S03E133 38 Years of Practicing Law & Writing A Memoir with Steven Scott Eichenblatt

A seasoned trial lawyer opens the door to his hardest truths, and shows how they forged a life of service. We sit down with Steven Scott Eichenblatt, a 38-year attorney and founding partner of Page & Eichenblatt in Orlando, to trace his path from insurance defense to plaintiffs’ advocacy, the rise and strain of small firms in an ad-driven market, and the human habits that keep clients returning for decades. The twist is his memoir, Pretend They Are Dead, where abandonment, abuse, and a shocking encounter with his biological father collide with a lawyer’s instinct to verify and make sense of the past.

Steven explains how handwritten notes, steady follow-up, and community presence became his small firm’s unfair advantage against big-budget advertising and impersonal digital funnels. He’s candid about using technology and AI without losing the human voice, and he shares practical marketing wisdom for law firm owners: center the client, communicate clearly, and build trust that outlasts campaigns. The stories are raw and specific, guardian ad litem cases, families shattered by loss, and clients who kept his notes for years before returning with life-changing matters.

We also go inside the emotional calculus of a life shaped by trauma: the “feeling of no feeling,” the discipline that helped in litigation but complicated relationships, and the conscious choice to break patterns through fatherhood. Steven’s reflections on resilience, purpose, and advocacy land like field notes for anyone building a values-driven practice. 

Reach Steven here:
https://www.stevenscotteichenblatt.com/
Book: https://amzn.to/48IxFqo
https://www.floridalawonline.com/
@pageandeichenblatt
@steveeichenblatt

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the first market. Delivered 30 years. You're all the flood craft for navigating the overturning world of love for loaders. From the loving point of growth to building the driving team. The leadership and law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Marilyn Jeegans. Please join me in welcoming my guest, Stephen Scott Eichenblot, to the show today. Stephen is a practicing attorney of more than 30 years, a longtime advocate for children, and a founding partner of Paige and Eichenblot in Orlando. Over the course of his career, Steven has served as a pro bono guardian ad lightem, represented families from the first responders killed in 9-11, and earned multiple awards for his commitment to legal excellence and community service. But Stephen's story extends far beyond the courtroom. In his new memoir, Pretend They Are Dead, he shares a raw and gripping account of survival, trauma, and resilience from childhood abandonment and abuse to the long path towards healing and becoming the father he never had. The book weaves his personal history with defining moments of a legal career committed to protecting others. Today we're exploring Steven's remarkable career, the lessons drawn from his career, and the powerful story behind his memoir. I'm excited to have you here, Stephen. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Oh yeah. Thank you. That's a nice introduction. I'm dressed like I'm in winter, like up north. So I'm actually in Orlando.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

It's cold today, so it's relative, depending on where you're living.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

It is really absolutely awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Can you tell us a little bit about your leadership journey? I know you said you've been practicing for 30 years. Tell us a little bit about that.

Stephen’s 38-Year Legal Journey

Building A Small PI Firm

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Sure. I actually've been practicing 38 years now, which is seems insane. Our law firm's been we've been together since 1993. You've done really well as a firm and as a team. I started out at an insurance defense firm many years ago, a great firm in Orlando called Zuman, Kaiser, and Sutliffe in 1987. I had met my law partner, my current law partner, Greg Page, in law school, and we were friends there. And then he wound up the same firm. I wound up with, we were representing insurance companies and Walmart employers, and I got tired of squashing the little people, so to speak, because I was a good defense. I felt like I was a really good defense lawyer because I had a lot of anger inside of me. And and during that time, I became a garden ed lightum, started working on behalf of children, eventually switched over to the plaintiff's side. Both Greg Page and I were young, uh sort of naive and starting our own business because it was just he and I, and uh trying to get lines of credit from the bank and figuring out what to do and having employees and payroll and all that was that was quite an experience. Eventually we expanded. We do we would do all personal injury, romful death. We were doing some workers' comp. Don't do that much anymore, but we did expand to involve the commercial practice. So at one point we had probably about 40 people total in the firm, combining the commercial litigation practice and construction practice, like hourly billing plus contingency fee, and did that for about 10 years, and then our commercial partner was getting a lot of flat from his clients about being with the plaintiff's term. So that that became hard. So we separated and now we're back to Paige and Heikenblatt, and then our support staff. And we've had a really good time practicing law in a lot of different ways, actually.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

I love that. I love that. So over the course of the 38 years you've been practicing, when you look back, what kept you grounded and committed to the profession?

SPEAKER_02 4:32

That's a wow, that's really a great question because our profession has changed so much. It's so much harder right now, especially in Florida, deal with the insurance companies, the competition of the advertising attorneys. But the thing I think that kept me grounded was the clients facing anytime I felt sorry for myself or got frustrated, I look at some of the clients who's maybe they had lost a child, maybe they were paralyzed, maybe they were brain injured, or just struggling day to day. And I would dig in and realize, listen, I'm helping these people. I got to put any problems I have aside. And that they kept it real for me. And during the Guardian Lightham stuff, representing these children, and I encourage, especially young lawyers out there, you get a lot of satisfaction of going to the court courtroom, maybe to the house, interacting with the with the kids, like you're really helping them, and they're looking up to you because they've never met a lawyer before. You're like a foreign entity to them. And and I've gotten to spend a lot of time with kids that I was a GAL from like when they were six years old, and now they're 30. And so we still connected. So that's can be grounded for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

And that's gotta be rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

It definitely it really is. It's hard though, because you can there they can be a mess. So the family cases, and you're the GAL can be they can get ugly.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Wow, interesting. And so you actually describe yourself jokingly as almost extinct after such a long run in the law. What do you mean by that? And how has the profession changed you?

Staying Grounded Through Client Care

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Sure. Yeah, what I mean is that there are not in Florida, there are not that many small personal injury firms anymore. I think the advertisers that Morgan and Morgan, which is they claim and they probably are the largest personal injury firm in the universe. That's a diagress on their starting very aggressively advertising 20 years ago, and some other firms have come along and heavy advertising in Central Florida. So that has certainly affected smaller firms where we're getting uh we're not uh I'm all we're we're all word of mouth, former clients, people know us in the community, some limited online things, but but the the model has changed. Also with the online marketing, which is it's a totally different kind of marketing for me. Listen, I got money for law school by selling copiers 30 years ago or 40 40 years ago. And I didn't know anything about copiers, but I really did know how to sell. And I learned how to, I was good at knocking on people's doors, talking to them, just getting to know who they were. And then when we started law practice before online marketing and all that, it was the same thing. Traditional, go meet the people out of the community, meet other lawyers, shake their hands, meet doctors, remind people who we are and what we do. And now at this point in time, that's not the most, probably not the most cost-effective or time-efficient way to to meet people because everything is virtual. And so it's really driven a lot of the smaller firms out. And some of these bigger firms have also taken on the smaller firms. They've the smaller firms have gotten, that's their model has gotten swallowed up.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

They were absorbed, yeah. So acquisitions exactly. But keeping up the fight and but your community involvement is helping you with the with keeping your name out there and keeping you known to your particular client base.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

One one of the things, one of the things that I did, I used to do, not as much now, but that really worked great. I was really compulsive about making sure everybody who called our firm got some kind of correspondence from us, some kind of handwritten note, whether, even if we didn't take the case, just so that in the future, I called the clients of the future, they would at least maybe call us or think about us, the whole top of mind of awareness thing. And this is a great story. I when I was a young lawyer and had lots of hair, and my partner who has hair but is very black, where we were like in our 20s and we started the firm. And every once in a while you get the clients who are like, You're too young, want somebody more experienced. You get that, and now it's the other way. I'm now old and I'm not too. But I got I remember that one we would send people thank you cards just for stopping in and put them on like our we had a we had our own little newsletter mail up that we did. And uh, this woman came in, she had a really nice case, and uh, I thought she liked me. We connect connected. I wrote her a nice note, and then I never heard from her again until about five years later, she walk walked in her office without an appointment, and she had my handwritten note, and she's yeah, she had my handwritten note, and she said, You were I really liked you guys, but you were a little young. My daughter got in a catastrophic accident, and I really appreciated how you followed up and and I'd like you to come come with me and meet with her at the hospital and so forth. And that was that I feel that was the kind of thing that we would do that led to us representing generations of families, people that I I'm now representing grandkids and grandfathers who I represented years ago. Wow. But I feel like that's gotten lost in all this big advertising, the personal uh the human touch. And we still are we still do it. It still works for a small firm. There's a lot of different factors that play into that.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Do it something different instead of everything so loud and in your face. And and I recently interviewed someone who was talking about customer-focused messaging. Instead of being the same no fee, no win, no win, no fee, the same words, look at what your customers are looking for. And it sounds like with the with your personal touch, your community involvement, people know the type of people you are, and people do business who do good business, they just can trust you.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

It's yeah, it's I'm afraid that with AI, or you see even less personal touch. It feels like I'm already seeing a lot of that out there, getting letters that or emails. I'm going, okay, this is B it. So this is an AI letter.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Those I get a lot of those on LinkedIn messages as well. And you're like, I know no one wrote that.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah. And I get it. AI is fantastic. We're certainly using it to our advantage, but there's something about the personal touch. You can never underestimate the value of a handwritten note or just something that still is human-to-human contact, still makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

And I love that she kept that for five years and came back.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

I we have listen, when you practice 38 years, I literally have a client who's uh he is a paraplegic I represented long ago. And I talk to him probably every week. And I think I've represented every single person in his family at his church, and his and I don't talk to him every week because oh, on cases we're just we just became really good friends. Wow. And uh and that that connected me to that network. And but it's look, the phone doesn't ring anymore, it's all emails, yes, right? And it's it's just a lot harder.

Marketing Shifts And Human Touch

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Wow. So let's transition a little bit to your memoir. In your memoir, Pretend They Are Dead, it's incredibly raw and personal. What finally made you decide that now is the moment to tell the story?

SPEAKER_02 12:16

I think part of it it was just like I needed to finish it because I'd been working on it so long. It was a goal that I had set. And at one point I'd had an agent and she retired during COVID. And so I hadn't quite finished it. And then I realized that I was like, I gotta get, I gotta get this done. I started it at a time when I had gone through a divorce. I was in a low, below period, and I needed, I just felt like I really wanted to write, journal, do all those things. And I started writing stuff on paper because I had been through a lot of trauma that I never talked about. And I knew I was carrying it inside me, and I knew I had to unleash it. And as I started writing, it turned out I was a pretty good writer according to the this writing workshop. And I was able to, I really was able to connect my brain to the paper and get and get it going. And I'm really happy with how it turned out. Here you go. And it's been really cool. Oh backwards. You know, as you know. And there you are. Anyway, you know, it's really cool is I've been contacted by so many people, like that, not just like reviews, because we've I've gotten almost 200 reviews now, but just people in the community that knew me but had no idea what my story was, or and some professionals in the community, some judges who, you know, a few judges who who knew me but didn't know me, just wanted to take me to lunch and sit and hear, just hear about the process. And what I've learned is a lot of plaintiffs lawyers, especially have had similar situations. There's a lot of lawyers who have chips on their shoulders come from trauma when they are growing up or whatever it was. Because I've been hearing that story from a lot of people who never shared it before. But by me sharing my story, I think it's helped people share theirs.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, I think it makes it okay when someone sees someone else being vulnerable and telling the story. I agree.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah, it really does make it okay. But it was hard to do and hard to put yourself out there.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

But like therapy, probably. It was probably helpful to work through it.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Absolutely. Yeah, that definitely was. And I've got plenty of material for another book. So I can rat too.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

The title itself is very is like stops you in your tracks. What does that mean in the context of your life and why that title?

SPEAKER_02 14:36

The title comes from a magazine article to give you the quick the quick summary is that my biological father left me when I was a young child, was adopted by a pretty violent, nasty man, wound up getting adopted by him. And uh years, years later, and there's a lot of events that happened that I describe in my book, including a car accident, a very significant car accident that was catastrophic, that I witnessed when I was 16. That turned out to be my biological father, saved his life, didn't know it was him at that time. It's very intense. And then I started and I started, I I I I worked at the tennis court, 16 years old, hear this horrible crash, I was the only one there. Guy went through the windshield. I called the police. I just I'm freaked out because I'm just I'd never seen anything like that. A car crash like that with a guy bleeding from his head, and I here I am, just I don't know what to do, and other than call. But I walked over by the car, there's a bunch of people. They an ambulance comes, police comes, get your looky loos out there, and he was unconscious. And they pulled out his wallet, and they called out his name and says, Hey, anybody know this man? And they said the name Alan S. Nessel, and that's him on the cover, Alan S. Nessel. That was my biological father, who I didn't know, but I just got my Schwing Varsity 10 speed that I loved, and I drove home and I never told anybody I was there until I was in my 40s. And then years later, to get to the answer of your question, presumably or dead because it took me a long time to figure out what to do. Is he when he wound up dying, a sort of a reunion with him? He was disabled, had brain injury, had lots of problems. He wound up shooting himself with morphine, he died, and I went to the funeral trying to get some kind of closure, trying to figure things out. And I'd been through a lot of trauma in my own with my adopted father, and he's violent and all that, and trying to figure out okay, here's my biological father. I'll go just to see if that does anything. While I was there, I found out that he was a writer, like a real writer, and he had written thousands of pages of wrote, he had thousands of pages that he wrote in um single space typed letters to to a cousin of his over the course of 30 years. Plus, he'd been published in multiple magazines and won national awards. I had no idea. And one, and so that was part of my journey too in the memoirs, trying to figure out who he was and why he was, and thousands of pages. One of the magazine articles that was sent to me by the cousin that I met at the funeral was called Hello Yellow, and it was a story about the last night he's my father spent with us with a drawing of a man with his back to his three kids, and he literally tells the story of our last our last supper together. And he knew he was dropping us off, wasn't coming back, but we we didn't know. And in that story, he writes about how he'd gone to a psychiatrist, and his psychiatrist told him, just pretend they are dead.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Oh my god.

Memoir Origins And Healing

SPEAKER_02 17:58

And that's what he did. We lived in the same town, lived in the same town, lived within two or three miles from him. I was just a kid, and he never he never saw him again.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

And you lived in the same town?

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Lived in the same town, walked by he was a veterinarian, walked by his office a million times. But when you're a kid and things just things just happened, I wasn't allowed to see him, and I wasn't like banging on his door either. Yeah. But I was a kid, he was the adult. And then going through all the stuff that he wrote, his writing was incredible. I learned what happened in the car accident, and you'll have to read the book through that. But there was just a lot of insane things that you it's as I was doing, as I was doing my the memoir and the agents were looking at and the editors, publishers, and I said, you know what? One thing about this memoir is I have the evidence to back up to these stories, are sound so crazy, but they are not only true because I've got all of the evidence that he sent me, I also contacted like former employees of his, did my research to make sure that this really happened. So you don't want to be the you don't want to send stories out there that are accurate.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

No, that's true, absolutely. And you described burying your pain so deep that it became the feeling of no feeling.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

What did living that emotional state look like it's like looking at a gray wall and trying to figure out how to put color on it? It's I mentioned I went to my father's funeral, I tried to feel something, and my emotions, and it's and I just I talk about this in my book too, is I've been married three times. My third one, my third, my wife now is it's fantastic. But my first two marriages and some of my other relationships, I was always told it was always me and Steve's a great guy, but he's disconnected to his things. Like I had trouble being emotional because I got beat up a lot by my father growing up, and and a lot of other things happened, and you bury, so you just bury your emotions. I bury my feelings, and I'm still working on it. But uh, it helps you when you're a defense lawyer or even a plaintiff's lawyer because I can tunnel vision, compartmentalize, but but really like when I think about my father's death or my adopted father's death, I feel nothing, like which is less than feeling anger. It's like I just don't feel anything. I don't feel sorry for the I don't feel any very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah, that's an interesting thought to make it a feeling with no feeling, but yeah. So you've spent decades helping children, families, and vulnerable people. Do you see that's a connection through your past and the clients that you were trying to serve?

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Oh 100%. One of the ways growing up that I survived, and it was survival in my house, was I became a big reader. I my grades were horrible in school. I graduated from high school with like 2.1 and because I didn't go to class. I was doing drugs and I was defiant. Everything I was supposed to do, I did the opposite, got in a lot of trouble, but I was a great reader, and a lot of the books I read were books that were like Horatio Alger, like the uh the young boy that becomes a rich guy and then helps, then helps feed the poor. I loved those books. I read a lot about like the the Native Americans, and I went to work for the Indians, for the Florida Governor's Council on Indian Affairs because I wanted to help them. And I went to Israel because it was this I wanted to help people there. I wanted to join the IDF. And I realized that I wanted to use the energy I had inside of me to help other people, and that wall was the way for me to do it. And it's been it's been great. I really, I love, I love helping people and I love the satisfaction I get from it. I hate fighting with insurance adjusters all day, but but I'm good at it. So yes, it definitely in my upbringing definitely connected me to uh to where I am now.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Fantastic. And you became a very different kind of father to your own five children. And what drove you to your determination to not repeat the past?

The Title’s Story And Family History

SPEAKER_02 22:10

That just that exact is my biological father was left by his own father. Uh, and I did not want to be the I didn't want to repeat that same pattern because there was a history in my family, for whatever reason, of men taking off. And I didn't want to do that. Plus, I have a heart for kids. I was always the guy, the kid that was looking at people playing with their dad, playing catch or whatever it was, and being envious, being jealous, and being shy, like afraid to hey, can I step in with? So I wanted to be the dad that was interacting with his kids. I coached the teams. When I grew up, when I played sports, no one ever came to my games. And I'm not, that's just reality. It's just I don't feel sorry for myself. I just wanted to, I just want to make sure that is not how my kids developed that my kids know of their form that and I became I'm probably too soft as a dad, but luckily my kids are all doing really well.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

I love that. I love that. So we're obviously gonna have a link to the book in show notes. What do you hope readers, especially those who face their own trauma, take from your story?

SPEAKER_02 23:19

That you can't spend your life as a victim. You can't spend your life feeling sorry for yourself, whatever cards you're given, your thread, only you can fix it. Only you can make a decision to just live your life in the past and and think about all the bad things that happened, or live your life in the present and future, figure out what you have to do to make yourself better on the inside, and then help everybody else and use that to tell your story.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

I love that. And finally, after revisiting your past so publicly with this book, how do you see the next chapter of your life unfolding?

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Well, that's a pretty that's a great question. I'm certainly going to be continue practicing law because I do enjoy it. I got a great partner, so we'll keep keep doing that as long as we can. And then I've been invited to speak at a number of different places about my book, even uh, even up at some colleges and some book conferences. And I I think that I will probably write another book because people are responding and it seems to be helping people. And I'd like to write something about being a lawyer and practicing and so and that as well. I'm just gonna I don't mind that in my comfort zone. I don't know what direction I'm gonna wind up going in, but I'm up for anything.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Well, if you write that next book, you gotta give me a call and come back and we'll talk about that. But that's exciting as far as the speaking engagements and stuff. I this has been a really great show. I really am enjoyed talking about your book and about your past and your pro your oh my gosh, I can't talk accuracy of your growth of your firm. I know my listeners will probably want to reach out to you or follow you. Where would be the best place for them to do that?

SPEAKER_02 24:54

My law firm, the law firm is called Page and Iconblatt. I can blast sort of spell it, E-I-C-H-M-B L A T T. But my I have my I have a website for my book, which is www.stepenscott Iconblatt.com and pretend they are dead is you know that you should be able to get to it on Amazon pretty quickly. But if anybody has any questions and what I like if the list shows about building a law practice, some of the huge mistakes we made, some of the things that were great, or just needs to be encouraged to hang in there, just give me a call.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

I love that. So we'll make sure that we have all of those in the show notes. And again, this has been a great opportunity to chat with you. I really appreciate your time today, Steven.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Thank you so much. It was nice meeting you too. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to LawmarketingZone.com to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law Podcast, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

Numbness, Resilience, And Service

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at LawMarketingZone.com. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources, and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us to review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.