Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] So let’s circle back to your practice real quick. So you know, you do criminal and PI. Did you always do both? How do they, you know, what’s the interplay is one, do you do one more than the other? You know, something it’s, do they are they good complimentary practices in your experience?

Steven Goldstein: I started out as a PI lawyer. I had no formal training as a criminal defense lawyer. I was never a legal aid lawyer. I was never a prosecutor. I was never mentored by a criminal lawyer, but in New Jersey, not New York. So this happened to be in New Jersey and I didn’t have an office there, I was just admitted.

So I get what they make you do is you have to do one free case a year and they don’t care if you don’t know what you’re doing. So it’s either gonna be a criminal case or like a family court case, like a domestic violence.

And I got mine and the first one I got was a guy who I’m still really good friends with [00:01:00] to this day. He was accused of, he was having trouble with his wife, you know, she accused him of assault so he had a criminal case and he had a domestic violence case, a final restraining order. And you know, I kind of dug into it. It wasn’t getting paid, but I found it like pretty interesting. And I said, you know, this is really kind of good for me to be a defendant to help me be a better plaintiff’s PI lawyer.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, 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 [00:02:00] podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This podcast where I get to interview founding partners, I hear about their journeys their lessons, and for today’s guests hear a lot of good, cool stories. I’ve heard some of ’em this is gonna be a good one. So not, not to set expectations too high, but I’m really excited about this ’cause I’ve, I’ve gotten to know today’s guest this year, and I, I’ve been fortunate to hear some of these stories and I wanna learn more about ’em.

So, Steven Goldstein today. Welcome to the podcast. Steven is a lawyer in New York and New Jersey. He’s got a practice. He does some PI work and he does some criminal work. But Steven, welcome to the show. Why don’t you sort of give us some background on you. Tell us about your firm.

Steven Goldstein: Sure. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. So I have a pretty odd type of practice. I do criminal defense, New York and New Jersey. Personal injury in New York and New Jersey. I kind of have almost two [00:03:00] staffs. I have one staff that really just concentrates on New Jersey, another staff that concentrates on New York.

I also don’t really have. I’ve only had one associate in my career, which is 30 years. So the way I operate is I use a lot of contract lawyers, a lot of independent lawyers for court appearances, depositions, writing, brief writing, anything you could think of. I kind of thought of myself as like the general contractor.

And when I need a plumber, I hire a plumber. When I need an electrician, I hire an electrician. I’ve had partners. Unfortunately the partner I’ve, I’ve had is not well. So, we’re transitioning outta that. And I’ve been at it my own firm since 1994, so I, 31 years. My journey was a little, I wouldn’t say different, but I remember when I was in college and all my friends were going to law school, I was of the [00:04:00] opinion that they’re really doing it because they either want to keep partying or they have nothing better to do. And I was an okay student in college, but I said, maybe I need the real world to beat me up a little bit.

So instead of going right to law school, I started a journey on jobs. But going backwards my grandfather was an entrepreneur and he did, he had an incredible business. What he did was, so, you know, when you throw out your clothes in the bin, you know, and you see like the Salvation Army bins or whatever, and they say it’s for charity, and you throw out your old clothes.

Well, what he taught me is actually what happens to your clothes is they don’t go to anybody. They get thrown into giant warehouses where people like my grandfather, starting in the fifties and sixties would go and they would pick out the best stuff and they would buy it for five or 10 cents a pound.

And what my [00:05:00] grandfather did is he would buy jeans, whatever the good jeans and good condition were, and he would wash ’em and he would literally then sell them to flea markets. People who ran flea markets in the south Arkansas, Georgia, you know, you’re from Georgia. And I learned his business ’cause I would work for him in the summers.

And he had always told me don’t ever get a job. He said, it’s the worst thing in your life you could do. He is never worked for anybody. Get yourself a job. So I didn’t follow his advice in college after college. And I’d worked in various jobs. I’d worked, I’d done sales, I did public relations, and then I got a job at Madison Square Garden, which for any sports minded person who grew up in New York like I did, was the dream.

And I worked there. We promoted the boxing matches, and this was in the mid to late eighties, and I got to meet some [00:06:00] great people. My famous story is that sugar Ray Leonard threatened to beat me up while we were out drunk because I was giving him a hard time and said, you know, Thomas Hearns beat the crap outta you.

And he was getting really mad ’cause he had, he was a little drunk. And then, you know, after that I decided I wanted to go to law school. And the reason I went to law school is at the time I was working in a pharmaceutical advertising agency on Madison Avenue. And it was a small agency. And one day some strange guy walks into the office, goes to the three corner offices, basically goes to these people who were all in their late forties and fifties.

You know, you are out, you are out, you are out. And I was like, whoa, okay. These people are in their late forties, fifties, they’re running ad agencies and now they’re just thrown out on the street like nothing. And I said, this will never happen to me. And I literally went out and got the LSAT course, [00:07:00] took the LSAT and I went to law school.

I think I, I graduated when I was 28, 29. I went to law school for the sole purpose of having my own law firm. Like it was not, I want to get a big job. It was, it was none of that. It was. I had a plan of about one or two years I would work for somebody, but I’d better be able to try cases and I better get to court immediately.

And I was able to do that and that.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I, I find there are, there are people like you that, that knew, always knew that you’re gonna start your firm and then there are others that sort of fell into it or were pushed into it for whatever reason. But I remember, so I wanna talk about your firm in a minute, but I remember you telling me before you started your firm, you, you’re working for a guy that basically you, you as an associate, you, you basically had to, you know, eat what you kill or pretty close to it.

And so, you know, tell me that story. I mean, you, you had to hit the pavement, maybe [00:08:00] literally to get business.

Steven Goldstein: So it’s actually the backstory to this is so when I was outta law school, my first job, I worked for AIG defending liability cases. And it was downtown in Manhattan. And early, early on in my career, I’d say three months, four months I was doing a deposition at a guy in Brooklyn at a storefront.

And after the deposition he takes me in the back and he says to me you know what, can you get me on this case? And I’m like, I don’t know. Well, well, what do you, what do you demand? He goes, well, you know, you know, I’ll give you 10% or whatever you gave me, whatever you get me. And I’m like, what do you mean you’ll give me 10% or whatever?

You, I get you. It’s like, well, you know how it works. You know, you, you get me what I want. You know, I, you know, somebody will come visit you. And I was like. Really, I was like, I, I think I’m too early in my career to get involved in this kind of stuff. But there’s a point to that story. I then got the brilliant idea of I didn’t want to go [00:09:00] to New York anymore.

I wanted to see what it was like to work in New Jersey. And I grew up in New York. I grew up in Brooklyn. I didn’t grow up in New Jersey. And I somehow got a job at a firm that did commercial real estate and I pretty much hated it. And I remember the day I knew I had to go back to the city was, I was sitting outside, I was sitting in my office and a deer walked under my window and I was like, what the hell am I doing?

You know, I grew up like done. I need to get back into the PI world. I need to get back into the go to court everyday world. And so for some reason I had the brilliant idea of calling that guy and saying, by the way, I’m looking to get back into the city. Do you know anybody? And he wound up telling me, I kind of do, I know this guy, you know, who’s looking for an associate.

And I, so I called this guy, his name was Gerald Miller. He was the first guy I really worked for, like in a small plaintiff’s personal injury firm. And we talked about the job [00:10:00] and we talked and he asked me, you know, how I see a future? I was like, well, if I’m doing things right, I should have more cases than you in two years.

And he was like, really? I was like, yes. I was like, I’ll do the work now, but I intend on. And that

Jonathan Hawkins: First of all, I love that attitude, man. That’s, that’s, that’s badass. It probably took him a little back there.

Steven Goldstein: so my grandfather had taught me, whenever you go on a job interview and somebody asked you questions, you basically tell him, you should hire me ’cause I’m gonna make you money. It doesn’t forget about the, you know, and I see how it resonates now as an owner that, you know, listen, if I interviewed somebody for an associate’s job and they came to me and said, hire me because if you hire me, you’re gonna make money.

Well, that sets my frame up was like, oh, he’s not a cost. Now this guy was, I guess out of, he was out of central [00:11:00] casting and I guess unless you grew up in New York, you wouldn’t be able to visualize this type of PI lawyer. But it was the old and obvious in those days, it was very heavily Jewish laden, the, the plaintiff’s PI lawyers.

And he had been a PI lawyer for 30 years and never tried a case. He was afraid of his own shadow. He was afraid to spend a dime. And the first our salary negotiation was like this. I think your first year you will make $45,000. Your next year you will make $35,000 and then the next year you’ll make 20,000 and the next year I’m not paying you a salary.

I said, okay, tell me the backside. And the backside was a bigger piece of the pie as each year went on. And I said, pay me less the first year, but I want a piece of the action right off the bat. And he was like, [00:12:00] great. And so I had had some sales experience. I had, I was not afraid to go out and ask for cases.

I was not afraid to go out and sell. And the first year I was with ’em, I made over a hundred thousand dollars. And I would do things that are hard to do today. I mean, I would go to every IME and at that time there were a lot of insurance brokers on Broadway in Manhattan. Uptown, like above 96th Street.

And I would go out once a week and I would literally walk the pavement and I would go in and I would give my card, I’d give my spiel. And from doing that I got three or four guys who actually started referring me cases. And within two years I had a bigger practice than he did and he was older. And I had then partnered up with my first partner, Ed McGowan, who is now the head of he’s probably the best trial lawyer I’ve ever seen.

He’s the head of legal aid for all of Manhattan now. [00:13:00] And he tries the wildest criminal cases that are almost impossible to get as a private lawyer because nobody would be able to pay. You know, we’d get into the situations that these people get in and actually have money also. And we started our firm, him and I, and the first week Ed hit for a million dollars on a trip and fall case in the Bronx and that was in 1994. This was two years after I graduated law school. And eventually Gerald Miller, who I worked for, he was pretty much out after two years of me being there. He was like, I’m going to Florida for six months. And I basically took over all his cases and he made more money the last five years of his career by me paying him than he ever made having his own practice.

And that

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. Wow.

Steven Goldstein: kind of how I, [00:14:00] that was the start of, of, of it. And then it started branching in all sort of directions. But

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s awesome. You know, a couple things there for, for any younger lawyers out there may, maybe you don’t literally hit the pavement like you did, but, you know, get up from behind your desk. You gotta do that. You gotta meet people and don’t be afraid to ask. Ask for cases, ask for work. You know, a lot of lawyers just scared to do that.

Seems like.

Steven Goldstein: Thank God. Thank God. And you know, I do still do a lot of this kind of stuff, so I do a lot of flesh to flesh. A little later on in my life, I became the mayor of my town, and that was an interesting story. I, I had moved into my town I think in 19 93, 94, whenever it was. And I just had some brilliant idea.

I was like, let me go to the local political party meeting just to [00:15:00] see what’s going on. Just, you know, maybe I’ll get involved, I’ll do something. So at the time I was like 30, 31 years old. And this was in New Jersey, in the town I live in now, spring. And back then again, ’cause everything was, you know, paper, it wasn’t, there was no computers And all across New Jersey, the political parties were run by these little old women who were the political powerhouses behind the scenes.

So I went to my first meeting, and you gotta understand, I’m like 30, 31 years old. Everyone else in the room is 60 plus. So when I walked in it was like gasps, like, who is this person? And they’re like, what do you do? I’m like, I’m a lawyer now. Like the gasps are getting even louder and, you know, meet the people, sit at the meeting the next day I get a call.

They go, you are now the lawyer for the library board, like the library board. What the hell do they need [00:16:00] a lawyer for? Well, they have meetings and you know, they like to have, they’d like to have a lawyer there like, okay. I’m now the lawyer for the library board. I’m like, okay, kick something on my resume.

You know, I can say, okay, now look, I’m a, I’m also the library board lawyer. Fast forward two years and there, every year there’s an election. The way the government of my town works is the township committee. So there’s five people on the board, and those five, they choose who the mayor is. So there were two seats up and they come to me, they’re like you are running for township committee?

And I’m like, well, wait a minute. I mean, I’ve been here for three years. I don’t know anybody. And the guy I was up against was a probably 70 years old, had been on the town council 15 years. And I start now thinking in my head, okay, so they need me to go in and lose. But now when I do this, I think the way it works in politics is once you’re the sacrificial lamb, they owe you.

And now they’ll start giving me like [00:17:00] the, what you hear about in New Jersey, like the bs no-show jobs. You know, like, I’ll get some position with like some board and they’ll pay me 30 grand a year and I never have to go or do anything ’cause I’m running and they’ll owe me this. And so I went out and I actually campaigned and low.

And, and the other thing I told them is I said, you know, by some miracle if I actually win I’m playing in a basketball league and our games are Monday nights and that’s when the meeting zone. I’m like, I’m not blowing off my basketball league to be on the township committee. I mean, this was the attitude I had.

I was 30 something years old and lo and behold I won. And I’m like, what the hell just happened? Like this wasn’t, I, I don’t know how it happened. It, it happened. And I wound up winning two more elections. I did play basketball though that year I did miss the meetings. I was true to my word. And you know what’s cool about being on the township [00:18:00] committee in that town or the mayor is we have in our town Bal, this role golf club.

So if you are a golf fan or a golf fanatic, that’s one of the top 100 courses and we get the the PGA championship every 12 or 15 years. Just so happened we got the PGA championship when I was the deputy mayor, and it was in 1998. And my picture is in the PGA championship guide the program.

And that was the tournament where Phil Nicholson won on the fifth day because it was raining on the fourth day. And it was pretty cool. And literally one of the perks I, that was one of the reasons I kept running is literally ’cause the perk of I got to play at Baltar role, which in a million years I would never get to do.

And I had a run of about eight years on the board. And I’ve turned that into, now I’ve been the public defender in the town for the last 10 years. And that’s a, that’s a political [00:19:00] position. Believe it or not, it’s, it’s a tougher fight to get that job than to get on the town council.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So let’s talk about your firm now for a minute. You sort of said, you know, it’s unique. You’ve got contract attorneys. I can’t remember the name, but I feel like there’s some name for it. Like the bench attorneys or something in New York per diem.

So explain how that works. You know, that’s, that’s unusual to me, at least in Atlanta.

Steven Goldstein: And you know. When I met you and other people like you through the group that we’re in I was stunned that I was the only one who even knew this. So in New York, especially especially, you know, in the 90’s and 2000’s and pre COVID for certain, I was in court every day, literally every single day because they would do settlement conferences, discovery conferences every, every single day.

And in New York City alone, there’s five courts, you know, so I could [00:20:00] have a case in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and I can’t be everywhere. You know, just one person. There are lawyers, literally in New York City and New York state whose sole practice is to cover court for other lawyers. And what they do is they charge a hundred bucks.

And they’ll appear on as many cases as you need. And you then realize they are better to go to court than you are because they know very intimately now all the judges, all the court officers, all the court clerks. And if you think about the economics of it, if I had to be at a conference at nine 30 in Manhattan and I got there at nine 15, you could literally sit till one o’clock in the afternoon because there’s a hundred cases on every day and you’ve got per diem lawyers on the other side and they’re running to three or four different courtrooms in a given day in the same courthouse.[00:21:00]

So if you are sitting there, you could be sitting there waiting for your defense attorney till 1130 for a nine 30 call, and none of the judges will call them on it ’cause they know what’s going on. Everybody’s out hustling. So I determined pretty quickly. I would go to court, but I would go to more of settlement stuff because it, and unfortunately you don’t get it as you don’t get it today, like I did when I was a younger lawyer.

’cause I really got to develop really close relationships with defense lawyers. ’cause I would see them every day and we would go to lunch and because we’re sitting there for three hours waiting for one case, you know, you’re BSing and you’re really getting to know them, you know, how they work. And it really, really helped resolve a lot of cases.

So that became kind of like my business model. And I would say, you know, my time is worth a lot more than a hundred bucks for me to do one conference. You know, if I settle one case for $20,000 because I’m not sitting in a court [00:22:00] it’s worth much more. And in New York City, especially New York City firms, you will find the big firms, literally the firms that have 30 or 40 lawyers, they, they don’t send their own lawyers to go.

Because they want their lawyers in the office, you know, producing discovery or doing depositions. But I also used lawyers to do depositions. And one of the reasons I did, and especially I’d have ’em do defense depositions, and I would use X defense lawyers to do it. You know, a I was a small firm and I always found that it was great to have a second set of eyes on my case.

So those lawyers would look at the case, they would prep for a deposition, and afterwards, or before they’d say, you know, you should do this, this, this, you should get that, that, that they would then write these deposition reports for me. And they did a great job because what I have discovered over the course of my career is, and this is one of the little secrets nobody will say, but I don’t have an ego, so I don’t [00:23:00] care.

The way to make money is a plaintiff’s PI lawyer is to get the case. And then any other factor of the case, you could always hire a better lawyer than you to handle. So there’s better lawyers at me at discovery. There’s better lawyers than me at doing depositions. There’s better lawyers than me at doing trials.

There’s not a lot better than me at getting cases. I’m sure there are, but that’s where kind of my ego goes to, you know, I’m really good at getting business. But if, and, and the way I discovered a lot of my deposition lawyers would be the ones who I would be opposing. And if they impressed me, I would say to them, if you ever go out on your own, keep me in mind.

I’d love to use you to help me on my cases. And so over the years, I build up a vast network of really, really talented lawyers who, you know, they didn’t want to work for a firm. They wanted to have their own freedom and, you know, they were making a decent living. But when you do the per diem thing as a lawyer, you know, you don’t have.[00:24:00]

The malpractice insurance is next to nothing. You don’t have office staff, you have no overhead. You work when you want. And I found that financially and economically, it really, really worked out. Well for me, and I still do it to this day, my New York cases, I don’t go to court. I have other lawyers cover court for me, pretty much almost do everything at this point.

Literally all I’ll do is get the case and get the medical records and if I got a file suit, that’s kind of the last I I see of it. Until it’s

Jonathan Hawkins: it, it, the thing that’s crazy to me, the per diem, and I guess all the courts, everybody’s on board with this, but like I just imagine down here a lawyer’s makes an appearance at court and then they’re scared they’re in the case and can’t get out. But I guess

Steven Goldstein: no, I mean that’s, no, they’re just appearing of counsel, so, you know, obviously they’re, when they would appear, they’d be, you know, Goldstein and hand worker. Jonathan Hawkins appearing for Goldstein Anmar. You know, they, but the culture is such that everybody understood. There [00:25:00] was like, that thought never entered my mind until you just said it.

And I’ve been doing it for 30 something years. Like nobody even thinks you know that they are in the case ’cause they’re appearing. It’s just like an associate appearing on behalf of a firm. They’re, it’s the firm and somebody’s just appearing on behalf. And that’s how all these per diem lawyers would enter their appearances.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right, so I wanna go back. I wanna, we’re gonna jump around a little bit, but I wanna go back to Madison Square Garden. You know, I understand you’re, you’re a huge grateful Dead, dead fan.

Steven Goldstein: Love

Jonathan Hawkins: and they used to play there a lot. So, you, you, you get to see, tell, tell me about that.

Steven Goldstein: So I, I, so I saw them ’cause I worked at Madison Square Garden four years and the dead would be there at 12 to 15, maybe 10, 12 nights a year. And my office was literally so Madison Square Garden is a weird building if you don’t know it. The actual arena where they play is on the fifth floor of a building.

You [00:26:00] literally have to go up escalators or up elevators to get to where the actual basketball court or the hockey rink is, or wherever they do. My office was on the first floor of that building and I had the all access pass ’cause I worked there. So I would literally go to every concert and at intermission I would go backstage and I would hang out backstage and I would be in my suit or whatever.

One day, I don’t know what came over me, but I wandered into the arena at about four o’clock in the afternoon and. The Dead are doing their soundcheck. And the only people in Madison Square Garden at that time are me, about five or six cleaning women and the Grateful Dead are doing their soundcheck for that night’s concert.

And they played three songs. And I was, it was, I got my own private concert. And I’m trying to think if you could even pay for that or could have paid for that in those [00:27:00] days. But I mean, I would do, I would do stupid stuff like, you know, my friends, I would sneak ’em in. It was, you know, but I was the man, believe me.

And

Jonathan Hawkins: bet. I

Steven Goldstein: I got to play basketball in the arena on a, whenever the you know, whenever the court was laid down, whenever the Knicks were playing, if there was college basketball. And that occurred on my first day, on the job. Second day I got a call from the CEO of Madison Square. And at the time, this guy’s name was Alan Fields.

And Alan Field was a very interesting character. He was a very, very intense guy. And I was, you know, 23 years old and I’m like basically a gopher for the boxing department. And, and Alan Fields calls me directly. He goes, Steve, this is Alan Fields. And I’m like, why the hell is this guy called? Like, is he welcoming me?

And he says to me, he goes, I [00:28:00] hear you play basketball like I do. He says bring your stuff. You’re gonna go to the arena tomorrow at one o’clock. We’re playing. I’m like, you know, okay. And I go to my boss who was a big name in the boxing world. His name was Bob Goodman. He was Don King’s main guy for a long time.

And then Madison Square Garden hired him to run the department. And I said, Bob. Alan Fields just called me to play basketball tomorrow. What do I do? And he said, you go play basketball. And that started, you know, four years of playing against. And I, again, this is in the mid eighties, so this is when, if you’re a basketball fan or this is when the Knicks had, you know, Mark Jackson, Patrick Ewing, Oakley.

This is when they were really, and I used to get dressed in Mark Jackson’s stall in the locker room before we would go play pickup games at one in the afternoon. So, you know, for a kid growing up in Brooklyn who was really into sports and into basketball I was like, how could it [00:29:00] ever get better than this?

But I was making $18,000 a year. So at some point I figured, okay,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, you were saving a lot of money on the tickets you

Steven Goldstein: I was saving a lot of money on the tickets. Yes, I was. But. One thing it did do is, you know, when I was introduced I met a lot of fighters, a lot of boxers, and I think it started me on my sort of the way I handled people in as a lawyer now because boxers are the most humble of athletes.

I’m even talking like the big names. So a guy like Ray Leonard who I actually got to know pretty well. Now this is at the time, I mean he was a little past his prime, but you’re talking a guy gold medal. It was Ray Leonard. He was like huge. But Ray Leonard was a very down to earth guy, and I always felt with boxers, say, unlike basketball players, any team sport player, when they’re younger and they’re good [00:30:00] when they’re 10, 11, if they’re good boxers, nobody cares.

Unlike, you know, if you’re a good basketball player at eight, nine years old already you are being catered to. And boxing too is a very humbling endeavor. I mean, you’re getting punched in the face, basically that kind of humbles people. And I don’t care how good you are. And I said to myself when I became a lawyer, I was like, if these guys can be humble in the face of what they face, like who am I?

When I’m dealing with a client who, you know, doesn’t come from any sort of background privileged background who am I to have heirs or to think I’m any, any better? And I think that was a big part of why I do get cases and repeat cases from people is I’m really not phony. I really try and talk to them like they’re just people like me.

Like I, I’m no better. And my office is on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and it seems, but I’m in the, [00:31:00] I’m in the worst building. In on Madison Avenue, but I have the Madison Avenue address so people, you know, they get, you know, it’s a big deal. But it really taught me a lot about dealing with people, is that aspect of my life.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so back to, to basketball. I mean, did you, did you, you played growing up, where did you play professionally? Was

Steven Goldstein: I played, yeah, I played in England one year. So I had gone my junior year of college. I studied abroad in London and, you know, I was playing at co I was playing four or five, you know, days a a week. And I was looking to play, and again, this was, it was only magazines. There was no online stuff. And I, there was an ad in a magazine for a team that was looking for players.

And I went down, I tried out, I was the only American who tried out, and as soon as they heard me talk. And I was able to [00:32:00] play, I mean, I was a good school yard player but the high school I went to Lincoln High School and I mean, these guys were almost pros in high school. You know, every, every starting five of my senior year, every single person went division one except for one.

And he went to Vision Three and Mar Stefan Marbury’s brother played in high school with me

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Marbury, by the way. Yeah, so I’m George Tech guy. He came down his freshman year and changed the team. We, we were good.

Steven Goldstein: right. So yeah, Stefan Marberry went to my high school grew up in the neighborhood I grew

Jonathan Hawkins: I.

Steven Goldstein: in, and so I made the team and got a stipend to play, traveled all, and I, I was 19 years old at the time and traveled all over Europe playing basketball for nothing. Saw, you know, I went to France, Greece, Italy.

Yugoslavia at the time it was still a country. And obviously, I mean, I always say that my life peaked at 19 and [00:33:00] went downhill after that, even though it’s been a pretty good life. But I mean, I was really cool. I had an earring, I had air, you know, I was playing basketball, I was living in London and the West End.

I was, I was really cool. And then, you know, I had to grow up.

Jonathan Hawkins: that, that’s awesome. We, I mean, you got, you got all sorts of good stuff. You, you, you’ve been in a movie, right?

Steven Goldstein: Yes. So I had I, not an actor, I also, I play piano. I’ve playing piano since I’m a kid. And about four or five years ago, a good friend of mine, his friend was producing a documentary which is on Amazon and Netflix now. It actually won the Emmy from 2022 for best documentary. And he had asked me to play a piece a piano piece in the doc.

You know, I guess when you watch documentaries, you don’t realize it, but there’s all this stuff going on in the background and there’s all this music. And he gave me a piece by a Polish composer [00:34:00] from the 1930s. The name of the movie was They Survived Together. And I played the piece for a minute and 10 seconds in the movie.

And I’m on the credits at the end where, you know, you know how the credits, they roll slow, slow, and then they start moving so fast you can’t even read ’em. That’s where my name pops up. But the guy who produced it was a guy I’d known for a long time and he won the Emmy Award, the film won it, and his name was John Rokosny.

And I said, John am I allowed to say that I won an Emmy award? And he goes, yes, you could say you won an Emmy award. So. When I’ve had a few drinks in me and I’m trying to impress people at a bar, I’ll always tell ’em I won an Emmy award for playing in a movie.

Jonathan Hawkins: And every few years you get a royalty check for a few cents.

Steven Goldstein: no, because I didn’t get, I did not get paid to do it. It was you know, it was a documentary. So they basically have no money. They, they basically raised money to produce it. But it was a great, it was a great movie. I mean, it’s the movie’s about a, a family in Poland [00:35:00] where it’s five kids. They were the only ones who, where the family completely survived the Holocaust.

They were the only family in their town. And it was it was a great, I mean, it’s a great movie. I mean, I would recommend anybody Netflix, on Netflix, Amazon Prime. I, I think it’s all over, but it, it, it was a really good movie. But that was, you know, quite an experience. And, you know, I’m a little older and I’m kind of looking back at my life and I’m like, wow, I really did do a lot of cool stuff.

But again, you know, I think. It makes you a better lawyer. I, I think the more round, well, the more rounded you become. I think it really, you know, does help. You know, people say they love the law and they’re really hyperfocused on it. I mean, I, I love being a lawyer. I mean, I, I love what it’s given me. I love the freedom I have.

I love the life I’ve been able to make for myself. I love the people I’ve met. But, and, you know, I’m on the other side of building, so I now am going through [00:36:00] the, you know, wow, how much longer do I have while I still have my health and I still have energy and I’m still, but you know, I’m at that, that stage.

So I’m trying to develop these other things. So I started taking piano lessons again. I, I’ll look into maybe teaching. I do for the last 15 years, I go up and I lecture at Cornell. University, my friend, the guy who introduced me to the guy who produced a movie, he’s a professor at Cornell for the last 20 years.

So I go up and I lecture his class and it’s interesting what I do with them. So he teaches a law class in the hotel school at Cornell, and I basically for the last 10 to 12 years have been using them as a really, really, really smart focus group. And so literally they, he has a hundred kids in the lecture hall and he brings me in to talk about tort law.

And basically the first time he said, just tell me war. You know, tell them [00:37:00] war stories. So like what I’m teaching them is brought to life. And I did that for the first two years. And then I think by accident I had had a case. I think it was an Uber case or something, and it had to do with the person should have never been allowed to drive Uber.

And there were technical issues and Uber was defending the case on these technical issues. And I said to the class, I said, here’s their defense. Because either they couldn’t figure out that the guy maybe had a criminal record, whatever it was. I can’t remember. But I do remember these kids start laughing and saying, oh no, they can’t say that this, it’s so easy.

They could have done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, what? And I mean, I had hired experts to look at this and these kids at Cornell, obviously, and I wound up going back talking to the Uber lawyers and I settled the case for a lot of money. And I said, whoa, this is pretty cool. Let me start, I’ll tell my war stories.

But so what I would do is I would [00:38:00] then take the lecture class and I would divide them. In two groups, plaintiff in Defense, and I would just give ’em the facts of the case and let them have added. And as you can imagine, you know, it’s tough to say that this is your average person in the community because these kids were all brilliant.

But boy did I get a lot of great stuff from them over the years when I would have trials. So I mean, one of the things you could do if you’re a younger trial lawyer is, you know, go to your local college and, you know, go to one of the departments and say, you know, I’d like to come in and just talk to your class.

You know, if they, if there’s a pre-law class, let me go in and tell a war story. And what it also could do is, so they were in Cornell, I was in the city. But if you do it at a local college, what a great way to find an intern, or what a great way to find someone to work for you. And, and, and have like, you know, use community relations and you know, that.

Morphed into more focus groups. And the way I do my focus groups now is well, a few years ago I went to the guy that I have my luncheon [00:39:00] almost every day in my town. He owns the pizza place and I said to him, you know, what are you, what’s your slowest night of the week? And I, he goes, Mondays, I said, you know what?

I wanna do my focus groups in the pizza place on Monday nights. Like, great. So I hired a mom from town that I knew. She’s a, she’s a paralegal at the defense firm locally. She took over and she went out and she would find me just by ads on Facebook. She would find me people to sit on my focus groups.

I now have a waiting list of about 200, and people call her all the time, can I be on the focus group? Can I be, and what I do is I just literally, I get 10 people. We go to the pizza place, they get there we email them with the menu, they pre-order, they sit down at seven. I give ’em dinner, but I give ’em a thick, you know, heavy Italian dinner.

So by the time they’re ready for me, they’re all, you know, they can’t move. They have to sit there and they have to pay attention. [00:40:00] And, you know, we go for two hours and I’ll present usually one criminal and one personal injury case. And what it has done, which I didn’t realize, but morphed into it’s great community relations, great referral source.

Because if you think about it, I’ve now presented trials probably in the course of all that I’ve done, probably about 300 people. So now these are 300 people who’ve kind of seen me in action. They have an affinity to me because I’ve given them something for nothing and I feed them and then I give them each 50 bucks.

And they go on my mailing list, they go on my newsletter list. And, you know, there’s a whole other side we, we haven’t talked about, but, you know, marketing and how you can do it if you’re a state younger player there’s so many things you could do locally and you know, it’s a win-win because now I’m seen as like, okay, I’m this guy helping out the local business and obviously he’s really happy ’cause he’s got 15 dinners he’s serving that he wouldn’t do and he’s got customers who [00:41:00] may not have ever come in there.

So, you know, it, it’s a win-win and I, I really enjoy it because I like the guy and I, I wanna see him do well.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s awesome. That’s a great idea for people out there.

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 let’s, circle back to your practice real quick. So you know, you do criminal and PI. Did you always do both? How do they, you know, what’s the interplay is one, do you do one more than the other? You know, something it’s, do are they good complimentary practices in your experience?

Steven Goldstein: I started out as a PI lawyer. I had no formal training as a criminal defense lawyer. I was never a legal aid lawyer. I was never a prosecutor. I was never mentored by a criminal lawyer, but in New Jersey, not New York. So this happened to be in New Jersey and I didn’t have an office there, I was [00:42:00] just admitted.

So I get what they make you do is you have to do one free case a year and they don’t care if you don’t know what you’re doing. So it’s either gonna be a criminal case or like a family court case, like a domestic violence.

And I got mine and the first one I got was a guy who I’m still really good friends with to this day. He was accused of, he was having trouble with his wife, you know, she accused him of assault so he had a criminal case and he had a domestic violence case, a final restraining order. And you know, I kind of dug into it. It wasn’t getting paid, but I found it like pretty interesting. And I said, you know, this is really kind of good for me to be a defendant to help me be a better plaintiff’s PI lawyer.

And so what I did, and I was a young lawyer when I did [00:43:00] this, and when I tell young lawyers even now to do this, they look at me like I’m crazy. So usually the veteran lawyers, the guys who are out there 15, 20, 25 years, they don’t wanna deal with this crap working for free. They got law firms to run. So I went to other lawyers because you are allowed to slough off your obligation.

So if somebody, if you, if Jonathan Hawkins gets the notice to appear pro bono for somebody, he could have somebody else do it for him. And Jonathan Hawkins gets the credit. So I would go to people like Jonathan Hawkins and say, Hey, if you got a pro bono case criminal that you don’t wanna do, give it to me.

And I kind of learned that way, and I was smart enough as a young lawyer when I would have a case, especially criminal, I would go to the prosecutor and say, look, you gotta help me here. I really don’t know what I’m doing. What should I do? And nine outta 10 times, you would be [00:44:00] shocked that they would tell me what to do.

They would say, you should make a suppression motion in this case. You should. Because, you know, part of being a good lawyer is being a little vulnerable. And a great skill is to admit when you don’t know what to do. Because what happens is, I think most people. Are wired when somebody genuinely sincerely comes to you and says, I need help.

I’m trying to do my best, but I really just, they do it. And even bigger help are legal aid or public defender attorneys who will go out of their way to talk you through a case. Because the people who do it full time, they really are zealots in the belief that, you know, they’re the last bastion of defense against, you know, the system.

And they wanna see all criminal lawyers not only do well but do it competently. And I did it enough times that I actually started getting pretty good at [00:45:00] it. And, you know, criminal defense makes you a better pi I lawyer in a number of ways. A like pi, it’s negotiation. I mean, you’re negotiating, you know, different thing.

You’re not negotiating money, you’re literally negotiating. People’s time in prison or probation. You know, I think there’s a lot more at stake, but as a criminal defense lawyer, your job is to just poke a hole everywhere you see it potentially to occur. And I know as a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer, a lot of times, you know, I’ll be on listservs or I’ll talk to others and they’ll say, yeah, this insurance defense lawyer, he’s a pain in the ass.

He’s asking me for this, this, this, this, this, that. And it gets them actually angry or it gets them, you know, it throws ’em off and none of this stuff throws me off anymore because I know what they’re doing and they’re not doing it to be jerks. I mean, listen, some of them might be, but you know, [00:46:00] very few. I mean, I, most defense insurance, defense lawyers or PI defense lawyers that I met, I genuinely like, you know, they’re good people.

They’re doing a job, and if their job is to poke a hole, in my case. Why would I get angry at that? Or why would that frustrate me? All it means is if I can un, you know, if I could stop them from poking that hole, it’s just gonna help my case get better. And the criminal defense made me a much better PI lawyer.

It also really grounds you on how important it’s when you’re representing somebody. And I’ve developed very close relationships with my criminal defense clients because I think if you care, that’s generally the nature of what should happen. You know, you really should care at a gut level, at a personal level if you’re gonna go in there and, you know, represent somebody on a criminal case.

Now, it happens on a personal injury case too, but [00:47:00] it’s, it’s kind of different in the sense that level. It almost doesn’t occur unless you really go into trial and then you really, really gotta dig in. But, you know, your basic auto accident case with a minimum policy where somebody has an injury, where they’re gonna pay the policy, you know, you can’t be close with everybody.

But you know, this is why I believe, you know, even if it’s a limited amount, if you are a younger personal injury lawyer, even if you got a volunteer, take a criminal case, see it through, and I, I promise you, it’s, it, it’s going to affect your ability at trial and it’s going to affect your ability at empathy for the your, your client.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, the other thing another story you told me sometimes you need to have both skills. So is I, I’ll call it the jaywalking case, which was both a criminal and a pearl injury case. Right? That, that’s an incredible case.

Steven Goldstein: Yeah, that was probably,

Jonathan Hawkins: quick overview [00:48:00] of

Steven Goldstein: I’ll try. That was the most memorable case I’ve probably had in my career. So the long story short is we get a call from a guy that his 70-year-old father is sitting in Rikers Island, which is a notorious place in New York City. It is awful. It is the worst place. It, it’s scary to go there as a lawyer.

Forget about being a prisoner, and he’s a 70-year-old man, and he’s being held on a charge of endangering the life of a police officer. So, you know, I get this call and I’m like, okay, 1500, $2,000 case, blah, blah, blah. So it turns out what had happened is. Poor guy had been hit by a police scooter, knocked upside down, rendered unconscious and to cover themselves up, the officer charged him.

The officer who hit him, charged him with endangering the life of a police officer. So they haul this guy off to jail. They came, he was there until he retained us. He was there for five days. He was in so much pain and he [00:49:00] got no medical attention. He was in so much pain that what he told us is the other inmates would take their sandwiches and they combined their sandwiches to make a pillow for him.

Now you’re talking about a guy who never had been arrested. He was living here his whole life, lawfully Spanish guy, didn’t speak English. And I suddenly realized like, wait a minute. I’ve got. A PI case here. The long story short of it is the guy had a broken neck and he wound up getting two fusions.

So I had to, I was defending the criminal case and I had a personal injury case going along, and they kept prosecuting the criminal case and the district attorney, and this was in Brooklyn. They kind of don’t know what’s happening on the civil side. And the civil side has no idea, but as they keep, so I, besides the personal injury case, I have a malicious prosecution, false arrest.

I’ve got the [00:50:00] whole gamut going. And every time I would walk into the criminal court, I would tell the DA or the prosecutor well, they’re called das, but most of the country calls their people prosecutors. So I’ll say that. I would say to him, you know, the fact that you’re continuing this criminal case, I thank you my children.

Thank you. My unborn grandchildren. Thank you. My unborn great-grandchildren. Thank you. And my unborn great-great, great-grandchildren. Thank you. And he had no idea what I was talking about. So cut to the cut to, they wouldn’t dismiss his criminal case. They insisted he take a plea of some sort. I said, it’s not happening.

There’s no way. And we get to the trial of the criminal case. And the way it works in in New York when you’re going to trial on a criminal case, is again, you have one judge and there’s a billion cases on and they’re just cycling through and everybody’s getting these, what they’re called adjournment, contemplation of dismissal, where basically stay outta trouble.

Six [00:51:00] months. And the case gets dismissed. They offer that to me. There, I reject it. Judge says to me like, what are you doing? And I now start telling the judge the facts of the case. He calls this poor line district attorney, it’s get me your supervisor. And he goes ape wild on them. And he says, I’m sending you out to try the case right now.

And at that point they then said, okay, judge, we will reduce it to jaywalking, which is now is just like a ticket. I said, no, we go try the case. The trial judge has the same attitude. Oh, and 10 seconds before they do their opening statement, they say, oh, we have to disclose to you that we’re not calling the cop because he was fired two years ago.

Because he pulled his gun on three other cops over three other occasions. [00:52:00] I said, okay. It’s, it’s an interesting fact. But. That judge let me cross examine the people from the police department, like nobody’s business. There was not a question I, I could have asked them, you know, what they had for breakfast five days ago and that judge was, you know, overruling every obj.

I mean, I could have asked. And so what I did, I was able to get great deposition stuff because it’s a trial also because I had the criminal case going. So what the city of New York does is they’re notorious for holding back discovery in civil cases, but in the criminal case, they don’t hold back anything.

So I have all this stuff that the civil side is telling me doesn’t exist, but I got it from the criminal case, but the civil people have no idea I have it. So, you know, when we go to. So the civil lawyers now, so I get an acquittal, obviously, and it was the, it was, it was tried as a jaywalking case. The first one that had been tried since 1935 or something like some crazy, [00:53:00] you know.

So we go to the civil side and we go to the first settlement conference and we’re all sitting in there and I say to the, now the lawyers representing the city of New York, I’m, you know, are you aware that your guy was fired for, and all these things that they have no idea. I’m like, how do you know that?

I was like, well, you guys didn’t know that my guy was criminally prosecuted for this. So I have all this juicy discovery that I’m not giving you because it’s yours. And the judge kicks them out, kicks me out, and you know, we, we eventually came to like a multi multimillion dollar settlement. And the crazy thing is, is had they been honest from the jump.

There was video of my guy crossing the street on his phone. And I was worried about liability if they had just, you know, when he was hit back then, not obviously arrested him. Just treated it like any other personal injury case. I probably would’ve gotten [00:54:00] a 10th of what I got. But you know, in that case, you know me, the newspapers, it was, but it kind of had every, it was a very sexy case.

It had everything. And this guy was brilliant. Took his money, moved back to, I think Ecuador, bought a house on the beach and lived happily ever after.

Jonathan Hawkins: That is, that is crazy. I love that story. So, so we’ve been going at it a while, so I wanna be respectful of your time, but you mentioned earlier that you’re sort of getting to the stage of your career where you’re starting to think about what’s on the other side.

So you’re developing the, you know, redeveloping your, your hobbies and whatnot. But as you look back over your 30 plus years and if any young lawyer was coming to you are there any pieces of advice maybe you’d give them about starting a firm, starting their career, marketing, whatever it is?

Steven Goldstein: I would say first you need to get a mindset, even if you’re an associate, that the only [00:55:00] way you are ever going to really make it as a lawyer is you must get into the client acquisition mindset. You have to understand that as in any business, the highest paid people are the revenue generators.

Now, I’m not saying don’t go out and study how to be a great trial lawyer and don’t, you know, obviously you gotta do your CLEs and learn, but so you need to take an interest in sales. You need to take an interest in marketing, and you need to always be curious and creative on how can I make myself put out there so I could learn how to market, you know, how to sell.

Me for instance. Now I’ve paid $2,500 recently for an online sales course, sales, sales, not law, literally sales. Because so much of what we do as lawyers is sales. So don’t ever think [00:56:00] that sales is beneath you. I think the best lawyers and probably the wealthiest are all sales or saleswomen salespeople would, would ever, you know, recall at at, at some point, you need to go out and join groups that are concentrating on marketing, that are concentrating on sales, and surround yourself with people with an abundance mindset.

I actually did a post on LinkedIn this morning because on my listserv everyone was complaining about Morgan and Morgan, which I’m sure everybody, you know, they spend all this money then blah, blah. I said, and I said on my post, I said, look, nobody could compete with you. You are a unique person.

You yourself. Find your identity, find your personality. ’cause nobody else can, can be that. And then learn how to market it. You know, learn how to blog, learn how to make videos. Once you get a lead, learn how to sell them. Learn how to be empathetic. But you must, your [00:57:00] goal must be that no matter how good of a lawyer I am, I wanna be better at bringing in the business.

And when you, now I was lucky ’cause I had that mindset from the get go. ’cause I had an entrepreneurial grandfather. I didn’t go through the growing pains of I’m gonna be a good lawyer, and then all of a sudden, oh my God, what do I. Do. I took an interest in that stuff before I even went to law school.

But you, you almost have to, because anybody who studies this, anybody who’s in the world of lawyers who are entrepreneurial knows just because you do a good job at something, you know, doesn’t mean people are gonna recognize you or find you. I have a buddy, really good friend of mine, I went to law school with about eight, about five, six years ago.

He hit a case against New Jersey Transit for $17 million. And I had dinner with him and I gave him all these ideas of how he could use this, you know, for marketing. And he wasn’t the marketing [00:58:00] mindset and he just thought, well, this case appeared in the New Jersey Law Journal. People are gonna call me.

Mm-hmm. No, no. Now could he have packaged that content into. A great video a great blog posting on LinkedIn every day to how I did this. You really, really have to understand that even if you’re an associate, you’re the owner of a law firm. That’s what you do for a living. You are the chief marketer for a law firm.

Actually doing the legal work is sort of like the deliverable. It’s be the difference between owning the bar and being the bartender. And you could be both, but to me, if you’re a young lawyer, get out there and learn how to market and sell and you’ll be guaranteed. Nobody will ever be able to walk into your office and say, you’re out.

You’re out. You’re out. And if they do, you say, great new opportunity.

Jonathan Hawkins: Great, [00:59:00] great advice. We’ll, we’ll end it with that Steven. Man, that was awesome. If anybody out there wants to get in touch with you, refer you a case in New York or New Jersey, whatever, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Steven Goldstein: My website is www.gh, like goldstein handwork law NY nj.com. Just leave us a message there. You could fill out a form. Our, our phone number is there (212) 679-1330 is the general number and you know, happy to talk to people about any cases or just talking about if anyone’s interested about talking about marketing or sales.

I like, you know, Jonathan too. Love, love talking about,

Jonathan Hawkins: And if they want to come up there and play golf, you’re, you’re always

Steven Goldstein: I’m always getting, I’m, I’m going to be playing Alpha in about one half hour after we’re done with this. On this beautiful day at the Jersey Shore, or a beautiful afternoon.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Steven, man, this has been awesome. Thanks for coming on.

Steven Goldstein: Thanks so much for having me.

OutroUpdatedWebsite-1: Thanks for listening to [01:00:00] 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.