How This Niche Law Firm Went Nationwide with $0 Ads - #247

This niche law firm went nationwide in the US with zero ad spend.

Joshi only built authority through teaching, writing, and speaking—and that organic law firm marketing turned into a nationwide referral network.

If you're bleeding cash on ads to attract clients, watch how specialization built a nationwide referral pipeline—and real relationships that last.

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📄 CHAPTERS

0:00 - Niche Law Firm Goes Nationwide With $0 Ads

1:32 - The Hyper-Specialization That Sets This Practice Apart

4:29 - From India to Michigan: An Attorney's Origin Story

8:10 - Screening Cases to Protect Law Firm Cash Flow

9:05 - Consultant vs Co-Counsel: Two Fee Structures That Work

10:58 - Organic Law Firm Marketing: A Referral Pipeline With Zero Ads

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Transcript

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There is a key here. The key is that you have to be prepared to challenge and attack arguments and theories, not people behind And I take pride in my work because over the period of time, I've had many tough cases where I ended up being friends with opposing counsel after the case was over and maintained their relationships. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show. The podcast, designed to help family attorneys build the firm of their dreams. I am your host, Tyler Dolph, and today we are continuing our owner operator series. We have Ashish S. Joshi who who practice in India. He moved to America. He now hyper specializes in his divorce cases. The complex, ugly, sad, terrible divorces involving violence and children. And really encourage you to to check out this podcast and, you know, learn from Ashish understand how he was able to specialize his firm and what he's built. Thank you so much for your time today. I am so excited to have you on the Sterling Family Law Show. If you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about your firm. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. My name is Ashish S. Joshi. I'm an attorney out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I'm licensed to practice law in New York, Michigan, Washington, D.C., and my background is from India. So I practiced law in India as well. I'm based out in Michigan, but my practice is a nationwide and at times internationally as well. Wow. Tell me more about that. How how are you running a nationwide firm? Well, my primary area of practice is family law. And within family law I handle complex litigation cases, cases involving typically family violence and by family violence. What I mean is cases involving allegations of domestic abuse involving interpersonal violence, cases involving severe parental alienation, emotional and financial abuses, and international abduction of children. So within that family violence umbrella, those are the cases that typically come across my desk and my area. Specialization is law and forensic sciences. So I typically come in to cross examine, let's say a child custody evaluator, or to put on evidence of emotional or coercive controlling behaviors. Try to educate the code. What's meant by parental alienation, combat the propaganda of misinformation and disinformation regarding alienation and issues related to that. So at times I'm brought in by the client himself or herself. Could be a dad or a mom who may have read one of my articles or books, or watched an interview and wants to speak with me. At times it's the local council reaching out to me saying that, hey, I have this issue and I have an expert coming in. I need some help to depose the expert across. Examine the expert. So it varies. But yeah, I litigate across different jurisdictions, but my role as a litigator or as a consultant is focused on these issues. I love the specialization. I got to imagine that's a that's a difficult role that you have to play in, in the day to day life. It's difficult from two different perspectives. It's obviously challenging from a substantive viewpoint, because you have to understand the nuances of each state's custodial factors and the best interest analysis factors that come into play. But it's also difficult to ensure that you have proper boundaries, because at the end of the day, you are dealing with the really dark cases. At times you are dealing with children, you're dealing with cases involving physical, sexual, emotional abuse and allegations of this abuse. You are at times dealing with a child who has been abducted out of the country. So you're dealing with foreign systems as well, and they're law enforcement and the Hague Convention. So self-care and ensuring proper boundaries are in place is also important when you do these cases day in and day How'd you get your start? Give us some origin story. Well, so I was born in India. I grew up in India. I practiced law in India in High Court for about four years or so, and I came to University of Michigan Law School for my post-graduate legal studies. I did my master's in law, and for a time being, I practiced on international issues and cross-border litigation. But my mentor at that point in time was a gentleman who was a who is a clinical psychologist and an attorney, and I started to work with him. I was curious about doing jury trials. I'd done a lot of bench trials in India, but India doesn't have jury system, so that was new to me. So in order to get more experience, I started doing second chair work with him in front of juries. And his expertise was cases where cases involving false allegations of child sexual abuse now, which are very hard hitting and which require tremendous understanding of child suggestibility, forensic interviewing techniques. Where do false allegations come from, how to interpret medical evidence or the lack of it, and things like that, which led me down the different path of child suggestibility and alienation, and what causes some sort of negative influence on an individual, whether one is an adult, one is a child. How does the influence work? What happens when you are caught in a cult? What happens if you are trapped in a loyalty bind? Tribal warfare. And eventually I came on to family law through criminal defense work. And do you have your own firm? Or you work at a larger firm and have that specialty? have my own firm now. When the mentor I was talking about his name is Demosthenes Lorandos. When doctor was an active practice, we had a firm called Lorandos Joshi, and he retired from the practice of law sometime in 2016, I believe. And since that time, once he retired, it's I own the firm. It's Joshi attorneys and counselors. And how big is the firm today? we the full time. We had two two lawyers here. But I often have a contract lawyers involved in cases in different jurisdictions. And we have two paralegals. So in a case involving, let's say I have a high conflict litigation in California. I would obviously involve my staff and my colleagues here, but I would also have contract lawyers working with me as part of the legal team to augment the research or to require any kind of special research on these issues. Part of the challenge in my area of practice is that I look for professionals who have a blend of law and forensic sciences, because it's important to understand the legal part of it, but it's also important to understand the science. When you are going to cross examine a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a mental health professional to understand the peer reviewed literature, the data behind it, etc.. Fascinating. I want to stay on the business side for a little bit as it relates to, you know, running the business of a law firm and being the CEO, but also being highly specialized and working lots of cases. How do you how do you manage the firm? How do you, you know, ensure that you guys are getting paid in cash flow and all the things while also being so specialized in your practice? I try to screen the cases that I take. I want to make sure that the cases I take are cases that I can add value. So for example, if it's just a high conflict case where the parties are unable to get along and they are just wanting some lawyer to do litigation for the sake of division of marital resources, property, etc. that's not my cup of tea. I get involved in cases where I can add significant value in terms of forensic sciences that are involved in terms of child safety, in terms of protecting your parents relationship with the child, which is at stake. So once that's understood and that's agreed upon, then the next step is what's going to be my role. And my role typically is in one of the two areas. Either I work as a consultant to the local attorney, where I work as a litigation consultant. I helped the local attorney shape the litigation strategy, get the right kind of motions before the court, help understand the science behind the custody valuation data, whatnot. But I'm working as a sounding board for the lawyer and help lawyer prepare for the case. In the other role, I put on a hat as a litigator, and I come on as co-counsel, which requires that I take depositions. I do part of the trial, I cross examine witnesses. So obviously the fee structure is are different for each role, and it's dependent upon the budget. The client has availability of my time. What's the court's litigation docket look like? Things like that. But unfortunately, perhaps fortunately in two areas that I primarily work of, family law and criminal defense lawyers in the US are not allowed to take on contingency field requirements. So that really requires you to be very disciplined in your approach, in how you spend your resources and how you allocate the resources to a case. But in some other foreign jurisdictions, it's a different system. So you also have to be cognizant about this if you are working cross jurisdictions, because what may be acceptable practice in the United States may be really frowned upon in some parts of the world. Interesting. Wow. Yeah, kind of different. You know, we run our family law firm and is very much, you know, standard divorce mediation trial. How are you able to maintain a pipeline and be able to project your business out over, you know, the next year or two? It's mainly organic. I would say I don't engage in any paid advertising, so nothing like, for example, pay per click or whatever is in the vogue these days. I maintain a significant amount of teaching practice. So what I mean by that is I write articles, I write books, I engage in a lot of teaching at continuing legal education programs, where there are lawyers, where there are judges, where there are magistrates guardians and lights. And that often leads me to other cases. Typically, I would be presenting it, let's say, a conference in Austin, Texas, and I would be presenting before a multidisciplinary crowd consisting of a psychologists, lawyers, judges. And that would lead to someone reaching out to me and saying, hey, you just talked about that vignette or the case study. I have a case exactly like that. Can I please have a consultation with you? The consultation would open up some other opportunities where I may play a role in the case as a litigant, I'm sorry, as a litigator or as a consultant. And that's how it goes. Sometimes the same local council that I work with in another case may come back to me and say, I have another case of this nature. And now we have a different fact pattern, but somewhat similar. Let's work together again. That's great. Yeah, it's very collaborative. As I'm thinking about your your story and incredible that you were able to practice law in both in India and now in Michigan and learning all those things. What advice would you have to a new attorney who is looking to get maybe more specialized? You know, maybe they've been a family law attorney for a while, but they gravitate towards your story, your special specialization. What advice would you give them? Well I'll tell you what to work for me or what I find enjoyable. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I discovered early on that I enjoy new challenges. I enjoy meeting people, I enjoy collaborative work, but I also enjoy cases where there is a significant amount of conflict. There is a key here. The key is that you have to be prepared to challenge and attack arguments and theories, not people behind it. And I take pride in my work because over the period of time, I've had many tough cases where I ended up being friends with opposing counsel after the case was over and maintained their relationships. What I found helpful was to join national organizations such as American Bar Association for the AAfC, for people who work in the Family Court area and then attend their conferences, of course, but try to get involved actively, which means that you have to have a role in either teaching, publishing, active committee work, where you actually work on projects with professionals from different parts of the country. It's time consuming. It takes a lot of energy, for sure, but that's where you get to develop as a professional, and you get to get to be in a habit of exchanging ideas, challenging ideas, but still maintaining a collaborative relationship and personality. Getting involved? Give the experience. Find a mentor. We hear that kind of narrative a lot on this podcast that you come out of law school with all at gusto and, you know, think you can take over the world, but having the humility to ask questions, to ask for help, to raise your hand and, and take that kind of leap of like, I'm just going to I'm going to sign up for a committee. I'm going to get involved and see what happens. I would say one of the if there was one trait which I think is a key to be a successful professional in the area that I am in, I think that would be curiosity. You have to demonstrate and have curiosity. You have to be able to ask question why or what if or how come. Look at it from a different vantage point and viewpoints, and that also helps you as a professional, as a human being, you find the work rewarding after a while. That's right. A good as we're kind of closing up there here. Is there any any other piece of advice or kind of knowledge. Sure. You'd want to share with our audience. No, I think I enjoy what I do. I'm fortunate in that and at the end of the day, any professional, I mean, you create pride in your work and you enjoy what you do. That's end of it. what it takes. I really appreciate your time today and look forward to continuing to watch your journey.