Building a Firm You Believe in | Craig Mastantuono

Craig Mastantuono didn't leave public defense just to be his own boss. He left because he had a vision for what a great law firm could actually look like.

Today, his firm is less a practice and more a culture. It’s built around a philosophy that truly defending someone is setting them up for success both in the courtroom and out. Craig walks us through how his team uses the ACE questionnaire to uncover clients’ stories, why holistic client services are a necessary backbone to defense, and how he helps his clients flourish beyond the requirements of the court.

Whether you're thinking about starting your own firm, have your own already, or want to learn how to improve client services in any practice, this episode is for you.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
01:15 Welcome & Guest Background 
29:05 Why start your own firm?
39:35 Why are client services so important?
48:19 What is the ACE Questionnaire?
1:07:03 Motivations & Why Defense

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Telling a judge your client never had a birthday party is something that, you know, simple that connects and that anybody can relate to. The process of asking some of my clients these questions makes me realize they've never thought about or been asked these questions before.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Welcome back to another episode of Sanctuary in the Jungle. I'm your host, Aaron Nelson. Today I'm sitting down with a Chicago-raised criminal defense attorney, Craig Mostentune. After years of working in public defense in Walkershaw, Craig went out on his own, not just to be his own boss, but to build the kind of law firm he truly believed in. His firm now isn't just a practice, it's a culture. At the heart of that culture is a dedication to crisis management through client services. Today, Craig walks us through how his team creates a sanctuary through holistic services. We'll talk about how the Ace questionnaire helps him see the full picture of a client's story and why he goes out of his way to set clients up for success both inside and outside of the courtroom. Hope you enjoy. Here's Craig. Welcome to Sanctuary in the Jungle. Craig, thanks for joining us here. Thanks for having me. Long trip up from Milwaukee, huh? It's a nice drive. It's a beautiful state we live in. As I like to say, you guys have the best law firm over on the east coast of the state, and you're coming over here to the west coast of the state.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Nice to be over here at the other uh best law firm. And thanks for the compliment. Not so sure that's true, but we try our best.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Well, I don't know. Absolutely. So I know you're in Milwaukee now, but uh you're a Chicagoan, is that right? South side Chicagoan, born and raised, yeah. Yeah, tell me about growing up uh in the south side of Chicago. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Uh, you know, I looking back on it, I think it was wonderful. Um I'm not so sure it was always wonderful at the time, um, but that's makes me like everybody else, right? Growing up is tough.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Uh no matter where and how you grow up. Well, the south side of Chicago is, you know, there's two sides of Chicago if you're from Chicago, the north and south, right? The north side of Chicago is where the wine sippers live and the Cubs fans, and the south side of Chicago is the multi-ethnic, multi-racial, working class part of town. There's also a west side, so I don't want to disrespect my west side brothers in Chicago uh and sisters. But um, you know, to be a lawyer now is unusual for someone that grew up on the south side of Chicago, at least at my kind of level of socioeconomic status. Nobody on the block that I grew up in uh on went to college. Nobody on the block beyond those that block went to college, nobody beyond those blocks went to college.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Like the people before you or the or like your your your colleagues, your peers?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

The m my elders. So my parents, right? My parents and the parents around me. This was a working class part of Chicago where the average median income was in at the time probably the 20,000s. And um, you know, back then making it in my old neighborhood was getting a union job. You know, my uncles worked for places like International Harvester, right? Okay. Um and you know, getting a union job was kind of the height of of making it for working class Chicagoans at the time. So, you know, in the sense that I, you know, I repeat this line sometimes about my clients. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but like we become what we see, right? Oh, sure. And if if I became what I saw back then, I'd be, you know, a union guy somewhere working, probably getting ready to get done with retirement because my body was given out of a lot of uh years of labor. Or in my case, frankly, my father was a small businessman, was a deli owner and a caterer who started a business with his grand with my grandfather, his father. And so he was a businessman, a small businessman within that town. So or I would be in the food and hospitality uh catering business right now.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

So I know you're a small business owner now, and we'll we'll we'll get to that uh later. But tell me a little bit more about your parents. You were you're a child of immigrants.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

I am the son and grandson of immigrants. My father's parents emigrated from Italy in the 1921, which was a very common uh wave of Italian immigration at the time. And my mother was born and raised in Mexico City. And she emigrated with her two brothers and parents after World War II. My grandfather was a foreign national in the U.S. Army and served under General Patton in North Africa. Wow. And he enlisted in the Army as a foreign national, as a Mexican citizen when he was 35 with three kids at home to ultimately get to the States. Wow. He was living in the States at the time and sending money back, and he enlisted during World War II, which, you know, sometimes I think about that just as an aside and think, you know, who goes to war, a world war, at 35 with a wife and three kids?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah. You know. Well, I mean, there there was a story that motivated him, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Right. And and a desire, I think, to to emigrate. Sure. And uh, you know, I mean, he his his he was here working and sending money home for a reason, right? Things weren't good. Yeah, it was better where where he was coming to. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

What was um the population like where you grew up then? Were there a lot of other immigrants? Were there a lot of was there some diversity?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, there were there was a lot of diversity actually, but Chicago is a very ra racially segregated place, most along residential lines, right? And so I grew up in a neighborhood, you know, 15 minutes south of downtown Chicago, where you knew what blocks you could go on and what neighborhoods you could go in and had to stay out of, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Based on your looks, based upon your skin color.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

I mean, the biggest thing on the south side of Chicago when you were growing up in racial segregation is there were black neighborhoods and ethnic neighborhoods. Okay. And back then, residentially, they were segregated hard. And there was danger for, you know, kids who weren't African American to go to African American neighborhoods, and certainly the other way around, African-American kids to come into white ethnic neighborhoods. And kind of as this half relative to other Latino people, fairly fair-skinned, you know, Italian-looking person, myself and some cousins of mine that were also half Mexican and half other mixes, we kind of moved in and around those circles sometimes with more ease and sometimes with more apprehension. So uh, you know, Chicago is just a racially charged town. Okay. Um, especially growing up uh, you know, in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Did you grow up uh speaking multiple languages? Uh I grew up speaking fairly proficient Italish and fairly proficient Spanglish. Tell me a little bit more about that. What do you mean? Well, my mom and my mom was Spanish, my English Spanish was her first language, right? But my mom and dad spoke English at home because my father's first language, which it was English. He didn't speak fluent Italian. His parents did, but they were immigrants that were arrived in America, we're gonna speak English, we're going to assimilate and become American citizens. So it wasn't a priority, you know. My dad was born in 1932, it wasn't a priority in the 40s to make sure that your son spoke Italian as much as it was to make sure that your son fit in to society, to larger society. So he and my mom spoke English at home. So we didn't grow up speaking multiple languages, but you know, every weekend on Sundays, especially, I was either at my Italian grandparents' or my uh Mexican grandparents' home where we were eating what we would call field to fork now. Yeah, but really back. I didn't know what that was, obviously back. Farm to table. Farm to table, field to fork. Uh but uh, you know, these were immigrant grandparents that grew everything in large gardens, rolled pastas, made salsas, you know, and interestingly enough, they knew each other uh as their children had mar married. And my Mexican grandfather spoke Italian from his service in World War II. He came up through North Africa, hit Sicily, and went up and ended up in Rome for a year and a half working at an Allied hospital because by then he spoke multiple languages and served as an interpreter, and it got him out of the last year or so of battlefield duty off the front of the side. So he would he would speak Italian with my Italian grandfather, and he thought it was a kick, you know, to do that.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

So you would hear a lot of Spanish with from the grandparents, a lot of Italian from the grandparents.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Of course.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Do you are you now uh bilingual, multilingual?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

I wouldn't call myself bilingual, I would call myself proficient at understanding uh Spanish. Okay. I sling a little Italian for fun. Um but we serve Spanish-speaking clients. My team in Milwaukee, we have two fluent Spanish speakers uh on our staff, our investigator and our legal assistant. And so we serve the Latino community and Spanish-speaking clients with frequency.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Yeah. And I want to get into that because I know you're uh uh I know how that impacts the profession and what you do, the services that you provide, the sanctuary that you can give. But before we get there, just a little bit more about uh growing up. Did you were you an only child?

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Did you have siblings? No, I was the youngest of four. I have two older sisters and an older brother. Okay. And um two of them still work in that Delian catering service that never really was great at providing with us with a lot of money, um, but was good at um providing a structure. And when you're kind of the third or fourth kid in a small business family, uh you start you you have the opportunity, I think, to look around a little more versus your older siblings that are kind of coming up in that business and probably you know working harder in it. And I I feel that I was privileged by that. I had older brothers, brother and sisters that looked out for me, and I came five years later. I was kind of a little bit more of a surprise baby after the first three were born. And um, you know, I I wanted at a pretty early uh age in high school to get higher education.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

And I, you know how did that you I mean, you said, you know, you you are what you see, yeah. Right? I mean, and it doesn't sound like there were a lot of other people in your neighborhood or in your family or elsewhere that were seeking higher education. So what do you think it was about you and your experience that led you there?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah, well well, probably one thing was the high school that I went to. I was doing fairly poorly in public schools coming into middle school and out of middle school. Uh in some ways that was a very good experience because Chicago schools were desegregated at that time. So, you know, I went to school with black kids and Latino kids and kids of all uh ethnic ethnicities, which was wonderful. There was a good diversity of community. Um but uh for various reasons I just wasn't doing well in middle school. I was fighting, I wasn't satisfied, I wasn't getting good grades, I was getting incomplete grades.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Um so I ended up going to an all-boys Catholic high school on the south side of Chicago, n near my neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

All right.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Um Chicago has a ton of parochial schools. Uh back then, a lot more single-sex uh Catholic high schools.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Now they've all neighborhood neighborhood-based.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yes. And so the one I went to was Marist High School, All Boys Catholic. I, you know, I did need discipline. I got it there. Uh it took me about a year to adjust to get to the with the program, but I got with the program. And my older brother had gone there as well. So I wasn't the only kid that got sent there. Um, and it was affordable for a working-class family back then. I mean, I remember my tuition being about six, about$850 my freshman year, and it poked up to like$1,250 my senior year.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And that was still a good amount of money for my parents to scrape together and send us to schools like that, but it turned me on to the possibilities of higher education. Um, but it was just the concept of, you know, thinking that learning is cool, good grades can open doors, you know, discipline is required to get good grades. Yeah. I was an athlete in high school, uh, you know, and so I just got steered onto the right track. And uh and my scores were good. So when we came time to take tests, I did well on the ACT and I was college bound, you know, so I started seeking out opportunities. Ended up going to Loyol University of Chicago. And is that on the south side? That is on the north side. So I moved up to the wine sippers country. Wow. Yeah, and and uh it would also was, you know, I would come home for the weekends fairly enough, you know, not too frequently. I wanted the college experience. But I went up there with a plan uh and I had enough money to live there my freshman year, and then I became a resident assistant, an RA, my sophomore, and two more years afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

You worked your way through.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah, I put myself through college and law school.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

And that was my plan was if I don't get this job, I'm gonna have to figure something else out. So I waited tables and bartended my way through college and law school, but that RA job really helped me stay on campus for the rest of my college term and and work for a room and board and was all free at the time. So that worked out really well.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

So when you said you worked your plan going in, obviously as an 18-year-old young man going to college, you know, everyone's got a plan, or as Mike Tyson says, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the nose.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Did you get punched in the in the face metaphorically? Oh, sure. You know, one of the punches in the face that I got was realizing that being transactional about education, which is what you did when you I don't want to sell it too far, you know, it's not like nobody in my neighborhood ever went to college. Some of, you know, certainly people from that high school that I went to, even though it was kind of a working class Catholic high school, were college-bound. Um, lots of kids. Um, it was college preparatory school. Um, but it we we were still very transactional, at least uh in my small community. If you went to college, it was to get a job. And so, you know, uh there was a neighbor who did have a college degree who was a starting accountant and said, well, get a degree in business. You know, you go to college, you get major in business, get a job. And you know, two years into my college career, I'm you know, doing finance work and economics and accounting, going, I hate this. You're looking at spreadsheets thinking, what am I doing? Right. Meanwhile, you know, my history class, my sociology class class, my English class, those are things that I love studying and reading. And you know, by then I was in the school of business, so I finished that degree, picked up a minor in sociology.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

But do you think your your background of just, you know, school is a tool that's gonna get me a job because that's what I need to do, did that limit some of what, you know, maybe the freedoms that our children have now? Oh. A hundred percent. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, we just thought about education as b at least I did, as entirely for the purpose of getting a job. So there's a process that you go through, right? It's kind of an awakening of your mind, right, to get turned on to higher learning and to be scholarly and to uh explore and investigate new things. Seek knowledge, right? Absolutely. It's Carnegie Library, right? You know, that's there you go. You know, always this place of light, right? You know. Um so um, you know, that was a process for me. And by the time I was nearing the end of my college career, and I I got okay grades and was doing fine, um, I knew I didn't want to come out of college and be a businessman, whatever that was. I ended up uh majoring in marketing. I did like marketing a lot in the sense, you know, not in the sense of we people think of marketing like television commercials. That's not really marketing, it's looking at society and saying, where's a need? How is business fulfilling it? What is the product that we use to fill that need, you know, and so our advertising is a subset of that, right? But um I enjoyed that, but I knew that I didn't want to come out and be like an account exec at an ad agency, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

When you were in undergrad, were you did you start thinking about law school? How did it come to be that law school got on your uh on your path?

SPEAKER_01 15:56

You know, do you ever think that you look back on your own past and you fill in gaps and invent a lot of it?

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Sure, absolutely. I mean, it's like it's hard to say now why it why why it is that happened, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:07

All of those days stacked on each other back then, experiencing them and how they added up.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

But I mean, my my memory of mine, this is is I went to school uh at UWM uh and I was gonna get a teaching degree, but I was also a soccer player. And uh to become a student teacher conflicted with the soccer schedule. So next thing you know, I'm a philosophy major. Right. Those are the types of life decisions that I was making when I was 20.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Yeah. So here's my reconstructed memory of one of the m biggest influences on why I decided to go to law school. You know, when I was in my third and fourth year of college, when I was ending my college career, I was certainly um, I was reading stuff like Studs Turkle working, you know, I was I was picking up my sociology minor. I became turned on to the cause of social justice, right? I I, you know, at the time, you know, our our causes were divestment in South Africa, our causes were, you know, uh Central America and what the U.S. government was doing to screw things up down there. Um, you know, we were going to the Peace Museum, hanging out at places like the uh Heartland Cafe, which was a you know a Beatnik cafe and north of just north of Rogers Park on the north end of Rogers Park. And so I cared a lot about uh issues I think that um motivate a lot of defense attorneys, you know, uh equality of opportunity, you know, disadvantages being overcome, challenges being overcome, how poverty can impact lives, right? Just basic at the biggest umbrella, unfairnesses. Unfairness unfairnesses, yes, unfair, unfairness. And so um, you know, uh one of my distinct memories is um listening to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album for the first time. Yeah, you know, it's it's night circa 1987, 88, you know. I hadn't really, you know, that album came out 15, 18 years pre prior to that. Uh, I hadn't really listened to the lyrics. If you listen to that album right now, they are so relevant.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Isn't that crazy? We we've been watching some different things, and you go back and you're like, that's still relevant. 40 years ago, some of the same issues just keep coming up, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Marvin was singing about trigger happy policing and I can't pay my taxes, and his friend getting home from the Vietnam War, can't find no work, can't find no job, you know, uh, and you know, environmental themes in that album, all kinds of you know, um really relevant themes that still ring home today. Honestly, that you know, in my reconstructed memory made me want to go to law school as much as anything. Right. You know, try to make a difference, you know. But I will say this: if when I entered law school, uh, you know, and applied to and ended up going to DePaul University, still on the north side of Chicago and uh moving into an apartment and going to law school, I was one of those entering law students that was telling themselves, you know, you can do anything with a law degree. I can go work in policy, I can write, you know, I can we tell it.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

How many people tell me about that?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Like, well, uh, you know, it's just good to get a law degree. I was like, okay. Right. Uh guess what? You know, when you're paying for it, you're taking out loans, and you hit like your third semester of law school, what you realize is I need a job when this is done.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

And yeah, you know who's employing people with law degrees?

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Law firms and places where they employ people to practice law, right? So um I realized pretty quickly I was gonna be a lawyer.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Now I imagine your your parents, your family are uh proud, deeply proud of all of you've all that you've done, but you've certainly strayed away from the blue-collar, you know, small b to some degree the small business uh doing that. What at the time that you were doing that, what was how did that feel like with your family? Did it feel like you were separating from them?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Did it feel like that that was No, I I I come from a tight-knit family. I you know what we didn't benefit from resource and fine financially, uh resource-wise and financially, I I benefited greatly from a caring, loving family with siblings. I mean, I I'm still tight with all of my siblings. My father passed away during the pandemic, my mother's gonna be 94 next weekend. Good genes. Um yeah, and we're all getting together, of course. And so I I had a tight-knit family. So it didn't feel like I was, but it did feel like I was entering into a different world. Yeah. In fact, I remember going home, walking into my dad's shop, my mom was there too, and just telling them about, well, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go to you know law school. And they thought that sounded good. And I think for parents in this in the position where it's their fourth kid, they they're not parents that pay for college, they're parents that support and love their children and want them to do better. Um, it was very much, if you can do that, you should do that, right? They see you happy, they see you being successful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Um, so they they're okay with your going in that direction. Because I could see you're leaving their world and going on to a different world. In some ways, education is just a different world.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

You know who it was different, you know where that contrast really uh set in for me was a lot of my friends that I grew up with on the South Side, right? Yeah, by the time I was in my second year in law school, right, these guys had been working for six years. You know, they they they had you know calluses on their hands. They went to work for a living, they had cars, you know, that were relatively they would come up with them. Kids not yet, none of them yet, uh, but surprisingly, um, but they would come up in cars and visit me on my apartment on the north side. We go to clubs, we'd, you know, hit bars, we'd hang around in my apartment and drink, you know. And um to them, it felt like I was entering a different world. And for me, it felt like I was leaving that world. In fact, you know, when I was studying for the bar, uh, because I took the Wisconsin bar, I went to Chicago law school. I remember them telling me later, yeah, we would leave you alone. Like if you we would wait for you to say, what are you guys doing this weekend? or I've got a three-day weekend because we didn't want you to screw this up, you know. And we didn't want to come because we were. A flavor of that. You know, but that this was real life, and I would never compare myself to a movie. But I understand. But they, you know, they they were supportive. I remember my friends saying, you know, uh my best friend Steve dropping me off, and he was my cousin, my mom's brother's son, dropping me off one time, and you know, by then he'd been working six years, and he's like, You got any money? Yeah, I got money, you know. I got a roll of L tokens, I got 20 bucks, I'm I'm good, you know. And him, you know, here, take some dough, dude. You know, like there was stuff like that. My sister dropping off groceries at my school at my apartment, stuff like that. So I had a lot of support. Sure. And um, so that that's where I got the you know sense of leaving one world and entering another was with your buds, because you're 22, yeah. You know, 24, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

And then you uh so you start law school, um, you're there in DePaul, right? And uh your first year, I think you're you have a you have a job and it it doesn't have anything to do with criminal defense work.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Uh a couple of them. I I was bartending at the Hotel Belmont in Chicago, I'm Belmont and Sheridan, banquet bartendering, uh bartending, I should say. And um, but also uh I had started working before I went to law school in the summer full time and after my first year in law school for boys and girls clubs of Chicago.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

And you were there, were you gonna you were gonna maybe give up law school, I had heard.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

I wanted to quit law school after my first year. Yeah. I went to my club director and said, you know what, I hate it. I don't like the community, frankly. I I the people that are the other law students. I'm gonna be honest about that. I wasn't thrilled with my environment. I there were you know, they were all fine people. It was but I just uh I wasn't um I I wasn't enjoying the community that I was in. It seemed very gunner-like, it seemed very competitive, and so I went to my club director and said, Look, I'm I'm running these daycare programs and and and club um camp programs for kids that are disadvantaged. I love this job. I'm good at it. You're making a difference. Yeah, and and they're making a difference in my life too. And I knew that. So I said, I'm uh I want this. I'm gonna quit and I'll figure out a way to pay back the loans, and I'll be a club director like you. And he uh he's departed now. Um, but he was a great guy. And um John told me, I'm I'm not gonna hire you, and I'm gonna make sure nobody else hires you either. And I'm like, what do you mean, you know? And uh he he said, Look, you you know, we we got plenty of people that want to be club directors, and we have staff, but not a lot of us are going to law school. You're gonna do more for the clubs if you become a lawyer and see through your studies than you're gonna do as a club director. And so I don't know if that's true or not, but that was one of the reasons that we set up our annual fundraiser at our firm was to give back to you know, boys and girls clubs of Greater Milwaukee and boys and girls clubs of Chicago are all part of the same organization, serving the same kids. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

And so you did that. Uh I mean, at least you you you did that and you signed back up for law school.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Signed back up for law school, put my head back down, started completing my studies. At the end of my second year, I got a job at a at a commercial litigation firm, medium-sized firm. Uh, had a good experience that summer, actually took a case to trial with one of the lead partners. We had this knockdown drag em out battle over a uh sale of a business and whether fraud was perpetuated within that sale. We won.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Um you got to do some major work to contribute to some.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

And uh wrote the closing argument in the case and didn't give a shit when the verdict came, you know, like came back. I was, you know, I mean, I did in the sense that we did good work and we won, and my partner was very pleased and the firm made money, but I was like, wow, this isn't, you know, I didn't like our client, you know. I didn't care if he got his several hundred thousand dollar judgment or whatever it was, in in the sense that it didn't make me feel you know truly motivated or like I'd accomplished justice, right? I mean, I think we were on the right side of the case, don't get me wrong.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

But it was not, it didn't, it it didn't fill you with joy, it didn't it didn't motivate you to to continue to go on from a from a a caring, as you said, standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

It's a it's a it's an interesting thought because I've never thought about this before. But um, you know, if you hear about another case in civil world, right, um do we differentiate justice just based on running through our filter, right? Like, oh, you guys won that case, but I don't really care. You know, it's justice, right? It's just not the kind of it's not my kind of justice or the kind of justice that I want to try to achieve, right? And I think, you know, I've never really thought about it that way, but that's what was going on, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:51

How I think of it sometimes is there's lots of different balloons out in the world, and some of them come fully, fully filled. And I'm like, I I appreciate your balloon and I'm glad that it floats, but you It has the right to float. It has the right to float, but there's these other balloons over here that need more air, and I'm gonna give those balloons air. And it sounds like that's what you're just like uh they don't need me to fill up those balloons.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Pretty much. Um, and I'm not gonna be happy being that balloon filler, yeah. You know, more importantly to me at the time, right? So you made a change. So the following Monday I went back into that firm and said, Thank you for the offer. I'm gonna work an internship at a student uh credit internship at 26 in California at the Cook County Public Defender's Office. Wow. And you know, you have these guys in expensive suits and they put a lot of time into training and me and uh enjoyed my summer there going with this quizzical look, like supportive, of course. That that's fine, but also like really, you know, like you're gonna you're gonna go down to that dirty criminal court building, you know. In Chicago, you have Daily Center Plaza, right, where the civil cases are heard downtown, and you have 26 in California where the criminal building is. And um, you know, these guys don't go to 26 in California, right? So I I thanked them and assured them that that's what I wanted to do, and started law school like the following week and put in for that internship, got it, and um, you know, uh the rest, as they say, was history. I fell in love with the work, did a full year of student practice down at 26 in Cal, worked for some great public defenders. In fact, one who was young at the time was Amy Campanelli, who became the Cook County Public Defender just a few short years ago and had a run as the lead uh public defender, but I had great experiences there.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Hello, just wanted to jump in and thank everyone for listening to the episode. Those of us advocating for the underdog know how hard it can be to carry the hope. We also know that often it takes just one smile, one hug, or one small win to keep us going. My hope is that these conversations not only encourage you to keep going, but to share that energy with others, keeping the whole community moving forward. So carry the hope, share that hope with a friend, and subscribe now to join us. So 26 in California? Yes, 26 and California. 26 and Cal is it. 26 in Cal. So you're down there as a as a law student. You've talked about what do you see?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, you know, one of the most striking impressions I have of that time period is walking back into the holdings uh area. Behind every courtroom, right, there's a there's a bullpen or a holdings cell down at Chicago courtrooms. Okay. Um they're bigger. The courtrooms are are like Milwaukee County, large ceremonial courtrooms that I was assigned to, at least, the one that I was assigned to, and the bullpen would hold maybe up to 20 people, right? One thing that struck me is every single person in that bullpen was black or brown, the majority black and a few brown people. Okay. You know, uh not one white person, you know, stuck on cash bond, right? But all black. And when was this?

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Some in the nineties? Uh early? 1992. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, that hits that hits anyone. Sure. Um, but if you're already, you know, public defender oriented and you know come from a Latino background, you're like, wow, man, this this is stark.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Like Did you know that? I mean, again, the experience of seeing it is different than reading about it. But was it was it sh did you even expect that and were still shocked, or was it just kind of naive?

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Remember what it was like at that time, Aaron? You you I didn't have a lot of expectations. They were all exposures, you know. Yeah. Like you know, your first job clerking at 26 in California, you're following your public defenders around, trying not to look stupid or say something stupid, you know, and learn as much as you could, right? Uh at least that was my mindset. So I don't know what I expected, but I know that it struck me like a blast of cold air, you know, it's like, wow, this is something. And you know, and and it's not like that was the formative experience that made me vow to do something. That was just something that impressed me negatively on some of the um what we now call the racial disparities of the criminal justice system, right? You know, uh those things motivated me. As much as it motivated me to want to help kids that had a disadvantaged background, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

So, you know, I what do you think it was about? I mean, I I'm not surprised that you were motivated, but in some ways that can also just be so overwhelming. The injustice of it is just you see it and it's like, wow, what what can I do here? There's just a big, huge brick wall that I can't get through. How does what do you think in your background and your in your youth and your growing up made you become motivated when you see that rather than just like, oh man, there's nothing I can do here, I'm turning away.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

I was one of those people in law school that to me never thought about engaging in a practice from the other side of the criminal justice side. I wanted to do something about this. And I can't tell you now it's because of this experience or it's this because of this upbringing. It's it's it's formed, it emanates out of all of those experiences, right, that we have growing up. You know, um, I hear 10,000 brush strokes. Yeah, I mean, I I saw racial racial prejudice up front and close from the lens of a non-African American person in some of you know my experiences in my neighborhood at my high school, watching Harold Washington become elected, you know, as the first black mayor of Chicago and watching all of the racial animus that that brought just to the surface of Chicago. So, you know, there's a lot of experiences that add up to make to motivate you to either want to jump into the fray or run away from it, which you know, which I I didn't do at the time, you know. Um so you know, it was pretty clear to me I wanted to be a public defender, and there was a hiring freeze in 1992. So, long story short, I started applying at different places because I had to pay the bill, and one of them was to Wisconsin State Public Defender System, and so I accepted an offer to go work in a place called Waukeshaw, Wisconsin, which I later learned was a suburb just outside of Milwaukee. And I told my friends I'll be back in two years, and it's been 34 now, and I took a just keep going farther north, huh?

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Yeah, right. And now here you are up in the sanctuary.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

So I uh I met my wife as a public defender in the Waukeshaw office, Yvonne Vegas, and was a hotshot public defender that started just ahead of me. And uh I stayed seven years there and then went into private practice. We had some good lawyers in that office, and I loved being a public defender. Yeah. Uh and when the time came, I I I knew that I wanted to be in private practice eventually. So when the time came, I still I still loved the job.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

And when you said you knew that, how did you know that?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

You know, probably that was the point at which I reverted to being transactional again. I wanted to make more money, you know, and I felt like.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

You should have money with others and help.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

I'm I'm willing to admit it, right? And at the time, frankly, you know what? I was making$63,500 a year with state benefits in 1999. I made twice as much money as anybody in my family, you know, almost twice as much as as I made more money than my father ever made in a year. Uh I was just at the point where I could pay my student loan uh without having to take a deferment or fall behind on loans. So I was just reaching a the comfort zone financially and knew that if I didn't leave now, I wasn't gonna leave because I'd get handcuffed in from a financial standpoint and I loved the work. But I also um thought that I had skills that were good and that I could probably make up that salary, if not better. I wanted to give that a try. Uh so it was one part that, and it was one part I didn't want to work for anybody. I I I I I probably did fall back to my father's, you know, small businessman.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

In fact, something just uh in your core, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah. Um and I I I haven't worked for anybody since. Uh I remember telling my father and my uncle about the year that I left, months after I left, it was Christmas time. I was home for the holidays. And then uh my uncle particularly saying, so you quit that state job, and you know, your uncle Ed worked for the state for so and so, and look, he's got a pension, and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you sure you know what you what you're doing? And I looked at him and my dad both and said, because he they said, What do you like? And I, you know, they were supportive, right? And I said, I'll I'll be able to do this. And they said, What do you like about it? I said, You know what I do like? I can tell anybody I want to go screw themselves. And you know, nobody's ever gonna fire me. And and my uncle said, like, yeah, that's pretty cool, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

You know what?

SPEAKER_01 35:28

That's the shit we make up in our head too. It's not like I've really had to tell people to go screw themselves, right? You know, I've never had that movie moment, right? Um, but I've also never been afraid of being subject to the winds of a recession, a layoff, a bad boss, you know. Um being you're out there, like being out there for yourself is fraught with a lot of peril along other lines, but one of them is not that. Like you're not you're not subject to somebody else's will that you decide could be unfair.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Yeah. I mean, your independence, right? I mean, you absolutely work together in a firm now, and I I want to talk to you about how important that is to have others around you, but the be able to to create your own environment at work, to create your own values, to to decide how you're gonna run all of that, right? You get your your family name on the door, was your dad's deli to have the have the name on the door?

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Uh yeah, you know, I my father's last name, Maston Tuno, is on the door with Coffee and Thomas, my two partners. Yeah. But there's a pride in that, right? Absolutely. Developing a culture is cool, you know, develop developing the culture of your firm. I don't know if everybody thinks about it, but I certainly think about it, and I think a lot of people do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Um maybe that's some of the marketing background, because actually we've been doing some marketing here, and it's amazing how much that actually falls into the culture. Like, well, who are you? Yeah, what do you really want to do? Right. All comes back to marketing and gets into creating a culture.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

So um, so yeah, tell me about the firm a little bit because I uh you I think you have one of the model criminal defense law firms in the state. Um and one of the things that I admire is what you've already talked about is it, you know, uh multiple different partners. Um you have have uh bilingual, you know, people, but you also have an in-house investigator. We do. And I I'm gonna give you your own pitch here, but I I don't think there's any other criminal defense law firm in the state really that has an in-house investigator. I've never heard of it, and I'm just I've always admired that. Tell me, how did that come to be?

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Well, first of all, I work with great lawyers. So there are four lawyers at our firm, my partners, Rebecca Coffee, Leah Thomas, and our associate Claude Allen Millholm, or Lon, he goes by.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Um we are all people I think that care a great deal about the practice, the work, and our clients, as most lawyers would say. Um and um comes from a Haitian American background. Uh he's a black lawyer. Um he's in his fifth year of practice. Leah is in her 13th or so year of practice, Rebecca's in her 22nd or so year of practice, and myself. So we all come from these kind of women or minority backgrounds that I think is helpful sometimes to uh in in a larger urban practice, particularly.

SPEAKER_03 38:13

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Um and that you know, wasn't by design uh necessarily, but it it evolved by design over time. We have a legal assistant, right, like every law office has or a lot of law offices have. Sure. Uh and then um you asked where it came from to have an investigator. I really liked the public defender system model of having investigators and client services specialists. So we um have an investigator, Marcus Ruiz, who's a Puerto Rican-American uh former Marine, okay. Served in uh the Marines and did two tours in Iraq, uh including uh the first tour was pretty rough, Battle of Fallujah. He was a Marine infantry infantryman.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Yeah, that's one of the worst places to be.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Absolutely. Um, and he's an impressive young man. He's uh got a degree from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in history. And we also have a part-time client services specialist, uh Jada Miller, who's a former probation agent of the state of Wisconsin. She retired after 25 years and was looking for some part-time work.

SPEAKER_03 39:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Uh so he's been with us a couple of years now, and I we've always had somebody serve that role, a client services role on a either part-time or one of our team members uh would fill in that role.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Tell us a little bit. I mean, I I I know I asked about the investigator, but just um client services. I didn't know you had a separate one. I thought um your investigator doubled as a as a client services. Well, he did for a while. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

But we were able to move him fully into investigation. What's client services?

SPEAKER_02 39:35

What's that about and why do you have it involved?

SPEAKER_01 39:37

So at the public defender's office, it was mostly writing PSIs, right, and uh engaging your clients and our clients in treatment programs, offering them options. I always found they were a little stretched. I always thought, well, I'd like to have a dedicated, you know, when you can divide client services among four lawyers, right? Um it fits into our philosophy of representation. So can I bore you with that for a second? Yeah, absolutely. Uh I think we all do this. I just the way I square it in my head is um I we call it a dual tracking, right? Like I take on a case um and I prepare for trial and engage the litigation that I can. Sure. And I also have my client jumping through hoops, you know, to address the situation that got them into this, right? And you know, accomplish something during the whether it's two months or seven months or a year that we have this case pending, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:27

I always think of it, look, there's trial and negotiation. But what you're saying is the negotiation is really, first off, we got to start with our client.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

100%. You know, well, I mean we treat people, not cases, right? We represent people, not cases, or not crimes. Uh quick example, right? I just resolved a case uh last week in Milwaukee County, and it was a bad, reckless driving eluding where a guy ran from the police for you know a reason as as unremarkable, you know, uh, but led the police on quite the chase, got away, later got picked up on the warrant. Um for seven months while the case was pending, five months, uh he worked on going to a DMV DOT uh traffic safety school, which wasn't insignificant, it was like four three-hour classes on Saturday, right? They were the point reduction type of uh driver safety school. But he didn't have a license yet. So the second thing was get your license, right? Third thing was maintain the job that you've had, right? And the fourth thing was to uh write a letter of apology to the police officers. Now, all this goes into the memo, right, prior to sentencing. And we were gonna maybe um try the case on you know some issues or or not, but the mitigation and you know, the buildup of mitigation, the review of the discovery was more this isn't a who-done it as much as a what to do about it, is what we say at our firm, right? When it's you know, most cases aren't whodunits. This isn't remarkable work, right? But we have him doing these things, and at the point in the hallway, this was one of those hallway negotiations where DA is plead to this charge, we'll dismiss and read in these two charges, you know, prison up to the court, right? That's a you know, yeah, yeah. Um so it was a it was a serious and reckless driving's one of the y you know how every few years a crime becomes the crime de jour for prosecutors to get tough on for real reasons in Milwaukee. Reckless driving and eluding are the crimes de jour right now because they're a little bit out of control in Milwaukee and they present a public safety risk. So prosecutors are going hard on those. I walked out into the hallway with uh uh the prosecutor uh let's say November, and we had that back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I had already sent him evidence of all these things that I'm talking about by email. And he, you know, it was one of those beautiful things where it's like, you know, what about a stipulated sentence? Do you go there sometimes when you're negotiating and it's gonna be one way or the other, the one way's not good for you, so I'll stipulate to jail. You know, what about, you know, imposed and stayed, two years probation, stipulation to six months jail. He comes back 12 months. I go 10 to 12, sold, you know, is one of those things, right? Go back and tell my client, involves, you know, work release jail, but you're gonna have to do, you know. So, you know, client services will get all that stuff done for us. Weekly check-ins with that client. How's the traffic safety school going? Did you get your license? Here's your options. Post-disposition, deferred prosecution, our client services specialist is here's your options for community service. Let's, you know, let's make these DPAs go better so that our firm has a reputation for making DPAs work. If we can get a reputation for making sure people complete DPAs, we're gonna get more offers for DPAs.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

My clients finish the DPAs.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

My clients do finish their DPAs. Our clients, right? Um prosecutors know that. Uh so it helps your deals, it helps your clients. Um in that case that I was just describing, you know, we go in front of the judge, the judge is a good judge, my memo is there, and he says something that struck me, and it it made Makes me think that the limits there there's a limitless possibility of things we can do for clients, right? Yeah. So Mr. Mastin Tuno, I noticed that, you know, your client wrote a letter of apology to officers so-and-so and so-and-so. Um, and it was a heartfelt letter. He wrote it himself. I didn't have a thing to do with it. Said yes, Judge. He said, you know, I we hear these cases all the time. I've only seen this maybe once or twice. Now that's not a pat on my back. It made me think like, these are easy things to do. We should be doing these things as a as a defense bar. That that's a simple thing. You know, you always have I'm sorry. Right. Like, you know, your client always has at leisure I get it and I'm sorry, you know, and if we ignore those things, we ignore something that may be important to the judge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:40

I mean, I a bunch to unpack there. I would say, you know, one is as a lawyer, you have a caseload, you also have to the you're you're running a law firm, you have business concerns. To make to know that you have somebody else that's going to do these client services, so it is, as you say, simple, but it needs somebody else to help that. And sometimes as lawyers, maybe we don't have the bandwidth to do that because we're we're doing the law stuff. Yeah. We're doing the business stuff, we're doing the marketing stuff, we're doing different things. And so the fact that you, like you said, you set up your your firm to know, look, I don't necessarily have the bandwidth. It's going to be better served if somebody with the bandwidth can dedicate to it. So, yes, it's simple, but you have to do a lot of upfront planning in order to get it get the simple done.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

You also have to decide to make less money. Yeah. Yeah. Those are two salaries that need to be filled, right? Absolutely. Yeah. In Jada's case, she's part-time, right? Sure. But it's still money, right? It's still a salary. In Marcus's case, he's full-time, you know. And so now he has moved fully over to full-on investigation. And you know what else we do with these two people is, you know, we decided a couple years ago, nobody's trying a case alone anymore. Yeah. One of those two people is always with us in trial. So Claude Lon, Claude Allen, just uh won a trial not too long ago in 2025, but in the second half of 2025. Jada, our former probation agent, sat with him in that trial.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

Yeah. Just emotional support.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

I just had one in October. Marcus tried that case with me. Marcus and I have tried lots of cases together. And he'll testify sometimes, you know. He'll testify. In fact, I I don't think at the PD's office, we didn't put in my when I was a public defender, we didn't put our investigators on the stand as often as we should. And I we invite the opportunities to put Marcus on the stand. He hates it, by the way. But but he's a very good investigator. Um, we go to this we go to the scenes, we take our own pictures, we discover things, we take measurements, we you know, uh we do it on motion stops too, on stop motions. Uh you know, we go go see where the officer says this guy fled from the police. Go drive the route that he drove when he said he noticed, you know, the traffic violation. So he and I will do those things, and you know, you know that the most powerful stuff in a jury trial is the stuff that the state didn't give the jury that you can give to them, right? Absolutely. So we take those opportunities, and sometimes it's stuff that's not fully critical, who done it evidence, yeah, but contextual evidence. You know, here's this space where they're saying this workplace assault took place. Let's look at that space. You know, they never showed you any pictures of this. This is how close these two cubicles were. I'm speaking of like a prior case, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:15

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SPEAKER_01 48:42

The ACE Questionnaire, the adverse childhood experiences questionnaire. Tell us not all of them. Tell us about that. What is that? Uh Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire has been used. Uh it was produced as a part of a study in the 80s. Um you go to CDC website, find look up uh ACE Questionnaire. But it is a series of questions, 10 questions, that are a that are aimed at trying to uncover childhood trauma. So all of the questions relate to prior to you were when you were 18, prior to years uh during the years before you were 18 years old, did anybody ever or did you ever experience? And then it is questions based on trauma. Did anybody ever slap, beat, physically abuse? Did anybody ever belittle, make you feel unloved? You know, was anybody in your family incarcerated? Did anybody in your family suffer from mental illness? Uh you know, things like did you have did did you have a split parent household, right? Ten questions. Uh scores of five and higher are when you enter, you know, um uh what the CDC would uh deem to be a a traumatic uh childhood, which can later have outcomes. Uh they actually impact higher ACE score can impact physical health later in life, physical health negative consequences. But also um, you know, when we at our firm started noticing the kind of emergence of the ACE questionnaire, you hear these questions in doctors' offices now when you go in, uh um, especially younger people. Um when the ACE questionnaire started being used more prevalently in larger society, it came to our attention, and I thought it would be a good tool to have some of our clients answer a series of questions.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

And why do you think just I mean maybe it's obvious, it's simple, but just why is that helpful? Why do you need to do that as a criminal defense lawyer?

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Well, look, um 90% of what we do, right, is not go to trial in a criminal case. 90% of what I'm doing is trying to get to a defined goal with a client, whether that's avoid prison, get a reduction in charges, get a DPA. But there are a lot of cases, right, Aaron? I mean, I'm not ashamed to admit it. There are a lot of cases where my clients are convicted of really serious stuff. And a lot of times where I've pled them guilty or no contest to really serious stuff because that's the best option at the time. And so these become contested sentencing hearings, often where you're arguing about prison or something else, right? And you know, I just got tired, you know, when I was a public defender into private practice, I got tired of and wasn't very good at trying to, you know, I I make fun of it a little bit by the speech that starts off my client was born a poor black child on the blank part of Milwaukee or what you know. I I just think our judges are like, oh, another another person that had it rough, and that's an excuse for behaving badly in our society.

SPEAKER_02 51:32

So I just don't become immune to that story.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Yeah. And I also, you know, I think we need to open eyes in a different way about what to do about wrong in our community and open the eyes of the people hearing our arguments, right? So I use memos a lot. We write our own now, we produce them in-house, we use pictures. We use we've been using photos in plea negotiations. Email made that a lot easier for since before you know email was the prevalent way of communicating in in plea negotiations. Um, photos, um, I I don't really do the sentencing videos. I don't know if you do those. I haven't done them yet. Yeah, I haven't either. It's a little too groovy for me. I'm not positive I can get my judge to watch the bio video of my client. But I try to use photos. I uh we use family photos in our sentence memos all the time. I don't know if you do that, but um, if I can get a nice um photo of my client and his family, which I can always get, right? You and your kids or or or your family members. But we'll include the ace questionnaire if I think that um a client's had a particularly traumatic uh upbringing. And you would be surprised you the amount of clients I've had that have eights, nines, and tens on the ace questionnaire. And these are questions that answering yes to one of uh uh is horrifying. Yeah right. I'll tell you something else though, if I can go on about this. The experience of the experience of administering the ace questionnaire, you know, you have to tell your client the reason you're doing this, right? You also have to assure your client you're not asking these questions to belittle, your job's not to judge, these are very sensitive questions, you don't have to answer them. I'm gonna keep it in my file, we'll decide whether or how to use it. I don't always share it, I probably share half of them if that meant, you know. But I the process of asking some of my clients these questions makes me realize they've never thought about or been asked these questions before. And these are people that are answering yes to six, seven, eight, nine, and ten of these questions.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

It almost, you know, is it somewhat that what happened to them in their childhood has become normal, so they don't even it doesn't even stand out as something that is holy.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

I had a client who was um a drug dealer in Milwaukee, African-American man in his 30s. He said, Yeah, come on, you we can answer ask these questions. I asked him all the questions. He we had to pause several times. He left my office in a puddle. In a puddle. It was it was uh it was almost awakening for him. Oh complete awakening for him. And I had to walk him out, you know, I had my hand around his shoulder, like, we're gonna come back next week and we're gonna talk about how to use but just thinking about those things in a deliberate way for the first time reduced him to to tears that couldn't stop for him, or he's having trouble breathing, and you know, um so in the it's it's almost like this life is at a distance, and now that in some ways opened it up to them. Yeah, and and I think our judges over time, some of them um, and I'll put in the a plug for the ones that have been appointed most recently by the current governor, but I think our judges have uh, you know, and the the industry, the law, the legal field has become in tune with issues of trauma trauma and child and childhood trauma, right? Uh I think that we, you know, I had a judge, I was going on about the ace questionnaire that I administered in my client and my client's upbringing, and what to do about it. Not that it's an excuse, judge, but it informs our decision making moving forward. Let's talk about what to do and how this we can respond to this, right? I had a judge interrupt me and say, Craig, I read The Body Kept the Score, Keeps the Score, which is the book about adverse childhood trauma that's like a big thing. Oh the body keeps the score.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

The body keeps the score. You know, I I got it, go on. You know, like I'm like, well, we've reached the point where the judges have read, you know, the body keeps the score, you know.

SPEAKER_02 55:20

But I heard you have heard you also you've you use the ACE test, but because you've done it so much and because you've heard different people respond to it, you've uh kind of have your own version of the Ace Plus. The ACE plus, right? Tell me about what's the ACE plus.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

Well, you want to illustrate these concepts, right? So I just started asking additional additional questions. Did you ever have a birthday party? And that's why I brought that up earlier. Is that you know, you know, every kid should have a birthday party, right? Every kid should have somebody say, You're special today, you know, and hopefully it's with family members or friends and a cake and funny hats and you know, maybe a couple balloons, right? You know, and too many of us, we grew up that way. My cousins would come over with the aunts, they would come over and uncles, and we'd have a birthday party. So I would just ask my clients, or do ask my clients, um, have you ever had a birthday party? You'd be amazed at the amount of you know, clients that say no, you know.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

Never in their life at a birthday party.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

Another one is like, what do you remember, you know, do you have a family tradition either like for the Fourth of July or where would you go for Christmas if your family celebrated Christmas or a special day that, you know, you have a tradition, a cookout, or you know, a lot of times the answer is uh no, you know. What was the longest time you ever spent in a in in living in one house? In one apartment, house, place where you lived? You know, the answers to those questions, the the the ace questionnaire is one type of question, but the answers to those questions, or you know, if they ask, if they answer, you know, yes, somebody did, you know, belittle me, make me feel unloved, you know, who was that? Well, that was my mom. Well, tell me you know, like a little bit about that. You know, the stories that emerged from using that as a tool to get to more information that could be more illustrative. Opens up doors. Yeah, opens up a lot of doors. Um I I recently had a client whose mother killed, shot and killed his father. And then using the ACE questionnaire, he answered yes to the sexual abuse question. I asked him who you know who that was. But at the same time that that process was going on, his mother, who was in Togeta, who is in Togeta for killing his father, felt the need to write my office. This was a pretty serious case uh to write it was a drug dealing case, to write my office to kind of explain the circumstances of his upbringing and her involvement in his l in her son's life. And um I can't remember which one came f first. Actually, the letter came first. She said, you know, I always thought that he was sexually abused as a child. And I suspected it was the somebody at this school because he wasn't the same after this. Now I'm asking additional questions in the ACE questionnaire, and I I said, I gently said, you know, who was that? And he said it was the principal at this school. But then I asked about it, and he said, he said to me, Yeah, it was it was actually like on the news at the time, the prosecution. So a couple of punches on the keyboard later, right? I find that this was a case 11 years earlier that was prosecuted where the school principal was prosecuted for sexually abusing three or four students. My client was one of the kids that never came forward. Sure. I call up the prosecutor on the case, who's a Milwaukee County DA. I said, Do you remember this case? I'm looking at C COP, CCAP, and it got dismissed. And you know, this prosecutor is a pretty I I've tried a couple of cases with her. She's tough. Yeah. I said, you know, you wouldn't just dismiss this case. What happened? She said he burned down his house and killed himself in it. The defendant in the the school principal. I said, I have this client. I explained the situation to her. She goes, I don't doubt him at all. We know he had other victims.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

We were able to, you know, and we introduced I introduced this information to the prosecutor in my case to say, you know, this is a hard upbringing. Choices have been made as a result of this upbringing. We have to decide what to do about how long this person's going to now be incarcerated. You know, let's inform our decisions, at least with a full knowledge of who this person is and what they experienced. But the ace questionnaire really produced that additional information and that additional questioning about, you know, some of these questions. Telling a judge your client never had a birthday party is is you know it's something that, you know, simple that connects and that's anybody can relate to.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

Yeah, yeah, different. I mean, and when you were asking the questions about, you know, I have Trey at a birthday party every year that uh, you know, uh uh that I've had a birthday. Um just when you had asked the question about houses, like I I've had two houses. I grew up in my childhood home. Right. Uh Lisa and I bought a house and we've been in that house for 24 years. And I think Lisa's background is I think since five, she was in her same childhood home. And then yeah, so you know, that's that just seems common to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Me too. And and uh, you know, those things really mattered in my stable up, my stable upbringing, what was financially unstable, was stable in the ways that matter, the ways that made you feel safe, the ways that made you feel loved, the ways that made you feel like you'd have your parents come home at the end of the day, no matter what. They weren't missing or they're gonna be taken away from you. And so I just asked questions based on my own experience of what was special to me, what was formative for me, what made me feel safe and ask questions. Or what did I enjoy?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:48

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

Did you have a public pool near your house where you went to? Did you have a bike? You know, did you, you know, yeah, did you participate in sports as a youth?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

You know, there's all kinds of things that we some of us might take for granted. 100%. Um, and then with that question is very informative.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

Yeah. That's wonderful. Your, you know, sanctuary in the jungle, right? Is what the the podcast is called. And a lot of what we've been talking about is what I think how your firm creates a sanctuary there for our clients. I I talked about it with our first guest, Professor Michelle Levine, about how we need to get the story from our client, right? How much of that is also related to just language? You said you have different people in your office who speak Spanish, right? You know, um, I've heard you use many times the word translation just in in conversation that it that just I was like, I I don't normally hear that word. So what is it about language translation that is you think helps you guys make a sanctuary there at your office?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

Well, for language that we use, if it's a different language like Spanish, uh, which we're able to use, right? And I'll jump in with Marcus or Dagmar, uh, you know, our other our legal assistant speaks Spanish, jump in with my own Spanish, you know, I'll jump in enough to let the client know I can understand you know what's going on when you're talking and add my own two cents, is certainly one way that Spanish-speaking clients feel more comfortable. That that's just obvious, right? For obvious reasons.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

Because it's not it well, it it it might be, but sometimes it's not. I mean, I only speak one language, you know. So it's one thing for me to speak to them in their language, but it's another for me to hear to let them speak in their language so I can they can use the words that are best for them. Can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

100%. I mean, they tell us things in Spanish, Marcus will explain things to me, or I'll pick up just those nuanced differences in languages that make you realize the thing they're talking about a little bit better. They can put it into their own words in their own language. You know, languages like that. There's words in other languages that we don't have a word for, right? You know, um, you know, and there's ways to use words. Like in Italian, a ragazzo is a boy, but a ragazzaccio is a bad boy. And you could add a to any word and make it a bad thing of that noun, you know, which is great, right? Like, you know, and if you bother to use well, but if you bother to explain it that way, it means something very different to an Italian, right? And an Italian would do what I'm doing as a as a fact as a matter of fact with their hand. Um so language is really important, but let's talk about English, right? I think we create a sanctuary for our Spanish-speaking clients because they uh they are immediately more trusting of the environment they're in if there is proficiency in their language at that law office during this crisis. We're crisis management.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

Yeah, I love that about your friends that you I mean. You put that in your title.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

Criminal defense crisis management, you know. Our job at the end of the day is not to go to trial. You know, I'm not saying our job is to avoid a trial. What I'm saying is what we sell to people, what we bring to people, whether we're def public defenders or private attorneys, is creating a better outcome from a bad situation. Our clients come to us in crisis and they need to leave our offices less in crisis, right? Whether that's from the first meeting because they feel better about having the advocate that they have or about the outcome. We create positive outcomes to difficult situations, right? And so I'm not selling, I mean, thinking with my marketing brain again, I like to think I'm fairly proficient at trials, right? But I'm not selling clients my trial. They don't care if they're avoiding prison, whether they avoided it because I went to trial or because I negotiated an outcome that avoided prison, right? They they care about can you deliver me to the place that I need to be delivered to? Returning to my family, not going to prison, avoiding a felony conviction. Yeah. You know, just you know, and and this is from simple drunk driving cases to the most complex cases, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:46

But even we've recently been doing some marketing and one of the we made like a brand video, right? And the I thought part of it was you were in this world, something happened to you, we're gonna be somebody that brings you back, as you said, return to your family. Sure. But a lot of what I hear you saying is you were in this world, something happened, we're gonna bring you back to a better world. Because you're getting them services, you're getting them opportunities and other things. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

That's that that's absolutely possible. I mean, you can, you know, the process of responding to a crisis, right? The things that you have to do when the chips are down, right, to overcome something that put you in a position can absolutely return you to a better place. You know, I mean, kind of back to we become what we see, a lot of times I realize that the expectations I have for my clients are the first time they've had aspirational and positive expectations. That in itself is a new world for them and a positive experience, right? And so creating expectations to get through a crisis can also create positive steps in your life. You can get to a better place. Client services can assist that. Investigation can assist that. You want to You want to create an environment, I think, where everybody in your office is invested in your client's success, right? Whether that's how they're greeted at the door, right? And you know, we our legal assistant, I I I uh tell them this all the time. We've had multiple assistants over the years. You're our front door, you're our front door on the phone, you're our front door when people come in, you're the first person you have are vital to our success. Absolutely. You're an extremely important person. You don't just answer the phone. You know, you help bring people in the door, make them feel introduce our culture, our environment, our values, our principles. 100%. And it it brings me a great pride when I see reviews, either online or otherwise, where people say that first call with Dagmar made me feel better than the five other calls that I placed. Yeah. You know, Marcus really made me feel unjudged and like he was going to do something. And, you know, I I just think it's more rewarding to have an environment like that for the people in your firm as well. That you're dug in, you know, you want to create success, you want to minimize damage to your clients, and you're helping each other do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

Yeah. You know, when you were talking about um holding them to certain standards, right? There's a quote on the wall over here that actually Liesel introduced it uh to me, but the line that I'll just read to you is if we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become who they are capable of becoming. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

Absolutely what you just said. Absolutely. Now there's a piece of that that I want to talk to a tiny bit, is like you can't, in my opinion, and you shouldn't. Um you can't come from it to it from a I'm in a better place than you. Sure. There has to be no judgment. And a realization that, you know, that we're all human, that I I'm one slippery step away from failing.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:50

And I was thinking about, you know, some of the themes of of your talks with attorneys so far. How do we deal with managing this? How do we, you know, persevere through the struggles of our own um challenges, whether it's too much work, whether it's bully judges, whether it's the stress of managing cases for our clients that have life-altering impact on them, right? And one thing, and it is simple and it's not profound, but I consider myself in my 34th year of practice to be fortunate and lucky just not to have suffered a mental health crisis, a physical health crisis, you know, bad business decisions, um, the impropriety or dishonesty of people I work with. Uh, you know, there's many ways that life comes at you that no matter what you do or plan for, right? Yeah, I try to watch my health. Yes, I try to talk out my issues, you know, yes, I we all do wellness things, right? Sure. But sometimes life just comes at you, and if I'm able to avoid, you know, the comets flying, the meteors flying at me, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:54

We only have so much bandwidth, and if work stress takes so much of our bandwidth, we're maybe not capable of dealing with the other things that come at us.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

Correct. I mean, I paid off my student loans not too many years ago when I was 51, right? I mean, I I think like, what if I had had a health crisis? You know, my wife, same way. We both paid off our student loans at 50 and 51, right? What if what if you had a mental health crisis? What if you lost your job? What if you got downsized? You know, what if you're something happened to your child? Yeah, what if you just weren't very good at, you know, making money in private practice, you know. I mean, so you know, I never uh discount the fact that I've also just been lucky to avoid some things. Sure, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:32

So we've been well, thank you for your time here. I've um we've been chatting for a little while, but I want to I have one more question I want to ask you to just wrap up here. Um at the you know, this is as we talked about, this is this is some hard work, right? This is uh stressful. Um it's grueling, right? It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of tension, emotional energy. Um, but here you are 34 years in. You know, you're you're still sound passionate and enthusiastic about the work that that we do. What what fuels your heart? What makes you get up in the morning to say, I'm gonna go do this some more?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:13

Uh, you know, I walked uh into uh I met my wife, uh, who's also a career uh attorney, uh Yvonne, and said to her today after a court appearance this morning, you know, I I'm pretty good at this and I still enjoy it a lot. And it was, it wasn't a sentencing hearing that I did, it was a preliminary hearing that was we had to solve some problems on a no-contact order, on a bond provision, and you know, appear in front of a judge, get that order made, and uh advise the client how to do this and connect with the DA, who conveniently was a former student, you know, deal with a victim who was not you know, but you're bringing value to solving problems that are big, that meant a difference between this guy seeing his kid or not, right? And you know, I I do take joy from that. I think what you have to do is stop and recognize those moments when you bring value to a situation, which you do all the time in your work if you're trying hard to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:13

It's not just hearing the word not guilty a couple of times a year. If you live for only for not guilties, and I've heard not guilty lots of times in my career. You're you you're not making yourself happy on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

You're gonna be thirsty. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

You're gonna be thirsty.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:27

No, you gotta you do have to pause and say, you know, this was a good moment that I helped my client out, and I did pretty good at it, and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, does it does it does it make you feel good? We all got to decide that for ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:39

Right. Um But I mean, I'll I'll you know, you are a talented, smart, young man. You could probably have success in lots of different areas. You think about that sometimes, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:50

You you chose this.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

But you know, why did you choose this and why do you keep doing this? Because i I get it that you're good at it, but you could be good at lots of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:00

Sure. Okay, you know, I've spent hundreds of hours and about six years in the last six years doing two pro bono cases that resulted in people being released from prison on sentence modifications who were gonna serve lots more years in prison if we didn't come up with a way to get these cases done. I didn't receive a dime for them, right? But those in compensation were some of the most compensating cases to me. They I got more from those cases than I've gotten from fees in there. I got the ability to connect with people and change their lives in those cases in an in an incredibly profound way, because you're walking out of prison when you weren't gonna get out of prison, right? And so it's that's a dramatic way of saying, look, I I think the currency of life is not money. The currency of life is connecting with people. Now, my education and the way I've chosen to exercise my career gives me the ability to connect with people through trying to help them, right? But if you don't think that's valuable, that's fine. This work isn't for you. But if it is valuable to you, then this work gives you opportunities every single day to make that currency, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:21

And, you know, to me, I I enjoy that. I enjoy, and you know, there's ego wrapped up in that too. Don't get I'm not trying to come at it from a St. Francis type of way. You know, uh it it is a boost to your ego to think I'm a problem solver that can help a situation out. I can bring value to this, I can do something to make a person feel better. And and they're gonna give me the accolades and gratitude for that, but it's they're also gonna proceed forward in a better place. The minute that stops, you know, when I can't come home and say that, then you know, it's probably time to retire. That's fine, you know. Um, that and music, you know, we didn't touch on music. We didn't get to jazz. I was thinking about jazz.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:58

We'll save that for the next episode. So, well, thank you so much, Craig. Appreciate your coming here. Thanks for listening to Sanctuary in the Jungle. This episode was brought to you with the help of May Daily and Nelson Defense Group. If you haven't already, be sure to check out our companion articles on Substack. With every episode, I take a deeper dive into the topic at hand, applying the theme to real cases and issues, sharing how it helped me to improve my practice. If you want to learn more, subscribe at sanctuaryinthejungle.substack.com. That's sanctuary in the jungle.substack.com. We'll see you next time at the library. Until then, stay strong and carry the hope.