Masterclass with Adam Rossen: Success in the World of Criminal Defense Law

Join us as we sit down with Adam Rossen, a powerhouse in the world of criminal defense law and founder of a multi-million dollar firm. Rossen’s journey from law school to prosecutor to legal entrepreneur is one of resilience, determination, and strategic ingenuity. Listen as he reveals the challenges he faced starting his own firm and his unique approach to client generation, not to mention his knack for delegating tasks among his team of eight attorneys.

The conversation takes an exciting turn as Rossen unveils his masterclass on building a thriving criminal defense practice. How does he balance high ticket services with white-glove service? How does he foster community and connection in a field often characterized by cold professionalism? You'll be captivated by Rossen’s candid discussion about his aspirations to scale his firm and his ambition of becoming the premier go-to criminal defense firm. You're sure to pick up a few pointers on the pivotal role of tracking numbers, balancing casework with firm building, and the art of sharing knowledge.

Lastly, prepare to be inspired as we explore Rossen's success in conquering the legal landscape of South Florida. Delve into his strategic use of social media and the important role mentors have played in his career. Whether you’re already in the legal profession, or just curious about business building, case generation, and lifestyle design, this episode with Adam Rossen is a treasure trove of insights. So don't miss out; tune in and learn from one of the best in the business!

Connect with Adam on Instagram or Youtube.

Rossen Law Firm

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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I tell people, I say, when they say, what do you do? I say, look, we're community and relationship builders. How we do that is through criminal, dui and federal defense and we switched the website over two or three years ago to the hero's journey model from Storybrand. So it's not about us. We smile in our pictures. It's not eight attorneys arms crossed, looking fake tough right. We're warm and inviting and I'm obsessing about the way intake speaks to people. We have Las Vegas Hotel sense in our office. We want this to be a warm and inviting place where people who are going through the worst time in their lives we specialize with the over anxious first time person through the system and then we do great work and we build relationships.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Welcome to time freedom for lawyers, where the goal is to become less busy, make more money and spend more time doing what you want instead of what you have. To bringing together guests from all walks of life who are living a life of their own design and sharing actionable tips for how you, too, can live the life of your dreams. Now here's your host, brian Glass.

Speaker 3: 1:17

We are back, my friends. Hey, sorry for taking a month off there and dealing with all kinds of problems or, as we like to say, opportunities in the business, and between that and a couple of weeks off that I've taken on vacation with the family over the summer. Like this schedule just kind of caught up for me, and so I decided to take the month of July off, start releasing podcast episodes again beginning on August 1st, and now we got a good backlog of episodes. We're back in it. I think you're going to dig this show today with my friend, adam Ross, and Adam as a criminal defense lawyer down in South Florida, and he's going to walk us through a masterclass of how to build a big ass criminal defense practice. Adam is the only multimillion dollar criminal defense firm that I've ever heard of. The stuff that we get into today is stuff that most law firms are not even thinking about. What's the cost to produce a case? How can we pair badass representation with high ticket prices with white glove service to make sure that we are building community and building connections as well as taking care of our clients? The other thing that I'll say is Adam is in our iconic saluted group here at Great Legal Marketing. And so if you listen to this and you get really inspired by it and you want to hang out with other people, other lawyers, who are building businesses just like Adams, reach out to me at Brian at GreatLegalMarketingcom. I'll walk you through the application process and see if our membership is a good fit for you. And with that, back to the show.

Speaker 3: 2:42

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Today's episode is with Adam Ross and of the Ross and Law Firm in South Florida. He's a member of our Great Legal Marketing icon accelerated group and in the time that I've known Adam, he's grown from a two lawyer practice to eight lawyers and is now running one of the few multimillion dollar criminal offense firms that I've ever heard of. What Adam's done is really cool because he pairs badass legal defense with white glove client experience. If what he has to say about business building and case generation and lifestyle design is interesting to you and you want to hang out with other people like Adam, reach out to me.

Speaker 3: 3:17

We're currently accepting applications in a limited number for both our hero and our icon accelerated groups for 2024. Send me an email, brian at GreatLegalMarketingcom. B-r-i-a-n at GreatLegalMarketingcom. Okay, now on with the show. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Today I have Adam Rossen. Adam is a criminal defense lawyer in South Florida. He's the founder of the Ross and Law Firm and he hosts a podcast called Success in South Florida. Adam, welcome to the show, my man.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Hey, brian, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Speaker 3: 3:47

Adam, you are a rare criminal defense lawyer in that you're not like a solo running his firm out of the cell phone in his pocket. Can you take us through your career path from law school to prosecutor to now running a multi-million dollar six lawyer criminal law firm in South Florida?

Speaker 1: 4:08

Right, actually now we just grew to eight, so now we're up to eight attorneys.

Speaker 3: 4:13

You got to tell your website vendor to update with the next two.

Speaker 1: 4:16

then yeah, I know, I know they're coming. We've been a little behind. A lot of fast moving changes here, like always, that seems to be the one constant here. But yeah, I did used to be that lawyer. So I was that lawyer running everything out of my cell phone for years and years. But to even go back further, so I graduated law school, I did an internship at the state attorney's office, at the prosecutor's office, loved it, became a prosecutor and was only there 18 months. I was promoted first in my class. I was promoted twice before a lot of my other friends were promoted even once.

Speaker 1: 4:45

But I and I wanted to help people. So my whole life I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make money that's not the main indicator of success, but it's one of them. But I wanted to do big things and I wanted to be either a doctor or lawyer and started college as a doctor, realized chemistry and biology are terrible and I just I loved law and order and I thought I was good at arguing and wanted to be a trial lawyer. So I started the prosecutor's office and I thought I'm going to be this bad, bad ass homicide prosecutor and one of the best trial lawyers in South Florida and I quickly realized that the politics bothered me. I've always been somebody who, if I don't agree with you, I'll do my own thing. I think rules are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. So I just said you know what I'm going to. I'm going to leave. I don't like it here, I don't like the way that they treat us and I'm going to do my own thing and start my own law firm, and my roommate at the time was also a prosecutor.

Speaker 1: 5:42

We jumped together and we started a criminal and immigration law firm that we had from 2008 and everything was run out of the cell phone Seven years. We never. We grew enough to where we didn't need to get real jobs. But we because because when we left, we said, okay, if I need to do document review to supplement it, I will. If we need to crawl back to the prosecutor's office or get a real job from something work for somebody else, we can. We grew past that pretty quickly, but we never grew to the part where we could actually where we hired an employee. So I was my own legal assistant and I was my partner's legal assistant and I was in to. I was everything.

Speaker 1: 6:17

And then, in 2015, he wanted a split and it's funny that you mentioned cell phone, because I gave him the office phone number because my cell phone was more valuable and I wanted I didn't want to have a fight over that because there were other things that I like. I'm like you take the business phone, knowing that my cell phone was way more valuable to with clients and everything, and we split. We're still good buddies. But that's when I got serious about 2015 of, okay, I need to build something and it didn't. I didn't really know what I wanted. I just growth.

Speaker 1: 6:46

About two years later, we're growing and I had three trials in five weeks and I won the first two and I lost the third because I was burnt out, because I couldn't sustain it, because I couldn't. At that point I did have a legal assistant, but I just I'm done with trial for the day. It's eight o'clock and I'm having a strategy session to sign up a new client, so there's money coming in and I would have won that third trial if it wasn't for that and I was just it was. I'm like this has to change. That's when I became much more intentional and wanted to really just build a firm. That was a firm. I didn't think at that time, it was going to be six lawyers, or eight lawyers, or 20 people. I just wanted to have a few people and have something that's a lot more sustainable instead of every Sunday night going all right, we made our money for the week, when's it coming in next week? I wanted something that was predictable and reliable, so that's where it started.

Speaker 3: 7:33

So 18 months in the prosecutor's office and then you jumped ship to run your own law firm. I was 26. You were 26, 26, starting your own business. Because we have a lot of law students, young law graduates, that listen to this podcast. Where did you look, 18 months after law school, for any information on how do I run a business, how do I find clients, what kind of documents do I need to keep for my tax returns, all of that kind of stuff?

Speaker 1: 8:01

So back then in 08, there were some things. It was. I remember there was Jay Fuenberg's book like how to start a law practice. That was supposedly the Bible, and we had that. We bought books on family law and immigration and this law and that law. We had a plan. The plan was terrible but we fell into some other things. But no, we really had no guidance. We met with a bunch of older criminal lawyers that said A, if you want to stay in business as partners, don't track the money, don't track who brings in what. So we didn't. A lot of the other criminal lawyers said keep your overhead low.

Speaker 1: 8:32

So we had a virtual office. We worked in our apartment since we were roommates together, I like to say we worked in our boxers and just clients in the virtual we rented. Like we had 10 hours a month that we could do, but we really didn't do anything. The plan was terrible. I didn't know about programs like GLM or any. I wish I did. I know GLM was around then, but if I found them and started in 08, right now we'd probably be at a four person law firm, probably at eight figures. But that's okay, cause we needed to take our lumps and learn and figure things out on our own, and we stumbled into some good things that happened too along the way, that were just unexpected. But no, we had no idea. I'm completely clueless. And nowadays 2023, it's so much easier.

Speaker 3: 9:14

What do you think about that advice now from the old lawyers about don't track the money? Is that advice you would give to two guys starting their own firm now?

Speaker 1: 9:21

Absolutely not Terrible advice Terrible. And when we were splitting in 2015, I remember it was maybe the second week in January and we had an idea to wind down like a year apart, we were going to have a one year wind down, a trial, separation, right, yeah, yeah, kind of. Look, we're really good friends and we still are. And what I did was I was like, okay, it's January 7th, let me go back and start tracking who brought in what. And after three months it was two thirds of me, one third of my partner, and that gave me all the confidence that I needed to say we're not doing a year, we're doing May 1st. And on April 1st I told him I said, look, one more month and then we're out and we'll still wind down other things like cases we have together, whatever. But no, you need to know numbers, metrics, data. So it was terrible advice, but that's okay, because I didn't really know better or have any intelligent entrepreneurial lawyers to be my mentors.

Speaker 3: 10:14

You're a numbers guy now I know that you're running your firm on extraction system and that you have scorecards and metrics that you're looking at weekly if not daily. What are, for you, the most important two or three metrics that you're looking at on a weekly basis about case generation?

Speaker 1: 10:31

It's qualified leads coming in for us is huge Really. Of course it all goes to intake for me, because those are really my department. Manny, who's the managing partner, he cares about that a lot but he's really trying to look at more of the legal. But for me it's all about intake because that's the engine and that's the engine that makes the firm go. So it's qualified leads, it's signup percentage, it's average case value, total number of new clients, it's all those things.

Speaker 3: 10:56

Let me ask you this, because everybody talks about qualified leads, but I'm not sure that anybody has a singular definition for what that term actually means. And even me, when I look at when I, on Friday, when I sit down and look at how many qualified leads came in this week, sometimes it's like putting your finger in the wind. You're like that one is qualified. It might be qualified one week, but the next week, when you had more, maybe it wasn't qualified, and so how do you think about that? So let me take a stab at it. Maybe it's somebody who's charged with the crime, who doesn't already have a lawyer, and maybe there's some like means to pay qualification, but how do you think about that?

Speaker 1: 11:33

Yeah, so it's funny. We actually had that discussion. Well, we've had a written definition and then I expanded upon it three days ago, so it's great timing and we didn't plan this. So it's is this case that we want, a case that we can handle? Meaning we don't do appeals? Okay, is it in a location that we handle? So, if it's in Georgia, we can't help. Even if it's in North Florida, we're really not going, unless it's a media murder case and they have tons of money.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So it's is it a case we want? Is it in a location we want? Is it a client that we want to represent? And is the client communicative? Okay, which the communicative part we just added, because we're tracking these things. And if a web lead comes in saying, hey, I got a, I was arrested for DUI in Broward County, perfect, we're the best law firm for you. But if we can never get that person on the phone and they came in from a web lead or a live chat, then I don't think that's qualified right If they're unresponsive. So that's the four prong test that we have who's?

Speaker 3: 12:37

the arbiter of is this a client that we actually want to represent? How do you make that decision?

Speaker 1: 12:42

That really just goes to the attorney. If we get, if they're just a complete jerk and through our intake process and we do a strategy session look, this person's a complete jerk we turn them down, which we do sometimes then we don't take every case that comes in. Then the attorney can then switch that over and say, look, that was just unqualified, they're not a good fit for us. And there's we've also identified a few different client and case types that are not good fits for us. So we do have free strategy sessions. It's not a console, it's a strategy session Usually goes 45 minutes to an hour and a half and but there is no official time on it.

Speaker 1: 13:17

But we do have a $250 fee, a barrier up for certain things that we've identified that just maybe. These type of clients we don't work well with. So if it's a violation of probation and it's not our current client, we generally don't work well with them. So you have to put some skin in the game $250 to meet with us, and if they don't, then they're not qualified. Even though we take VOPs in the location, they're responsive, right and we can help them.

Speaker 3: 13:43

So that kind of that just whittles that away. This guy isn't any good at following the rules, and so he won't be a good client. Is that why a violation of probation is not a good fit for you?

Speaker 1: 13:52

No, it's because we can't give payment plans because they're going to go quickly, so it's paid in full and most of them are drains on our resources, because when you're in jail you work out, you talk on the phone and read, and they talk on the phone and they're going to call us all day, every day, and it's pressure. Why am I sitting in here? It's a month or less of a timeframe, so it's just we've identified, we charge more for them. We're not the type that's give me 500 bucks cash and I'll see you in court tomorrow. So we just put that barrier up because we'd rather not give them 45 minutes to an hour and a half of our time, unless they're serious, and we don't want to change and do a 10-minute consult. Wham bam. Thank you, ma'am. We don't want to change the way we do things and our standard, and we do that with restraining orders too and some other type of areas of law.

Speaker 3: 14:43

I'm sure that's a mistake you made during the first 15 years of your career, underpricing that service and then ending up on the phone 25 times.

Speaker 1: 14:50

Absolutely so. It was something that about three years ago, as we really started to grow, we tripled the business in a year that Manny and I we just said, hey, look like it was probably after we got burned on that. And then we had a restraining order case where we met with them for an hour. I had to review all these documents. We knocked it out of the, I knocked it out of the park and then I maybe. I quoted $7,500 and they said, oh, that's so much more than I thought. And I said what'd you think it was? And they said the first layer I met with charged $2,500 and I thought that was too high. So I was hoping you could do it for $1,500. And we're not the type that's just going to go in there and wing it. We actually do the work. And so we really thought we said what are the drains on our intake and can we put a barrier up? So we do.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Because you all are one of the higher priced, if not the highest priced, law firm in the area. And so what have you done? And you tripled the business inside of a year, right, and so that must be working. So what have you done to differentiate yourself in the market? That's not playing on price and underbidding everybody else, but at the same time, you've generated more five star Google reviews than anybody else that I can find in the area. So what's the secret sauce there? That's funny.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Everybody wants to know it's. We do great work, but we build relationships with people. So yesterday I had an hour and a half DUI strategy session and the first 20 minutes was me trying to get to know the client. Right, she's terrified about this, she's never been arrested before and so just being naturally empathetic and we make sure that all of our lawyers we only hire a very specific type of lawyer and making sure that we are very empathetic, that I say I tell people. I say, when they say what do you do, I say, look, we're community and relationship builders. How we do that is through criminal DUI and federal defense. But that's the way that we look at ourselves. Yes, we have amazing reviews and but the and the reviews tell stories. Not just great people got me off of my murder charge. They tell stories about the emotions and how they feel.

Speaker 1: 16:50

And we switched the website over two or three years ago to the hero's journey model from Storybrand, the Storybrand model. So it's not about us. We smile in our pictures. It's not eight attorneys arms crossed, looking fake, tough, right, we were warm and inviting and I'm obsessing about the way intake speaks to people. We truly we have. We have Las Vegas hotel sense in our office. We want this to be a warm and inviting place where people who are going through the worst time in their lives we specialize with the over anxious first time person through the system who may or may not have substance abuse or mental health issues. It's just a combo of all those things and then we do great work and we build relationships.

Speaker 3: 17:34

Let me about your recruiting process for other lawyers. How have you been able to recruit these great, empathetic lawyers to your firm, usually away from government jobs where the benefits are off the charts, there's incredible job security and there's no shortage of work.

Speaker 1: 17:50

So how have you done that? Initially it wasn't intentional and now it has become intentional as we've morphed over the last or grown over the last three years, but it just grew. So we hired an attorney three years ago named Susan Lawson and she's amazing and she never thought she would leave the government and some things happened in that office that made her want to leave and she left and that kind of snowballed because we started we've had a good Manny and I had a great reputation. But then bringing her on a 13 year lawyer who never was going to leave it A lot of people in the Broward Public Defender's office was like whoa, wait a minute, you got Susan, something's going on here. And then two months later, one of her best friends, who had been on our radar for years and we just we never even interviewed her because she was never going to leave became disillusioned and said talk to Susan and Susan, I love it here. It's amazing. And she came and then everybody else said whoa, you got Susan and Manny, how did you do that? And it just it snowballed over the last few years of we're not running a chop shop, all of the fears of great government lawyers. I'm going to go to a place that's going to be a chop shop that I'm going to only get paid based on what I bring in.

Speaker 1: 18:59

I'm a government lawyer because I don't want to bring in money. I don't want to have to bring in clients, I don't want that pressure. I those lawyers say, oh, somebody's looking at life in prison, that's not pressure. But if I have to go out and network, that's pressure, right. So we've built that and we've said, look, we take care of it. My job, I tell them, my job is to bring us interesting cases from marketing and sales and the business strategy. My job is to bring you guys really fun, cool cases and let you guys be the stars. I don't need to be the star. I could be the star on your podcast. I could be the star going around to marketing conferences. I don't need to be the star in the courtroom anymore.

Speaker 3: 19:34

Let me circle back to that, though, because you started with that advice of don't track the money, which is bad advice, but now you've built a firm with eight lawyers where you must. There's not a way to say I can go and find these cases without tracking the money, because I'm bringing in all the money, and so do your lawyers that are coming especially from government jobs. They have any client generation responsibilities they get bonuses based on it.

Speaker 1: 19:58

But I don't ever want them to have the pressure because that's not what they want to do. Then they will be unhappy and then they may go back to the government and not be amazing lawyers for us. So, for example, susan, she lives in Parkland, which is a very nice western suburb of Broward County, and she grew up there and she lives there. Now Her husband's a federal agent and she has two boys that play every single sport imaginable that I think are six and 10, seven and 10. And she was so nervous about, oh, I'm going to have to bring in money. I said, no, susan, I go, but listen, you're Parkland baseball mom, I go. So you will bring in money. You have a network of 50 or 100 people that you know and you're involved in school and sports and this, and that it will naturally happen through the law of attraction. I'm a big believer in the law of attraction and so I told her that and of course I was right and she loves it. Now I'm not sending her to multiple functions all the time. She'll come with me occasionally to certain things. I told her we'd love to brand her the domestic violence queen of the wealthy suburbs in South Florida and she loves the drama with that and she's an amazing lawyer for those type of cases because she's so empathetic and she's very patient and kind. So when you have neighbors fighting over disputes and they're going nuts, I can't. I don't have the patience for that anymore. She does, but she's brought in and she's been very profitable from a lead generation standpoint. She brought in a big DUI felony serious bodily injury case a friend of a friend just by being her. So that's, we do that with her. We have other lawyers that do like to go out and hustle more Great David, who's our federal attorney and handles a majority of our Palm Beach cases.

Speaker 1: 21:33

He was on this morning. He was on the news. I'm talking about Trump's indictment. He loves, he wants to be in front of the camera. So I let him do a lot of the YouTube videos and we promote not just me but him. But if he didn't like doing it I wouldn't ask him to do it. That's my philosophy on that. Plus, I like trials. I don't like the trial prep anymore because I obsess over it, but I love the marketing and the sales and the strategic planning and thinking.

Speaker 3: 21:58

So I've gotten to the same point where I like talking to clients and I like trying cases, but I largely hate everything in between, and so we've hired now people to come in and do all of the in-between stuff. That just drives me nuts, and the struggle that I had at them was getting over the feeling that if I don't want to do it, there's probably nobody else that wants to do it also. But then reminding myself that 10 years ago I would have loved building cases and getting them ready for trial and I probably would have been nervous to go and try them because I wasn't ready for that, but I could have done all of the prep work for it. And so how have you managed in your own mind to getting out of the day to day running of the cases? And if you have a strategy session for somebody, then like mentally decoupling yourself from that case and trusting your team to take it the rest of the way home.

Speaker 1: 22:45

I don't decouple myself from it. So I still tell them like hey guys, like I want, if it's my sign up and I have a relationship, just keep me informed. I want to know I do back off and let them do their thing. Sometimes I'll come in natural habit. But why don't we file this motion? And what about?

Speaker 1: 23:00

this and what about this? And most of the time, like Adam, we know you're a really good lawyer too, just go away. But there's been a few times when I've come in and given a different perspective and they'd be like, wow, you're right. So I still have that a little bit, but really in 2021, we went from two to five lawyers in eight months. And that last hire, that fifth hire, Mehdi, when she started in August, it was she's on the market. We probably will need her in six months. But I said you know what a superstar like that doesn't come available every day and she's going to be the one to get me out of cases, Because I can't grow the firm the way I want if I have cases. So we just we took a leap of faith and we hired her and we started whittling me out and within three months, I think, my caseload was zero, and that's been almost two years.

Speaker 3: 23:46

So now we're trying to get me out of intake. Yeah, that's. That's exactly the hire that we just made a month and a half ago, and my goal by the end of the year is to be down to 10 cases, because I do still like being involved in them, but I don't. I like I don't want to answer discovery anymore.

Speaker 3: 24:01

Yeah yeah, when you're up here in two weeks when you're up here in two weeks, I'm going to pick your brain about how you manage to do that, because I have a hard time if I'm not just sticking my head in the sand and completely ignoring a case. I have a hard time letting other people run with it.

Speaker 1: 24:15

So, look, we had recently we had a shooting case that was five years old. It was originally my case, me and Manny's case. This was a very complicated case. We love the client to death and five years later we're finally going to trial and David is the lead attorney. David, susan and Metti our all-star team. Susan and Metti are board certified attorneys. There's less than 400 in the state. We have two and two females, and the two of them David and our law clerk.

Speaker 1: 24:40

And I didn't show up for jury selection because I didn't want to be bored with that, but I showed up for day one of the real trial and I'm there for two days and it was hard and I had to keep telling myself I'm like my role is the coach, my role is the advisor. If they're asking me for advice, I will give it, but I cannot come in here and step on anybody's toes. They were fully prepared, they I still think nobody knew the case better than me, but they knew the case extremely well. And look, trial lawyers. We all have egos and managing a bunch of alpha trial lawyers. That's probably great discussion to have with Manny. I know he wants to hop on the pod, so if you want to do that. You could talk to him about that because he manages them now.

Speaker 1: 25:18

But it was difficult. But I just I had to fight that urge because it was not only what was best for the client in that moment, but imagine if I came in and undercut my team. What would that do for them the next month, three months or three years? So I just I had to be very intentional and just say you guys are amazing, I trust you. And it was beautiful. The prosecutors actually dismiss the case midway through trial and the judge threatened to hold the alleged victim in contempt of court and threatened to give him six months in jail and said the only reason I'm not doing that is because the prosecutors dropped the case. Get out of here.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Why did? Why did a case like that take five years to get to trial?

Speaker 1: 25:55

There was a civil lawsuit that my client won. We didn't represent him on that, but the client won. There were about 40 witnesses that we deposed. There was, we filed a standard ground motion that we lost, that we appealed and then COVID. So it was a mix of all of those that it just took five years. Never should have taken that long. But between all those things it did and we had asked about 25 times for a dismissal in those five years and it had to take five hours of cross-examination of the alleged victim, which was it was an absolute master piece by David I texted Manny midway through and I said this is a. This is Kobe Bryant's 81-point game right now. This is a masterpiece and he did an amazing job and client was almost held in contempt, or the alleged victim was almost held in contempt of court.

Speaker 3: 26:40

Better than your client being held in contempt, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:44

What's the biggest the previous two years? It was staff. The lawyers were great, we knocked it out of the park. Then it was just staff turnover and growing and building systems and we had a ton of change. We went in the last 12 months, actually in the last 10 months, we went fully paperless. Then we did a complete custom build out with Salesforce, which has been a little rocky but it's getting better, I'd say. Now it's just trying to hit that next level of growth and really manage on numbers, metrics, data we're working, skews into our cases to know how much it costs to produce a case. When just trying to hit that next evolution while still being stable because we haven't, we've been growing that some people come in and think, geez, every week you're trying to change something.

Speaker 3: 27:26

I heard you say that before, but you're the only lawyer that I've heard ever talk about working skews into a case, so give me just a couple of minutes on what that means and how you track that.

Speaker 1: 27:37

Yeah, a skew is a short for stock keeping unit. It's things that any grocery store or really any business that sells products or goods, software that they know. Right, if you go to a cupcake shop and they're selling a cupcake for $3, they know how much it costs to produce between the materials and the labor, right? And obviously they're trying to get down both of those by buying by scale, by buying in bulk and using larger equipment instead of a five court at home kitchen aid mixer. So our lawyers don't track their time, we don't run on billables and we decided very deliberately to never even ask them because it would be a coup. They would revolt. So we're piecing it together as best as we can. We call it an e-wag and educated wild ass guess. But yeah, and we just mixed in how many phone calls, how many court appearances?

Speaker 1: 28:24

When we came up with something, then I just increased it by 25%, just assuming that we undercut it, and then we really looked at what do we pay the lawyers and what does it cost? Does it cost $2,000 to produce a case? Does it cost $5,000? And we want a very specific ROI. It look. It doesn't mean we won't take a case if we can't get it, but it just we need to know, because if somebody comes in and they say, look, we really want you, can you reduce the fee by $1,000? There's some considerations where we may, and especially if it's still profitable, and we don't really like doing that and that's why we have some other options of financing and certain things. But we want to be a little more. You don't really know, unless it's a financial decision, unless you know your numbers, unless you know what it costs, some people might get really excited.

Speaker 1: 29:08

I charged $50,000 for a sex case. What if that case cost $60,000 to produce? What if that cost case cost $40,000? Some people say it costs you $40,000 and you made $50,000. No, you're losing money. So we really want to get a better handle on that and we want to get a better handle on profitability by pod. So when lawyer X says, hey, adam, I want to erase, we're going to say you know what? We're going to give you a bigger because that's how great you are. Or we're going to say we can't right now because the numbers don't justify it, but we'll show them and say this is what we need to hit so you can make what you want to make and based on average case value and when you're doing flat fee, you can only make more money by either getting more cases, charging more money or finishing the cases sooner and being more efficient. We always have the debate of efficiency versus. We're not going to cut corners, but can we be more efficient?

Speaker 3: 30:06

Really, try to run it like a concept, right, and so I know that you are somebody who spends lots and lots of time and lots of money at various mastermind groups and coaching programs and things like that. So I'm curious, on maybe the average week or the average month for you, adam, how much of your time is split between casework, firm building, learning from somebody else and then teaching any of those entrepreneurial things you've learned from somebody else? Back to the rest of the team.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Casework yeah, casework not much, really at all. I'm very involved in intake. I'm very involved in marketing and it's not just I'm not necessarily the doer, but I'm the thinker, the planner, the manager of it, coaching up the team, listening to phone calls saying, hey, wait a minute, we could do a little better. Here and there. A good amount of time is spent in that. The last look, we just hired a sales attorney. We're four weeks in and part of me knows I need to give that up, but I don't really want to because that's my last really tie to the clients. I'm signing up 30% of all the clients when at least I know 30% of them and I can see them and say hello and build relationships.

Speaker 1: 31:14

It's really hard to tell, but I'm trying to skew more towards big picture thinking, growth. I travel a decent amount, which is hard when you have two little kids, but it's fun, but it's maybe once a month I travel or go somewhere, usually for to learn and grow, so it's definitely a good mix. I don't know about percentages, but I'm definitely trying to become more of like our good friend Craig Goldenfarb, where his job is 95% CEO and he looks at dashboards and numbers all day and he gets to network and market and go to lunch. To get on his schedule for lunch, I think you have to book him four months in advance, because he has a networking lunch every single day of the week and just things like that. I want to grow to eventually be more like Craig.

Speaker 3: 31:56

What is your goal for the firm? Three years, five years, 10 years, whatever time horizon makes sense for you?

Speaker 1: 32:01

Right. So with EOS, we do have our goal. We do have monetary goals. We want to be an eight figure criminal defense firm. We want to do high volume but also high fee, high customer service, not a tournament, burn a model. But it's more than that. We want to be prestigious. We want to be known as the go to criminal defense firm. We want to be the firm that prosecutors and public defenders refer cases to because they know we're the best. We want to be the firm that the local law students and the young PDs and prosecutors are like wow, ross and law firms on this case. Or we want to go to their happy hour Right, they're the cool place for people that love criminal law. We want to be different, we want to be innovative, we want to revolutionize.

Speaker 1: 32:44

So I can't tell you exactly how many employees are. And look, once we hit eight figures, I'm going to say, all right, I want multiple eight figures. The old post keeps moving. Yes, and it does. Seven years ago, even five years ago, I could never have imagined we'd be here right now Never. And that's part of what we're really trying to do with EOS is come up with the one, three, five, 10 year, and we'll see what happens in 10, 20, 30 years. But we may add on a practice area or two, I don't know, maybe we may go. We want to dominate South Florida. We want Miami, broward and Palm Beach. We may try Naples in the West Coast, or Tampa, or Orlando, jacksonville, I don't know, because I don't want the quality to suffer, because if it was a tournament Burnham model we'd be all over the state by now. Super cheap, dui a tournament Burnham, walkham and Plieham out. But that's not. That doesn't interest me, because it's not just about money and that just doesn't interest me. So we want to build a really prestigious firm as well.

Speaker 3: 33:41

Oh man, I think that is as good a place as any to wrap it up, adam. Where can people find you if they want to hear more about you and your firm?

Speaker 1: 33:48

Yeah, we're pretty much everywhere. We try to dominate the landscape. So, lawfirmcom we're on YouTube. We post some really cool body camera videos and some other just lots of information about the law on YouTube. We're on Instagram. Ross and law firm Facebook Haven't ventured too much in a TikTok yet. You can call us anytime. You can email me, adamantrosinlawfirmcom. I love talking to people. I've been so fortunate over the last maybe seven, eight years to have probably 10 amazing mentors in my life. Now, they didn't just come. I spent time and money and was very intentional about curating them and saying, hey, no, knock, you're going to be my friend, you're going to be my mentor, kind of thing. But and I love doing that for other people as well, because I've had so many generous people help me out and I would love to do the same. So we're easy, I'm easy to find.

Speaker 3: 34:38

Make sure we link to all of that stuff. Check out Adam and his podcast and if you're ever getting any trouble down in South Florida, you know who to call.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Yeah, come on vacation, don't leave on probation.