Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] I mean, it’s a good way just to run your life. It makes life more enjoyable, all those things. But, you know, there’s not an immediate ROI necessarily, but long term, these sorts of things, you know, you are tending to the garden and, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years, these things are just gonna be producing fruit everywhere, and you’re gonna just enjoy it along the way.

That’s, I think that’s a really smart thing to do, and it sounds like just sort of came natural for you, and you just like being around people and talking to folks.

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I think you’re right. I mean, the garden itself, just by doing that will give fruit itself and, you know, if it’s just a pretty little flower that you can’t eat, fine, it’s all good. You made a good difference in this person’s life. They had a good experience ’cause when I go to trial and I ask juries about what’s been your experience with plaintiff lawyers if you hired a firm maybe 60 to 70% of the time of those who have hired plaintiff lawyers, it’s probably like neutral to closer to negative than positive.

Welcome to the Founding Partner Podcast. Join your host, Jonathan Hawkins, as [00:01:00] 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. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview founding attorneys and hear about all the cool stuff they’re doing. And today we’ve got a great guest, Jason DeSouza, out of San Antonio, Texas. He is primarily I’ll call him a personal injury lawyer, but he’s got some little niche areas that, that we’re gonna dive into.

And he’s sort of off the beaten path a little bit in terms of the geographic area that he covers as well. We’ll dive into that. So Jason, welcome to the show, man. Thank you for coming on.

Jason DeSouza: No problem. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. I appreciate it

Jonathan Hawkins: So where are you [00:02:00] located? You’re, you’re, I guess you’re based in San Antonio, Texas, but you cover… I’ll let you describe it

Jason DeSouza: So I’ve got a firm we started in 2015 personal injury, trial law handle litigation exclusively. Our office is in San Antonio, but I found a little niche serving small communities south of San Antonio. So, if you’re kind of familiar with Texas we go down to the Coastal Bend area, the Corpus Christi area, and then kinda like float down the middle of Texas, the, the bottom middle of Texas between San Antonio and the Mexican border.

And it’s a, it’s a great niche. I kinda call it the Dairy Queen niche because we’re helping people in small towns where a lot of the plaintiff firms are all kind of based in the big towns, and they’re all trying to fight for all that business there

Jonathan Hawkins: Great strategy. It’s great strategy. Go, go to the blue ocean instead of the red ocean, right?

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I’d love to say it was my idea, but I had a great paralegal she passed away last year of breast cancer. And she [00:03:00] was from a little s- town in Freer, Texas. And so that’s kind of where I, I thought it up after getting so mu- so much business out of there

Jonathan Hawkins: Cool. Yeah, I want to dive into that a little bit. But, but let’s back up, man. So, I want to go back to the beginning. So we’ll f- we’ll start with this. Are you from Texas?

Jason DeSouza: No. So I’m from Toronto. My wife’s from Michigan, and I went to school in Michigan Cooley Law School. And so one day I’m just– I’m walking from my car to the library and the weather’s coming in horizontally, just coming in, all of it, the slush and the wind and the water and the rain and all of it.

And I didn’t, you know, and being from Toronto, you know, I’m kinda used to the bad weather and I was like, “I gotta get out of here, man. I just need, I need like one year out of here.” And so there were a bunch of states that Jessica and I, my girlfriend at the time, Jessica, and she’s now my wife, we talked about moving to for just a couple years, you know, North Carolina or Nevada or California, Texas.

And we just kinda, we were like, “Let’s, let’s move to Austin. We’ll go to Austin. That’s where, you know, that’s where the cool kids go to, and we’ll go there.” [00:04:00] And then we were like, “Damn, Austin’s expensive and we’re broke, so we’ll go to San Antonio and we’ll hang out there for a little bit and then we’ll move to Austin.”

But we fell in love with San Antonio. I mean, it’s a great town. It’s so, like, below the radar. People are amazing here. The food is great, friendliness, and so we’ve just been here since 17 years now, since 2009.

Jonathan Hawkins: Did you know anyone before you moved?

Jason DeSouza: I didn’t, we didn’t know anybody. Dude, we didn’t know anybody. My dad’s got a couple cousins in Dallas. Dallas is a five-hour drive from here, so it’s not that close. So we didn’t know anybody. We didn’t know anybody in Austin, we didn’t know anybody in San Antonio. And so we were like, “I mean, I got you and you got me, and so we’ll just move down there and we’ll, we’ll figure it out.”

And, you know, our, our worst-case scenario was we move back home. What’s the big deal? You know? So what? The, the experiment didn’t work, not a big deal. We got to live in Texas for a little while, and we’d move back home. So I mean, it wasn’t a problem

Jonathan Hawkins: I love that. I love the idea of just going somewhere and trying it. I’ve done that a few times in [00:05:00] my life. It’s been a long time. I’m sort of– I got an itch now, but I’ve got kids in school, so there’s only… Yeah, they’re not gonna go– They’re not leaving at this point, so. But I, I assume at that point you didn’t have kids and so you were sort of free to go wherever you wanted

Jason DeSouza: We, we didn’t have anything going on. I actually, I made a point to propose to Jessica in September of 2009 ’cause I was working at the bookstore in law school, and all the women I worked with at the bookstore that were in law school working there, they were like, “It was either he put a ring on my finger, so yeah, I moved with him, or no, he didn’t put a ring on my finger.”

So I was like, “Unless I get that ring, I’m not gonna move.” So I was like, “Okay, let me, let me make sure I get that ring on there so she feels a little bit safe, and then we’ll just, we’ll give it a shot.” No kids, no… Just, just debt. No kids

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. that’s, that’s a big, that’s a big baby you gotta take care of. But, so, okay. So, so you moved to, well, you moved to Texas after you graduated law school. Did you work in Michigan at all? Or was, you just, you, you graduated and [00:06:00] moved straight down there?

Jason DeSouza: So ’cause I was Canadian, I could only work in the law school, so I worked at the bookstore for a short period of time. And then apart from that, no, I’d never worked. I, I worked, I did unpaid work, so I guess I volunteered at a union AFSCME. And that was, that was great experience actually. I mean, it was really good.

I loved working for the working man. I got to see how unions operate, how employers operate. I had a great friend in law school, he’s in California now working for AFSCME, and I mean, he, he got me in to AFSCME so I could see the arbitration process. And I got, I got to be a c- part of a couple arbs, and that was, that was cool

Jonathan Hawkins: So you go down to San Antonio, you don’t know anybody. Did you have a job lined up or did you just go down there and say, “I’ll figure it out when I get there”?

Jason DeSouza: Yeah, I just knew that I had to write the ethics exam and pass it, and that came up in ’09. And then I knew that I was scheduled to write the bar in February, and I knew that the, my bank had given me a bar prep loan. And so I was like, “Okay, well, I got, you know, X amount of dollars for this bar prep loan, and I’ll just, like, budget it.”

And [00:07:00] we didn’t know anybody. And what sucks about being broke is that it really gives you very little choices about things. So there was about a month in time where we’d run out of money, so Jessica and I were donating our plasma just to make some extra cash.

Yeah, and I’d never done that before. She’d never done it before. And then they just take so much out of you with plasma, and we got home, and we’d lost the money, but they had the plasma. So it was like, “Oh man, this, this is, this…” And so I remember telling her at the time, I was like, “It’s okay.” We were, like, upset at each other, and I was like, “It’s okay.

These are the good times. Remember the good times.”

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I tell you, if you make it through that, you know, that’s, that’s going through the trenches together. All right, so, so what was your first law job down in San Antonio? Was it at a firm or did you have to just open up shop?

Jason DeSouza: So my wife found work first, and she started working in January of 2010 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And so where we lived in San Antonio, we’re just living off the freeway, and so she’d have to drive about maybe six exits to her [00:08:00] job. And there was a guy who had a, a little, like, electronic billboard, and he would advertise tax litigation.

And so Jessica saw it one day, and she’s like, “So there’s this guy on this exit here, and you should go you know, apply.” And I was applying to, like, a whole bunch of different places and that type of thing. And so I went there, and I was like, “Hey, man, I saw your electronic billboard that you do tax lit, and, you know, taxes aren’t ever gonna go away, so I’m your guy.”

And so he was like, “All right. You’re my guy. I’m gonna give you 25 of the worst cases I have in the firm that are not even tax lit.” They’re just, like, my tax clients who have some sort of problem with something else, like some derivative nonsense that’s going on. But he’s like, “You’re gonna get great experience.

You’re gonna love it. You’ll get this headache off of my desk so I can make more money fighting the IRS.” And so I was like, “All right, man. I guess, you know, I guess I have no choice.” I mean, I had a choice, but it put me in the courtroom. It put me in depositions. It put me in hearings. I mean, I was, I was, I was loving it.

It was a good time. It was, it was fun. And so I worked there for about a year and a [00:09:00] half, and then I realized I wanted to get into PI because one of his clients was a PI lawyer. And so I was privy to the books, and I was like, “Man, these guys are making a lot of money. They’re pretty stupid with what they’re doing with their money, you know, particularly not paying the government.”

But there’s obviously money in this line of work. And, you know, you can always use a trial lawyer that’s for sure. So that’s, that’s when I kinda, like, got the idea rolling of getting into personal injury.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you learned, you learned a couple things. One, it’s, it’s a good business to get in, and two, you better pay your taxes.

Jason DeSouza: Yeah, exactly. S- switch those. Pay your taxes, good

Jonathan Hawkins: There you go. Okay, so, so before you left, or well let me ask it, did you leave the, the tax litigation firm to go start your own firm?

Jason DeSouza: No. So I actually ended up going to work for a small… So, so the first guy I worked for, he was a one-man shop, and then I went to go work for another firm that were like two or three lawyers, and I was there for about two years. And then in 2013 I was like, “Okay, [00:10:00] well, let me go work for this big advertising firm.”

So I worked for them and they’re, right now they’re the biggest injury firm in Texas. I think they’re maybe only number two behind Morgan & Morgan. And I was, I think I was lawyer, when I started there I must have been lawyer 40, and when I left after two years I was lawyer 80. And I think they’ve got like up to 300 lawyers now.

So it’s, I mean, they’re behemoths, dude. Yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: Texas? Where are, are they

Jason DeSouza: Yeah, als- just in Texas, just spread throughout Texas. And,

Jonathan Hawkins: that’s a big plaintiff’s firm

Jason DeSouza: Yeah, dude, it’s really big and they are the gorilla on the block, man. Yeah, that’s for sure. Yeah. So, so I figured I worked there for two years at that last big firm, and I think what happened is with every, like, businessman or, or businessperson or entrepreneur, they have this thing where, “Hey, I could do it better than these guys.”

And so initially I started off by pitching my supervising attorney my ideas, and she was, she was a nice enough lady, but she was terrified that she was gonna get fired. And so every time I’d pitch her something and was like, I got the whole thing out, like planned out, [00:11:00] she’d be like, “Jason, you got a docket, and if you do that, I’m gonna fire you.”

And so she threatened to fire me four times. And on the fourth time where it was just like, just this idea of how to subpoena bill- medical bills and records and get causation from the orthopedic surgeons, I was like, “You know what? It’s all good. You don’t need to fire me. I’ll be gone in three days.” And so that was the start of 2015, and I was like, I, I’m, I’m gonna bet on myself that I could do it better, and if, and if the bet doesn’t pan out, eh, it’s fine.

Not a big deal

Jonathan Hawkins: So it’s interesting. I was gonna, I’m gonna ask, you know, are you an entrepreneur? And, and part of just being an entrepreneur is, is being willing to take risks and bet on yourself. I mean, moving to San Antonio, not knowing anybody, that, that, that’s a big marker. You know, that is a flag that says this, this guy’s willing to take risks.

And I’m curious, I did some research for this, and I believe your parents immigrated to Canada. Is that right?

Jason DeSouza: That’s correct, yes. From India

Jonathan Hawkins: so you are the, a, a child of immigrants. And I’ve always, I’ve always, you know, [00:12:00] this, this country, the US, maybe Canada too, I mean, you have all these people that, that, that self-select and immigrate over here.

They leave their country, they don’t speak the language, and they still do it. There’s gotta be something in their DNA that just, you know, they’re willing to take risks. I think that’s why this country is so entrepreneurial because of the, the people who have come here over the years. It’s just, it’s built into our DNA.

So I’m wondering, when you think about your life and where you got it, do you, do you attribute it to that? Were you born with it? What- did- were you taught it? Have you given much thought to that?

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. I mean, ’cause I’ve lived it. And so, just by short background my dad… So when I started when I… So when I was in college a buddy of mine in college and I got together and we kinda scraped together, like, a little bit of, like, cash that we had, and we bought a house, and my dad agreed to carry the mortgage on that house.

And it was, like, a three-bedroom ranch-style house, and in Canada they have basements. [00:13:00] And so we renovated the basement, added two bedrooms, a bathroom. And then from our second year on in college, we lived for free because we rented it out. And so at that point my dad was like… Because even before then I’d been angling, and I’d been, like, telling him a lot of stuff, like, you know, “I’ll mow lawns and I’ll make some money, and I’ll shovel driveways and I’ll make money, and I’ll do this,” and I had these ideas.

And so he, he finally saw it when I was in college, and he was like, “So just so you know,” he goes, “Your great-grandfather was a cobbler in India, and he had his own cobbling shop.” And he goes, “Your grandfather was a, a mechanic engineer in India, and he had his own shop.” And he was, like, one of the first Indians who’d either converted a gas engine to diesel or diesel to gas.

One of the, one of those things. And then he go- And my father and my uncle, his brother, they owned a machine shop, a tool and die shop in Toronto from ’87 until they retired in 2019. And he goes, “This, this constant itch that you always have and this constant thing that you always have going on, it’s there.”

And then [00:14:00] after that, while I was in college, too, I also started, like, an entertainment lightings thing. And you know, you know, like, the, the lights for concerts and theaters and movies and stuff. And so I would just try to market it to various businesses where they could customize these lights and they would flash in grocery stores or flash in businesses or flash at clubs or whatever.

And that failed. That fell flat on its face. And but I think, yeah, I’ve always had that. But having said that, I never wanted to start my own firm. Like, if, if somebody had been like, “Hey, just so you know, five years in, this is the level of BS that you’re gonna be dealing with on a regular basis,”

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah.

Jason DeSouza: I’d be like, “I pass, dude.

I’m all, I’m all set. I’m good.”

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, that is, that’s so true. So true. For the people out there who have, have started their firm and, and have started to grow it or have grown it that is just… Unless you’ve gone through it and had to deal with all that stuff, I mean, it’s all, all sorts of stuff. I mean, you got clients coming at you, you got employees coming at you, you got employees coming at each other that you’ve gotta [00:15:00] deal with, all those sorts of things.

And yeah, you just sorta have to, I think you just have to experience it to, to fully, fully get it. Okay, so, so you’ve got… I mean, I think you’ve got it in your DNA, man. You’re, it’s in your history. You were, you, you know, you were always starting these businesses, so eventually I think it was your destiny probably.

You were gonna, you were gonna start this firm. So, 2015 you said, “All right, I’m going out, I’m doing it.” Let me ask this: Did you have cases? Did you take cases with you or did you start from scratch?

Jason DeSouza: So I didn’t take any cases with me. I had started kind of building them up in the middle of 2014. I had a partner and he’s, he was in Houston, and so I’d met him. I knew him in a little bit in law school, studied for the bar together, and he was in oil and gas. In 2014, oil and gas in Texas and nationwide is tanking.

So he’s trying to get out of it, and he’s like, “Man, there’s, I hear there’s a lot of money in PI.” So, we kind of si-started signing some cases up, and he would like kind of handle them in Houston. And then, like, my [00:16:00] D-Day was January 1, 20-2015. And so we had, we had a docket built up, nothing in litigation per se, and our agreement was he would handle pre-lit and I would handle lit.

And like two months into it, he was like, “Dude, we can’t do this.” And so he packed all my stuff up in Houston and changed the locks and drove it to San Antonio and was like, “Hey, we’re done.” And I was like, “Oh, damn.” Well, I’ve got… A-and at the time, it’s 20, it’s 2015. So at the time I had a, a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old.

And I was like, “Shit dude, I just like bet everything on myself and now you’re telling me that it’s all over.” And I’d also put a bunch of money into his Houston office. And so anyway, him and I just sorted our differences out and there were some cases that I kept and then I was like, “Nah, I’m still gonna bet on myself because I still know that I could do this better.

It’s just a setback.” And you know, by that point already two months in, I’d been dealing with a bunch of stuff already and I was like this is not, [00:17:00] this is not like… So, so I took a paralegal with me, Shelly, the one who passed away last year. And when I took her with me she told me, she goes, “I mean, it’ll just be like how it is now at Tom’s office, but it’ll just be you and I handling a docket.”

And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, you know, that makes sense. That’s probably exactly what it’s gonna be.” Two months in, nothing like that at all. And so I was like, “Whatever man, this is just a setback and we’ll figure it out and it’s all good.” And I, it’s number one big lesson learned. So, I just kept working the cases on my own and, and I kind of had more control and it ended up being a wonderful blessing because, you know, I think for trial lawyers they just kind of need to have the, a certain level of control if they, if they believe that they have the best secret sauce.

Jonathan Hawkins: I’ll tell you, partnerships are hard. They’re hard. I mean, I deal with that a lot. That’s, that’s my day job. It’s interesting. I mean, I, it’s, I can’t believe it. You don’t have to go into the details, but two months in he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, come.” All right, it’s not gonna work. That is, that’s insane.

I mean, that’s, that’s [00:18:00] insane. I’ve seen a lot of insane stuff. That’s, that’s pretty insane. But so anyway, okay, so then you’re like, “All right, I got…” You’re like, “What do I do?” And you say, “All right, I’m gonna go for it.” So then you had to figure it out. So maybe you had a few cases with you, and then you had to figure out how to get cases.

So what… Tell, take me through that early on. You had your paralegal and you, you, you sort of, you, you started over and then you started over immediately, started over again. Gotta go find cases. What’d you do?

Jason DeSouza: Well, she, so she’s from this little town called Freer, Texas. It’s in Duval County, and her family is really, really well known. So this was just like a, a real blessing and a stroke of luck that she even had started with me. And when I, when she was first began as my paralegal in 2013 at, at the prior firm, I didn’t know any of her history.

I didn’t know any of the history of Duval County and how plaintiff-friendly Duval County is. And so, she told me point blank, she was like, “Look, Jason, I know a lot of people. A lot of people know me. When things happen, they always wanna know who I should call. If somebody wants to get divorced, they call Shelly.

Somebody gets into a crash, they [00:19:00] call Shelly. Somebody wants to do a will done, they call Shelly.” So she’s like, “People have been calling me, like, all these years, and I just, like, always farm it out to somebody else, and so they just start calling.” And so I just made a point from the beginning even, like, from, from day one, the beginning of January January 2015, that I would meet with all the clients in person.

If I had to drive two hours to Duval, if I had to drive three hours to Houston, if I had to drive up to Austin, whatever, I would drive, I’d sit down, I’d visit with them. I did it at my prior firm. I’d done it since, like, day one. I was just like, this is, this is the essence of business, which is face to face, you know?

And so I just would meet. I’d sign people up in person. I’d drive two hours to Duval County. I’d drive the two hours back. I’d sign them up. I’d go over their case. And so what happened is, unknowingly, ’cause nobody ever told me that that’s, like, really, like, the secret sauce to getting a lot of clients, is people love that, man.

I mean, people are just so all about the face-to-face meetings and the talking face to face and meeting your lawyer and knowing what [00:20:00] your case is all about and getting a roadmap and what the expectations are. So, you know, one client begat another, begat another, and we just kept kind of, like, growing that way.

And so another client would be like, “Hey, my buddy just got into a crash, and, you know, they wanna hire you,” and all. And I was like, “Okay, let’s go. Like, where, where do they live? Okay, I’m, I’m gonna be there. I’m gonna leave right now. I’ll be there in two or three hours. I’ll drive there.” And I would just be back, and I’d turn around, and I’d be home that night.

So it was, it, it was a number of years until I, like, stopped doing that. I think it was, like, the first five years I would do that for every single case, whether it was a trucking case or a non-commercial case or an oil field. It didn’t matter. Like, I was gonna do that no matter what. And then my time unfortunately just got so chewed up, and the exhaustion of driving, like, all the time got to me.

So I stopped doing that. But I’ve started kind of picking that up of late, where once the client signs up with me I still continue, and I’ve started this again starting in ’22. I still have Zoom calls and telephone calls with five to six clients every week, just so they know who I am, they know who [00:21:00] they’ve hired.

They feel that the boss is talking to them about their case. They feel important. They are important, and they know, like, you know, what to do with their case and what to expect.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I wanna dig into that. I heard, I’d heard you say, talk about that in another place, and I really wanna dig into that ’cause I think that is genius for lots of reasons. But before we get to that, let’s talk about what’s your firm like now? I think you have, like, 30 people. How many attorneys versus non-attorneys?

What, what’s the setup of your firm?

Jason DeSouza: I wanna say we got about 30, and I did a count yesterday in our company meeting. I think we’ve got nine attorneys. We had maxed out, I think we got to a total number of about 37 people overall by the start of the year. And I started thinking, I was like, you know what? I, I do not have a desire to get up into– The, the more this thing grows, the more it owns me.

And I’ve got a big thing about, like, consent. You know, just, like, consent of how you run your life, autonomy, agency. You know, am I gonna run my life or is my phone gonna run my life? Or is my, you know, are [00:22:00] my possessions gonna run my life? Or what’s– I wanna be able to have control over my life. And so the, the machine was getting too big, and the machine was starting to spin me versus me being kinda at the center.

And so, you know, just the natural turnover of things, people would leave and I was like, “All right, we’re not gonna replace them. We’re gonna be more selective with cases. The advertising will still continue.” So we’ve got about 30 people nine lawyers. We’re in the process– I’ve, I’ve just taken on my own docket.

It’s only 10 cases, 10 big commercial cases. My partner, Lucas he’s got his own docket, and he’s in the process of kind of shrinking his docket down also. His goal is to get to about 15 cases. So that’s kind of our current strategy right now, which is you know, just be a little bit more selective and keep the personal touch going because it just works so well for us.

Jonathan Hawkins: A lot of wisdom and insight in that for sure. I mean, it, it’s everybody out there’s to grow, grow, grow, you know, scale, scale, scale. And I mean, look, there’s some excitement to that. It sounds [00:23:00] exciting, but when you get to the reality, it’s, it’s sort of, it’s, it’s not always as exciting as it sounds. And you’ve sort of been through that and you’ve made the, the conscious decision, which, which is cool.

I like that. And let me make sure, so you’re primarily a trial firm, right? Or, or do you ha- is it, is there a, a pretty big pre-suit element to your firm?

Jason DeSouza: So there– we’ve got a really good lawyer on the pre-suit department. But even on that side of things, she’s a trial lawyer, and I’ve told I’ve told her, I’ve said, “Hey, look, if you think that you can settle a pre-suit and they’re being fair to the client, fine. Otherwise, file it, get a new adjuster let it kick around a little bit and let them talk some sense into themselves and then get it settled.”

But if even cases on her docket, there was a, there was a dog attack case on her docket, and they offered us two hundred and fifty dollars with eight thousand in meds. And just ’cause they were in a great county south of Dallas, I was like, “Well, I mean, what are, what are we supposed to do with that? You know, how, how is that fair to the client?”

She end, she ended up trying a banger of a case. [00:24:00] I wasn’t with her, but another lawyer went with her. They tried a banger of a case. They split the liability fifty/fifty. The jury gave us meds, and the homeowners were completely dumbstruck ’cause they thought they were just gonna pour us out in this super conservative county.

Our client was a I wanna say like Ecuadorian or, or South American immigrant, and they thought they were just gonna like walk all over us, and nah, it didn’t happen. So, I mean, we’ve always got the threat of trial but at the same time, the client’s best interest is always to be reasonable.

That’s, that’s the client’s best interest. Even on my docket, on the lit docket, no matter what, anybody’s docket, your client’s best interest is reasonability. And so that’s, that’s what we guide ourselves with

Jonathan Hawkins: And a minute ago you mentioned advertising. So are you– do you advertise? Is it digital? Are you on billboards? Are you on the radio? What kind of stuff do you do?

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. So, so my wife and this is the other reason. I mean, I’ll give credit to my wife ’cause she’s phenomenal. I tried to get her to join the firm for a lot of years. She was working in the nonprofit field and she was just loving it, so I was like, [00:25:00] “Okay, that’s fine, I guess, you know. Enjoy it, you know, enjoy what you, what you wanna do.”

In twenty twenty-one, they did a reorg at her company, and they sliced off the top half. And so she was in the top half, and they were just like, “Hey, we’re gonna give you six weeks severance, healthcare, COBRA, et cetera.” And so then she joined another nonprofit, didn’t like it at all, and so I said, “Okay, come on board ’cause I need somebody to be able to keep eyeballs on numbers because otherwise, like I’m staring at the bank sheet and the numbers all day long.

And unless… In my opinion I just need somebody who I know I could trust making sure that the numbers and the money is taken care of ’cause there’s so much money coming in and out of the firm.” And so she handles the finances. She also handles the marketing. And so, our marketing strategy is that we do a lot of billboards.

We do we’ve gotten in the past six months kinda heavy into TV advertising when the Spurs are playing and during the news. And o-one of the things we’ve always done is community involvement. So I started with Christmas giveaways in one [00:26:00] town in Freer, where we bring Santa and gifts and games and food and drinks and photos and all kinds of stuff.

And now in the past, like five years, we’ve expanded it. So now we do an Easter giveaway. We do the Christmas giveaway. And on the twenty-fifth of July, we’re gonna do– So in a few days, next week, we’re gonna do a, a backpack giveaway, where this year we’re giving away six hundred and fifty backpacks. If the school needs us to fill the backpack, we’ll stock it.

Otherwise, we’ll put whatever, you know, kind of stuff the kids want, and then we also do like additional giveaways there. And that, that’s another thing that keeps me in the community and shaking hands and meeting people and letting them know that I’m a real dude and that I want to be in your small town.

Like I, I desire to be there. I wanna be part of what you guys do. I wanna help you guys succeed. I want– Your success is my success, and the better you guys do, the better I do, and, and I wanna make sure you guys are doing great.

Real quick, if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, please check out my book, the Law Firm Lifecycle. It’s written for law firm owners and those who plan to be owners. In the book, I [00:27:00] discuss various issues that come up as a law firm progresses through the stages of its growth from just before starting a firm to when it comes to an end.

The law firm lifecycle is available on Amazon. Now, back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: All right. So I’m gonna embarrass you a little bit. So you’re kind of famous around there, right? Do you, do you go out to a restaurant and people are like, “Hey, it’s you. It’s Jason Wa.” Do they wanna get pictures and all that?

Jason DeSouza: So you know, like fame, it’s funny ’cause like minor fame is kind of new to me ’cause nobody really know. I’m just like a lawyer in San Antonio, right? So I don’t do any advertising here. But I go to some of these places, sometimes I’ll get like comped coffee or like my, my food at the gas station will be free.

Or like, I see that like my pens are in use over there and people recognize me. I’ll be at the courthouse. I was at the courthouse last week in Duval, and the bailiff was telling me how much he loved my oil field commercial, and he was doing the thing that I do at the end, which is like, I, I say something and I kind of like do the finger gun.

And he was like, “Man, I love that commercial so…” And I was like, “Man, you guys are so great, dude. I, I love you guys so much, man.”

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. And so, so, and this is all coming back to the, five [00:28:00] clients a week calls that you do. So, you know, you’re sort of famous you know, especially for them. And, and then you’re probably not wor- Are you calling people on cases that you’re not directly involved in?

Jason DeSouza: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. If they’re, if they’re signed by the firm, I’m, I’m talking to them for sure. Oh, yeah

Jonathan Hawkins: And so it’s probably a treat for them. I mean, they, I mean, number one, they’re like, “Okay, you know, we hired the firm. You’re the face of the firm. It’s great that, that you’re checking in on us.” I sh- I assume that the reaction and the feedback has been really good

Jason DeSouza: Th- people, people like it. I know, I, I guess like I still get treated by clients the way that I had always been treated by them. But I can tell you that they really like that we keep our word about things. They really like that I’m the one that’s letting them know what the word is, and they’re– I have staff on the call also.

They like that I have a mind for their case versus just being like the pretty guy on the billboard, you know? And so they, they like that the boss [00:29:00] knows that the boss is involved in this case in some way, shape, or form. And they get my cell phone number too, and I’m like, “Look, for any reason you can’t get ahold of somebody at my office, I, I guarantee you that’s not gonna happen.

But if for any reason that doesn’t happen, just shoot me a text, man. Just send me a text. Tell me, know- let me know how you’re doing. Check in with me and let me know what you need, and I’ll make sure that that gets routed to the right person and you’re taken care of. So there’s always gonna be a backstop where the buck will stop right here with you no matter what.”

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so it really, you know, and part of where I’m going with this too is it, it really binds the client to the firm. And, you know, one area that I do a lot of is, is sort of lawyer separation, fights over cases and clients. Somebody leaves and they go like, “I’m taking the clients.” if you have never worked on their case and never talked to them, it’s gonna be harder, not impossible, but harder for the client to say, “Hey, I wanna stay with Jason.”

If you’re doing these calls and checking in on them, y- again, you’re binding them to the [00:30:00] firm. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that yet, but if you haven’t, keep doing what you’re doing ’cause it, that is a really good idea, at least for that, and, and I mean, for lots of reasons. For that reason, you’re binding the client to the firm, not just some attorney that might leave.

And then of course they like you and then they’re gonna start referring their family and friends and all these things. H- have you experienced all of those things?

Jason DeSouza: Oh yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny you say that ’cause when you asked me whether I, whether I t- took some cases with me from the last firm, I didn’t do that, but I took clients with me. So I kept the cases over there, but they, they got kicked over to another lawyer. Their case settled, they got money.

But inevitably something else came up where their friend or their family, and they had my number, and they were like, “Jason, I didn’t, I didn’t wanna talk to anybody over there. I just know you.” I mean, I had one of my first clients, it was a med mal case where it was an improper oophorectomy, and she, she couldn’t find me at the last firm, and she told me she, she went, she called, she asked for me at the firm, she looked for me online, she [00:31:00] called the state bar.

She, like she went through heaven and hell to find me, and I remember I was on a drive coming back from Houston to San Antonio when she finally like, got ahold of me, and she was like, “Jason, I looked for you everywhere. I’m, I just had this oophorectomy. I’m still bleeding. It’s happened for this long, and I looked, and I didn’t wanna talk to anybody else but you.”

And, you know, she’s, she still is in contact with me, and she’s probably gonna help us out with the backpack too. So I, I think you, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s a great way to just… It’s also a great way to make friends and meet people and, like, have people look out for you too, I think.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is the long game. Well, and I bet you get a ton of good Google reviews, I’m sure.

Jason DeSouza: We, we, we have a lot. Yes, we have a lot. Yeah

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, it’s a good way just to run your life. It makes life more enjoyable, all those things. But, you know, there’s not an immediate ROI necessarily, but long term, these sorts of things, you know, you are tending to the garden and, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years, these things are just gonna be producing fruit everywhere, and you’re gonna just enjoy it [00:32:00] along the way.

That’s, I think that’s a really smart thing to do, and it sounds like just sort of came natural for you, and you just like being around people and talking to folks.

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. And I mean, you know, I think you’re right. I mean, the garden itself, just by doing that will give fruit itself and, you know, if it’s just a pretty little flower that you can’t eat, fine, it’s all good. You made a good difference in this person’s life. They had a good experience ’cause when I go to trial and I ask juries about what’s been your experience with plaintiff lawyers if you hired a firm maybe 60 to 70% of the time of those who have hired plaintiff lawyers, it’s probably like neutral to closer to negative than positive.

And so when you’re having this terrible experience in your life, an amputation or a death in the family or like a bad back injury or neck or whatever, maybe this is gonna help out a little bit more, you know?

Jonathan Hawkins: The other thing, I’ve experienced it personally, lots of lawyers I’ve talked to, we think we were in, in this client’s life in a really difficult time. It helped them through whatever it was they’re going through, lawyers of all types. And then [00:33:00] you realize after a couple years, they forget your name. They forget your name. I was talking to a guy, I don’t know, a couple years ago we were talking about this, and he said he was in line, I don’t know, DMV or wherever, and he was talking to somebody who was i- in some sort of lawsuit, and he’s like, “Oh, I’m a lawyer. Who’s your lawyer?” ‘Cause he just wanted to know who it was. And the client was like, “I don’t even know his name.”

In the middle of a case.

Jason DeSouza: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: so yeah. Well, let’s… Another thing you mentioned I don’t know if we talked about it much, but you briefly mentioned the oil field cases. And so I wa- I was, I was really interested in that. What are oil field cases? Like, how are they different than other, other types of cases?

Jason DeSouza: Okay. So I guess for the trial lawyers out there, I’ll, I’ll start with being technical. If you think of a jury charge they could be active, active negligence, negligent activity. They could be premises liability. They they’re gonna be respond to you ’cause you got a company involved.

So that’s kinda like the [00:34:00] technical aspect of it. But the, the practical aspect of it is, you know, sometimes these guys are doing maintenance on a rig, and they may fall from if there’s a derrickman, they may fall from the platform, or they may get injured as a result of the use of the rig, or there’s something they’re doing.

But it could be an explosion where an oil field guy gets burned. It could be you know, explosions, could be workovers, could be amputations as a result of using certain equipment. It could be you know, the– could be somebody drives into them on the site. It’s, it’s generally any number of things, but what I find fascinating about it is that you’ve got engineering involved bec- you’ve got construction involved you’ve got medical involved obviously because of the injury and you’ve got also potential products liability involved as well.

I think there’s a huge, huge products liability aspect. And I tell… I’m, I’m a member of AIEG, which is for plaintiffs product liability lawyers. There’s just a shameless plug there for them because it’s a phenomenal group. And I tell those guys all the time, man, like, there’s a lot of products cases just sitting [00:35:00] in the oil field products malfunction, design defect, that type of thing.

And so I, I found it interesting because with an 18-wheeler that rear-ends a, a four-wheeler, a driver, you know, you’re gonna sue the company, you’ll sue the broker you’ll sue maybe the, the trailer, whoever, whatever they’re hauling for, that type of thing. But it’s kind of like a linear, a linear dimension, you know, like ABC down the line.

With the oil field cases, you’ve got different companies involved. You’ve got like the torque and test company, you’ve got the operator you’ve got the workover rig, you’ve got the engineer, you’ve got the company man you’ve got the landowner, because sometimes the landowners just want to sit there and watch the job happen.

You’ve got the rental equipment companies, you’ve got the rigs that are coming and going. There’s so many different companies involved, and so A, you get a really, really great choice of venues. That to start. In Texas they’ve got a workers’ comp bar where if you have workers’ comp, you can’t sue your employer unless there’s a death resulting in gross negligence or there’s an intentional injury.

So usually the employer’s out of it. But you’re gonna get a [00:36:00] lot of other different companies involved in the mix. And the injury will be… The doctors handle the injuries, so that is fairly straightforward in my mind with how the doctors handle it. But the various theories that are available to you as the lawyer are really, really wide-ranging, and it’s really enjoyable work.

The other reason too is that there’s just not a lot of lawyers handling oil field work because it’s, it’s really scientific. It’s really engineering based. It’s complex because of the number of companies involved. But that also means that the claims are low with the insurance companies. And so the reserves can be set a lot higher in terms of settlement.

So, you know, there’s a lot of 18-wheeler lawyers here in Texas. They’re phenomenal plaintiff lawyers, are really, really good. But I’m sure they’ve noticed that it’s a dogfight once they have surgery and you’re trying to get like real good value on the case because there’s just, you know, Progressive’s getting tagged left, right, and center or AIG is getting hit all over the place ’cause there’s so many 18-wheelers on the road, and it’s hard for the insurance companies to allocate so much funds toward all these settlements.[00:37:00]

And that’s not really happening in the oil field space. It’s not really even– For the products liability guys, you guys understand that it’s also not happening in the products world just because there’s just not that much competition because the field is so slim and the, the choices for good lawyers in those fields aren’t, aren’t really very wide-ranging.

Jonathan Hawkins: it always fascinates me how lawyers sort of find these niche practice areas. I mean, I’ve got my own and the seed of it was intentional, but what it’s grown into was not. It just, things happened along the way. I’m curious how you found your way in the oil field cases.

Was it you just got one and that was your first experience and you’re like, “Wait a second, I need to get, try to get more of these,” or was it something else?

Jason DeSouza: It was Shelly. So Shelly from Duval County. And so she kind of introduced me to Duval County, and they drill a lot there. That’s the Eagle Ford patch in South Texas. Most of the oil from Texas comes from the Permian Basin out in West Texas, but Eagle Ford has a good patch. So when she introduced me to Duval County, I realized that there’s a lot of people in the [00:38:00] oil field there.

And then as I started getting the cases, I realized that I enjoy dog fights, you know? I really do. I enjoy dog fights. I like being in the mix. You know, a good dropping a punch or, like, even getting a punch delivered to me is all good. I’m fine with it. I don’t mind protracted litigation.

I don’t mind trying case. I had told my advertising guys who did my commercial, I was like, “One of the things that bothers me the most in the oil field is the way that these companies bully their workers.” I hate bullies. I can’t stand them. I think they’re cowards, and I think they’re weak.

And I think the problem is that you’ve got these guys who don’t even have a high school level education. They are working their asses off. They are working so hard in that 100, 110 degree heat. Nobody else wants to do it. They’re risking their lives. They’re li- risking life and limb, and they get injured, and the first thing that happens is you got a guy, a supervisor, coming over to him saying, “Hey why don’t you go home for the day?”

And so they go home for the day, they come back the next day, and they’re like, “Oh my God, how’d [00:39:00] your clavicle get cracked? Were you drinking last night? You fell off the balcony? That didn’t happen on the site. And if it did happen on the site, you file a claim, you’re never gonna work. It’s never gonna happen. You’re gonna get blackballed.”

And, and so I started realizing that, is that I d- I get these clients, and they were just so afraid To talk to me. You know, they’re like, “I don’t– If somebody finds out I’m even talking to a lawyer, Jason, it’s over.” And the more I’ve gotten into it, I tell these oil field guys, I’m like, “Guys, I promise you, they cannot find people to work in the oil…”

They can’t find people to work in McDonald’s right now. There’s a shortage of office workers to work in, in offices. These guys in the oil field, there is a shortage of talent and hard work and grit that make the oil field so unique. And so when they try to push you around, all you have to do is just, just push back and say, “Hey, look, just call me.

And if you don’t even want me to notify…” It’s not like I have to send a trigger and notify the LOR right away, the companies. If you wanna sit back and just get the treatment that you need, let’s sit back and relax, man. It’s all good. [00:40:00] And then when you find that your company’s gonna screw you, and they’re gonna fire you, and they’re not gonna let you back on the job because you’ve got this bad injury, then we can open fire.

But we could sit back, we’ve got two years to chill out, man. So let’s just chill out. Let’s just make sure your body gets good. Let me take care of you a little bit. Nobody needs to know that you’ve ever hired a lawyer at all. It’s all good. So that’s what, that’s what kinda grew me in the space, was these guys need somebody who’s strong, they need an advocate, and they need somebody who’s not gonna play games with these oil field companies because they’re just…

Man, they’re pushing these people around, and it’s just so wrong. It’s so wrong, man. And so that’s what, that’s what really started growing it for me, was just that, like, passion of like, “I’m gonna hit these guys back.”

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. So, so what is– It’s the Eagle, Eagle Landing, what’d you call it?

Jason DeSouza: E- Eagle Ford.

Jonathan Hawkins: Eagle Ford, that area, and then you’ve got the other big batch of oil. Have you, have you expanded over there geographically to cover the same type of cases?

Jason DeSouza: You know, I tried it out. I tried getting into West Texas [00:41:00] for about maybe six months to a year, and the problem was is my system just doesn’t work out there because there’s no nonstops from San Antonio to Midland. So what was happening is I would go out there to meet or I’d go out there to, like, scout the area or do an event or do something, and so much of it was I had to drive the– or take an Uber seventy-five minutes to Austin, fly to Austin, fly there, spend the night there, do whatever I was gonna do, visit with the client, and then come back.

And I was like, “I don’t know, man.” I mean, there’s a lot of money to be made out there, but at the same time, again, like, who, who’s controlling who at that point? Like, is the practice taking over and, like, I’m just becoming like a, “I gotta get a private plane now just to fly back and forth.” I’m like, “I don’t need all that, man.”

Like, we’re small. We can, we can control our own destiny and control our own growth. There’s lots of work out there, and so it’s, it’s all good, man. It’s all good Yes. Yeah, she’s my CFO and CMO

Jonathan Hawkins: so, okay, CFO, CMO. What’s that like? Yeah. [00:42:00] Be careful how you answer this, man, ’cause she may listen. But it’s, but it, but

Jason DeSouza: is next door.

Jonathan Hawkins: it really… Yeah, she’s already, she’s over, she’s listening now. But, but that always fascinates me, and I know a lot of people that, that do this and, and it works really well.

But, but there is sort of the, you know, at work, at home line that sometimes people draw, sometimes they don’t. They say, “We just all live it all day, every day.” How do you guys make it work?

Jason DeSouza: So I think it’s like, it’s, it’s hard not to live it all day every day. She’s, she’s a worker bee man, and I mean like she is a hard worker. She’s on top of it. I’ve got two cell phones. One’s a personal and one’s a work phone. So when I get home from work I’ll park my car under the carport, and I leave my work phone in the car physically outside of my house.

And so then I have my personal phone inside the house. So that’s, that’s like my version of separation, and she’s pretty good with, for the most part, like kinda not like drawing me into it. So it’s, it’s, it’s all good. She didn’t wanna join the firm, just like for full, full [00:43:00] disclosure ’cause she was like, “Look- I know what your personality’s like.

You’re like a bulldog, man. Like, you, you get after it, and it’s gonna, like, it’s gonna F up our relationship. It’s gonna screw up our things that we’ve got going. We’ve got a good thing going.” And I was like, “I just, I need somebody, you know? I just really do. Like, we’re just, we’re growing, things are happening.

I, I just, I just need somebody, so just start part-time.” So in ’22, she was here part-time. What I have found is in the rare instances that we’ve had conflict so for example a real-life example is maybe about four months ago, she was like, “Look, dude we’ve got this chat, and it’s the marketing chat.”

And I was in the marketing chat, she was, her employees were. And she was like, “You’re just overrunning everything. Like, y- I’ll say something, you’ll… I’ll ask somebody something, you’ll answer. You know, just, it’s getting messy, and obviously everybody has to defer to you ’cause you’re the D’Souza on the door, not me.”

And so she was like, “I’m losing, I’m losing control of it. It, I’m not enjoying it. You know, I don’t like it.” And so we kinda had, like, a talk about it. [00:44:00] And so as soon as she told me that, I let her finish. As soon as she finished, I pulled myself out of that chat, and I was like, “I’m not, I’m not trying to be, like, that, that guy.

Like, I’m not trying to be like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna give you the silent treatment now and do nothing.'” I’m like, “It’s all good. I’m out. It’s all good. You’re the CMO. There’s a reason you’ve got the title. You have to be able to handle your business.” You’re the CFO, but she doesn’t question, like, when we’re spending a bunch of money.

When we’ve gotta go spend, like, a million bucks in total on a products case, she’s not like, “Well, do you really need to pay that expert 50 grand for that phone call or something?” You know what I mean? Like, she’s not, she’s not doing that. And she’s, so she’s respecting the, the commercial world that we live in.

And so I was like, the only thing to do in a good marriage is to respect your partner and your wife. So I was like, “Well, I’m gonna respect you then, and I’m just gonna bounce out of it.” And I was like, “Well, what do I do when I want, like, stuff? You know? Like, if I want s- like, I wanna be on a podcast, you know, and I wanna talk to people, and I wanna do that.”

She’s like, “Talk to me. Just talk to me. You just, you just come to me. You come to me, bubba, and you, [00:45:00] you handle it through me, and, and I’ll take care of it.” And, and she has always kept her word and, you know, I mean, here I am. You know? So so, so that’s what I do, is I just, I just roll over and I’m like, “All right.

It’s all good. This is, this is your world. It’s all good

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, that’s smart. I mean, as you grow a law firm and you bring in leadership that’s not you, other leaders in the firm, whether it’s your wife or somebody else, if you’re constantly going in there and undermining them, it’s not gonna last. If they’re in charge, you gotta let them do it.

So that’s number one, good for your marriage, but also just good for growing a team. I mean, you just gotta do that kind of stuff. I wanna circle back. You mentioned the two cell phones. So when did you start that? What led to that, man? That’s a great idea. I love it. ‘Cause earlier you said you you give all your clients your cell phone. I was like, “Oh man, that’s dangerous.” But yeah, so tell me about the two cell phone system.

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. So a buddy of mine was visiting me from Toronto in October of ’24, right? And he’s a big tech guy. And so we’re drinking on the [00:46:00] patio at my house, and we’re talking, and I go, “Dude, I would love it if I could schedule texts on my iPhone, but, you know, Apple just isn’t there yet.” And he’s like, “Whoa, look at this.”

And so he shows me this. And so that was like, I mean, giving candy to a diabetic, dude. Like, I started scheduling texts just nonstop, like, going out. So all weekend what would happen is I wouldn’t communicate with people on my thing. I have one cell phone at this time, and it’s my personal/work, and I’m scheduling texts to people’s work phone all weekend, you know?

And so Monday morning, like, boom, they’re getting drilled 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00 in the morning and I kind of then came to realize, I was like, “Well, I’m never getting any downtime ’cause I’ve got incoming texts coming, and calls from clients, and other people, and friends, and whomever, and so I’m never shutting off.”

And then because of that, my brain isn’t resting on the weekend. When everybody else is resting I’m still going ’cause I’m still scheduling these texts, so I’m thinking about stuff nonstop, and sometimes you should just stop. Like, just stop [00:47:00] and don’t do. So maybe a year ago now, maybe a little less than a year ago, I was like, I talked to the COO, and I was like, “I need to have just a separate cellphone.”

So we’ve got a corporate plan, and I was like, “I’m just gonna pay in, and I’m gonna get a separate cellphone. It’ll be mine. It’ll be my personal phone.” And so that way I just get downtime. And, you know, I mean, things can wait, right? Like, I mean, somebody will text me at 7:00 at night, I won’t know ’cause I’m inside.

But when I get up in the morning and go to my car at 7:00 in the morning, I’m going over my text messages before I get to the office. It’s all good. It’s, it’s all good. We just need time. And so that’s been really good. It’s been really helpful. It’s been a good, good separate… I, I cannot… If there’s a lawyer and you do not have a second cellphone, I want…

And, and you use, like, one for work and personal, like, I cannot advocate this enough. It is… It doesn’t matter. It’s 100 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, $15 a month Mint Mobile, who cares? Like, it doesn’t matter. Just get yourself a second cellphone [00:48:00] and just, like, you will get a physical separation. And I promise, within, within a month, it might even be, like, less than a month, weeks, sometimes even days depending on the level of pressure you’re under, you’re gonna notice a difference.

And you will notice a difference in your anxiety, you’ll notice a difference in your sleep, you’ll notice a difference in your appetite, you’ll notice a difference in your temperament, you’ll notice a dif… I mean, the fact that, like, this thing that you have in your hand that you associate with work is no longer associated with work, and, like, it’s n- your text box isn’t constantly flashing, you, it’s life-changing. I, I wish somebody had told me this years ago. It is absolutely life-changing. And, like, you should go, like, right now when you hear this, go to the cellphone store and just go buy a separate second line, second phone, and do it now because it’s life-changing. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself

Jonathan Hawkins: Great idea. I am that’s something I’m gonna explore. But let me ask the, the practical reality. So when, how hard was it in the beginning that you… Were you tempted to run back out to the car? Oh, I gotta check this one thing. H- [00:49:00] how long did it really take for when you could be like, “I’m doing it”? Or, or maybe you could do it from the beginning

Jason DeSouza: I think I wanted it so bad. I think I, I’d waited for so long, and I was so overdue that it was like, it’s all good. And I just, I physically did not want that thing in my house anymore. Like , like it was, it was just, I just don’t want this in my house anymore. I don’t wanna continue going to it all the time.

What’s also funny is that I used to be, like, a big, like, Sunday afternoon stressor. So, like, my temperament would change Sunday afternoon. We’d get back from church, we’d go eat, come home, and then, like, I’d start, like, feeling it, you know? now, like, it’s funny ’cause last Sunday I was like, “Man, I feel cool, man.

I feel real good, relaxed, everything’s all good.” I ain’t going to that car, that’s for sure, ’cause that’s gonna change it. But, but yeah. So, so for me, Jonathan, it was like, it was, it was the instantaneous thing. And I, and I’ve done the same thing with email also which I don’t know how practical that is for a lot of lawyers, but three years ago I started it with email.

And I hired an employee, [00:50:00] and this employee, amongst her other duties, she just tackles my email. And so if there’s something that is, like, really urgent that comes up I’ll get it, like, the really, really old school way where they’ll print it out and stick it on my chair and I’m like, “Okay.

Well, I’ll write a note on it and send it back out.” And so email was, like, the first step of decompressing and taking my life back as a, as a lawyer

Jonathan Hawkins: I tell you, email’s tough. It is the bane of mine and every, all of our existence, but it, it’s, it’s tough. I, and I have friends and attorneys I know that have handed it off but it is, it is just so hard. It’s hard for me. I don’t know. It’s really hard, but I kn- I need to do that in some form because they just come, and they’re just like bombs just coming all all, all the time, just coming in and and, and when you need to focus on getting certain things done and you get these bombs coming in, just throws you off, off course.

So yeah, that, the good advice is cell phone, another cell phone, and have somebody manage your email. So [00:51:00] let’s shift back. We’re running out of time here, but I do wanna hit a couple more things before we get out of here. But you started with you and a paralegal. You, you grew as, as big as maybe 40 or so folks.

You’ve shrunk a little bit. What’s, what’s your… How has your role evolved as the firm has, has sort of gone on this journey? In the beginning, you were talking to all the clients, driving there, trying all the cases. What’s, what’s your, your role in the firm like now?

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. Yeah. So there was a big development in my life at the start of June. But, but you’re right, because before, like, I’m the guy ordering supplies for the office, and I’m the guy doing the bank runs, and I’m the guy doing, trying the cases and meeting the clients. And so it kind of like mushroomed to me being the guy doing everything.

And then it kind of like, well, you know, there’s lawyers to handle that stuff, and then there’s staff to handle that stuff, and then there’s my wife and my COO to handle that stuff. And so I was the managing attorney at my firm, you know, during the whole time. [00:52:00] And then at the beginning of June… So in April, there was a lawyer that left.

Great guy. He just decided, you know, he wanted to go separate ways, which is all good. And so I started, like, participating more in the docket And so after about, like, doing that a little bit more, being a guest star on people’s cases on the docket, I just decided, I was like, “You know, I, like, miss being a lawyer.

I miss…” Unfortunately, I had never been able to fall in love with management. As much as I have tried, I just cannot do it. I can’t keep telling people and reminding people and doing all that, like, management stuff. It’s not who I am as much as I’ve tried, and I’ve given it a long try.

So the beginning of June of this year I– myself and the COO we spoke, and I was like, “I’m gonna take on a docket. It won’t be any bigger than ten cases. It’ll be small. It’ll allow me to just, like, focus and, like, laser focus on the theories of liability and the deponents and the discovery and the pleadings and all that other stuff.

You know, I’ll have just a couple staff that work for me. I’ll be on a small little island.” A lot of the stuff can, you know– I mean, if the lawyers wanna talk to me about their cases and tune me in and let me know what’s happening, that’s all good. I trust [00:53:00] them. I’ve been working with them for a long time.

But again, I gotta get back to the foundation and get back to the basics because I found that the problem was, if I’m not part of the case, I’m just kind of the managing attorney, but then I show up to trial. So what’s happening is now I am subject to somebody else’s depositions. I’m subject to somebody else’s pretrial rulings.

I’m subject to you know, relationships between the attorney in my office and defense counsels. I’m subject to all of that. So, like, I can show up, and I can try to big dog it all I want, but it ain’t gonna make a difference because I’m not the one that’s actually worked on that case for the past two, three, four years.

And I just– It, it wasn’t– It was like, it was like having a little rock in your shoe, you know? Just a real tiny little pebble, and it’s just not quite right. You’re just not walking just the right way. And so that’s the most recent change I’ve, I’ve got- come up with where I’m just handing things off to more people to actually let them, let them bloom or let them sink, you know.

And if they sink, hey, it’s all good. You gave it a shot, you know. You tried your [00:54:00] hardest. It’s not for everybody. Best of luck down the road, and we’ll, we’ll keep this thing going. But that’s, that’s what I’ve started doing. And that’s been, that’s been really enjoyable, too having a small docket, being able to focus.

Not even all of that docket’s in litigation yet, so the, the party hasn’t even started, you know? So we’re– It just, it’s, it’s just like those little, those little things, you know, and the ability to exercise control over your own life, I think that’s, that’s what makes life worth living, you know, is that knowing that you can, you can control how your day goes versus your day being controlled by somebody else and your life being controlled by somebody else.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, love this. You’ve, you’ve come full circle. So you started the firm you s- you went into law to practice law and help people. You built this firm and you, you get distance from actually practicing law and helping the folks. I mean, obviously your firm did that, so you had some role in that. But the other thing is you’re true to yourself.

You, you didn’t… You don’t like it. You wanted to [00:55:00] get back into casework and, and the, you know, the beauty is you, you have the ability to do that. So that’s really cool, man. I like that

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you

Jonathan Hawkins: ‘Cause I mean, look, you got one life to live. It’s your firm. Design it the way you want it to be and, and design it so your role is where you want it to be, so

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. And you know, I think a lot of times we’re trying to, like, maybe as plaintiff injury lawyers, we’re trying to, ” Man, I gotta get the biggest verdict, and I gotta get the most clients, and I gotta sign up the most this, and I gotta…” Man, that’s not, if that’s not your track, like, you could be an eight-figure firm.

We, we, we’re able to be that level of firm, but you don’t need to be a 100-person operation that’s always, like, turning and burning cases all the time. That’s, if that’s how Company A does it, that’s how they do it. Do it the way that, like, be true to yourself, right? Like, do it the way that you know you could do it

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, man, there’s a whole lot more that I’d like to talk to you about. We’ll have to do another episode. But I, but this has been real fun. It’s been [00:56:00] fun getting to know you, man. This is, seriously, I, and I like what you’re doing over there. And I, and you seem to be enjoying it again. I mean, that is, that’s, that’s really cool.

And to be able to move down to a town where you knew nobody and build a firm like this, it’s really impressive, man. So congrats on, on building a firm like that. So,

Jason DeSouza: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: Thanks for coming on. I, I do wanna say, you know, before we get off, you gotta make sure everybody knows how to get in touch with you and, and, you know, if they have cases they wanna get you involved in or, or, or whatever, what’s the best way for them?

Which cell phone are you gonna give them? Just k- just kidding.

Jason DeSouza: The one, the one that I always answer during the day. That’s, that’s the one you can get, no problem. Yeah, if you want, if you want to find us, just look up De Sousa Injury Lawyers online. You’ll find us, I mean, it’ll, it’ll populate right away. If you want to shoot me a text, if you’re a lawyer or you’re a client and you want to talk some more by all means.

My, my cell phone number is 210-591-9777. I don’t mind [00:57:00] at all. You know, we all get tons of spam callers, so trust me, it’s no skin off my back. It’s all good. Contact me or shoot me a text, and I’m happy to talk. I’d love to

Jonathan Hawkins: Jason, man, it’s been a lot of fun. Thanks for coming on

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. Thanks brother. Thanks for having me. I appreciate that

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.