Everything they don’t teach you in law school | Vadim Glozman

Law school teaches you case analysis. Becoming a great trial lawyer comes from working hard cases with real stakes and learning on your feet.

In this episode, host Aaron Nelson sits down with Vadim Glozman, a federal defense attorney based in Chicago, who came up under the mentorship of legendary Chicago attorney Ed Genson — a man whose office saw everyone from politicians and alleged mobsters to your everyday neighbor. It's where Vadim learned that behind every case file is a human being, meaning every human has a new lesson to teach you.

In this episode, you'll learn:

1. Why the trial lawyer "playbook" doesn't exist — and why the best attorneys are the ones who learn how to figure it out when they don’t know something.
2. How to try strategies that nobody else will — because sometimes the best moves are the ones nobody thinks will work.
3. Why hiring an expensive lawyer can be the smartest move you make — and why we should all value it more.

Whether you're a young lawyer trying to find your footing or a law student wondering what actually separates good attorneys from great ones, this episode is packed with hard-earned insight you won't find in a casebook.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You gotta figure it out. And each case is different. It's not a science, it's not a math equation. There's no right or wrong answer. There's just experience, trial and error, and using your judgment to try to do the best that you can.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome back to another episode of Sanctuary in the Jungle. I'm your host, Aaron Nelson. If you've ever wondered what it actually takes to become a great trial lawyer, I can tell you, it's more than the case analysis they teach you in law school. Today's guest is Vadim Glosman, a federal defense attorney out of Chicago. Vadim breaks down why young lawyers need to stop waiting for someone to hand them the playbook. Instead, they need to figure out how to figure it out. The best trial lawyers aren't built in a classroom, they're built through hustle, working hard cases, and learning on your feet when the stakes are real. And there's no textbook for that. As a young lawyer, Vadim cut his teeth learning from the legendary Ed Jensen. Throughout his career, much of Chicago's history walked through Jensen's office from politicians and alleged mobsters to the everyday man. That's where Vadim learned to see the humans in every case. We'll also talk about something a lot of people are afraid to say out loud. Why it's okay, even smart, to hire a lawyer who's worth a high fee. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Sanctuary in the Jungle. I'm your host, Aaron Nelson. Happy to be here today with Vadim Glosman. Vadim, thanks for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Of course, it's always humbling being on a podcast that I'm a fan of.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Oh, well, that's uh a compliment. I appreciate that. Um it's nice to have the podcast out now, and so that there are some guests that have had a chance to listen to it. So thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, I got I gotta listen a few episodes and prep and ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Ready to go. And you came up from Chicago. Nice little uh getaway for you.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, I got away from the kids for a night, needed a full night of rest to make sure I could talk to you normally today.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

We're gonna we're gonna grill you, right? You better be this is the same thing you tell your clients, like get a healthy night's rest before you uh go and perform in court.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

I definitely tell them get a night's rest. They they don't like sleeping during trial, especially if they're nervous about testifying. And I tell them you're gonna do a lot better if you get some sleep.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

So let's uh let's start at the beginning. Um tell me a little bit about your your childhood.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

I came in an immigrant family. My family came over here when I was three years old, um, lived in a small apartment on the northwest side of Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

So tell me, can you talk to us a little bit about just that when you say came over here? You're you you were born in another country?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I was born in another country, uh born in Russia, and moved here when I was three and a half years old.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about how that happened? How what and motivated your parents to come over to Chicago?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Um my dad's cousin lived here, and I think, you know, that was still when the Soviet Union was around, and everyone was trying to get out of there. My family's Jewish, so they were political refugees and they were able to leave. There was kind of I forget what they call it, but there was that big swarm of people in like the late 80s, early 90s that came over and we were part of that. You have siblings?

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Only child. Only child. So it was For better or for worse. Yeah, right. What else was it like? Uh you moved out of the uh Chicago, I think, sometime in middle school or elementary school?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

We moved to another suburb, Skokie, when I was seven or eight years old, and we lived there for about a year, and then we moved to a suburb, and I lived there until left for college.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Okay. Uh and you stayed in the Midwest for college, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

I went to the University of Illinois in Champaign and then came back to Chicago for law school.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Okay. So what motivated you to stay in Illinois?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

In-state tuition. I don't know.

unknown 3:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Um, Illinois is a good school. I was always a fan of the school, the sports program growing up, and yeah, not much thought went into there.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

No, you know, it's uh as for as much as I can remember being a 17 or 18-year-old, the uh the thoughts in my mind about why I did the things that I did don't make sense to me now as a 55-year-old. I'm kind of like, I can't believe I made it where I am, considering how unaware and stupid some of my decisions were when I was a teenager.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Any of those experiences resonate with you? No, of course. I mean, choosing college, there wasn't much foresight to it. It was, what are the party schools?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Where am I gonna have fun? You know?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah. Where can I get a good education and have a good time?

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Were your parents educated?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah, my mom actually went to med school in Russia and my dad got a PhD in mathematics. And so when we moved over here, my dad became an actuary, but my mom's medical license obviously didn't carry over.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Okay. Did she continu did she get back into it and do anything with the education under her degree?

SPEAKER_01 4:56

After a while, she got into um ultrasound and started her own ultrasound company, and so she was still in the medical field, but she's not a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Okay. So I grew up in a with a blue-collar background, but my parents very much were putting books in front of me, and it seemed like uh college was just the inevitable path because all my buddies went there. Was it that way for you because of your your family and the values that they taught you?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Probably then part of it was also just you know, typical immigrant family. You gotta go to college, you gotta go to grad school and get a good job.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Were you reading a lot as a kid? I went through phases. Okay. I think uh, you know, sometimes I would find a book that I liked and I'd read that, and if it was part of a series, I would, but it was never a big part of my life. And I never, I don't think I ever really had anything I was that interested in until I got my clerkship with who ended up being my first boss, Ed Jensen, and I kind of saw this path of like I want to be a criminal defense attorney, and I just started digesting all of these not necessarily academic things, but maybe articles about lawyers or biographies about lawyers or reading about old cases that were interesting and just kind of pulling some nuggets of information from that. So maybe it wasn't typical education in that, but it was the way I learned.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I also used to ask him a lot of stories. I would just sit in his office and ask him about his old cases and his old clients and things like that, and I would digest that, and that was how I learned.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And I want to I definitely want to get a lot into talking about Ed Jensen. Um, but talking about you a little bit more about your childhood. Do you go into law school and we have all these wonderful ideas in law school, right? There's all this abstract and all you just read it, and you're like, you you just went and worked.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, you know, I was never the best student. Um I was always kind of naturally smart and I would grasp concepts fairly quickly, but I was never like the studious kind. I would never, you know, do the all-nighters like other people or study for a long time. I would just kind of figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

And you're just a student in another way.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Student in another way. And in my second year, I started, I keep mentioning him, but he's just I wouldn't be in my career without him. I started clerking for Ed Jensen, and I saw that this is probably what I want to do. But I also wanted to finish law school in the same amount of time. I didn't want to go to part-time. So I figured out a way to make my schedule so it was I was full-time, but it was all night classes. And then I would work all day, and I also wanted to get practical experience. So for half the day I would go to the public defender's office and be in court, and you know, in Illinois you can get a 7-Eleven license, which means you can actually argue on behalf of the client to a jury or a judge as long as you have a supervising attorney.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Okay. Why do they call it 7-Eleven?

SPEAKER_01 7:46

It's just the Supreme Court rule 7-Eleven, or I forget what it is. And um nothing to do with Slurpees. No. Um so I would do and I'd argue like motions to suppress, and I think I did a jury trial, and then in the afternoon I would go work at Eddie's office. And then one summer I did a internship for an appellate court judge in the morning, and then worked at Eddie's office, and then by my third year, I was just in the office all day. And because my grades weren't the best, I knew if I wanted to get the job that I wanted to get, I had to be there and show them that I'm gonna be a good employee because no one's gonna hire me off of my transcripts.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah. Well, let's you know, you've mentioned Ed Jensen. Just for those of us who aren't from Chicago and weren't practicing law in the in the 90s or the aughts, who's Ed Jensen?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

He was one of the premier criminal defense attorneys in Chicago. Um, he represented everyone from notorious mob figures to politicians to celebrities to the everyday guy. He he loved what he did. Um I think there's a quote about him somewhere where for 50 years a good part of Chicago's history came through his office. Um and yeah, he was used to joke around that I should pay him to work for him.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Enjoying the episode? Subscribe so you don't miss the next and share it with a young lawyer or student looking for a little motivation. It takes 10 seconds and means a lot to us. I think I've heard you or maybe others uh talk about him as the the the dean of the Chicago Defense Bar. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

He he was uh his reputation preceded him. You know, I couldn't go to I would always follow him to court.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Um even if I didn't have to do anything, I would walk and carry his briefcase just so I could be seen with him and see how he interacts. And you couldn't get in or out of a courthouse, even if it was a five-minute status, in less than two hours. Every judge she ran into in the hallway, prosecutors, defense attorneys, clerks, bailiffs would just stop and talk to him.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

They wanted to talk to him. They wanted to talk to him. What do you think it was that that drew him to other people? Why did people want to talk to him?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

He had a very likable personality. Um he knew how to talk to people. They used to joke that when a client walked into his office, he would give them the Ed Jensen treatment and he would walk out thinking that they were best friends and wanting to hire him. Yeah, no matter what. But he's he's very mod he was very modest. I mean, don't get me wrong, he he thought he was the best trial lawyer. He thought he was sounds like he might have been. Yeah, he probably was um very successful, but he had a very everyday kind of guy vibe about him when you talk to him.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

He found something in common with everyone.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah. I I haven't mentioned him before, but when I was first hired, I came up here and was working at Doordrill and Scow, and the person who hired me was Don Fast, uh incredible influence on my career and everything that I've done. And one of the things that I noticed about Don sounds like very much like like Ed, was like everybody liked him. The judges liked him, the prosecutors liked him, and now, 30 years into this, I'm like, the prosecutors don't like me, they hate my guts. Like the judges may or may they might respect me, but I'm not sure how many of them like him. But he was able to get the job done, and everybody liked him. That's pretty remarkable. Sounds like that's like Ed Jensen.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

I think so. The more I think back about it, I think when he was I so when I worked with him, he was kind of at the tail end of his career, and I think everyone kind of looked back fondly on the things that he did with more humor. But when he was actually advocating and on trial, I don't think they were very friendly with him.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

In the moment, it's a little bit, you know, it's easier to look back and go, remember that time we were in trial ten years ago?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah, he I mean, there's all these stories about all these antics he would pull that you just can't get away with now, and I'm sure rubbed people the wrong way, but it is funny thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

How time heals, but also time softens, right? Because there's definitely some some uh some prosecutors that uh I knew or worked with back in the 90s, and we did not get along. And if I see them now, they seem to be very cheery about it, and I'm always thinking to myself, okay, I'm I'm all for being cheery, but it didn't seem like you really were a big fan of mine in 1999. No, but I think they probably had respect for you for fighting for your clients. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe that's what it comes down to, right? Yeah, yeah. And I and obviously Ed Jensen, uh everybody respected him. I'd like to think so. Okay. Um Do you have a story? I mean, what did you get to see? I mean, you you you chose him. You said you wanted to follow him around. What was it about him that made you say, that's the guy whose briefcase I want to carry?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I mean, I didn't have any lawyers in my family, I didn't know any lawyers, like I told you earlier in the interview here. The way I was learning once I got interested in it was reading all these articles and stories and books, and the more I dug, the more I kept seeing him pop up.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

And I was like, if I'm gonna work in criminal defense, this is who I have to work for. You know, I uh I was intrigued by the types of cases that he had, the types of clients that he represented, um, the kind of stories he had to tell, and and I wanted to be a part of that, and I wanted to have my own one day. Yeah. And I thought the path of least resistance to that is if I could work for the guy who did it already.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, absolutely. So if if you like the stories that he told, right? I'm I'm guessing if the people that I admire are often the people that I'm striving to be like. Sure. I want to be more like Keith, I want to be more like Colette, I want to be more like these other attorneys that I knew when I first started, and I I saw them in an aspirational way. What were the things that you saw about Ed in the stories that he told about his work or his clients that you aspire to emulate?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

One of the things about the way he practiced that always stuck with me was his ability to look at a set of facts and see something that no one else saw. Okay. Um I like to say he read between the lines. And you know, you could have ten lawyers and nine of them look at a police report and all see the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

And he sees something in there that no one else did, and he bases his defense on that, and he's able to be more successful with it because And is he seeing something, you know, you said it's it's it's not there. I mean, you said it's in between the lines, right? I mean it's it's something like as he figures out if we got from there's a couple of letters missing in the alphabet when we got from here to here, and we got to talk about what the what's missing.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah, he exactly. And the way he explained it to me was he would write out his crosses, but he would have these kind of like forks in the road. I don't know how better to explain that, where he'd have a a topic or a category of questions that he wanted to go to, and depending on how the witness answered those questions, he had multiple different cross-examination lines he can potentially go down.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Like a flowchart.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Sure. And he wouldn't use all of it, but he would have three or four options depending on what the witness said. And he was a notorious over preparer. You know, he uh he could have a huge federal case with tens of thousands of documents, and he would look at the front and back of each document four times. Um, you know, there's other successful lawyers I know who look at those documents, pull five out, put them in their back pocket, and go try the case. But he uh he wanted to know everything, he wanted to have the best grasp of the facts, and I think where I was going with this reading between the lines is you don't have to dispute what the facts are, you just have to reframe them. And that goes back to what we were talking about credibility. I think judges and juries like believing law enforcement officers.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Yeah. It's probably the default.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

It's hard you have to be a blatant liar for a jury or a judge to think a police officer is lying. And so when you look between the lines and you figure out the facts that should be there or could be there. What I mean by that is you're not inserting falsehoods or anything. You're you're just you're taking the facts that are there and you're turning them on their side. And you're like, well, if we look at them this way, it shows a completely different scenario. And I I found that to be effective, and I think that's what I took from him.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah, right. I mean, I I is it um Sherlock Holmes, I think famous quote where he's you know, there's a stick in the ground, and he'll stand on one side and say, That stick, look, it's pointing over there to Vedeen. Yeah, and then he'll turn and walk around to the other side of the stick, and he'll be like, Oh, that stick, it's pointing over there to Aaron. And so it depends on where you're standing to see which way the the stick is pointing.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Absolutely. And uh unfortunately, or fortunately, our cases are more complicated than the stick. So the more you prepare, the more you're able to see it from different angles.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Yeah, absolutely. Um so um just his work ethic, you know, his vision and his work ethic to say, I'm not gonna be satisfied with this simple answer. I'm gonna look and I'm gonna look and I'm gonna look until I can find an answer that I can use.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Absolutely that. And when I told you earlier that I like to develop relationships with my clients, that's directly from him. When I say he gave them the Ed Jensen treatment and they walked out feeling like they were best friends, yeah, is because the consultations or the meetings would feel like two friends talking.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

And was that false? It wasn't because they would develop relationships. And you know, I would I was there with Eddie for what four or five years, however long I was with him, and there would always be old clients coming in just to talk, just to see how he was doing, not because they were in trouble, but because they developed these you know lifelong relationships.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Sure. I mean, in many ways, he he saw them as full human beings, humans are humans, and and he saw them that way, and I guess they respected that. Of course. Yeah. Um, anything else about you know, work ethic, vision that you've seen, other things that you think now, you know, 20 years into your career, longer into your career, you're thinking, I need to do it like Eddie. You know, what would Eddie do here?

SPEAKER_01 18:18

I think that every day. I used to, in my old office, I had an old um magazine article about him where they had a full-page headshot of him, and I had it on my wall. And it was an interesting picture of him because it was almost like the Mona Lisa, because depending on what angle you looked at him, it could be like he's smiling at you or he's frowning down at you or scowling at you. And so I'd be working on something, and I'd look at him, and if I thought I was doing a bad job, I'd look like he was scowling at me. And if I thought I did something clever or good, you could see like this like Ed Jensen smirk on his face, like as if he's proud of me.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Uh sometimes people will say they've got, you know, they've got a mom voice in their head, some you know, their mother or their father saying something to them around their shoulder. It sounds like you've got the Eddie voice up in your head saying asking you questions or pointing you in directions. I do.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

He was a very important part of my life and career, and you know, I I still stay in touch with his wife. She's still alive, and I call her once in a while. She calls me. Um I became friends with his son, uh, friends with his nephew. You know, the he's still a part of my life.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Right. And when you were there um interning or clerking, you know, as a as a law student, um, did he have a full practice? Were there a whole bunch of lawyers there? Was it was he a solo guy?

SPEAKER_01 19:37

So he was already kind of dwindling down by the time I got to him, but he had a big suite with a lot of offices. Okay. And so a lot of the lawyers that were still there were at one point or another his partners or his associates. Um when I started working for him, he was partners for a short period of time still with another very prominent Chicago attorney, Terry Gillespie. Um, and his son Mike Gillespie, who I also worked with and I still do work with, both um incredible attorneys. Uh, and he had, I think, two or three associates at the time. Um the practice kept kept getting smaller as I stayed with him, and I went from being a law clerk to being his last associate slash partner, what he called me sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

But so I I got lucky in the fact that you know, I didn't get to see him in his prime, which I always wish I did. I wish I got to see him in like, you know, the eighties or the nineties when he was at the top of the game, the best lawyer in Chicago. But I got lucky in the fact that he was still getting these high profile, very interesting cases. And me as a young kid who was, you know, five days out of law school, I could dive in and work on these cases and do the things that you know some lawyers never got to do. And I was throwing into these big federal cases and kinda I wouldn't say I wasn't given guidance because he was always kind of pointing me in the right direction, but it was kind of like figure it out. Given some freedom. Yeah, and so I was working on cases I probably had no business working on, but I figured it out, and because of that I was able to leverage that into starting my own practice when he got sick, and continuing maybe on a smaller scale with those types of clients and cases, but even now I think I'm fairly early in my career and I'm getting these types of big cases because I was able to work on them from day one and now however many years in my career I am now, I'm I'm able to act like I've been working on them for so long because I have.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah. What do you think it was? I know you you're you're very modest and humble, but uh it sounds like that would have been a coveted position to be a law clerk for Ed Jensen, to be an associate for Ed Jensen's. Uh why you? You you must have been doing something, you know, it's not just your good looks and charm. I mean you have that, but Gotta be more than that.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Um, I I remember exactly what happened. I uh I was a law clerk and one of his associates had just left to go work at the public defender's office. And when I first to put it in context, when I first started working for him, he wouldn't talk to me. You know, I I was put in the back office. It wasn't even an office, I'm sorry, it was a it was a closet with old files and books that I shared with two other people. Kind of Harry Potter-esque? Kind of. Uh not much bigger than the cupboard below the staircase. But all these lawyers would be coming in to interview, and I was still probably a year away from potentially passing the bar. And I walk into his office and my heart is pounding out of my chest because he hasn't really talked to me, and he's he's an intimidating figure at that point to me. Um my heart's pounding, and I'm like, Mr. Jensen, I know you're interviewing people for an associate position, and I'd like to be considered. He looks at me and goes, You are being considered, now get out of my office.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

So what do you think it was about the stuff that you did? And again, I know you're he he's he's brilliant. He's experienced, he knows stuff. What do you think he saw? I mean, why is he considering you? He saw I was a hard worker.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Like I said, I was never the best student. Um but when I went to work for him, I worked hard, and the first case I worked on was this real estate lawyer who's actually a good friend of mine now talking about uh relationships. But he had he ended up being charged with two mortgage fraud cases, and it was the first one that came in, and we got dozens of these discs of discovery. And Eddie wouldn't read anything on the computer, he wanted everything um hard copy, and so I was in this little office, and my job was to print everything, and the way we got this discovery there was no index, everything was jumbled up. I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but it was probably on purpose. Nothing made sense. And I broke probably five or six printers getting all that printed. I put them in 23 bankers' boxes, I made indexes for each banker's box. I knew every box inside and out. I knew how to do a real estate transaction better than anyone at that lawyer's office knew how to do a real estate transaction. And I I think he, you know, I I kind of carried that over into every case I worked on him with, and he saw I mean, he he's working hard on this, and I don't know if we're allowed to swear on this. Absolutely. I remember it was like a couple years into me being an associate, and we were representing a prominent political figure in Chicago who had been subpoenaed for some records, and they brought over the records to our office and had put sticky notes on the few pages that were um the important ones.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

And because these records were requested on behalf of like a corporation that they had and not individually, we couldn't plead the fifth on them. So we had to turn them over. And he's like, he gave them to me. He's like, okay, just go turn these over. So what I did was I took the sticky notes off and I mixed up the pages and I turned them over like that.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

In the same way that you tended to receive paper.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

And um the next meeting he asked when the client was there, he asked me if I didn't. I told him what I did. And you know, he acted like it was whatever, no big deal, and the client leaves. He looks at me and goes, You're you're not the smartest guy, but you'll know never let anyone fuck you.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

That's a you know, in in our line of work, that's an important thing to be aware of, right? You know, I I find it I find it interesting, Vadim, that you say you're not a good student, right? In the sense that I gather what you mean is in the traditional sense of books, but it sounds to me like you are a student of life in the you know, in the most excellent sense. You're an observer, you're a problem solver, and that's what we do in our work is you're as good a student as we're ever gonna get.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

I think they just clicked to me when you explained it to me. Yeah. Um I do mean in traditional sense. I never got the best grades. I never, you know. Lots of different ways to learn, right? But yeah, I agree. I'm a student of the game, and like I looked up to Eddie, you know, we talked about books earlier, maybe before the interview started, but just like I looked up to Eddie, I started gravitating towards biographies of other prominent criminal defense lawyers. Yeah. And that was kind of how I was learning. I wouldn't necessarily open up the federal rules of criminal procedure and read that front and back, even though at one point I did do that. But um I figured that would be good rules to know.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah, but that's the grinder attitude that you have, right? You're just like, I'm gonna sit down and I gotta grind through this other stuff. But what you were drawn to was the practice, not the theory. It's the practice.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

The practice and the stories and being able to take out these nuggets of information from war stories.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Because I mean, as you probably know, not probably you definitely know, what you learn in law school is not what you necessarily do representing a client. They don't teach you how to be a lawyer, they teach you how to pass the tests.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Yeah, exactly. But it's all application. I mean, we have all of these ideas, it's application of the law, it's application of the theory, it's application of all these things, and sometimes the best way to learn it is to either do it like you did in law school. You're just like, I don't need to learn it anymore, let me just go do it under 7-Eleven.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

And then, you know, to watch other people do it, you know, that you have these wonderful models. So I think we need more students like that. Actually, in our world, I think that's what we need is in the criminal defense word, we need practical students.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I agree with you 100%. I've talked to people about this. Like, I like the idea of an apprenticeship, but I don't know the practical way of how you work that into becoming a lawyer. But I think you need a good mentor. You you need if you're gonna being a lawyer is hard. Um emotionally, mentally, physically, all those things, and you have to like what you do. Like I tell my associates, if you like what you do, you're gonna get good at it, and if you get good at it, people will pay you to do it. And in order to do that, you have to f I think it helps finding someone that you look up to and you want to try to emulate. And I actually heard someone talking about this before. They always you know lawyers always tell the lawyers, find your own voice.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

To me, finding your own voice means trying to copy other people for a while until you get to the lane where it becomes you.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Sure, right? You you you have to see what the other options out there are, and then maybe you gravitate towards one and you tweak it, you modify it, you edit a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Pick something out from this guy and pick something out from another lawyer and so forth, and those things become you know, like a melting pot.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yeah. Um, you know, just the other thing that I I'm we have a young uh aspiring law student here watching us right now, you know, and so the the from your story, what I what I'm gathering that we're what we want to pass on is like you need to have some hustle. Like you want to get by in this world, you need to have some hustle, some creativity, some grinded out stuff. That's what I'm guessing Ed saw in you.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

He called himself a hustler, and I never knew what that term really meant until I kind of started living it, and then people started calling me a hustler. And and not necessarily the negative connotation where you sometimes hear about it. Not a yeah, uh you're not grifting. No, you're just you're doing whatever needs to get done, and whether that's whatever needs to get done on behalf of your client or whatever needs to get done on behalf of your business, yeah. You get it done, and the people that succeed are the ones that are willing to do it, and more times than not, you're probably gonna fail, but you're not gonna know until you try.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Yeah. You know, it's it's I'm sure it's in your office too, right? We you're crazy busy, right? You probably don't have time to mentor in a traditional sense of like hold someone's hand, point out, do this, point out, do that, point out, do that. You're probably now in the Ed Jensen seat, and you're like, carry my briefcase and watch. And that's how somebody needs to. I mean, that's some of the mentoring is like you putting people in a position to observe, but they gotta bring the hustle themselves.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

I have yet to ask someone to carry my briefcase, but I agree with you. I uh I tell everyone just come to court, you have my calendar, come to court with me. Even if it's just for a status hearing or continuance, you never know what you're gonna learn. And the other thing that I've been trying to instill in my associates and law clerks is there's always something new in this business. And you have to be able to adapt to the situation and get comfortable being uncomfortable. And the way I was able to do that was because I had this freedom given to me by Eddie of here's a file, figure it out. And because I was able to figure it out, that was a way of learning how to figure it out also, not just learning about the case, not just learning about the law, but learning how to figure things out. And so I think sometimes they see that as a negative of my mentorship of like I can just leave them to their own devices. But to me, I see it as I'm helping you so later on in your career you know how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Or you could figure it out if you don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Yeah, I mean it's you know, if you were gonna cross that person maybe in a different way, it it you know, the questions that you might make, I'm gonna give you this, you know, how do you think I'm gonna want it when you get it back? Yeah, how do you think I'm gonna use this when we get to trial? How do you think I'm gonna do those things? And then the then the advice is well, then put it together in a way that's gonna be helpful for me to use in a way that you think I need to use it.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

And I agree with you 100%. I found it very helpful asking them questions instead of directing them necessarily like do this, do this. Like, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Yeah, because I I've heard you say uh before, and I know this is again part of your uh humility, right? Uh too stupid to be intimidated, unorthodox ways, right? Have you said that about yourself before? I don't know what I'm supposed to be scared of. Yeah, but might that might be also uh as an intern or as a young person as you're gonna have to figure it out, yeah, right? You're gonna maybe see things because I've got flaws that have been embedded in me because I've done it a certain way over 30 years now. And if I give give this to somebody fresh, sure, they're gonna maybe see something that I didn't see because they're looking between the lines in a different way than I did. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

You need a fresh set of eyes, and sometimes I think it just it helps to be unorthodox in the way you do things.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

You know, you see lawyers all do the same thing and all get similar results and wonder why it's not the results that they want. Maybe just try something different. Obviously, within the rules or the acceptable rules or acceptable standards, but try something different and maybe you'll get a better result. And I've I don't know if lucky is the right word, but I've been unorthodox in ways I've approached certain cases and gotten results that are surprising.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Yeah. You know, I I when I heard you say that uh it the image that came to me is you know, we as lawyers, we know the hallways, we know the paths, and therefore we step on we stay on those in those hallways. And sometimes you need to walk through a wall to get to where you want to go. And it sounds like you're willing to just walk through some walls. Sometimes I don't know I'm walking through the wall, but I end up on the other side. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

But and and that's the in the law, we have these principles, justice, fairness, truth, right? And then we don't always have a procedural vehicle to get us into that room where justice is. I think a lot of times justice is in the hallways, right? Well there is that too, right? There's definitely um you've you've made it maybe the person in power with of justice, you've invited them out to the hallway with you. I've heard you tell a story about how you were able to convince a U.S. attorney to get a certain result for your client even though there wasn't a procedural vehicle. You just, hey, let's do this. This is we have to reopen this, we have to redo this. This is just fair.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

I I learned that from my wife. She taught me uh you can't get something if you don't ask.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

And I think uh people are afraid to ask sometimes because they don't know if it's possible or not. It actually just honestly, I'm working on something right now that had happened. I had this guy in federal court, he was charged with multiple counts of money laundering, structuring, running an unauthorized money transmission business, and lying on a CTR form. And the this case has been set for trial so many times, but kept getting whittled down, got the money laundering charges dismissed, got the money transmission charge dismissed, got the structuring charges condensed to one, still going to trial. And then I was driving to that trial in Cleveland I just had, and I was thinking about the case, and I was like, you know what? I know I've asked before, I'm gonna do it again. And I emailed the prosecutor from the car and I said, you know, this case is a shell of what it was. Can't we get some kind of deferred prosecution on this? And he wanted to talk, and I'm like, I'm on trial. I was like, alright, talk after trial. And we had gone a call, and he's like, you know, we're we're very confident we can get a conviction on this case. And I said to him, just because you can doesn't mean you need to. Doesn't mean you should. And he's like, okay, well, like, do you want to come in and pitch? I was like, look, I don't want to waste anyone's time. Talk to whoever you need to talk to. If there's an available lane, I'll go in and I'll make my pitch. If not, we don't need to waste anyone's time. And I didn't hear anything from them for a month, month and a half. And I get a phone call and they said, Does your client want deferred prosecution? Um keeping my fingers crossed, we'll find out in the next few days if it's gonna go through. But again, just if I didn't send that email and ask, we'd be going to trial in next month. Um and it's always, you know, a lot at risk going to trial.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Yeah. And I know you have, it sounds like, you know, a national practice. I imagine you're you're not tied to Chicago, but you probably have more cases in federal court there uh in the Chicago area. But with a national practice, you're out there meeting new lawyers. You have to develop a new relationship. How do you how do you get to the point where you you get somebody's ear, you get their trust to even reconsider when they've said, we're not doing that.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

It's very hard when you're an out-of-town lawyer. Um, you know, people are comfortable with the people that they know. Um, they don't know what kind of attitude you're gonna be coming in with. Um I I just try to stay humble. I don't like coming in like a bull in a china shop.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

I don't think that helps anyone.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, no, I'm you know, I uh I've been doing this 30 years and I've uh burned many a bridge, ruined many a relationship, and uh think in the moment that's what I needed to do. That's what I needed from my client. You know, looking back on it, I uh young Aaron has really fucked me sometimes on my the way that I did things. Uh that's part of figuring it out though, right? Yeah, how do you get past that? How have you figured that out? Maybe maybe you were uh a lot more charming than I was, but sometimes I I I made some people really mad, and then you have to go back and and talk to them. How do you how do you do that? I still make them mad, you know.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Yeah you've got these nice stories that I'm telling, but you know, there's a lot of cases, and not every case ends the way you want it to. And you know, I I remember last year I got very angry and I yelled at some people I probably shouldn't have yelled at, and I started feeling bad the next day I made my rounds of calls and apologized to everyone because it just wasn't worth it. And you know, they were understanding it was the heat of the moment, all those things, but I think the older you get or the more you're in practice, you just you get more confident in what you do. And I think a lot of young lawyers who try to be aggressive, I was aggressive, I still try to be aggressive. You sound like you were aggressive, and I think that comes from a place of insecurity potentially, and you might think that's what you need to do to be an effective advocate. But the more you do it, trial and error you see, you know, sometimes the best results come when you don't act that way, and you just you gotta figure it out. And each case is different, in some cases you need to be more aggressive than other cases, and it's not a science, it's not a math equation, there's no right or wrong answer, there's just experience, trial and error, and using your judgment to try to do the best that you can.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Yeah, absolutely. You know, for me, I'm constantly just trying to build up my well of patience, you know. It's the benefit of doing this a long time is I think you're able to predict, not necessarily the future, but predict where this is going, predict where it's gonna get to. And maybe I can see that a lot quicker and sooner than somebody else on the other side, and I want to get them there, I want to get the uh prosecuting attorney there quicker. Sure. And you just can't. There's organically, I think they just need to get there on their own. And that's where sometimes some of my frustration is, is I'm like, okay, I just gotta I gotta bite my tongue, I just gotta let them get there on their own, and that's hard for me. That's super hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Sure, but part of what we do is we don't just manage our clients, we have to manage the prosecutors on the case as best as we can. And all prosecutors are different too, you know, they're all humans, and some are easier to get to than others, but you're right, you have to let them get to themselves. And maybe it's a product of them also having a large caseload and not being able to give the time to each file that needs to get done. And so when you as you get closer to trial, you know, they start looking at it, and maybe they start seeing the things that you saw when you first opened it.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. The conversation I have with every client, probably a conversation you have with every client, is at some point I'm gonna talk to you and I'm gonna say you have two choices. Do you want to accept this plea agreement or do you want to go to trial? Yeah, but what I know is the closer we get to this, the better this gets.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Right? The closer this gets, and it and I I wish we could get here sooner, but there's just something about having a trial set and making everybody do the work that you can't recreate in the abstract. That's the practical, you have to walk the walk before the other side will realize, oh, I can't prove it.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Of course, it's part of that, and part of it is you also have to have credibility in that you're willing to go to trial. Sure. If the prosecutor knows you're the lawyer that's too scared to go to trial, they're probably not gonna go to trial, you're not gonna get that 11th hour deal.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

So you have to when you don't get the deal you want, or there is an open avenue to get a good result at trial, you can't be scared to take it. You gotta just do it.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

You gotta, yeah. You gotta just sometimes walk through that wall, or sometimes just walk to the end where the trial door is and step in, and there you go.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

And I I don't know if you've had these experiences, but I've had really good deals come in the middle of a trial.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Yeah. So, like you, um a book reader, and I I love the abstract, but I'm also very much into the practical, just you know, rereading about about other cases and everything like that. And so I've obsession might be too strong of a term, but I've been reading a bunch of books about OJ. About OJ's trial, right? Did you read the new one by Afley Bailey? Uh I actually I'm on about chapter three. It's at the great book. It's uh it's at home on my uh little reading table there. Um but yeah, I've got Johnny Cochran's version, and this one here is um Gerald Ullman's uh version, Lessons from a Trial. So very practical along your lines. But I want to ask you something in here that he wrote, because I thought it was about um the money, right? And so he says the suggestion that money made a difference has been the basis of much criticism of the Simpson defense. And he says, I find that reaction hypocritical. And part of what he goes on to say is how we as a society accept that people with money prefer to live in more comfortable houses, they prefer to drive better cars, and they prefer to get better medical care. And we just accept that, right? But there's somehow when people with money prefer to get higher, I shouldn't say higher representation that allows the attorney to devote more time and attention to the problem. Because that's really what it is, right? The money allows you to devote a ton of time that maybe other attorneys can't do.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Of course. Uh uh the money doesn't all go to a lawyer's pocket. You you know, if you take a big case like the O.J. Simpson case, that's all-encompassing, and you're not gonna be able to take on other work, you're not gonna be able to bring in other streams of revenue for your firm. And so if you're working full time for a year or two years on one case, that money's gotta be able to cover your overhead for that amount of time. That money's gotta be able to cover your personal life, that money's gotta be able to cover all the experts that you might have to bring in. And I always I always tell people sometimes people come to me and they have maybe enough money to hire me, but not enough money to pay for all the additional things that will be necessary to put a full defense on, like an investigator or some kind of expert witness or something. I tell them, look, you might get better representation through the public defender's office because they have those resources built in and you'll be able to use them and actually put on a full defense. It's not fair to you if I take this money and then I have to half ass the defense because there's nothing left for the other parts that we need.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Yeah. I mean, I know I recently had an abusive head trauma homicide trial, I shouldn't say recently it was in 2023. Um, and we were very fortunate that our client was in a position to afford all of I mean, I think we had six medical experts. Sure. Seven, eight medical experts, right? But that's traditionally something that you might be in a better position to have a public defender to do that because they have the funding to get the experts, even though um it's an indigent defense, the whole organization has fun money for experts. Is that what you're talking about?

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Absolutely. And like you said earlier, some you know, the more you do it, the more you could look at a case and kind of see the projectory of what it's gonna take, and you might know from the initial consultation, you know what, I'm not gonna need any extra help on this. And that makes it easier to take on the case. But if you see, you know what, I'm gonna need a mental health expert or and multiple investigators or whatever, sure, you have to be open with the client about that because the worst thing you can do is take their money, then say, hey, we need all this other help, and they say we can't afford it. I'm like, okay, well then leave. Like I already earned my money, you can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Do you so you know back to um Mr. Ullman's comments about, you know, some of the, as he said, some of the criticism of the Simpson defense or people, you know, in that position are that person just buying their way out of trouble, right? To me, that's as much a comment upon the level of defense, and we don't necessarily want to guarantee that level of defense to all Americans. Any thoughts on that? Any, you know, I mean I just don't think that's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

If you could buy your way out of trouble, a lot more people would do it.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

You know, I've had so many clients in federal court come to me in like a on a white-collar crime and say, Can't I just pay this money back and you know it goes away? I'm like, no, if you could do that, everyone would do that. Yeah. What the money gets you is access to a lawyer who's good at what he does.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Sure. Or she does. And that might be a that might be an advantage. That might be a benefit, just like a rich person who gets cancer has the benefit of maybe going to the Mayo clinic and getting a second opinion and getting the people who are at the top of the game to try to solve that problem. But we don't begrudge that cancer patient going to the highest end to get it, but we might begrudge them to get the Vadim Glosmans or the other, you know, the lawyers at the top of the game. Society's weird in that way. Hypocritical, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 47:19

If there's a particular lawyer that you want and you could afford that lawyer, you should be able to get that lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

And if you can't, then you choose someone. I mean, the Sixth Amendment says council of choice, and you should be able to have your council of choice. There's actually a really interesting Seventh Circuit appeal going on about that right now. It was a case that I was involved with. I was kind of consulting during the trial, but it was this big fraud case, and the government restrained a significant amount of assets of this client, and the firm that he had originally chosen to represent him had to withdraw because he couldn't pay their fee. And then he ended up hiring another very prominent firm that cost more than 99.9% of people could afford, and he got a really good defense. He lost at trial, but after trial, before sentencing, it came out that the government improperly restrained some of the assets. Brilliant. And the judge denied it, saying you still got great representation, you still have this other money, whatever. But the judge understood the novelty and the strength of the appeal. So even though he sentenced him to, you know, several years in prison, he allowed him to stay on bond while it's pending right now in the Seventh Circuit, and they just had oral arguments on. And it's I think it goes right along with that. You get who you get who you want.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Yeah. And there are times when to me, it seems like, at least from a societal standpoint, right? And obviously OJ is a phenomenon of his own. But there's other cases that are always prominent, right? I mean, the the P. Diddy case, whatever whatever case you want to talk about, right? And the fact that there are people that have money and are able to afford attorneys that can devote years to a case raises the ceiling, right, for all of the defense across the board. Of course. It shows everybody what can be done if you have those resources in order to do that. It doesn't make it unfair. In many ways, I think it exposes the unfairness of how we treat those who can't afford somebody to devote all that time to the problem. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

And maybe it makes it more fair because you're able to actually go toe-to-toe with the government.

unknown 50:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

If you could without a doubt, you're going to put forward a better defense if you could spend every single day for six months working on only one case and going to trial than juggling just using a public defender as an example. Let's say they have a caseload of 90 cases.

SPEAKER_00 50:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

And 15 of those cases are up every single day. That's a lot harder to get into the nitty-gritty of everything, especially about these cases with an an enormous volume of discovery. And at least in the federal government, they have so many resources that they could put they spend years investigating a crime before it's even indicted. And so they have all their ducks lined up by the time and they expect defense attorneys who are either juggling their public defense caseload or their private defense caseload to focus in on this as if they've had the same amount of time to prepare. It's not fair.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Yeah, they because they have to have a stream of income, so they can't give up all their other opportunities. They have families to feed, their own family to feed, firms to support. And so in some ways it seems as if there's a level of representation that just most attorneys are overwhelmed. They can't compete with the government. That's right. Time and resources. Every now and then we're we see an example, you know, Karen Reed. She's able to put forward a defense at the same level or higher than what the government has, and you see the result that you can get. Absolutely. But instead of society saying, wow, we need to bring everybody else up to that level, they're critical of like, why does that person get that? They should come down here to the level that somebody else is. And that's where I think the hypocrisy that sometimes we talk about is we need to raise the level for everybody so that they have the opportunity to have that full defense.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Absolutely. And what people I mean, I think lawyers maybe get a b bad reputation if they charge a lot like the OJ Simpson lawyers, because people think, okay, well, do they have 90 clients who all pay them a million dollars each? No. They what what getting paid a lot does is it allows you to take on a smaller amount of matters, not you're making a ton of money on all this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

If you have a smaller amount of matters, you have more time to devote to those matters that you do have. Those humans that come into your office, you have more time to sit down and listen to their story, develop all of the mitigation, think about the special words that you need to use, and then narrate their story in a way that maybe they've never heard before.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Absolutely. Or just give more resources to public defense agencies like public defender's office. Maybe if you get more public defenders, each one will have a smaller caseload. And if they have a smaller caseload, they could give this time that's necessary for each case, and then it will be an even playing field.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

Yeah. I mean here in Wisconsin, the funding for more prosecutors' positions always goes up, but the public defender doesn't. And of course, if you have more public if you have more prosecutors, they're prosecuting more crimes, which just puts the burden on the defense bar even more, and you can't keep up.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Well, sure, it's a bad political position to not be tough on crime. So if you could have a platform that says we're gonna give more resources to fighting crime, no one's gonna get mad at you.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Correct. But the result is that it just becomes even more and more and more unfair for those people who are trying to defend against all of those, you know, the people in charge of the faucet who just keep flooding the backyard. Yeah, absolutely. So let me just ask one more what do you see for you in the future? What do you, you know, a lot of times people are here and I'm I'm gonna talk to them about their accomplishments, and I know you have a list of accomplishments, and I've we've talked a little bit about them, them today. Sure. But you know, tomorrow, next year, you know, 2030, what are you hoping to do?

SPEAKER_01 54:06

I want to be keep becoming a better lawyer, being able to, you know, have the ability to represent people that want my help. But uh I'm a fairly new father. I have an almost four-year-old and an almost one-year-old, and I'd really like to find a good way not to have work-life balance, because I don't think that exists in our life, maybe better work-life integration where I could still have the level that I expect of myself and my job, but also be able to be a present father. And I think that's that's the challenge I'm working on now. And hopefully I find a way to do that a good way.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Yeah. I'm uh my my kids are are grown and out of out of college now, but I found looking back that that opportunity to be involved as a father to to parent helped me be a better lawyer. I I still have a long I'm striving to still grow and to still be better, but that that chance at parenting is probably one of the greatest things uh that's helped me in the courtroom. And and I'm hoping for that.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

I've seen way too many lawyers who have isolated themselves from their families or not been in their child's lives, and they they had these accomplished careers, but as they go to the tail end of them, they look back and think about all the things that they've missed. And you know, your your kids might not care how many not guilty verdicts you have, but they might care that you weren't at their basketball game or whatever it is. Yeah. And so there's got to be a healthy mix somehow. And I don't know if anyone's ever figured it out or if there is even an answer, but I think my goal for the next foreseeable future is to figure out the best way that I could do that.

SPEAKER_00 55:46

Yeah. What what motivates you to keep doing this? So you said to begin with, like what we do is hard. It is hard emotionally, it's hard mentally, it's hard physically, right? What motivates you to keep showing up every day at that at the Glosman Law Office and keep doing the work?

SPEAKER_01 56:08

What I do is the first thing I was ever really that interested in, which is why I started reading about it, which is kind of why it started becoming part of my life. And at least at this point, I can't imagine myself doing anything else. Um that's why. I don't know if that's a good answer or not, but I've become pretty good at what I do. I'm able to help people. Yeah. Um, and I get a high when people come to me when they're in a time of need and they need my help, and I'm able to help them. I I like the feeling of someone calling me asking for help.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

Yeah. Yeah, that's very motivating, right? It's it's nice to be it's nice to be needed.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

Yeah, it is nice to be needed, and it's nice to be able to confidently tell them I'll be able to guide you through this. It's gonna be hard. Um I'm gonna come out scathed on the other side of this, but I'll I'll be here by your side.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

Yeah, it's nice to be needed, and it's nice to be helpful. Yeah, not only are you needed, but you're actually you're you know, you're helping, you're protecting in some way.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Yeah, it's not completely altruistic. You feel good about yourself doing it.

SPEAKER_00 57:13

Absolutely, yeah. You know, the work that we do, like you said, it's hard, right? There are days when, for lack of a better term, we get our ass kicked, right? We're not able to be as helpful as we thought. We get more burned, scathed than we thought. We weren't able to protect our client as much as we thought. And um, at least for me, there's days when I feel like I'm just less than. Uh, and it's hard. What where do you go to refuel? Maybe you haven't had those days, but I'm guessing you have. When you have those days. Most days are. Yeah. When you have those days, where do you what do you draw on? Where do you where do you find the energy to keep coming back?

SPEAKER_01 57:56

On to the next case.

SPEAKER_00 57:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

You just have to have uh that mentality. And you know, you get beat down so many times, over and over again, and then you get that win. Sometimes it's a big win, sometimes it's a small win, and you get this feeling that washes over you like this is why I do this. Yeah. And that energizes you for the next series of defeats.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Yeah. Do you uh what's the community like there in Chicago? I mean, I'm I'm you know, I'm thankful that here in my firm I've got a fantastic community. I work with my wife, you know, then the other lawyers are super supportive, and then Wisconsin, just in general, I have you know, friends across the state or an organization. Can you tell us a little bit about what it's like in Chicago?

SPEAKER_01 58:38

Sure. Obviously, Chicago is a big market, it's saturated, but I think people find their groups within criminal defense attorneys and they find like-minded ones, you know. Not every as you know, not every criminal defense attorney sees their job the same way or advocates the same way. And I think people find like-minded ones and they form friendships. And I in my experience, lawyers in Chicago are very good about helping each other and guiding them maybe in the right direction or giving them advice. Like I just said recently, I never told anyone I won't give them advice if someone reaches out to me. I've never had someone tell me they wouldn't give me advice either. And it even might, you know, we're humans, we have egos, we get don't always have the best relationships with other lawyers. We might see as competition or something. And that might be on a more personal level, but even with those people, if you start talking to them about a case, or it you're on the same team and you want to see each other succeed, and I think you know, we're all striving for the same goal and the clients are people, they're not just a file or a paycheck or a retainer check, whatever you want to call it. They're people. So as much as you might see someone as competition or might not like them or be upset they didn't hire you, at the end of the day, you don't really want to see something bad happen to their client.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

Yeah. You're still you're still somewhat invested, right? It might be uh a smaller amount, but just it's your community, it's your world, it's the criminal justice system which we work in, and we want to make it work.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:16

Absolutely. We wanna and if you make it easier for someone else, it'll it'll come back and be easier for you at some point.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

So uh last last question here, uh just because I know you you say you're not a good student, but I know you're a big reader. I know you've talked to Bugney about books. What are what are your three books you recommend uh our our listeners? What should they be reading if they want to become criminal defense attorneys at the top of the mountain where you're at?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

I'm gonna go with biographies because that was my bread and butter with books. Um Clarence Darrow, attorney for the damned. The Mandice, which is the biography by Edward Bennett Williams. Yep. And I'll say you're witness. Um it's right behind me here. It's uh it's a compilation of war stories from I think Chicago area mostly, lawyers, prominent lawyers, uh, about successes they've had with cross-examination, and each chapter is kind of a different version of a cross-examination or different aspect of the case. And that was one of the first ones I read.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

And it's a very practical, like you say, very like here's what happened in this case. I think it's lessons on cross-examination and life from great Chicago trial lawyers.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

It's uh the way I learned it's more entertaining to learn from stories than kind of a textbook. Yeah. And if you read between the lines in these stories, you get really good tips on how to improve your cross-examination. And I think one of the things I learned from that book is you don't have to follow the rules on cross-examination, how you're taught in law school. Yeah. And some of the more successful cross-examinations are where you did a cross in an unorthodox way.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

That sounds like a good theme to end on. A very practical lesson from uh Vadim Glosman, who's uh had success doing things in an unorthodox way. So I thank you, Vadim. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the time. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to Sanctuary in the Jungle. This episode was brought to you with the help of May Daly and Nelson Defense Group. If you enjoyed the listen, share the episode with a friend, whether it's someone working in the system, someone who wants to learn more, or someone who's never thought about criminal defense before. My hope is that these conversations not only encourage you to care more about our legal system and the people in it, but also to share that energy with others, keeping the whole community moving forward. So carry the hope, share that hope with a friend, and we'll see you next time at the library.