SALESBIZ with Mike Petrosyan
SALESBIZ with Mike Petrosyan
SB009 - Sam Geller, Founder of Geller Law
Sam Geller, Founder of Geller Law, and Mike Petrosyan talk about getting started in criminal law, best way to attract leads, opening up a personal practice and challenges that the legal industry is facing during #coronavirus #covid19 times.
3:10 First case
8:41 #Yelp it right
13:03 Legal industry under #COVID-19
17:50 Fear not
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Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/815311/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aggw0Lauz2llgPIKR9yIr
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-pipe-pros/id1495942048
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Sam Geller: 0:00
Right now, especially, this is gonna be hard to get a job. There's layoffs. And if you're starting your own firm, I personally think this is a good time to do that because of what I went through and what I've learned.
Intro: 0:12
Welcome to Sales Pipe Pros Podcast. Here's your host, Mike Petrosyan.
Mike Petrosyan: 0:18
All right everyone! Welcome to Sales Pipe Pros. I appreciate you taking the time. Today, my guest is a Bay Area native just like myself and actually a good friend of mine. He has been in the legal space for over 10 years now. Has has done tremendous for himself with his own personal practice. And I'm super excited to have him to share his insight. Sam Geller, welcome, brother.
Sam Geller: 0:46
Hey, Thank you, man. Thanks for having me.
Mike Petrosyan: 0:48
Absolutely, great to have you. So let's kick it off, bud. I think we were just talking about it right now before. When it comes to the legal world, everyone's in sales. Whether you're real estate, SaaS, legal, we all have to eat. We all have to make money. Love to hear more about that. But before we get into that, let's just take a step back. Let's talk a little about your background, how did you end up in law. Tell us all about you and how it all started.
Sam Geller: 1:11
Yeah, so as a lot of people that I know growing up, I was told that I got to be a doctor or I got to be a lawyer, maybe an engineer. Something like that. And, um, I enjoyed watching law movies much more than I enjoyed watching medical movies, and ultimately, I ended up going to law school not knowing what I wanted to do. I just knew that I wanted to be in court, and I wanted to represent people and not just sit behind a desk. So after passing the bar, I volunteered as a public defender, and I got an opportunity to be in court, figure out what that feels like, solidify within myself that I enjoy that experience. And then when the time came, I just started my own practice one day, told everybody that's what I do now. And slowly trial and error sort of figuring out, you know, how to I allow more people to know that is what I do.
Mike Petrosyan: 1:58
No. Yeah, I think, uh, quick background. You and I are both coming from immigrant families. I think that was kind of the approach of go to school, become a doctor, become a surgeon, become a lawyer so those are basically your three options. Otherwise, you're useless. So you clearly had a passion for the legal side. Tell me about why specifically, you went into criminal? Because I know that's the hardest side of the field. There's corporate, there's tax, there's real estate. A lot of other options. What inspired you specifically on the criminal side?
Sam Geller: 2:29
So actually, it was my first time having a case actually go to trial. At the at the time that I started volunteering, I wasn't so sure like which side of this field I want to be on? I mean, I knew that I don't want to do contractual law, corporate law because I didn't want to be stuck behind a desk 24/7. But when I started actually practicing criminal law, I had a case where my client was alleged to have committed a small offense, just like possession of some sort of controlled substance. And there was, like four people in the car at a concert that they were attending. And there was all this proof that that this person might have actually not been guilty. And I felt like the justice system was trying to pinpoint someone and that person happened to be my client. And in just in speaking with him and how he felt pressured and how he felt defeated. And how he felt like he was just stuck, you know, stuck between a you know, a rock and a hard spot. I felt like there's something that I can do. So completely scared, you know what's to happen, I was like, "Let's just go to trial", never having done it before. I had mentors. I went to court, picked the jury, and I got a "Not Guilty" verdict within 10 minutes. And that kind of got me. One, it feels great to get a right to get a "Not Guilty" verdict that quickly, but it just made me feel good, and made me feel like I help somebody have a voice, and from then it just kind of took off. Um, it's not something I can do in a different field of law like just be able to be somebody's voice, technically.
Mike Petrosyan: 4:02
Got it! So that one specific case you kind of fell into it and lit a fire in terms of, you know, maybe the legal system's not is just as we all think we are and you feel like you obviously everyone, you know, innocent until proven guilty...
Sam Geller: 4:17
Yea for me it was like, "Yeah, this person on a small case on a small crime is being treated this way". What's happening with people who are accused of committing crimes that are much bigger. I mean, a lot of times are people guilty? Sure! But you know, there are people who truly are, you know, improperly accused or wrongfully accused, is what I mean to say. And, uh, it's just that it's just like a poker game for everybody. And you have to equal the playing field somehow.
Mike Petrosyan: 4:49
Yeah, absolutely. So you were a public defender for how long?
Sam Geller: 4:54
So, I was a public defender in Marin County for a whole year. And after Marin County, I got an opportunity to work in San Francisco. Two very different experiences. I felt like in San Francisco, I was given an opportunity to kind of come into my own. Um, you know I got a chance to in Marin and in San Francisco, worked, worked with, in my opinion, some of the best attorneys I've ever met. And in San Francisco, I was just given an opportunity to, I guess, learn a little bit more skills because there was more opportunity to do trial work and different kind of motion. We're just because the nature of how the county's work, but that's where that's where I volunteer.
Mike Petrosyan: 5:33
Gotcha. Let's take a step back. You were a public defender at Marin County. Then you went to San Francisco. Then you had the grit to start your own company, your own business of just be legal representation. Let's talk a little bit about how that process started and how you eventually started your wow practice.
Sam Geller: 5:52
When I was done with my volunteer work, I had a decision to make. At the time it was you have to get a job as a public defender somewhere farther away into one of the further counties, or potentially find other work on. And I didn't want to drop everything that I have here in the San Francisco Bay Area and go to middle of nowhere and do public defense work until I get an opportunity to come back. So one day I just decided, "Hey, I can do this on my own". I have enough information that I've learned over the past year and a half and I have enough mentors that I could rely on. And in today's world, it's pretty simple, right? You rent an office, you buy a desk and you tell people this is what you do and at the same time with the Internet presence now, as long as you can build your internet presence, you can do amazing things. People find me on the Internet all the time. And once I started building that and finding different avenues to generate the potential for a new client, at least, it really helped me then, you know, show people what I can do.
Mike Petrosyan: 0:00
Absolutely! So when it comes to the legal world, like becoming a pilot or a cop, you know, you have to have some certain training to get in there. You have to have a specific amount of hours. Is there anything that's, is there a prerequisite, that you have to have a specific amount of cases or a specific amount of litigation time before starting a practice? Or you could just literally out of law school, pass the bar and then start your own practice?
Sam Geller: 0:00
You can literally get out of law school and start your own practice. It's great! It's also a little bit scary at the time to do that. But there's nothing that says you have to have this many hours under your belt before you can go ahead and represent someone on your own.
Mike Petrosyan: 8:20
Looking back at it now, I mean, you've clearly got some experience working in the public defender's office before taking that initiative. But, if you have to do it all over again, would you just jump in straight from law school bar and then start your own practice? Or do you think you went the route that was more beneficial?
Sam Geller: 0:00
Absolutely not! I think that if I had to do it all over again, I would do it the exact same way. Because the type of the experience that I got, you know, working with other attorneys and just listening to their ideas and the friendships and the connections that I made are invaluable. You know, the first time I walked into court was to just ask to put over a case to a different date. And I was terrified. I was like "Oh my god, I am like talking to a judge, and there is a DA and there's a bailiff." And being in court every single day as a public defender with someone to always protect you who is a mentor, is an invaluable experience.
Mike Petrosyan: 8:21
Yea, absolutely! I'd imagine, too, I, thank the Lord never been in trouble with the law before. But I'd imagine if I were to hire someone, especially from a private practice, too, I'd want him or her to have some skin in the game and have some sort of scars, been in actual legal environment before, before trusting them with my money or my freedom, livelihood, etc. So totally agree with you there. So you mentioned earlier about different avenues with respect of building your pipeline, getting your customers in. Let's talk a little bit about some of those. I know that you're on Yelp. You have a contact page with them. It seems like a partnership. I've seen you on AVVO. Let's talk a little bit about some of the platforms that you would recommend for someone that starting their own practice to build up that presence and get your name out there more.
Sam Geller: 9:04
Yeah, well as you mentioned, I use Yelp. When I just started, I felt like Yelp wasn't the thing for me because I would use Yelp to find a restaurant. You know, I wouldn't necessarily think to go to Yelp to find an attorney. Now, you know, several years later, I think people use Yelp for everything. So people are looking to start their own business. It's important to create a Yelp page. But at the same time, your Yelp has to be something that you're confident in presenting. You have to have great pictures. You have to have great content, great information, great descriptions and then reviews matter, right? So if you have Yelp, Yelp can be a double edged sword. If you're doing a bad job for people, people are going to leave you bad reviews. If you do your best and you, you know, provide the service people are happy with, then you're gonna get good reviews and over time you develop, you know, you develop reviews that that people trust, right, So, getting a review, having a McDonald's is much easier than getting a review, you know, having a law firm because people are afraid to go online post their legal troubles. But if you do a good enough job, people are willing to do that for you because they want other people to know that. Hey, you know, Sam is gonna be a good person for you to consider hiring. Um, yeah. Um I obviously use AVVO. I use Google. You know, I've tried things like Thumbtack and I tried these lead generators. I personally hated them. I felt like I would pay money for something, and at the same time, I would never get a call back. Or I will call somebody and they were looking for a different type of attorney. Sometimes I feel like the leads were fake, like the companies who were and paying leads for just providing fake leads just to create a create an income base or just to generate revenue. What I've started doing recently was I changed what I do from just selling my firm and making people realize that "Hey, this firm has good reviews on Yelp in Google" towards people actually knowing who I am as a person, right? Because I form relationships with people and it's a relationship of trust, and it's a time people are usually at their lowest point in life. They're terrified. They're scared. And they look to me as someone that can save them, right, For example. So I've shifted my entire, um, campaign, you know, for lack of a better word, too. Creating an image, a brand of who I am because people are gonna hire me, right? And that's why now I present people with videos on Instagram and Facebook. Um, Tik Tok, for example. Whatever platforms are out there now so that people can get to know me and have some information that I provide that could be related to their case. And, you know, when they call they already know how I sound and how I present. It's like we already met, and that's kind of the world that we live in. So I shifted my focus of that
Mike Petrosyan: 11:52
Absolutely! With respect to target market, is there a specific customer or specific type of case that you like working with? I mean, crimes come in so many different flavors, but which which ones do you find the most excitement with action? And from a monetary standpoint, of course, which ones do you feel like are the most a successful?
Sam Geller: 12:11
I mean, from a strictly business perspective? People who got money, right? That's what we want to work with, Um, that and that's always the goal. And the goal is to help somebody. But also it's important to value what you provide to people and provide that two people who are willing to pay for. At the end of the day, I do provide a service but I run a business and it's a, you know, it's a double headed monster. Um, and you know, if you ask for a target client, it's hard to say. But what's most enjoyable from from a target client perspective, you know, is someone who is there who wants your help, who you know, is willing to be grateful for what you're able to accomplish them right at that that's always important, but also be able to, like, help them with their career. Or, you know, maybe they lose their job or they lose their nursing license, whatever it may be. Having success in that sense is it to me, is more worthy than the couple thousand dollars that I make because I was truly able to help someone because of some mistake they made right. Most of my clients are not career criminals. They're people who had a bad date there, people that I got into a bad fight. That's and those people don't deserve for that moment to define them in any way. So that, to me, is like a target client. Always.
Mike Petrosyan: 13:30
No, I think I heard someone say the difference between a criminal and, ah, just a regular person, just one bad call. That's basically it, but it shouldn't define us. That's absolutely right. So with respect to your current practice now, we live in a very interesting time. This is COVID times, we're working from home. We're clearly at home right now, but this is a very interesting time. We just talked about this earlier, but with respect to what's happening in the industry, in your specific industry and working from home, how does all that work with judges and you going to trial? And we can't be in public places and getting the your clients of defensive they deserve? How does I was at that transpiring just give us a
Sam Geller: 14:17
Yeah, it's actually having major implications. From a business perspective., people not being out there, people not interacting means that people are not committing crimes. I'm not getting the call. But from the current clients and what's happening with court, you know, courts are doing their best to close like Contra Costa County, Alameda County, Santa Clara County have pretty much shut their courthouses down and said, "Hey, no clients need to show up and we're gonna we're only gonna handle certain types of cases." The major cases, violent cases, domestic violence cases, restraining orders, things like that. And then everything else is kind of being pushed down, down the line, which means that in two months, three months when this all settles, the courts would be super crowded, overcrowded. Not that they aren't already, but it will be worse, and people usually have a right to have a trial within a certain time. So what the courts are doing, they're saying it because of this national emergency, and there's apparently a government code for this that says we're gonna declare these days as holidays. Therefore they don't count towards your your rights you know, your speedy trial rights, your right to have this within a certain period of time, things like that. So what happened just just two days ago is that all jury trials are now continued for 60 days which means that if you're in custody on a misdemeanor case and you had a trial because you say so you haven't been released For whatever reason, you now have to stay in custody for an additional 60 days. That's usually more time than anybody does in a misdemeanor, period, right? And then, us defense attorneys, we're now asking for people who are in custody to be released because it's important for them not to contact the virus, then be released three weeks later just to spread it. Um, and you know, a lot of DA's are actually somewhat on board; many are not. It depends on the client, and you know it's a case by case basis, but its impacting the courts a lot and there's a lot of people who was lives are more direct, derailed by the fact that everything is being continued for 3-4 months.
Mike Petrosyan: 16:22
No, absolutely. I'm seeing a lot of ah on the news in the media around prisoners. I actually thought about this when this first came out. I thought, you know, how do you control a population of prisoners? Thousands of prisoners eating next to each other, living next to each other, not really knowing what they're contracting. I'm already seeing some of that, some of those numbers come out. The prisons are getting infected. Guards are being infected. It's pretty insane.
Sam Geller: 16:43
It's impossible. I mean, there is an SF Sheriff, for example, was tested positive. There's an SFPD officer were tested positive, and you think about jail and prison cells are there already overcrowded and most jails are a six by six cell, right, where you're sharing it with somebody. So there is no social distancing there and then say some Joe. So they're eight by eight. And sure, you have an extra two feet of space. That means that you have to stay two feet away from your, you know, corner to corner. Yeah, because anybody was walking by can impact you. So what's happening is, if you have less than 30 or 60 days left in custody and you're not a violent person, and you haven't been diagnosis with the virus. Let's just let these people out! Because people are coming in and out. And it's a small hub where they have to eat together, have to shower in the same place. They're bound to get infected by this, and then they're gonna be out in a week later and just infect the rest of the world. It's Ah, it's a huge dilemma.
Mike Petrosyan: 17:48
That's insane. So given current state of affairs, your overall success just if we put a bundle all into one what advice would you give to someone that's literally passing the bar right now, that wants a branch off and become, you know, their own individual contributor their own entrepreneur. What advice would you give to those people that are starting out, specifically in this crazy time to. I'd love to focus on that.
Mike Petrosyan: 18:12
Um, well, I think that, you know, this is gonna be a very difficult time for people to start their own firms, right? Because one, you have to keep the lights on and pay the bills, and you got to pay for you know, your own livelihood. Um, but if you're starting out today, my only advice would be is, Don't be scared, because fear never gets people anywhere. Um, and be different, right? Don't go online and find out what everybody else is doing. But how am I gonna be just a little bit different in front of, you know, my competition so that people actually want to communicate with me and talk to me, right? Because you're gonna have peaks and valleys of how your business runs. That's just normal in any sort of, you know, any anybody was self employed, especially in our line of work. But right now, especially this is gonna be hard to get a job. There's layoffs. And if you're starting in on firm, I personally think that this is a good time to do that because of what I went through and what I've learned as a result. Like if I could take what I know now and take it back six years when they come, it wasn't as good. I don't know where I would have been today, but I feel like I would have been here at least quicker. So now it's start your own firm online presence the most important thing now and, you know, build an online presence that you're proud to put out there. Which means that if you have a website and you have a Yelp and you have a Google and you have an Instagram, there should be no mistakes, there should be no typos, there shouldn't be a page that doesn't load, because that is a representation of how you run your firm.
Sam Geller: 19:46
It's good feedback. Awesome, man. And last question for your, brother. You know, all the success you've had. Everything. What's next for Sam Geller? What's next for Geller Law? Do you want to widen your practice? Do you want to continue specifically with your niche market and being your own boss? Where do you see this going in the next 3 to 5 years?
Sam Geller: 20:05
I mean, the next in the next 3 to 5 years what I would like to do is I would like to expand my firm from two perspectives. I would like to expand it in a number of people that work here, um, and also expand practice; the type of breakfast that we do, right? So program is sticking. A criminal offense is always going to be here because that's a fashion. But when I say hire staff, I have to hire somebody who can bring in a different line of who can bring in a different line of expertise, right. Because hiring someone who does what I do that I could do myself. It's helpful to alleviate what I do, right. But from a perspective of building more business and creating a pipeline of potential clients, that's not that helpful. So for someone to come in here, help with the office work and then also help with bringing in a different type of clientele, who has a different legal issue, that's the next step for me.
Mike Petrosyan: 20:58
So maybe tax or corporate?
Sam Geller: 21:00
We'll see. We'll see what what it becomes. But to me, I base who I work with on the kind of, you know, people that they are, like what kind of vibe I get from them. And if I find someone who does Employment Law, or if I find someone with us, you know, Intellectual Property Law that can contribute and I feel has a very similar passion that I do and can deliver, then that would be that.
Mike Petrosyan: 21:26
So first person, people, then passion and then we get into the practice?
Sam Geller: 21:32
I think I mean, to me, the type of person that I work with is very important.
Mike Petrosyan: 21:36
Absolutely! Well, Sam I appreciate you taking the time, brother. You've been killing it out there. Thank you for holding our justice system accountable to some of the craziness I've heard for all the stories you've mentioned and the things that we've talked about today. Continue crushing it out there and stay safe, my bro. I know it's crazy times right now.
Sam Geller: 21:53
Thank you, brother! I appreciate you as well.
Intro: 21:55
Take care. But thanks for joining. For more episodes, visit sales hypos dot com