worked for uh he worked, didn't come work for me, but he worked for a got a job out of law school. 2008 financial crisis. All of his friends, I think like the year before, went to big law out of William and Mary, and then they were all out of jobs. He was working at a small firm, but the first firm he worked for, I think he lasted six weeks because they were nuts. Like they took every case and they threw him into stuff that was way over his head and wasn't very fun. And he said, screw it, I'm not gonna do that. So he he just went and got another job. So that's a long answer. I think that you know, the world talks about work-life balance, and we we talk about life. Like work is a part of life, and you gotta make money, you gotta put energy into the world. I will tell you that the world will reward you if you put energy into it first. Nobody owes you anything, but being a good, decent person and asking, like, how can I help you first? What I did when I was in law school and said to my friend, I'll I'll just come help you, I'll just follow you around, you don't have to pay me. Um, that's I think a great philosophy to live by. Harder when you're young in the law, for sure, but just know that there's lots and lots of choices. And today, today there's a lot of conferences, there's a lot of groups of lawyers who are building cool practices that are business driven. You know, we gotta make a profit and work with people that we like to work with. And so you know, you can find the Jason Epstein's and the bent glasses of the world out here. Like we are there's more of us today than there ever have been.

SPEAKER_04 36:23

I think I'm curious what you're gonna stand. I I would say that when you're niching down into something becomes more detailed and you're your game compliance in one uh uh smaller subset of skills. So why not start really? When he's doing like a really specific area, that one area can become really interesting.

SPEAKER_06 37:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 37:05

The other thing that I think you will hear lawyers say is that I have to take if I'm out there running my own practice, I have to take a lot of these other cases, quote unquote, just to keep the lights on. And I I was fortunate to again run with entrepreneurs who said that's not true, that the better use of your time when you don't have a lot of cases to work on is to go and learn effective marketing. Go to learn how to be an interesting person. Because look, most people running around in Seattle, they don't need a lawyer today, right? But a lot of people know Jason because he's an interesting person, does a lot of community events, he's a giver, right? And so taking that kind of free time you have, as I did, I used to spend hours and hours in the library studying everything I could about building a personal brand that that would make people or cause people to remember Ben, uh, I don't know what he does, but he sounds like a trustworthy guy. He sounds like a nice guy. Let's give him a call. If you can do that and spend time getting good at that, and it's kind of funny because lawyers seem shy sometimes about telling their stories. And um, damn, like if you're good at something, yeah, let the people know you're good at it. Um, and there's a lot of ways to do that without just stay saying, oh, I'm the best PI lawyer in Seattle or Fairfax, Virginia, because we're not. We're not. But I'm one of, you know, am an interesting guy. Jason's an interesting guy. Uh, we have interesting lives. I'm CrossFit athlete, soccer referee for 52 years, uh, triple bypass surgery almost two years ago, fastest return ever to soccer refereeing from triple bypass surgery. Documented that like I just made that up, but then I awarded myself the award for being that. So there's a lot of um lot of things you can do. And my caution would be when you're out there, it's like a lot of lawyers just slip into taking bad clients who just um you know help create bile in your in your gastro system, and you don't you don't need that.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

You don't have to take that. In law school, with time being so limited, is it worth trying to even specialize in something, or is it better to go out with like a general understanding of that?

Building Teams And Remote Talent

SPEAKER_07 39:34

Yeah. So I so I think it's better to develop the skills of learning and relationship building and the skill of being curious than it is to try to figure out today in 2026 what you might be doing 42 years from now. Because this space that I'm in now didn't it was like, well, I guess ERISA started in 76, but I never could have imagined that I would land here. But I'm here in large part because I am curious, I am a forever learner, and I can create, I think I'm good at creating relationships that are win-win relationships, right? What can I do for you? What can I do for me? The other thing we think often think about is so I run mastermind groups and lawyers all over the country, but we have in our mastermind group, I have local competitors who are in my group. So we have this huge abundance mentality. But you now, having said all that, my associate, Damon, he worked in undergrad for a lawyer who was an ERISA disability lawyer, and he liked that. He went to law school. The only kid in America, only one in America ever went to law school wanting to be, knowing he wanted to be a plaintiff's ERISA attorney. He goes to William and Mary, which is of course here in Virginia. The guy he worked for knew me, so we had a real relationship. So he says, talk to Damon, just talk to him about the profession. I did. And then for his second and third year at William Mary, he basically worked damn near full time for us writing briefs and uh memos and stuff like that. So he was the, I think, the odd one who went to law school with a very clear idea of what he wanted to do, and he is excellent at what he does. But if you don't have that drive, you know, for anything in particular, like, A, don't worry about it, because again, I could have, I think I would have been successful and been a tax lawyer, because I liked it. But I I think it's more important that you have these generalized skills of humanity, being curious and just always asking why. I just finished, Jason, I don't know if you I I just finished this the huge Elon Musk biography, and uh, and then I was listening to Ben Hardy has his new book on scaling. He's got a great quote from Elon Musk because most people, most engineers spend way too much time optimizing for something that does that should not even exist in the first place, right? And so I think that what I've been good at is listening to whatever the status quo is, what's the mantra coming about the profession or about a practice area about anything, and saying just because you said that and everybody else says that doesn't make it true. So let's let's figure this out. Like what would be best for my life? So I give I give long answers, but I don't I don't think you need to specialize in law school. I think you're really smart to have gotten there, you're really smart to get through law school, pass the bar. You just have all these opportunities. And and my my caution again is just listening in and believing that there's only one way, and that is to be a slave for six or seven years, make partner, whoopy-doo. You know, when you make partner, they have you write a big check. They go to a bank and write a big check into the firm sometimes at these big firms. And just know that there's places like the practice that Jason runs, practice iron, practice all of your guest speakers. I think I've seen the list from Jason.

SPEAKER_06 43:04

Like, these are all entrepreneurial men and women who are worth listening to, I think.

SPEAKER_03 43:13

What advice do you have for knowing when it's the right time to start your own practice? Assuming you don't start it at law school.

Niche Down And Stand Out

SPEAKER_07 43:21

Knowing when it's the right time. From a financial standpoint, I had some money in the bank. I think for most lawyers, if you're gonna start a practice from ground zero, you gotta be able to get through it uh and pay the rent, mortgage, and eat for sure. Sometimes that's a supportive spouse who is working, right? Sometimes that's accumulated savings. I think that today, uh obviously anybody can go and make that leap. I recently gave some advice to a fella um And I his question was, I'm at a firm and I think I'm underpaid. He wasn't, but he thought he was. And he was thinking about do I go and start my own firm? I said to him, the thing I would do is I would on my own dime, I would join a mastermind group for a year. Join some group, it doesn't have to be in law, but some group of business owners and go hang out with them for a year. And then I would make sure, damn sure I read there's about probably 10 or a dozen really great books now in 2026 about running a law firm and running a small law firm. I'd make sure that I was a student of those books, and I'd make sure, again, on my own time, that I would I got out to some conferences. I run conferences, but there's a whole bunch. There's like, again, there's a dozen great conferences around the country and around the calendar where people like us are getting together. And I would make real sure that I was having conversations in the hall at breakfast and at lunch and at dinner with guys and gals who are farther along the path than I was. And I would go there and I would say, hey, I just got out of law school and I'm thinking about this. Like I would borrow the money to go to one of some of these conferences. Jason could tell you like which ones, and Ben could tell you which ones I think are worthwhile. Um, and I would just go and be the most curious sponge. And here's here's what I have, I believe and what I have found. The most highly successful entrepreneurial lawyers will give. A hundred percent. We will give. What we don't want is our time wasted, right? So somebody comes to me and says, Look, Ben, I've read your books, I've listened to your podcast. Man, can I get an hour of your time? I run a thing called Lunch with Ben, actually, lunchwithben.com. You can have a free virtual meeting with me if you're if you're a law student, it doesn't cost you anything. If you're not a law student, you have to buy my sandwich and have it delivered here. But the most successful entrepreneuri lawyers will absolutely give and they will share. And they love, we love being approached by quote young people or young in-the-law lawyers who are who are there and showing up with a pad with curious questions. And that's what I would spend my time. That's what I would spend a lot of my time doing when I'm trying to figure out what's the best time, or should I go and start my own practice? And again, you know, it costs you lunches, maybe, maybe it costs you to get to a conference. There's a lot of virtual stuff. It that those are pretty good, they're not quite as good. Used to have a lot of resources in 2026 that um I didn't I didn't have in in uh talk about this.

SPEAKER_04 46:41

If if you all I'd encourage everyone to like for anyone, so you might get some of the classes for you to look up. Yeah, sure. Every conference I go to. Every the conference I go to, the whole point of the conference is to sell more shit. So you can pay a couple of ranges of the conference and then they want to buy a shit on top of it. Benz conferences are really not getting your mind right, getting your mind and figuring out how the management principles are and um and then how all that will train data in your practice. And so I would be looking at that if you I could be on the CLS conference system and say, hey Beth, what's the lawsuit reading that we have come out from Seattle and Social Office? I bet you would be very and so um but then's not trying to be well, pretty sure.

PI Division: Relationships And Service

SPEAKER_07 47:38

Yeah, so our deal is like if honestly, like Jason is right, like you come help us hand out forms, maybe, and uh set chairs, we'll get a little work out of you, but you'd be introduced to a lot of really cool men and women who are happy in the practice of law. The other thing we could do, Jason, is you know, as you know, we have in a private podcast form. We have the recordings of the past conferences. Now, you guys have a lot to do in law school in this tongue. I'm not trying to add work to you, but if anybody would uh want to have access to this private podcast, uh reach out to me, Jason, give you my email address, and I'll I'll have my team uh hook you up. And it's really easy because you can just like when you're uh jogging or whatever, you can listen to recordings of all different, mostly marketing, but some life and philosophy and um uh some real practical advice. And and today there's any number of great podcasts as well. Um I have one, my son has one. There's lunch hour legal marketing, lots of good things to do. But yeah, anybody wants to come like next October to the East Coast, like I'll probably put you to work a little bit. You gotta pay to get here and stay in the hotel. But yeah, we'd love we'd love to have law students showing up because we think we can change their lives and show them what most law schools are not showing them.

SPEAKER_04 48:54

Um the other thing is that we've seen better generation shifting where yeah um came into the business and been operating in the business for a really long time with this understanding that the law firms are asset in the day. So here's what I'm gonna suggest if you use a home. I bet you that in our market whatever it is you want to do, there's some guy out there to send me tool that's a function that is considered a closing shop. And you can come in and say, hey, don't close the hall buying your firm by paying next percent of the ongoing revenue for five years. And that's a win for them because they were just gonna close up. Yeah, and now you're you're getting something built in. We're closing out and they're ready to go away. I'll get you upside in years.

SPEAKER_07 49:50

Yeah, there's a whole generation of boomers who are across industries who are closing, who are getting to retirement, don't have a succession plan, don't believe that they have value, and actually they do have value. Um, and that's another good place to go to say to someone, and again, it depends on your own financial need, but to say to someone who is older, like, can I can I hang out? Like, you know, give me I'll I'll I'll write memos for you. Like, just let me see the inside of a law firm. Let me see the inside of cases. Let me go hang out if you're interested at all in litigation. Like every time you go to a courthouse for one of these lawyers, like, hang out. Like, ask the bailiffs, like, where's the cool trial going on? Uh we have the coolest trial going on right now in them. I don't know if you've seen this, Jason, in Fairfax. So one of our buddies, criminal defense attorney, it's the au pair double murder trial. Go Google that on YouTube. The au pair double murder trial. It's the most bizarre thing. My friend told me about it a year ago, the defense attorney, and it's being tried. They're they're off, they've been off the last three days because of snow. But uh I digress, but just watching the other thing you'll see when you go to court and you watch a case, you'll see like there's a lot of lawyers who aren't very good out there. Like the bar isn't that high to be good at something, right? This is a you you'd probably be shocked at the general average level of lawyering in your local county court.

SPEAKER_06 51:20

There's a lot of dumbasses. There we go. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah, I did have a question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

You know, throughout law school and in law school interviews and stuff, you're repeatedly asked, you know, why did you want to go to law school or what made you want to come to law school? And I guess all that did this for the first very first time in this room here, I my answer that I've wanted to give is I want to build something big, I want to make a lot of money, and I want to help people while I'm doing it. But I would never admit that in most rooms. Um, and maybe that's just part of the culture in kind of the Seattle law schools, but I'm wondering if that's also part of the culture once you're out of law school, because it seems to me, based on the speakers that we've had and our professor, that there are people who are business minded. I just it nobody can talk about it, it seems like.

SPEAKER_07 52:05

I would be bold and talk about it. Because if if a lawyer interviewed here and said, I want to help you guys make a lot of money, and I want to learn how to do that too. Right?

SPEAKER_06 52:20

And and in doing so, we'll help people for sure.

Analog Marketing And Referrals

SPEAKER_07 52:24

That's somebody that we would go, oh, that's different. Tell me more about that. Because one, you know, one of the hardest things um to do as an owner, actually, is to like we have good lawyers here, uh, and we offer uh we offer all of our lawyers, you have$10,000 budget, education budget every year, right? And we're like, there's a great conference here, great conference here, great conference. It's really hard to get somebody to actually want to go and act like an owner. And and we're in a contingent fee world where where you could make like literally almost unlimited income. Like if I paid you a million dollars, it's because I'm making much more than a million dollars. Money is everything. But I I think that I would I would if that's your honest answer, rather than the BS of when I help people and you know, whatever, go for it. The worst that can happen is they don't hire you. But there's lots of us out here, right? And there's more and more lawyers today that are like, cool, I want somebody who is curious about making money. Because the only way to make money is to actually give great service and be a good lawyer and understand how to do the the nuts and bolts of whatever the practice area is. And you can find these guys and gals on LinkedIn. Like, like hook up with me, hook up with uh my son Brian, and see who who's hooked up to us. Because there's a whole bunch of us out here that are like, yes, damn it, like we're here to make money, and we recognize that in order to do so, we have to be good at service and we have to be good at at the law, but we are unabashedly unafraid about saying, but we're building our lives for ourselves. Like, because again, I just tell you a real quick story. Like when I had trouble by past 30 years ago, I had zero symptoms. I had zero symptoms, I had critical heart disease, it was discovered by accident, right? And I'm like, thank God, I I could be dead. I don't know how many days I have left. And you know, worked worked hard uh for sure, but you know, your family, your family's, you want, I think if you want them to be like happy that you became a lawyer, uh and happy if you become a law firm owner, like for us, that's the ultimate goal. And I get it that not every lawyer thinks that way. Probably most don't, or or they don't give themselves permit. I'm giving you permission to go in there to that interview and go, you know what, I want to make a lot of money. I want to be like a millionaire by the time I'm 30 or whatever, and um, I want to, you know, I want to have a great life. And then I would say, and by looking at what you've done, Mr. Lawyer Epstein, like I want to learn from you how to do this. That shows that you've done research, you've figured out that this guy or gal is an entrepreneur, and they are looking.

SPEAKER_06 55:20

We are looking for people who think like that, because that's a rare bird, actually.

SPEAKER_04 55:25

Yeah, I would I totally agree with Ben said. One of the um uh remembering something that's on the studio saying about the magnetic part and how do you make someone attractive to your message? And part of that I'm assessing by definition is it that you're magnetically attracted to one another, and that's actually good. So if I walked into a room and an entertainment side, I hear my while I'm helping people say this. You may repel somebody, you know, I don't even know what they're supposed to do. You may repel those people in that room, but there's getting people that magnetically attract and those are your people.

SPEAKER_07 56:09

And getting the reps of showing up for a live interview or a virtual interview and making that statement and making that argument for that, like that's really that's really important. Again, the worst thing that happens is they think you're a jerk and they say no. Okay, so I'm a soccer referee, like half the people think I'm a jerk every single game. I don't care.

SPEAKER_04 56:27

Okay, well then that's our time. I just out of curiosity, Ben. What um because I know Ben can talk about Gingeris. What is the most you've ever been paid for an hour of speaking?

SPEAKER_06 56:38

Or sorry, for an hour of what? Speaking? I I I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 56:46

Uh we need to pay you to come talk.

SPEAKER_07 56:49

They do, you but this is like airfare and stuff. Okay, well then just do this. I get paid twenty one hundred dollars an hour for consulting with people in long-term disability claims.

SPEAKER_04 57:02

Uh maybe follow no LinkedIn, if you want more to make sure I'm happy to govern us and uh you can ask me about all the questions.

SPEAKER_07 57:12

You guys are in a y'all are in a great place. Enjoy your day. You you're really sitting at the foot of a master of this, and I I hope you have learned. And by all means, even if two years from now you are out in the world and you've got a question, like just remember me or remember Jason, and I'll be here.

SPEAKER_04 57:28

And I'm um next week will meet this class. I'm leaving from class to go to the airport to Lyangland. So um I'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_06 57:37

Yeah, okay, man. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit greatleegalmarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team of LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.