Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] So you graduate you get the success, win the award with the Coach V book.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: of The next step in the writing career?

Justin Spizman: Yeah, I realized there’s no money in writing your own books because, you know, that $10,000 check was a lot of money at that time, but to the amount of work that went into it, it was crazy. I mean, you know, it was an insane amount of work and just very little money for the work. And so I realized quickly that the way that you write books or and make money, right?

Because it was important to me at that time to find the, you know, the balance was. You’re either John Grisham, you’re writing a legal thriller and you’re getting a million dollar advance every time, or you’re writing books for other people. And what I realized is in the Jimmy V book is I don’t like going on, you know, radio shows.

And I went on probably 50 plus radio shows across the country in like 30 days. I’d wake up radio show class. But what I realized is that the marketing is a grind. It is a grind. So I asked myself, how can I do what I love?

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, [00:01:00] Jonathan Hawkins, as we explore the fascinating stories of successful law firm founders. We’ll uncover their beginnings, triumph over challenges, and practice growth. Whether you aspire to launch your own firm, have an entrepreneurial spirit, or are just curious about the legal business, you’re in the right place.

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. This is a podcast where I get to interview founding attorneys and hear about all the cool shit that they’ve done and are doing. And today’s guest is doing some cool stuff.

He’s a, I’ll say he’s a criminal defense lawyer by day and an award-winning author by night. So we’re gonna dive into all that. Or maybe it’s early morning, I don’t know. You can tell me. But today’s guest is Justin Spizman. He’s an attorney here in Atlanta. So Justin, why don’t you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your firm, how many people are there, what kind of stuff you guys do, and then we’ll get started.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, so I’m [00:02:00] Justin Spizman. The name of the law firm is a Spizman firm. We have, I have a partner, Scott Fortas. We have three associates and of counsel lawyer. And then we have a remarkably great staff that does all the heavy lifting. So I think there’s 12 of us now. Our bread and butters criminal defense from traffic tickets to serious felonies.

So that’s kind of what we wake up and do every day. We have some subspecialties that are kind of one-offs, but similar to, you know, probably some crossover in the criminal world, I do a fair share of tribunal or disciplinary hearings. I do a fair share of protective orders, both prosecuting them and defending them.

There’s usually a criminal component to it, like domestic violence a couple other areas. Sometimes some complicated civil litigation that has some sort of crossover, you know, fraud or criminal aspect to it. So, but the traditional cases that we handle are people that have been arrested and accused [00:03:00] of criminal acts.

Jonathan Hawkins: You dabble in in some personal injury too, right? or no.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, dabbles da was the way to put it. I’ve, you know about seven or eight years ago I was sending out a lot of PI cases and we still do send out a great deal of PI cases, but you know, we have good relationships with our clients and some of these car wrecks are kind of fast falls down the middle. So we began handling those mostly ’cause I really love trying cases and you know, not to suggest that my job is easier or harder, but I think it’s easier to.

Ask for money than it is to ask for freedom. So it’s there’s something to that in my mind that it felt like my skillset crossed over well. So generally, the cases that were taken on the PI scale are, are ones that we are litigating. So, I enjoy a courtroom and that’s where I’m probably my most comfortable.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you always know you wanted to be a trial lawyer? Is that, you know, there’s some people that go to law school knowing that’s what they want to do, or is that something that just sort of happened later?

Justin Spizman: I’m still not entirely sure I wanna be a trial lawyer, but what [00:04:00] happened, I think for me is I went to law school somewhat begrudgingly. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but my parents insisted that I get a post, you know, graduate degree and I was always good at arguing with people not necessarily winning the arguments but arguing.

So decided to go to law school and once I got outta law school, I’m sure what I wanted to do. I was wonderfully lucky to get a job in the Fulton County Solicitor’s Office as a prosecutor. Took that job and I started trying cases and that’s kind of when I got hooked, just being in a courtroom, litigating, you know, just duking it out.

And when you’re prosecutor and you get to try cases against all different levels of lawyers, so defense lawyers would walk into courtrooms and some were remarkably talented, others were young, inexperienced, like me. But I love the challenge. I love trying cases against the best lawyers in the state of Georgia.

Even if I lost, it still felt like fun. And so I just got addicted to it. And once I got tired of working for the government, as many people do, I felt like I was underpaid. And it was hard to see where this was all going. [00:05:00] I flipped over. I also didn’t particularly love putting people in jail. It was not something I enjoyed doing.

Some people needed to go to jail, but I always felt somewhat conflicted. And I think I came to terms with the fact that I would be better off defending people and giving ’em a fair shot at things than I would prosecuting them. And it pays just a little bit better being on this side sometimes

Jonathan Hawkins: Just a little bit, probably.

Justin Spizman: just a little bit.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, yeah. So tell me about, so trying the cases. I mean, what does that look like when you’re in a solicitor’s office or prosecutor’s office? I mean, is it one a week? Is it two a week? Is it like three a day? I mean,

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: what does that look like and are they jury trials mostly, or bench trials?

Justin Spizman: Yeah, so part of it depends on where you’re prosecuting and part of it depends on at what level. You know, felony prosecutors, district attorneys. They’re trying less cases, but they’re trying most times, longer cases. So instead of a one or two day trial, they’re trying, you know, a week or longer. I mean, the, I think the quickest way you probably, the quickest [00:06:00] felony trial you’re gonna have is gonna be three, four days, and they usually seem to last a week.

So you’re, you know, week on, you know, few weeks off, week on, few weeks off. Obviously you get caught in these major felony trials with lots of witnesses that get take weeks, if not months. Right now there’s one of those going on in New York with a famous rapper. And so you will find yourself at the felony level, just more marathons in the solicitor’s office.

Misdemeanors, sprints, you know, one day trials. Two day trials, a lot of DUIs, a lot of batteries, a lot of thefts. So when you’re in a solicitor’s office, you are doing back to back. A lot of times it seems like you have a trial week and you’re trying cases, one after the other. Whereas in a DA’s office it’s less number of trials, but longer trials

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, that’s to somebody a while back and we were talking about surfing and he said that, you know, learning to surf was sort of hard because you, you gotta wait for the wave, so you got, see, it’s hard to get enough reps at least early on to really get, get at it. [00:07:00] And it’s sort of like that with trials.

I’m thinking if you’re doing a, you know, a couple week or more than that, or. I mean, you’re picking a lot of juries, man. You’re learning how to talk to a jury, right?

Justin Spizman: Yeah. I learned as I’ve developed as a trial lawyer, that I used to think that you would win a trial in a closing argument. Then I realized that you win trials when you cross examine witnesses, adversarial witnesses. And then I think at this point in my career, I realized that you win trials when you pick juries and that’s I think what I’ve settled on is that if you want to be successful trial lawyer.

You have to intuitively figure out what six or 12 people are going to be. Your shepherds are going to protect your client or are going to be the beacons of truth or you know, or white. And so now, yeah, you get to be real good at it ’cause you keep doing it again and again. And I think when I look at jury selection now I look at it in such a different light.

It’s not just an opportunity [00:08:00] to. For me to talk, and if I’m talking, we’re not doing very well. I want other people to talk. I want them to tell me things that they wouldn’t otherwise want to share, but yeah, but you just like pound it out, right? You’re picking, when you’re a prosecutor, you’re picking a jury, trying a case the next day, picking a jury, trying a case.

But that repetition is remarkable because, you know, picking a jury in a misdemeanor case and picking a jury in a felony case are no different. You’re in a felony case, you’re managing more people ’cause the panels are bigger. You’re choosing from larger groups of people. So you have to do more multitasking.

But the fundamental aspect of who’s the right fit here doesn’t change at all. So the little sprints are much more effective to really learn how to do it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. And I would think, you know, it’s if you’re doing a trial every five weeks or one a year the lessons you learn and, and to be able to quickly iterate and maybe say, all right, I’m gonna tweak that thing and then tweak this. It’s harder to do. But if you’re doing high volume of picking juries. Be like, okay, that didn’t work yesterday. Try something else today. Right.

Justin Spizman: Y Yeah. And [00:09:00] to try something else in misdemeanor cases doesn’t have as catastrophic of an impact as to try something else in a felony case, you know, what I loved about being a misdemeanor prosecutor to begin my career is, look, I mean, as a government representative, you wanna do a good job. You know, you want to pursue justice, but at the end of the day, if you lost, you know.

There’s, I mean, it’s graphic, but there isn’t a body on the floor that we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with, okay, so this guy who stole a bunch of stuff from Target will go steal some more stuff from Target. It’ll be back, you know, the drunk driver will probably drink and drive again, especially when I was prosecuting.

There’s no Uber, Lyft, you know, unfortunately domestic violence is often repetitious. You see people that is generational and so, you know, if you’re lost you didn’t have to look at someone and say, I know that you lost someone that you cared about. I’m sorry that we couldn’t find justice for you.

So it was a lot, lot less stressful then, and what I’m doing now.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. You know, it’s funny you’re talking about a, a jury. So a number of years ago, I guess pre [00:10:00] COVID, was living in DeKalb and I got called in for jury duty. It was a DUI trial, and it, you know, it’s small. You know,

Justin Spizman: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: with one alternate for the jury. And they start polling the jury doing jury selection, and I think five of the potential jurors had DUIs.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: and so sitting there and I’m thinking, oh my God, I actually might end up on this jury. And sure enough, I did and did openings. They called the police officer and they said, all right, we’re gonna take a break, set up the camera to do the, whatever the dash cam. We went into the jury room and then extended. extending, extending, and finally they called us out and said they reached a plea deal. So I guess they, they didn’t like the way we looked. They, They said, all

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: let’s get it done.

Justin Spizman: Someone, Someone didn’t like their jury that day. I mean, you never know who it is, but someone walked up to the other side and said, I don’t like my shot with this six. You got something to work it out.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. So let’s, let’s move on. So you decided to leave the prosecutor’s [00:11:00] office and go to the private sector, so take me through sort of that progression.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, it was kind of an interesting progression. The first thing I did was, is I joined a boutique DUI defense firm. That is no longer in existence. And I kind of became their, you know, their horse. I mean, I was running, it was a, you know, a woman that owned the practice and she had me, I was a former prosecutor.

I had a head of steam. I wanted to try everything. I wanted to generate business. So I ran, I mean, I ran every courthouse I could run to. I loved it. It was more fun than I could imagine. And toward the end of our relationship. It felt like I was doing all the work and she was taking all the money. I was the associate.

So that’s understandable. But this is probably a good early lesson to learn. We had agreed on a fee split when I brought in cases and I wasn’t getting paid that. So I hung around thinking the best things would happen and everyone would do the right thing and they never did.

So like I was, you know, I don’t know if y’all remember Bobby Petrino, which coach coached the Falcons in the middle of the night. I [00:12:00] just left. And I made sure that ethically I did everything I was supposed to do. I contacted all the clients, told ’em I was leaving, I was gone. And I just decided to just start up my own law firm overnight. It was literally overnight. And I was lucky enough where I had friends that had space and I just said, Hey look, I.

Can I have an office? And I said, look, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna spend any money on it. I said, how about I give you, you know, 5% of whatever I, you know, I bring in? And obviously within two months, that was a horrible deal for me. And so eventually I had to say, look, let’s, you know, formalize this, and I did it.

And so for about a year, I just ran my own firm and had no clue what I was doing, but people would call me and. The criminal defense community is a really wonderful community. It’s different than the PI bar. Nothing wrong with PI Lawyers, but it is PI’s a very competitive group of lawyers.

Same with family, criminal defense, probably because we all feel like everyone hates us. You know, the judges sometimes don’t like us. The prosecutors sometimes don’t like us, but we just have each other, right? We’re like, you know, we’re all [00:13:00] in this together. So we support each other. So people would send me cases not just junk, you know, traffic tickets, whatever it was, and.

So I just kept chipping away and building. And then there was a legal business consultant who I gave the call to and I said, Hey, I’m interested in potentially trying to scale. What do I do? And we started talking and he suggested that I call a couple of his references just to confirm that he’s as good as they said he was.

And one of those references ended up becoming my partner because. The business consultant was, it was Alvaro three A. He said, well, rather than you guys maybe talk his references, what would you think about joining? And a former partner he had more business than he needed and he was an expensive lawyer and he needed an associate at just a lower mark.

So I joined up with Mike and we became, I became his kind of above counsel, but I was an associate lawyer. Of council is just a fancy way of saying that we had a different fee split. He wasn’t paying me a salary, and [00:14:00] so, like many of my deals, I outperformed it very quickly. And then after outperforming it for a few years, I think Mike was tired of paying me what he had to pay me to be his associate.

And I felt like I was giving away a lot of money. So we both agreed it might make sense to become partners. So that was kind of the next step.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, going back I guess the first firm that you left another lesson there is for the owners. Do what you say you’re gonna do. Pay your people ’cause and then treat ’em right whatever that means because you don’t wanna kill that golden goose. I mean, and you get, it’s so hard to find talent nowadays you gotta keep ’em happy.

Justin Spizman: No, I mean, I look back at things that people have done or things that I’ve done, and I’m so thankful she screwed me. Oh my gosh, because I probably would’ve sat there for another year or two years thinking that we’re gonna become partners paying off all this money and it would’ve been horrible.

And you know, that moment when. You know, when she did what she did it was catastrophic for me. I mean, [00:15:00] it was, I think it was like $30,000 that she took from me. And because of that, I mean, it was, I remember we were just about to have our first child and that, I mean, $30,000, it’s a lot money, period.

But at that moment, it was like the most money ever to me. My whole salary as a prosecutor. So it was very difficult, very challenging, and, the greatest story that came out of it was I ended up filing a lawsuit and I ended up settling it and then there was a a nonpayment of judgment.

I ended up garnishing. So it was, you know, I never really got much money, but I was proud of myself. So

Jonathan Hawkins: all the way.

Justin Spizman: I just, you know, it’s sometimes and I think this is a good lesson, I’ve learned this. Most fights aren’t worth fighting. You know, if a client screws you over a few thousand dollars, if they want some money back, it.

Sometimes you just say, look if I can resolve this without a bad review or without a bar complaint although the quickest way for me to not do what you want me to do is to threaten to call the bar on me because I’ll tell you real quickly, I’ve done nothing [00:16:00] wrong and I’ll give you the number.

Have a good day. But you learn that you have to pick your battles and most of these battles aren’t worth picking because the time that you waste battling is time you can use to grow or scale or make money.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a great point. I do a lot of these and you know, the money is big enough to where you have to fight about it. But, and the other point I’ll say too you bring this up. I remember when I was a young associate, you know, the amount of money that would’ve been meaningful to me.

At that time was really like hardly anything to the partners just like, oh my God, just gimme an extra little, you know, and it’s like, wouldn’t

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: anything. And they, and you guys get to spread it around. Just give me a little.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: means so much. ‘Cause when you know, you’re building a family all the stuff when you’re young, paying off debt, all that stuff, the little, I mean, those little bits count. So, yeah. Lesson out there. Don’t kill the golden goose or the workhorse or Yeah. Okay. So then you ended up being partners [00:17:00] and then recently, I guess you ended up starting your own firm. spies been firm. So

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: like?

Justin Spizman: Yeah, it’s great. I I have a law partner, Scott Fortis. And he’s fantastic. Works every bit as hard as I do, and we have three associates. We have an of counsel lawyer who’s a senior lawyer that is. Fantastic and wonderful. He does a lot of federal work. It’s just great having his energy in the office.

And he wanted space and we need a little bit of help running around. So he’s willing to trade us. And then we have a fantastic support staff. I mean, we have, I wanna say we’re up to seven paralegals. Even our receptionist has some paralegal responsibilities. And I think the lesson that you just kind of outlined is.

You know, the importance of realizing that your team members are just crucial. So my paralegal Robin who handles my criminal cases and Raquel handles my injury [00:18:00] cases they’ve been with me, Robin’s been with me now for five plus years. Raquel has been with me for 12 plus years.

I, hopefully they won’t listen to this, but I think I’d do anything to make them happy. And they’re appreciated. And I try to find creative ways, not just in, in the sense of telling them, you know, and showing them by paying them a fair salary, but also just letting them know I appreciate everything they do, and when they do something great, just letting ’em know.

But also, you know, just doing things that are thoughtful. And so I know I diverted a little bit from where we were headed, but yeah, so we’re, we’re about, yeah we’re, we’re 13, 14 people deep and. We try to create a great work environment. You know, I think that we have three rules. Show up on time, be nice and do your job.

Those are my rules. It frustrates me when people are late. It’s just a personal pet peeve. But if someone is late, they call in, they say, Hey, I’m in traffic. I’m fine with it. They gotta leave early. Go to doctor’s appointment, just let me know. I.

Being nice is extremely important because there’s no reason why we can’t be nice to our clients. These are people that [00:19:00] support us and give us an opportunity to do what we do every day. So we respect that and then we do our job. Like, I don’t wanna hover over people on the managing partner, and I wanna manage, I wanna lead, I wanna be visionary, future focused, not sitting here telling people, Hey look, you were really rude to that client or, Hey, you didn’t follow these things when you were supposed to file ’em.

So we really do try to, to hire good people. But also once we get good people, once we get those all stars, like do everything I can to keep them, like anything and everything. And I found that if I just create a respectful working environment that cares about them as people and, and you gotta figure out whatever, it’s like you know, what’s your love language, right?

I mean it’s just figure out what makes people happy. Some people just like a gift every now and again, that’s really easy. Some people like to be told that their work is fantastic, or when they go out of their way to be recognized, you know, I mean, other people just wanna be left alone. So you just gotta figure out like how they thrive and then create an environment that is consistent [00:20:00] with that.

It’s amazing how many lawyers. Or just not caring to their team members. And that to me like blows my mind. ’cause I kind of kid like, you know, Robin and Raquel, it’s like I have my wife, my kids, and then they’re the next two most important women in my life. So I really do what I can to keep ’em happy.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, another good point there.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I don’t know when we met, I mean, it’s, it is been

Justin Spizman: Oh yeah. Has been. Yeah, for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: always, you know, my sense of you and you sort of. it here is that you are a, a go-getter man. You just make it happen. You’re always running around just making it happen.

So how how do you get your clients now and maybe, you know, take us through, I mean, you were in a DA’s office where you didn’t have to get clients. I mean, you just get your files stacked on your desk and all of a sudden you gotta

Justin Spizman: Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: How did you figure that out and what has worked for you and, and has it changed at all over

Justin Spizman: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I think what has worked for me is, I mean, and this is obvious, [00:21:00] but relationships, right? I’ve, from the warrior side of things I’ve built good relationships, like just with you. Like, you know, we met 10 years ago, we had a lunch. I remember it was over in gosh, it was, what was it?

It was over on, not how male North Side. North side. It was at that greasy spoon diner. That was like the, yeah, whatever. What the hell was that called? I remember we had that, you know, we had that first meal. I was like, oh, I was a good dude. Right? Like, so I tend to be attracted to people I just would like to hang out with anyway.

So like, just people I would go to a ballgame with or have a beer just, you know, come on their podcast like friends and so you know that. And then you just gotta follow up, you know, every now and again, whatever it is, you know, just call ’em up, text ’em, you know, just help ’em whenever they can help ’em. So.

You know, it started with just, you know, generating relationships with lawyers as just friends people I want to be around. And then after that, what I realized really built my practices two things. Number one, helping people like I, to this day, right? I’m not a traffic lawyer, but I probably [00:22:00] handle two to three traffic tickets a month for other lawyers or lawyers, family members or lawyers, paralegals.

Just as a courtesy, just as like, Hey, no problem. Happy to do it. And I don’t do it selfishly, right? Because I, my thing is this, I can’t refer you a case every day. I don’t know what’s coming in the door. I don’t know when I can send you a great case and I might not be able to send you a case, right? But you need help.

I can help you. And if I can just go get a traffic ticket handled for you so you don’t have to mess with it, like you’re gonna send me cases. And again, I don’t do it because I want the cases. But you know, I do it because it’s easy. It’s no hair off my back, your friend. I’m happy to help you, but that has been a humongous situation like for me to build, because all these lawyers, I mean, call what it is they owe me one, I.

And how do they pay me back? They send me cases. I mean, like, I hope I never need a divorce lawyer. I don’t intend to ever need one, so I’m probably not gonna ever need a favor from a divorce lawyer. But when they get a call for a family violence case or they get a call for a DUI, ah, you know, [00:23:00] Justin in the story.

So that’s been a humongous way. The other way is. I do good work for people. I mean, you have to service your clients. If you do a good job for your clients, everyone you take care of, whether it’s traffic ticket or a major felony, they will remember you and they will call you. And that is, people don’t think about that, but it takes time.

You know, you can’t build that book of business overnight. I mean, it took, I think it took me 10 years to get to the point where I’m consistently always busy. Those 10 years, there were ups and there were downs. There were slow, there was fast. Now, I mean, there’s more work than, you know, than I can take.

And so that, that has helped me because now when I have a, you know, a client that’s a jerk or a client that wants to negotiate me down from reasonable fees, I can just say no thanks. You know, and that’s a good thing because then the client is willing to see my value will come through the door, or the client is not a complete asshole to my clients, or sorry to my staff is gonna be there.

And so I, [00:24:00] I’ve just probably kind of built the business organically through great lawyer networking and just taking care of people. Like, I think that’s key. Like people forget about the importance of just taking care of people.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, and I mean great points there and it’s, and you’re basically, you’re planting seeds all over the place. You don’t know which ones may grow and which ones may bear fruit, some may

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: bear a lot

fruit and others, and you just continually plant the seeds, water, the seeds and hopefully good things come and

 

Jonathan Hawkins: a lot of this just a function of time. You might get lucky. It’s like that old saying,

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: you can’t force a nine month pregnancy to happen in one month.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: A lot of these, the relationship building, maybe you get lucky, but it’s just gonna take time.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: so let me ask this on your, do you have like a system or anything? a way to sort of, stay in touch with all the clients you’ve now helped over all these.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, so I’ll tell you I think the next phase of my career, what I’d like to do is we’ve certainly doubled [00:25:00] down and focus more on, on internet, but the way we’ve done it is not, I mean, I don’t pay, you know, my traffic, division pays a lot of money every month to Google.

Because that’s the game, right? People want traffic lawyers and they’re willing to hire a traffic lawyer off of the internet. It’s, you know, a thousand bucks, 500 bucks. It’s an easy decision, right? It’s not a life altering decision. But with criminal cases, people, I mean, look, people will take the internet as a point to start, but they want to meet with you.

They want to talk to you, but the most important thing that they want is they wanna see good reviews. And so we work, I mean, very hard to protect reviews. I mean, you know, on on AVVO have. 255 star reviews all former clients. On Google, we have almost 205 star reviews. And so that’s been like right now where we’re at, right?

Building the next phase when I can just find the time and energy to do it, is take this database we have of tens of, I mean, I probably have tens of thousands of people in that database and figuring out how I can kind of [00:26:00] like. Touch. Like you have a great, you know, newsletter that you send out with like a key, you know, topic or something like that.

I think I saw covenants, non-compete covenants that you sent out. And I read those like, I like them. I think it’s great. I wish I had the capacity to do it. I really have no complaints in the day and age we’re living and I can literally hire someone to do it. I just, it’s just doing that.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you know, maybe that’s a good segue into your second job or your

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: whatever you want to call it.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, you got some excuses. You know, you, you’re. Running a full-time practice still

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: You’re you got a family and kids, you’re doing all that stuff, but you’re also an author and an award-winning.

You won the Georgia Author of the Year Award. but tell me about your writing. So how did you

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: it? What do you do? I mean, at this point, how many books have you written?

Justin Spizman: Yes I’ve probably worked on in some capacity, meaning, you know, whether I’ve actually written them or [00:27:00] ghostwritten them or edit them or collaborated or conceptualized, probably over a hundred at this point. I’ve been professionally writing. I mean, I’ve been professionally writing for probably 15 years.

I’ve been writing for probably 20. I don’t, the first five years was just kind of walking around in the dark, figuring out what the hell I was doing. My mom was a New York Times bestselling author, so I grew up in, in a writing family. It was always something that I loved. I had a knack for writing, you know, English.

You know, if you look at my SAT breakdown, it was like almost 800 verbal and like 500 math, which I had to get a calculator out to figure out what that equaled. So it was the strength. I mean, it was undoubtedly something that I’m, that I’ve just been blessed with. You know, just having good DNA and so I kind of cultivated it.

I love to write, and because of that, I had an idea about a book in law school. I approached my mom with it. And she said, Hey let’s try to do something here. And so I put together a proposal. She kind of gave me the, you know, the format for it. [00:28:00] And I remember getting my first book deal and it was, it was like the most amazing thing.

And I was in New York and it was a book about how to survive law school. And, And this is, you wanna talk about full circle. So the guy that wrote the foreword for my first book was George Ross. Who was senior Exec counsel. He was Trump’s lawyer 20, 20 something years ago. Right. He was, if you remember The Apprentice, he was the old guy in the boardroom.

Right? Insane. Right. So, so he was in town in the land in an event and just walked up to him and said, Hey, I got, you know, I got this book I’m working on what you write the for. He is like. Sure. Just a nice guy. So we get the book deal and I remember they offered me a, a $10,000 advance. It was like the most money I’ve ever seen at that point in my life.

And I was like, blown away. I’m like, these guys are gonna give me $10,000 to write a book. I’m like, they’re insane. These guys are these, these people are morons. I don’t know what I’m doing. And so I remember I was in [00:29:00] New York and we got the book deal and I went to Bloomingdale’s and bought like everything I could buy, right?

It was like I blew like half of the advance in like one shopping spree. It was awesome. And so then, you know, that came out and then it was cool because I interviewed all my professors, I interviewed all my classmates for it. It was awesome.

Jonathan Hawkins: Lemme add, is that book still still out there, still getting

Justin Spizman: man, I think it’s out of publication. They probably could find, actually, interestingly enough, I think I lost a trademark this year.

Like I got a notification ’cause I trademarked the Insider’s Guide and I just got a notification that it’s back in the public forum. And I didn’t, I, I didn’t make an effort to save it. But yes, I wrote that book and it was, you know, it was fine. It did fine. It was cool. And then a couple years later I.

This is probably when it all became real is I had this idea to do a book about famous basketball coach Jim Valvano. And I approached his brothers Bob and Nick Valvano, Bob being a he’s kind of a celebrity [00:30:00] sports journalist reporter. And then Nick runs the V Foundation for Cancer Research, which raised over probably 150 million at this point for to find a cure for cancer.

And I had this idea to write a book about this famous speech he gave which I’m sure people listening have heard it. And I got a whole lot of nos and nos and eventually I bothered Nick enough where he said, yes, we got ESPN to give us the rights. And we wrote the book. And it hit, I mean, it became, it was very successful.

I did podcasts. I went up to the spring game at NC State. I mean, it was just. A home run. And I went George off through the year for that book, and that’s kind of when, you know, things got a little bit real. And then I turned that into another book. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: real quick, when you wrote that book, where were you? Was it, were you practicing law at this point? Where were

Justin Spizman: So that was my third year in law school. So my first year I wrote the Insiders Guide, and then my third year I wrote that. And so going out of law school and into my first year as a practicing lawyer.

Jonathan Hawkins: Is when it hit. So, [00:31:00] okay. Look, man, I know third year law school is sort of a joke. I mean, you don’t really need it,

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, the first two years is pretty, pretty heavy.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: How are you managing

Justin Spizman: Open it down.

Jonathan Hawkins: Your process Real quick

Justin Spizman: You’re, yeah you’re giving me too much credit to assume I was managing it. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you just a funny story. I remember. I didn’t manage it. I didn’t fail out of law school, but I also didn’t do great in law school. My first, you know, year because I was writing the book.

I was, you know, practicing law. I was, or sorry, I was in law school. I was having fun, you know, doing what you do when you’re still kind of in college. But I really, in college, I’d just come home, you know, to Atlanta. All my buddies were here. Again, it was like. It was a lot of worlds colliding. So I didn’t manage it very well.

I worked hard, but I probably would’ve done better in law school had I not been working on that book. But I remember I got my, my, whatever the research class I was taking, like, you know, the legal writing class. I got a C in it. And it really pissed me off because, so I’m sitting here, I get a book [00:32:00] deal, right?

I’m writing this book about succeeding in law school, and I get a C in legal writing. So I remember walking across the stage when I graduated, it just so happened my legal writing professor was giving out a diploma. So she gives me the diploma. Congratulations, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, you know, I’ve been, you know, there’s one thing I want to tell you, Melissa.

I go, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person that ever took you to legal writing class that got a c, but got a book deal That same year she started, started laughing at me. You know, just the stupid things I remember.

Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: her a signed copy? So here

Justin Spizman: You know, I gave everyone a signed copy that would buy one. So when I was, you know, when I was, when it was that first book, I wanted to sell books.

So anyone that would buy one would get a signed copy.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Okay. So you graduate you get the success, win the award with the Coach V book.

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: of the next step in the writing career?

Justin Spizman: Yeah I, I realized there’s no money in writing your own books because, you know, that $10,000 check was a lot of money at that time, but to the amount of work that went into it, it was crazy. I mean, [00:33:00] you know, it was an insane amount of work and just very little money for the work. And so I realized quickly that the way that you write books or, or, and make money, right?

Because it was important to me at that time to find the, you know, the balance was. You’re either John Grisham, you’re writing a legal thriller and you’re getting a million dollar advance every time, or you’re writing books for other people. And what I realized is in the Jimmy V book is I don’t like going on, you know, radio shows.

And I went on probably 50 plus radio shows across the country in like 30 days. I. I’d wake up radio show class. But what I realized is that the marketing is a grind. It is a grind. So I asked myself, how can I do what I love? But, you know, but monetize this, and I, I, wait a second.

If I write books for other people that can’t write books. I can charge whatever I want and if they’ll pay me that money. So the next book was this like referral. And I remember I wrote the whole book for like $5,000. Like, I remember that was like, and I thought I was ripping her off [00:34:00] my, this one was paying me five grand to write her book.

And I feel like I’m just taking advantage of her. And so that book went, got out and then I did a book with a woman named Molly Fletcher, who’s a female sports agent. She’s the female. Jerry Maguire negotiated over half a billion dollars for remarkable athletes, coaches, like really like big time.

And I did that book and then she introduced me to Ted Sundquist, who’s a former general manager of the Denver Broncos. He had just finished his run right before they won the Super Bowls in LA and all that good stuff. So he wanted to do a book and so I did a book with him. So it started very quickly transforming.

Jonathan Hawkins: so tell me what’s it like now? What’s the business like now? I

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: do people coming to you, are you trying to pitch the service? I mean,

Justin Spizman: Yeah, Yeah. It’s both to some degree. I mean, most of my, you know, now I’m at the point where most of the books that I’m getting are, you know, people that are calling me up and saying, Hey, we need help with a book. Or it, it may be specifically like [00:35:00] an agent. That has either I’ve worked with in the past or knows me I get a fair share of books from publishers.

When I worked on a, a book and collaborated with John Quiñones and Maria Elena Salinas about Uvalde in the Robb Elementary shooting, that was a book that that kind of found me. Disney Publishing contacted me and they had known that I’d worked with the editor at the time on another book and.

We just had a good relationship and I delivered a good product for her. So she contacted me. So it’s a fair share of referrals, probably 80%. Occasionally I’ll just get excited about something, I’ll see something, I’ll hear something, and I’ll pursue it. And that’s what I’ve done. You know, I probably do that once or twice a year.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I don’t you know, I don’t know what you can or can’t share. But I don’t know. There’s some of the highlights, some of the cool folks

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: to meet over the years. I.

Justin Spizman: Oh man. It’s part of the reason why I do this is because just a lot of fun. I’ve worked with Vander Holyfield I’ve worked with obviously Molly and Ted were fantastic [00:36:00] former clients. I I started to work on a book with Jordan Belfort Wolf of Wall Street.

I have to think about this, right? Because I gotta think about who I can talk about and who I can’t because there are ones I can’t. One, one of my favorite stories and it’s not a household name, but it’s a really important book to me was one I did with Keanon Lowe. Keanon was a football coach, played in the NFL he also played at University of Oregon.

He came home to a small school in, in Portland, in, in the off season after taking this team on a really, a historic run. He was called to retrieve a student and as he walks into the school building, the student walks out of a classroom armed with a shotgun, was about to shoot the school up and Kim’s faced eye to eye with him and instead of tackling him or trying to.

He takes the gun outta his hand and gives him a hug and it becomes a viral story. And I remember the reason why this is such an important book for me is COVID hit and I lost two [00:37:00] really big clients, you know, six figures worth of writing fees overnight, gone, no more criminal cases. I’m looking around going.

I’m in trouble here. Like this is, I don’t know what’s gonna happen here, but this isn’t good. I’m watching ES, espn. I see this 30 for 30 about this Coach Keanon Lowe and his amazing story, and his story’s remarkable. I mean, it traverses, you know, mental health and drugs. He was one of the coaches when Colin Kaepernick took a knee for the 49 ERs.

I mean, just the same stuff. And then, so I see it and I go on a LinkedIn and I find him, I said, Hey, you know my name’s Justin Spizman. I’m a writer. I like writing sports books. Do you wanna work together? And he responds a week later, he says, I’ve been thinking about doing a book. I. But, you know, I’m a high school football coach.

I don’t have any money. And I’m like, well, I don’t have any clients, so you and I are gonna be perfect for each other. I go, why don’t we agree that we’ll just, you know, we’ll do this on spec. You know, let’s just agree that whatever we make, whether it’s a dollar or a gazillion dollars, we’ll just split it 50 [00:38:00] 50 and I’ll go to work for you.

And so Keanon is truly one of the, just the greatest human beings you’ll ever meet. And so he is like, yeah, let’s do it. Let’s roll. So we start and then we start working on this project. We start putting together this proposal. We start coming out of COVID, and then I get a call from Keanon. He’s like, dude, I got this call from this guy Adam.

And no, it was Adam. Brad. Brad. And he told me that he’s he saw my story on ESPN and he’d like to see if I would be interested in selling the rights for a movie. And he said that he is Dwayne the Rock Johnson’s agent. So, you know, naturally I’m like, bullshit. Right. You know, this day and age scam.

So I go, I’m like, well wait a second. He is. And so during that time the rock began negotiating. His team began negotiating with Keenan Tobias, his movie rights. And so then the book got very serious, very quickly. And so we were shopping it and, it was one of those [00:39:00] things where, you know, you’re shopping it and so WME William Morris Endeavor took the book and so mega agents and they call us up and we had been shopping it for a week, maybe it takes time to get book deals.

They’re like, Hey, there’s this publisher, very reputable publisher, and they wanna make an offer on the book and like, yeah, sure. And so we have the offer. So they tell us what the offer is. And like, without going into details, it was 10 times more than any advance I design that I’ve ever seen. And it was like earth shatteringly, like big.

And so I’m almost in tears. ’cause this, it’d been a, it was been a tough year for everyone and it just felt like this moment. And Ken is one of those guys who doesn’t have much, he didn’t at the time. He just root for him. He’s just the best guy in the world. And so it was, you know, it’s like one of these moments I just lost my father.

It was just, it felt like so much was coming together in the world, was just like, was [00:40:00] like looking out for me and the only thing I could say to the agent was I. Well, they’ll give us that much. They’ll surely give us more. So, so Keanon goes your world, man. So we called back up and we asked for more and they said yes.

And, And so that, that deal, and it wasn’t about the money. I mean the money was great, but it was just about, we built a relationship together. We were both two good people. We went on a great journey. We did good work. And then like, wife just you know, did the rest, you know.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is really

Justin Spizman: Yeah, it’s a good one.

Jonathan Hawkins: is a movie in development, are we gonna see

Justin Spizman: You know, interestingly enough, I don’t know, I think they, so what I’ve learned is, you know, the Amazons, the Netflix, what they do is they buy millions and millions of dollars of content. I. And part of the reason they buy it is someone else can’t buy it, right? It’s to take it off the market and then they have full rights to produce it or not.

So there hasn’t been a movie yet. There needs to be a movie because it’s an amazing movie, but I, you know, I don’t, they have the [00:41:00] rights. And what was funny is that they made Keanon an offer and I remember Keanon telling me, he is like, yeah, it’s just not, you know, I don’t know. I’m like, he, this is amazing.

Like they wanna buy your life story. He goes. Yeah, but you know, next thing you know, there’s gonna be some old white guy playing me. He goes, you know, like goes, I just, I don’t know, man. It’s just, it’s my life. It feels like I should get some more for it. I mean, it just, you know, it he, he was in the most, you know, wonderful way that he tells that story.

It just truly was like he so authentic and he would never sell his soul for a dollar, whether it be a million dollars or $1. He just wanted to make sure that the story was true and authentic.

Jonathan Hawkins: that, that’s, that is an incredible

Justin Spizman: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I wanna shift, so stay on the topic of writing, but you know, there’s, books, lawyer, a lot of lawyers write

Justin Spizman: [00:42:00] Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: to

Justin Spizman: Yep,

Jonathan Hawkins: market their practice or tell a story, whatever.

Justin Spizman: yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: Do you have one of those? Have you ever done one of those? Do you have thoughts about those?

Justin Spizman: Yeah, I, so no, I haven’t done one for myself nor do I have any interest in doing one for myself. I, you know, I contemplate one day, you know, like Henry David Thoreau, like moving to Walden Bond and writing the next Great American novella or maybe just telling some good stories, like, I don’t know.

I mean, one day I’ll write a book for myself, I guess, but

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, the way I view it, it, is for your kids and your grandkids. So

Justin Spizman: yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: story. ’cause there’s a lot of stuff in your head, a lot of stories that may. Maybe they’re

Justin Spizman: Yes,

Jonathan Hawkins: Hear yet,

Justin Spizman: yes.

Jonathan Hawkins: one day they’ll have it. You know that might be one way to look at

Justin Spizman: It, yes, it is. It is. And so maybe one day, I just don’t have time now. But with that being said yeah, I do work on a lot of lawyers books. I probably get a call every few months about a lawyer that wants to do a book. Sometimes it’s, you know, an academic based book, like [00:43:00] a personal injury, like a playbook.

You know, or some sort of area of specialty, you know, a legal malpractice book, whatever it may be. So I do a fair share of that work. And they’re remarkable. I mean, calling cards and advertisements and, you know, one of the, really, part of the reason why I write and I still do it, I mean, yeah, it’s some, you know, the money’s good.

It’s fine. I do it because it’s a great opportunity to just learn. And so I become this like subject matter expert on, I mean, I’ve written books on leadership, on, you know, on building culture, on, you know, like every topic you can imagine in a self-help world scaling businesses. I. And I learn every time I write one of these books.

And so, ’cause I started my career really as like a business writer. That’s what I did, like self-help, business development. So like, if you think about all the fads that came through, you know, it was leadership and then it was culture, and then it’s, now it’s like health and wellness. And so like I’m doing a lot of these types of books.

Like I’m doing a book right now with a very famous dietician [00:44:00] in Canada. Which is wonderful, and I’m, I’m learning more about the diet mindset than I ever thought I would need to. I’m not a dieter, I’m a gym rat and I eat, you know, grilled chicken every day,

Jonathan Hawkins: pack now, right? You got a six

Justin Spizman: let me tell you. Right. But it’s so interesting the way that you know, that the world, you know, works in terms of these areas.

And so I get this benefit of just learning so much. And I love it. So these academic books, like the legal books, I get to go down these rabbit holes with my clients and they’re a great marketing source for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, yeah, so I, I’m a lawyer out there. What kind of advice do you have? If they’re thinking about a book or maybe

Justin Spizman: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: wanna do a book what would, what kind of advice would you give them?

Justin Spizman: Yeah. I think that, you know, first and foremost, I think it’s a really great, you know, a business calling card. If you think about it like this, what is the one thing you could do? And all you gotta do is do it once and it will give you returns every time you give it to someone. Right? Easily transferrable.

The beauty about a book is people think you’re a subject matter expert. If you wrote a book, it doesn’t matter how dumb you are. [00:45:00] If you write a book, people think you’re a subject matter expert. And so here’s the piece of advice I would give them. If you are going to do it well, right?

Because the worst thing you can do is write a shoddy book. And what that means is that doesn’t mean you have to hire me to write it, right, but you need to have professional cover design. You need to have professional formatting, you need to have an editor, right? These are all things that. That are so key in the book, like the rest of it’s, the rest of it, how you publish, who really cares, things of that nature.

But I mean, if someone picks up your book and the first thing they see is, you know, some sort of grammatical error, I mean, at least my responses, like, I’ll tell you, I get a lot of resumes you want to intern, whatever it may be. If I see a grammar issue, like I will not, I just put it in the pass pile.

I. I’m, I not, ’cause I’m just like this begrudging like, you know, English guy. It is just, you’re not gonna put the attention into a resume that you send me and you’re gonna misspell word [00:46:00] like, eh, you’re probably not the right guy for me.

Jonathan Hawkins: I’m with you a hundred percent.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: resume is maybe one, two, maybe. Nowadays you see a three pager. I mean, it’s not that long. You better make sure that thing is.

Justin Spizman: per perfect. Yeah, you’re, yeah, that’s right. But it’s a great calling card. I think word more should do it. You know, I mean, even if you invest in a writer, because you can’t get it done yourself, you know, if that writer charge you a chunk of money, you know, one good personal injury settlement this is something that every single year, right?

Think about it. If you use this, like if I told you, here’s the deal, I’m gonna, I’m gonna create something for you. I, and you can use it for 10 years. It’s just, you know, it’s put a finite time on it and every year you have to pay $5,000 for it. That’s it. That’s all you have to pay. It’ll probably generate for you four to five cases a year, do the math.

So I think that there’s a lot of opportunities out there for people to, to write books and I think more people should because their immediate credibility.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, it’s here. I’m gonna sell you this goose for 30 grand, but it’s [00:47:00] gonna pop out a $5,000 egg every month

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: 20 years. Yeah, I’ll buy that any day.

Justin Spizman: that, that’s exactly right. That’s how I feel about it too.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, so let’s shift back to practicing law and building law firm. Running law firm. So, what any advice you’d give to perhaps someone who wants to start a firm or maybe someone who’s just started a firm, maybe building your practice or just building a firm, any advice?

Justin Spizman: Be a subject matter expert. Don’t do everything. Be very clear about what you’re good at and what you know, because here’s the thing, people come into my office and, I mean, my practice personally in the criminal world is really about 50% impaired driving. That includes the homicides, fatalities, serious injuries, 50% criminal defense, right?

So major felonies, things of that nature. I think I become a subject matter expert on those two areas. I definitely think there are lawyers that are smarter than me, and I definitely think I learn every single day, but those are the things that when I take my [00:48:00] resume and I put them against other lawyers, I know I stand up.

And so with that being said, it’s because I focus 17, 18 years ago on those areas, and I’ve just cultivated ’em over the years. So that’s one, be a subject matter expert. Can’t be anything. You know, you can’t be everything to everyone. And I think the second thing is that, you know, you have to be patient.

It’s the worst advice in the world. No one, nothing pisses me off more than someone telling me to be patient. But it takes time to build a practice and, you know, stay lean. You know, service your clients, especially now when it’s small, right? Like you grow, then you have to figure out how to serve more clients.

I mean, so the struggle we have every day is how do we serve all the clients in our law firm? And look, sometimes we’re not perfect, we fall short, but we take responsibility for our mistakes, and they’re usually nominal. And we try to make them right and we give people their platform. Clients are platform.

And I think on top of that, I’m trying to think of something like you don’t hear [00:49:00] every day, and this is what I’d say, look at your clients, not as liabilities, but as remarkable gifts that are in your life. These are the people that pay you money and support your family. And if you can flip that switch and think to yourself, I need to treat these people.

As the assets, they are not liabilities. It’s not, oh, man, I gotta deal with John. He’s such a jerk today. Oh, I gotta deal with, you know, Karen, she’s driving me crazy. I live in that challenge every day, right? Like I do. There’s clients who call me up and they just, like, they get my cortisol going, like I get triggered by them.

But I take a deep breath and I think to myself, look, these are the people that keep me in business. They’re the way that I support my family. And I need to, at least from my mind say, I’m so thankful for these people so that when you know, when I get these calls and I’m immediately gonna go to that bad place, right?

We all do as lawyers, I think to myself, all right, like, I’m thankful that I [00:50:00] have these people in my life, and when I can do that, then it’s all good. So I think that’s an important part of it, and it’s not something that everyone does.

Jonathan Hawkins: That was beautiful, man.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, Yeah. I don’t do it. I don’t do it all the time. Some people just piss me off. Some people just piss me off. But I, it just giving yourself that, like, that mindset, right? It does give you like, it gives you like 10% more patience than you’d have otherwise. And sometimes that 10% is a difference between just being outright rude to a client and creating further controversy with them and conflict, or just resolving the issue.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Well, cool man. So I wanna wrap it up here.

Justin Spizman: Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: be respectful Of your time, but as you sit here today, you know, you your firm is fairly young. I know you’ve been practicing a while, but your new firm’s fairly

Justin Spizman: yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: Where do you see it? What’s the vision? Where do you want it to go? And maybe to add to that your book writing, whatever where do you see your career going?

Justin Spizman: Yeah. I mean look, I’ve we’ve grown this law firm. I mean, you know, I have three associates. I, I’d like to think every [00:51:00] one of ’em would say that they’re, they’re compensated well, we work ’em hard. But I think growth is important. Consistently trying to grow, but doing so in a way where I’m not necessarily working as hard and I’m not scared of hard work.

I don’t mind it whatsoever, but it’s, maximizing, your time. And doing it in a way where instead of working a 80 hour week I’m working a 70 hour week and getting the same output. So I think it’s this consistent evolution of working smarter while, while growing.

Such on the legal side also, just, you know, more wins. You know, more wins like in wins can be many shapes and sizes, but for me, like walking into courtrooms and winning cases.

Like I still walk into closets. Three weeks ago I was in Fitzgerald, Georgia trying a. A significant sexual assault case where I represented a captain in the Marines and we were able to secure not guilty verdict on every charge.

And it was a moment where it was a lot of work, a lot of energy, but we got outcomes. Like you get results. [00:52:00] And that’s like what I think is more important to me now. The money’s great. Clients are great, the size of the law firm’s great. I want outcomes. Like I wanna win, like I want to walk into a courtroom and I want to feel that I’m the best lawyer in that courtroom, and then I want to prove that.

So that on the legal side on the writing side, you know, I don’t know. I want to keep, to continue to, I mean, I feel like, like the writing is, the way I leave my print on the world is something I leave behind that has meaning. I wanna just continue working on projects that move me. You know, that project, you know, the Robb Elementary shooting and the Uvalde project is something that will never leave me.

I did it. I was very hesitant to take the project because who wants to dive head first into a, you know, a world of, you know, 19 dead children? It’s horrible. I mean, going to Rob Belman was horrible. Going to the cemetery was horrible. But let me tell you, it was one of the most like emotionally challenging things I’ve ever done.

But [00:53:00] man, it gave me perspective that you just, you’ll never get. And you know, it, you see people that have just suffered such significant loss that you can’t even imagine pain that you don’t even understand in a setting that was preventable. That’s the worst part. And I’m not even saying the shooting part.

I’m talking about the police officer response part. And to see the spirit, the human spirit, the strength. That’s when you like leave there and you’re like, wow, like, like I can, I, we will, everything will be okay. So it’s just, I want more of that, you know?

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. We gotta end with that,

Justin Spizman: All right, man.

Jonathan Hawkins: But for anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you maybe to talk legal shop or maybe to talk book writing what’s the best way? Maybe there’s two different ways, but what’s the best way

Justin Spizman: Yeah, writing justin@justinspizman.com. Very easy. And then our law firm is spizman firm, hsf law firm.com.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well Justin man, this has been fun. Thanks for coming on.

Justin Spizman: Yeah, man, thank you for having me.[00:54:00]

Jonathan Hawkins: Alright, enjoy your weekend.

Justin Spizman: You do the same.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to this episode of the founding partner podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on the latest episodes. You can also connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn and check out the show notes. With links to resources mentioned throughout our discussion by visiting www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.