Jonathan Hawkins: [00:00:00] And so, you know, I get it. One bad review here and there. You know, a law firm can, overcome it with a bunch of positive views. But if you get bombarded, let’s say you don’t have that many total, and then all of a sudden you get bombarded with 30 or 40, that all come at once. It’s pretty clear to anybody that they’re related.

And it’s not from a client that, you know, I haven’t luckily had to deal with it, but I’ve heard of folks they go to Google. If you can make it through the maze and actually get in touch with somebody to get ’em to respond, the response is usually not all that helpful. And you could feel helpless.

And it could cost, I mean, it could cost the firm multiple thousands of dollars, you know, maybe six figures over time if you don’t resolve it. So, I mean, you don’t have to give your proprietary way, but is it possible to get Google to take ’em down or do you have to sue the people?

Aaron Minc: Yeah, I think that sometimes you can get Google to take action, but it’s difficult and they don’t always do everything that needs to be done.

Welcome to the [00:01:00] 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 podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where we get to interview founding attorneys of law firms of all shapes and sizes and types. And today I’m talking to Aaron Minc and for all the law firm owners out there, you’re gonna wanna stick around for this one because we are gonna talk about some stuff that you are definitely gonna be interested in.

That’s something that I hear a lot of law firm owners are dealing with. I’ll tease a little bit, and that’s negative reviews. We’re gonna get to that later. That’s [00:02:00] something Aaron deals with a lot. So, he’s developed a pretty unique niche. And we’re gonna talk all about that. So, Aaron, welcome to the show.

Why don’t you introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, where you are exactly what you do and maybe a little bit about your firm. How big is it that, how many attorneys, all that.

Aaron Minc: Sure. So Aaron Minc, I am from Cleveland, Ohio. That’s where we’re headquartered. And I originally from Akron, my firm focuses on online defamation harassment extortion, extortion, and digital privacy. Basically, if something on the internet is causing you harm or having some sort of digital crisis, we can probably help with it.

Just, you know, we’ve got seven attorneys, about 15, 20 employees at any given moment. We serve people [00:03:00] nationwide and been doing this in this area for maybe, gosh, like 14 years at this point. And have been the firm’s been around for seven, so.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, one of the cool things about this podcast is I get to meet folks like you that have these you know, these really specialized niche practices that, you know, when you hear about it, you’re like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But you know, before we met I’m not sure I knew anybody that I could have turned to if this sort of problem arose.

So how did you get into it? Is that something that you saw sort of a need and you went there? Or was it just sort of by chance?

Aaron Minc: Sure it’s a long, it’s a long story. Kind of goes back to my, my origin story as an entrepreneur coming outta law school from the get go, coming into the practice of law. And, you know, I graduated from school. There’s probably a lot of lawyers [00:04:00] out there who can commiserate with this if they graduated around that time period.

Back in 2010 in the great recession, and yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: so I’ll just say I think that is, that will go down in history as as the worst year ever to graduate. And you know it firsthand, but

Aaron Minc: I do, and it’s not a contest per se, but if it was, I think 2010 grads have gotten the worst. I’ve seen like these articles posted like five years later doing a retrospect being like, it fundamentally changed employment relationships and structures and all this stuff. And, you know, not like 2011 or 2012 or 2009 got any worse, but yeah, I graduated in the height of it.

I worked my ass off in school. Like, a lot of people were like I, I didn’t do so great or they did awesome. But you know, I’m proud of that fact. And got, you know, I had all these summer associate things lined up for my, from when I was in my second year, summer or whatever, had all these offers.

It [00:05:00] was great. And you know, it was just so disappointing when I got to graduation and there was nothing there. You know, I vividly remember, like, and it was such a stark contrast at the end of my first year getting, you know, all these interviews, four or five and I wasn’t in the top 10% or something like that.

But I knew how to work the system and was a great candidate, great interviewer. I was the only one who, but anyways, I just remember like so different. I remember just going from that to not even like looking for anything to apply to like, anything. Like, not like, Ooh, I don’t want to do that. Or picking and choosing just any job.

And it was so demoralizing and depressing to have to go through that and. I went about a year. I was fortunate enough that I found a couple positions that were part-time or contract. I wound up working [00:06:00] in-house underneath the general counsel of a very large general independent contractor in Cleveland, maybe like the second or third largest in the region.

And was working like 20, 30 hours a week, most $18 an hour would go home at night and just blog or do you know reviewing construction contracts, which that wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. You know, I wanted to be doing business litigation being a business litigator and I. Just reviewing contracts.

I remember I would’ve rather stab pencils in my eyeballs at the time, but I was really grateful for anything and did pick up some great skills there. Like, I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten good at contracts had I not been in that position. And I, you know, I’m really grateful for having anything during that time period really.

And I think, you know, I hit a, I hit, and I promise this is going to a more positive [00:07:00] place eventually, but I eventually, you know, I hit a low point about a year out after graduating where I was still in that position and I finally got an interview. I had a bunch of interviews, but I finally had an offer to join a company, a manufacturing company, to kind of just keep reviewing contracts.

It was a full-time position, benefits but it didn’t even require a JD. And for me that was that was me settling. I can tell you my dad, who’s a lawyer, was not happy about it. But I took it and you know, I got let go 21 days later and it sucked. And again I, this is going to a more positive place, but it’s just, it’s part of the adversity that I’ve faced in my career and that was kind of a low point for me.

But it really was wound up being a turning point. You know, I went home that night, I talked to my wife and she kind of looked at me [00:08:00] and she’d probably been saying this for a year at that point. Like, you know, what are you waiting for? Right? Why don’t you just go out and just practice law and do your thing, use your law license, you know, spend all that money.

And up till then, I think lawyers can commiserate, you know, non-lawyers maybe don’t understand, but when you first get into the practice of law, it’s terrifying to go out and, you know, law school kind of knocks you, you know, knocks this into your head that you don’t know, that you don’t know and, and everything like that.

And you know, the good thing about being in that position is that it’s very clarifying in, in terms of that you don’t have anything to lose, right? Like, what’s the worst thing that could happen at that point? And I kind of was like, you know what? You’re right. What am I waiting for? I’m capable. I can do this.

I’ll just reckless abandon. I’m just gonna go for it. Whatever comes my way, I’m just gonna figure it out and just make this happen. And it’s kind of [00:09:00] crazy. I went, you know, I still remember, I just started going to the courthouse every single day. Got on the assigned counsel list. Started hitting up every single office sharing classified ad that I saw in any bar journal.

Went and started talking to every single owner about office sharing and arrangements like that. I started applying for whatever job I found anywhere that dealt with legal help or aid and just went at it every single day. And within 90 days I had won my first jury trial. Uh, yeah,

Jonathan Hawkins: Nice.

Aaron Minc: Yeah. I faced off again and second part, I wasn’t doing any litigation at that point and really hadn’t since I passed the bar.

And I beat a lawyer who was, had been practicing law doing trials cases for like 30 years. I’d just literally out hustled him. I’d gotten a job. Miraculously [00:10:00] at a firm two older gentlemen near the tail end of their career, lawyers had left the firm that they were with and decided to start a new one.

And I had synced up with them in the process of kind of responding and everything. And they were looking for someone young and hungry to do all their work. And within 30 days of being there they, they had sat me down and been like, Hey, we gotta, you wanna do, we got a trial coming up, you wanna handle it?

And it was 30 days out and I was like, sure, why not? You know,

no idea. Right? And it was breach of contract case. It was good. And then finally what happened too in this 90 day stretch after I kind of hit that point, was I found my first online defamation client on Craigslist of all places, which wound up being the genesis for the firm.

I own it today of all

Jonathan Hawkins: so so Craigslist, is that still around?

I mean, I, I remember being on there all the time and[00:11:00]

Aaron Minc: It used,

Jonathan Hawkins: car. I sold a car on there years ago, but

yeah. Is it even around?

Aaron Minc: it’s still around it’s not what it used to be. Right. You know, it used to be pretty legit. And that’s around that time when it was still pretty legit. So I had found this and I, I wish I still had the ad. It was a very short ad and it was like, old entrepreneur has some battles, some scores that he needs to settle.

Right. Looking, Looking for you know, young, hungry litigator, something like that. Not afraid to be aggressive and like sue the shit out of people or something like that. You know, I’m paraphrasing this point was not a big ad. Right. And I applied, I still have the email that I sent and I. Email reply was pretty short.

It was like, hi, I’m a young, hungry litigator, not afraid to sue crap out of people. Like, let’s think up, you know? And I went out there and gosh, he had, [00:12:00] I mean, the situation is like what they warn you about in law school where it’s like every red flag imaginable, you know? I mean, what could go wrong, right?

Like person looking for inexperienced, overly aggressive lawyer, you know, lawyer who is desperately looking for any experience to get in the courtroom and do whatever he, you know, gosh, what could go wrong? But what was crazy, you know, he’d, he’d had fired, probably the last five lawyers that he’d worked with, had terrible things written about

Jonathan Hawkins: that’s like the one of the biggest red flags out there.

Aaron Minc: Yes. Right. And the first issue that he wanted me to deal with was that someone had written this terrible report about him on this website called RipoffReport.com. And it was, he had come up with this business idea, which was pretty cool. He’s like this true blue, you know, [00:13:00] engineer, entrepreneur type.

And he’d come up with this widget that you could install in a car. And this was back again, like 2011, 2012 at this point. And it was when Obama was in his first term and gas prices were through the roof. And everybody thought that ethanol or all these alternative fuels were gonna be the wave of the future.

And that was like all the rage back then. And he had started this company. Where you could take this widget. He was a big car guy, and you could install this widget into a car and it would allow you to be able for just like a couple hundred bucks and your, your engine could then take ethanol gasoline and or gas, regular gas.

And it was a great idea. They got a bunch of people to get in on the funding and unfortunately it failed because, you know, that did not take off. There are not ethanol [00:14:00] gasoline things on every corner of, you know, right. So, it shut down. And one of his investors got really freaking pissed who had put in a sizable chunk of change.

And had lost all the money. I mean, everybody lost all their money. My client lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on it. It just didn’t work out. That’s what happens with business ventures sometimes. Right? And he had written just a scathing report on this website going after him calling it a scam. His, you know, and, and I did my due diligence.

I looked in on it. They had spent hundreds of thousands on environmental testing and all these other lab tests to get all these certifications. And it’s a long process, and it just, nothing came to fruition in terms of the actual economy and market. So anyways what happened eventually was that I took it on, I looked into it and I found this, well, you know, you could call it a loophole or just deep in the recesses of Google.

At [00:15:00] that point, I found this terms of service and form where you could submit. A court order if something is defamatory, to have it removed from search results ’cause ripoff. And you know, to back up for a second, the issue was that ripoff report never takes anything down. It’s like this infamous site where if you have stuff posted, they won’t remove it.

You can call someone a pedophile, whatever you want. They will never take it down. And it used to be a very powerful site that ranked very high in search results. And, but this one exception was if you got a court order that something was defamatory and they were protected by section two 30 of the Communications Decency Act.

So you couldn’t sue the site, they were immune. The only thing you could do was go after the person who posted it and get monetary relief. But if you got an order with what I found saying that it was. Defamatory and should be removed. [00:16:00] Then Google, you know, you supplied it to Google, they would take a look at it and they would dein index it from their search results.

So, that was my first kind of real client case that I developed myself and we filed and I got to take my first deposition by myself, which when splendid it involved dick pics, by the way, which is, it’s never a lot of cases somehow involve that sometimes, but

Jonathan Hawkins: yeah, when you, when you don’t, lemme tell you about my first

Aaron Minc: yeah, my first deposition, I, that’s a whole nother story that I won’t go out and length about, but I knocked it out of the park.

We settled almost immediately. Got a stipulated judgment and was able, we were able to provide that to Google and get a DD index. Got a great result. And the client was super happy. I got paid. It worked out really well. And after the case was over, I kind of had this light bulb moment where I was sitting there.

I was like, wow, that was fun. I got a great [00:17:00] result for the client. He went on, was able to, you know, it was preventing him from being able to start his new ventures. Every single time he tried to get funding or tried to have his business sold, people would find that he was losing millions. And I think within a year or two he sold, he wound up se selling his new business for like three or $5 million or something like that.

So it really worked out for him. And it wound up that, you know, I was like, this is great. And then I looked at the website and I kept thinking about it and I’m like, that website has millions of ripoff reports on it. And this is like the only thing that is really, truly helpful. Other than paying some extortion fee to the site to remediate it, not even get rid of it.

And, you know, I’m sitting there, I’m like, wow. Not only is this a unique solution that only lawyers can provide, I, to my knowledge, I’m one of the only lawyers in the country who’s even aware of this remedy [00:18:00] period. I could find only like evidence of like one other lawyer who even knew about this. And I was like, I think maybe I’ll just do this.

I’ll just do this. Like, this is fun, I like it. Let’s do it. So it’s kind of funny ’cause during that time of, you know, quasi employment, I was so bored that I used to, I started my own blog. Like blogging was all the rage back then.

No one really Knew what they were doing yet. And I had been blogging. And just blogging about cases.

I called it the Ohio Business Litigation Blog. And what I wound up doing, ’cause I still had the blog active, was I put up a blog poster or two about how I can do this. And the phone started to ring and it kind of just took off from there and never stopped ringing. So,

Jonathan Hawkins: that’s cool. So there’s a few things I want to go back. There’s a lot there. So, first of all sort of the adversity part that you [00:19:00] had to go through, which sucks. I mean, it

Aaron Minc: Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: But I imagine that it built some grit and more than that, but just sort of, the relentlessness that now serves you probably pretty well.

I mean, the early days of that, I would imagine, you know, just having to fight through that, you get, get into that habit where maybe that was always you, I don’t know. It’s not many lawyers so, you know, were you always like that or was it the adversity you went through that has sort of turned you into this?

Aaron Minc: I think I’ve always been a very gritty, resilient person. I’ve always been a hustler. I’ve always been an entrepreneur. That’s kind of just built into my nature. I honestly think I get it from my grandfather who was a Holocaust survivor and learning about his story and what he went through and how he was, he hustled to, to make it out alive and then was an entrepreneur and hustled when he got to the States to get [00:20:00] it done.

And but what I think it added and maybe was a sense of pain and necessity. That I would’ve never had before. And I, going through that experience for such an extended period of time, because it really started before I graduated. Like as soon as I found out that the, all I wasn’t gonna get hired, no one in my class did that, the firm I went to, and that there were no opportunities.

You know, that lasted probably for two years, one or two years before I even graduated, and then into that. So it was really like a three, four year period of going through that. It made me scared as hell. I don’t think I, I slept or didn’t worry for the first five, 10 years of practice, or I didn’t think for a second from day to day that everything I had or was building or any money that I was making wasn’t just gonna disappear the next day.[00:21:00]

Like, it, like I, I operated from a place where I felt no sense of security. In terms of what I thought needed to be done or how quickly things could change because I went through that and I, I think I’ve gotten over that at this point, and I don’t operate from that place. It leaves to making, I think, more risky decisions, more quick decisions too.

And just what really makes you relentless, really makes you do things. Try anything and be open to any opportunities that come to your, come your way. Right. But just I think that adds an extra edge into the equation. But I’ve always been just a very gritty and resilient, hardworking person in general.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. You know, I could see, you know, that fear. It could be good and bad. I mean, it’s good it’ll keep you moving, but you know, it is probably not the way it reminds me, there’s a, God, what’s his name? Scott Wolf or somebody? Wolf. He’s a. [00:22:00] Venture capital is somebody, he’s got some say, and it’s like chips on shoulders create chips in pockets or something.

So he is like, he likes to find the founders that have some chip on their shoulder. But the fear is sort of similar to that too. It’s like it’s just gonna drive. But the other important lesson, I think for all lawyers out there that I think is cool you know, the discovery of the niche and it’s, you sort of stumble upon it and, you know, people stumble upon things all the time, but they don’t go the next step and say, wait a second. And I don’t know what you did, but I can imagine you see the Ripoff website and then you’ve got like, you could do mailers to all those people on there. Be like, Hey, you know, what are you doing? All of a sudden it’s like, you know, you’re the guy and it’s, you know. Opportunities come and go all the time. And you just gotta be, sort of, have your eyes open to find ’em.

And, And You know, you found one and no one else was doing it. So at least for a while, back then it was like new frontier, right?

Aaron Minc: Yeah. And really even today my firm is really the only firm [00:23:00] in the nation. With, multiple attorneys where our entire firm and the entire practice that we have is exclusively devoted to this area of law as our niche in terms of our expertise. And it really makes a difference when all your assets, all your resources, all your people that’s the only area that you’re focused on.

There are other attorneys now that, maybe that’s part of their practice or it’s one person out there, but it’s a big firm and maybe it’s like one person and it’s all are part of their PI don’t know.

And then you have random law firms that just decide to put up an internet defamation. Like almost every other firm has that nowadays.

Because, you know, one time they helped with a, an issue or something like that, but I. You know, I truly, my assessment of the situation is we’re really the only firm in the nation, albeit the world that does what we do and standalone from [00:24:00] that perspective.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, that’s, that’s a good place to be. And I like that kind of, you know, if a firm can find that kind of niche and basically be, plant the flag and be the only one. I mean, that’s awesome. But I want to shift a little bit. So I, I read maybe on your bio that you know, this is what you do, but you’ve also, I think, tell me if I’m wrong, you’ve been sort of a victim of online defamation yourself.

So tell me about that, if it’s right or wrong, but I would imagine if it happened to you, that also adds, sort of an element where you can better empathize with your clients. Say, look, it’s happened to me too. So maybe talk me through that.

Aaron Minc: Yeah, absolutely. No, it’s kind of funny. I’ve been to fame multiple times. Like it’s, it’s just, uh, it’s just the nature of being a defamation lawyer and what I do, you know, a lot, some of the crazy cases we go up against like these crazy psychopaths sometimes in these exceptional situations.

It’s just that, you know, what do nuts. So people [00:25:00] do nowadays they go after people online, they put up ridiculous shit. No one is there’s no screen, there’s no filter, and they’re, you know. Digital world now has just all the weapons at their disposal just to maliciously attack and go after people.

So I, I feel like after maybe a year or two going into this practice, I realized that at some point someone’s gonna come after me, and it is because of my clients. And this happens to other lawyers. In other cases, if they take on controversial clients or things like that, they can have these things.

But you know, the people sometimes who I’m suing, they just they have no boundaries. They have no ethics. They don’t operate sometimes under the normal paradigm of what we consider right and wrong occasionally too. And then I’ve just had very random acts of defamation sometimes [00:26:00] where people.

Are being victimized by defamation, and they see me and my firm out there, and maybe there’s something a little wrong with them. They could be very smart, maybe too smart, maybe very malicious. And they’re the kind of the type of like pro se who gets some sort of conspiracy theory in their head. And between, you know, they’ll if they’re smart enough, they’ll I’ve wound up being hit with litigation a few times that has been easy to get rid of, but, other times, you know, drive by just wild allegations and attacks. But back circling back to what you said, I have had cases where, you know, sometimes it’s more trivial and obvious that it’s fake and it’s easier to take care of. Like someone will post something that’s just truly absurd and ridiculous, or they’re just a troll.

Like I had a case one time where someone posted on there, we [00:27:00] another attorney and it, and what’s crazy too is that usually almost all the cases are ones where I had actually, I have no involvement in the case. Like it’s someone else at my firm, right? And they didn’t do anything wrong, but for whatever reason, they don’t attack the lawyer, they just attack me.

So like I had a case one time where there was a a furry, a business that provided services to furries, I’ll just put it that way, was our client. And I don’t know if you know about furries, it’s people who and that, you know, with defamation, you always wind up with these, often these very crazy almost comical type stories and scenarios where they had had very serious allegations against ’em by their employees.

And we had sent out a cease and desist letter my employees did, and it didn’t go over well and the community did not like us. And all of a sudden we started getting hit [00:28:00] with some Google reviews. And there was one in particular that claimed that they were playing a tuba outside Dunking Donuts.

And that I had decided to go urinate in the tuba. While they were playing and that they managed to finish playing their song. It was like the star single banner or something during, and that they didn’t like me for that reason. You know, and then they registered the domain, like mink stinks.com and all this anyway that’s more like a troll situation where, you know, eventually we took care of it.

The person had mental issues. It was once they got counsel, which was, thank God for free. We were able to resolve it really quickly. But I’ve had others that are much more serious where there they come after me and I’ve had to litigate. I litigate all of them. You know, I don’t know why, I don’t know what people are thinking.

Like going after a defamation attorney, like defaming, like that blows my mind in of itself. It’s like if [00:29:00] I pick the fight with a kickboxer, I. You know, it’s like, what do you think’s gonna happen, right?

Of all the lawyers to do this, to like, why? But it really does, I think what a lot of lawyers, especially corporate lawyers and even ones where you’re typically just suing and really it’s not about the person on the other side, it’s the insurance carrier, right?

That you’re just trying to get compensation from. It comes down to money. And I think family attorneys can commiserate and would understand this, but for more than 90% of the cases that I deal with, it isn’t really about money. I mean, don’t get me wrong, costs are important. We get financial recovery in, in a lot of the cases that we deal with, but it’s about reputation.

It’s about stopping ongoing harm. It’s about principle. It’s about the fact that you are being harassed, someone is doing something to you or your business in a way that you cannot let it stand. Or is pulling one over on you. And there [00:30:00] is a desire to, like, there’s an inj, a feeling. My, my clients have a, a very significant sense of injustice about the situation, and they want resolution.

It could be that there’s an anonymous person attacking them or, you know, just a customer that is harassing and extorting them in a way that they will not stand, let stand or, you know, it really, really varies. But from my experience being defamed I know what those feelings are like and I know how personal it is.

I know how triggering it is how frustrating it is how helpless you can feel in those types of situations. And how more than just getting some sort of legal relief. The ultimate goal is about getting peace of mind in terms of finding resolution. So, you know, [00:31:00] having gone through that myself, it’s very easy for me to empathize and communicate and understand where my clients are.

And oftentimes you don’t even realize it, like everyone’s got kind of like a different threshold for this stuff. Some people, it doesn’t phase ’em at all. They don’t care. It’s very objective. Doesn’t bother them. But for a lot of people, they don’t know. And then once it happens to them, they’re like, it’s, it drives ’em crazy and it, it sends ’em in circles, it makes ’em angry.

It’s their reputation on the line. And, you know, I don’t let that stuff stand. I had a woman one time accuse me of trying to kill someone have her killed, that I gave confidential information to someone, some hate group that was trying to assassinate her. And, I said when I, when that happened, I was like, hell no.

I’m not living in a world where someone is ever going to question or believe for one moment or give any, any veracity to that type of allegation. Litigated for three years and [00:32:00] did not resolve the case until she signed an affidavit admitting that there was absolutely no basis to the allegations, and she apologized.

The primary goal of that case was not money. So, yeah, anyway, that was a long answer to

Jonathan Hawkins: no. Well, well, you mentioned, one of the things you mentioned were, and I mentioned earlier, are negative reviews. And you know, probably most of the lawyers listen to this. If you own your own firm, especially if you’re consumer facing, at some point you’ve probably gotten at least one negative review and a lot of times they are. Falses unfair. It may not even be from a client. Sometime I’ve heard, I’ve heard stories. I know you’ve heard ’em all, but I’ve heard the stories where maybe a client’s pissed or maybe a potential client, they, you don’t even do their practice area and they’re mad that you didn’t take their case. And then they go into a Facebook group or somewhere else, and then they get all their friends to just bombard you all at once with all these negative views.

And then you [00:33:00] can’t do anything about it. It feels like Google won’t do anything. And you know, these, these platforms basically won’t do anything. It feels like it and it’s so hard to get to the place. So, for all the attorneys out there who’ve had this experience you know, what kind of advice can you give folks?

I mean, how do you deal with this thing?

Aaron Minc: Sure, and this is what we focus on all day. We represent attorneys, tons of attorneys in different capacities, deal with Google reviews attacks. We tackle removing anything from the internet. But with reviews it’s difficult and really unfair for lawyers ’cause you can’t even respond ’cause of confidentiality and ethical rules.

And it’s just really unfair and it can be a hornet’s nest and you can get yourself in trouble if you don’t do things in the right way. I have a framework that I do a presentation on that. [00:34:00] I usually advise people to take and it’s kind of kinda like a three step escalation process for how you kind of have to sit, what you do when you get hit one of these with one of these things.

And you know, at the outset it, you know, the first step is just, you know, a preserve it, figure out what the hell is going on, right? Is it a real customer, fake customer? Is there any validity to what they said? Are there any communications that happened? Isn’t an ex-employee, what the hell even happened? Then you kind of need to assess how harmful the thing is, right?

Is this something that is just your run of the mill? You know, nah, I’m unhappy and it’s an opinion and it’s not really legally actionable and it isn’t that harmful and is on a platform where not many people see it. And it’s a one-off situation where they aren’t gonna come back [00:35:00] and do it again. It isn’t repeating, it isn’t escalating.

And, you know, for those types of situations, you know, my normal advice would be just to handle it like any other business at that point. Do good customer service. Figure out what the hell’s going on. Apologize and make amends if something got screwed up. Reply to the review in a way that you are, you know, professional.

Don’t breach confidentiality. Keep it clean, generic, and then do online reputation management. Get good reviews. It’s hard, but you gotta do it and you gotta keep your rating up high and that it’s not really that big of a deal If you have a couple bad reviews or you know, you’re anywhere between a four, five and a five.

In terms of your rating that’s, that’s an acceptable standard in the marketplace for most people. So with that, you know, with those types of things that’s kind of where, you know, you can escalate it through Google if you can’t resolve it. [00:36:00] Right. In other situations, what you’re saying, where you don’t know who it is, or the allegations in review are serious, where they’re posting on multiple platforms, where they seem to be escalating, where they’re being extortionate, where they’re harassing you and your business, where you know, they’re any number of different scenarios that can arise.

That’s where I kind of recommend taking more action legally about that. And there are options, you know, just ’cause it isn’t you know, we’ve had cases where we’ve, gotten things where people don’t. Necessarily know all the ins and outs of defamation. You know, they, they think one thing or the other and they don’t think they can do anything about it.

And in most situations you can. We write a letter, A lot of people just don’t wanna deal with the source either or it isn’t worth it, right? If someone’s gonna hire me to do something, we charge, we charge thousands of dollars. But we can get results in a lot of cases. And [00:37:00] if it’s something where it’s serious allegations of misconduct, or this is gonna stay with you for a while, or it’s just something by principle that you can’t let stand, then you really do need to do something with it in about it at the end of the day.

And then, you know, finally you can escalate things as, as all the way to a lawsuit. If it gets to that. And we do those types of cases all the time. Most of ’em resolve pretty quickly. We are able to, if we don’t know the identity of someone. How do you stop someone from attacking you if you don’t even know who they are?

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. How do you how, how do you do that

Aaron Minc: Right. So

Jonathan Hawkins: get these anonymous one stars that are trashing you that you don’t even know who it

is? It’s probably a former employee or something.

Aaron Minc: Yeah. It could be your competitor, it could be someone else. And

Yeah.

And in those types of cases, what we’re able to do is subpoena. We can file something called a John Doe action, and we subpoena the platforms where the reviews were posted on, and we can get user [00:38:00] information emails, phone numbers, registration, other registration information, the real paid or is the ip the IP logins.

And then we can follow up and figure out what ISPs are tied to the logins and do identification. It’s not perfect but in any case where we’ve got fresh data. Or a whole bunch of data points, like they’re doing multiple reviews on multiple platforms. I mean, we identify successfully who’s behind this stuff, probably 80, 90% of situations when it’s old.

When you’re dealing with someone where it’s a very sophisticated person who knows how to cover their tracks or it’s a hacker you know, we’re not wizards. There, there are ways to actually be a hundred percent anonymous if you are careful about it. So those are unresolved. But there are ways to get to the bottom of these things.

So.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so, you know, I get it. One bad review here and there. You know, a law firm can, overcome it with a bunch [00:39:00] of positive views. But if you get bombarded, let’s say you don’t have that many total, and then all of a sudden you get bombarded with 30 or 40, that all come at once. It’s pretty clear to anybody that they’re related.

And it’s not from a client that, you know, I haven’t luckily had to deal with it, but I’ve heard of folks they go to Google. If you can make it through the maze and actually get in touch with somebody to get ’em to respond, the response is usually not all that helpful. And you could feel helpless.

And it could cost, I mean, it could cost the firm multiple thousands of dollars, you know, maybe six figures over time if you don’t resolve it. So, I mean, you don’t have to give your proprietary way, but is it possible to get Google to take ’em down or do you have to sue the people?

Aaron Minc: Yeah, I think that sometimes you can get Google to take action, but it’s difficult and they don’t always do everything that needs to be done. And in a lot of cases, the issue’s not Google, like everyone wants to look at, go Google as the easy [00:40:00] answer. Google’s just the intermediary, they don’t know.

And what you really need to do in those cases, if you really want to stop what’s happening is you need to get to the source, you know, not dealing with the source and just blaming it on Google and thinking Google’s the solution. It’s kind of missing it, it’s mis analyzing the situation and avoiding the hard problem, right?

And if you don’t deal with the source, you don’t deal with the person who did that to you, they’re still out there. God forbid you get everything down, it’s great, but then they’re just gonna come back and do it again. You gotta deal with the problem. So if this, if it’s a situation where someone is, it’s unresolved, they’re gonna keep escalating.

You don’t know who’s at the bottom of it. You really gotta figure out who’s doing it and you really gotta get to the source to be able to truly stop it.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. Scary stuff. I know. It is of high interest to a lot of lawyers out there, so thanks for taking us through that.

Real quick. [00:41:00] 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 another thing I, shifting gears a little bit another thing you know, that you do that I, that we talked about I don’t know when we met

Aaron Minc: And, And

Jonathan Hawkins: weeks ago. sorry to go back and just, you may find this really interesting, the audience might, I’m dealing with a case right now where we’re representing a PI firm out of Texas. He’s given us an endorsement. I I can talk about this. Amaro Law outta Houston, his firm got hit. It was over a hundred day.

Aaron Minc: Sorry, over like a three month period every day, two, three reviews went up. He had a stellar rep, online reputation, five star and Google reviews over 1400, 1500 reviews. And some, we don’t know who yet, but some competitor obviously wanted [00:42:00] to manipulate that and take ’em down a notch. And they, what we saw was, what he experienced was every day for that period of time, you know, two, three reviews went up every single day.

They tried to be real tricky with Google’s algorithm and they would put reviews up. There were three stars, two stars. Pretend there were clients say good things, but they never called, or you know, they would, they would pretend, right. And they put up exactly 100 reviews. To the t Someone clearly just bought like a package of a hundred, right?

And we were able, and when it gets to that level, sometimes Google doesn’t, you know, sometimes they take some down initially, sometimes they don’t. And we were able to get to the bottom of it. The person who did it was very careful and we were able to get they screwed up on one day, on one account with one login, and we were able to get those, you know, it was a lot of work to get all the ips, but we figured out the one slip up and [00:43:00] we were able to have ’em.

And you know, we were going to trial on that in November.

Jonathan Hawkins: Is that a competitor hired somebody and you know who they hired? Or you know who the competitor is?

Aaron Minc: we don’t know who the competitor is. That’s our, that’s what seems to be the situation, but we know who based off the IP evidence and everything else, who registered the accounts and posted. Posted the reviews,

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’ll tell you, if you find out a competitor they, they may not be a lawyer anymore.

Aaron Minc: he’d be surprised, he’d be surprised. I mean, I’ve dealt with similar stuff in Cleveland, Ohio was representing two firms. He got hit with a wave of negatives all at once. And we wound up, we were able to track it down and, you know, four criminal defense firms had all got hit with a wave of negatives in the same area at the same time.

And they were all had very similar, our identical IP addresses, we noticed some very suspicious activity going [00:44:00] on, on with one competitor in particular. And when we started looking into it, the ips were the same across accounts. So, when we subpoenaed some of the competitors positive reviews, they wound up having the same IP addresses as the ones that had posted the negatives, right.

And oh, by the way, when we started looking at it, there were, you know, thousands or, you know, hundreds to thousand plus fake reviews across all their locations, and they looked really legit. They’re using the ai, you cannot tell that they’re fake and there, and what was worse really was the cherry on top was they were responding to all of ’em as if it was the owner of the firm.

I’m sure it was just, maybe it was him. Maybe it was I, his marketing company was responding, being like thanks for the endorsement. Like, it’d be like, Hey, this guy, it’s the most wonderful lawyer ever. He was so thoughtful with my case. Got a great result. He’d be like, you know, we get the ips, it goes back to like India, China, and you know, he’s responding.

He is like, thanks, you know, Regina, I’m [00:45:00] so, I’m so glad, you know, we got that great result. I’m so happy I could help you. Right. You know, it’s like unbelievable.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well that brings up another thing. I Don’t know how this fits into your practice, if at all, but the new FTC rule about the fake and purchase reviews

I don’t know, do you deal with that at all on either side?

Aaron Minc: yeah. There’s no private remedy for that. So you can report it at the FTC. We don’t really have much involvement. It may, it, it may helps for deceptive and unfair trade practices, arguments if you’re ever to sue a competitor over that. But it’s very state by state, but still in terms of remedies.

Jonathan Hawkins: cool. So I do wanna shift, ’cause another thing we had talked about before is I wanna talk about some of your service offerings. So we’ve talked a lot about the online defamation, litigation, all that stuff. But something that’s very interesting to me personally is just subscription offerings. And I think you offer some, or maybe you’re adding some or maybe both.

Maybe take me through that and, you know, how did you come up with those offerings? And just take me through the process.

Aaron Minc: [00:46:00] Sure. So I’m an entrepreneur at heart first and foremost, and something that just drives me wild about legal practice in general and the business model is hourly billing. I just hate it. I hate it to its core. But I can’t escape it either is probably the problem. So I’m always trying to come up with ways to try and get ways around that and have experimented with subscription services from time to time with moderate success in different areas.

But one of the areas that I’ve been focusing on with my business is we have kind of, ancillary non-legal service offerings or, non-legal services that we offer in addition to, or that supplement what we’re doing. So we, in addition to doing, you know, we’re gonna try and figure out who it is or get it down, and sometimes that’s not always possible.

Sometimes someone [00:47:00] contacts us about a bad news article, everything’s factual, right? Things like that. You can’t really do anything about it. So we offer online reputation management services where we’re able to help clients produce positive information and suppress that in search results. And we and there are options that we do with that, but sometimes they just aren’t successful, right?

So, we offer that, and that’s on a subscription basis. We offer digital privacy monitoring services on a subscription basis where we monitor basically someone’s entire digital footprint in terms of. You know what their digital identity is, their dark web, online physical threats. It’s kinda like an alarm system for your digital identity and world where if someone messes with it, you get an alert and then you can do something about it, right?

So I’m always looking at that and just have [00:48:00] gone and a little bit into the non-legal space to combine what I’m doing with that, that supplements and adds value basically.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, I love that I love talking to lawyers that see some, some problems that can be solved that are ancillary to the legal. There’s so many of those. I mean, almost any practice area, you could think of one or two of those, but lawyers often just don’t pursue it. I don’t know. They’re too busy.

They, I don’t know. They’re, They’re just not thinking about it. So I love talking to people that are thinking about it and trying it out, so that’s pretty cool. I know we’re sort of, I don’t wanna use up all our time on that, but there’s another topic that I think I came across are, are you writing a book?

Is that, did I read that somewhere?

Aaron Minc: I am, I am. It’s called Digital Intrusion. And it’s really just about helping people, providing client stories, information, practical advice for how you can protect yourself and the online digital age [00:49:00] that we live in with all this online harassment, sextortion, everything else, books in process we’re looking to maybe.

At May, potentially, or June next year as the publication date or the release date, I was able to link up with publisher, big publisher Wiley. So I’m

Jonathan Hawkins: Oh wow. So this is a real

Aaron Minc: yeah, this is a real book. This is a real book.

Jonathan Hawkins: did. You get in advance. This is this big time.

Aaron Minc: I’m first time writer. There’s, yeah I’m losing money on this for sure, but yeah I wouldn’t say losing money, but I, you know, I’m I’m going that route, you know, obviously there’s merits to going either way, but my mom is an English professor college retired, and she.

Just is a very big snob about it. And when she heard I was writing a book, she’s like, no, son of mind’s gonna go with some self-publishing route. You know, she’s very old school about it. She’s like, you’ve got a great topic. There’s a publisher that’s gonna want this, I promise you. Just go pitch it. You [00:50:00] know?

And I spent like a year working on a proposal, which is really interesting for a nonfiction book. You don’t actually have to write it, you just have to, it’s like a business plan for a book, and you put together a really good one, and then you send it and they like your business proposal for a book, and then they, they’ll sign you.

So it’s pretty cool.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is cool. So I, I just interviewed a friend of mine here in Atlanta, a criminal lawyer named Justin Spizman and he’s a he’s a ghost writer on the side. And we were talking a little bit about proposals and all that. It’s, It’s really fascinating and completely unknown to me. But, you know, I think that’s really cool.

It’s, It’s a legit publishing house. I mean, most of the time when I hear somebody’s writing a book, like I’m in the middle of writing a book, Wiley’s not picking it up,

Aaron Minc: yeah. No, I was shocked. They’re like a, most years they’re like a top 10 publisher, if not top five in terms of size. So I was elated and, you know, most important, my mom was happy, so that was the only thing that mattered, right? And

Jonathan Hawkins: [00:51:00] right, that’s

Aaron Minc: so you know, wouldn’t have done it without, without her support and encouragement.

So it was great.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, cool. So, you know, you’ve been at this for a while. You’ve, we talked about the adversity and the growth and sort of the spotting of opportunities and all that. for, other law firm owners out there or want to be law firm owners, looking back over your career and, the life of your firm, do you have any advice?

Is there anything maybe you’d say I wouldn’t do that or maybe there’s something you say, yeah, I would do that, but do it a lot sooner.

Any Words of wisdom?

Aaron Minc: Yeah, I mean, I guess if it’s a new lawyer you know, it’s kind of crazy for me looking back, it was like, I was on the cusp of getting hired so many times. Obviously there were overriding factors that prevented that in the economy. Looking back, but it was crazy because the moment I flipped the switch or made the [00:52:00] decision that I was gonna work for myself.

It went from just this like struggle where I couldn’t find anyone to work for. But as soon as I did that and I just like, was like, Hey, it’s just me. I’m working for myself now. Everyone wanted to work with me. And it was kind, it was just kind of crazy. Like I didn’t like people all of a sudden just started calling me out woodwork.

Even as a new attorney, it with barely any experience. It was like a light, like a switch flip. Right. And you know, in, in retrospect, I think it’s like you gotta go where it’s easy and. Whatever is easy or makes sense in your life, in, in the universe, that is kind of like their signal that’s what you should do.

Like one of the biggest mistakes that I’m happy I made in retrospect, but I would’ve told myself, and even [00:53:00] now I know now was mistake was like back in law school, there was a firm where great firm, I was the only kid to get an on the spot offer to join them right then and there in the first initial interview.

’cause I was able to blow them out of the water with some stuff I’d researched and found and press them. And in retrospect, when you have an excitement level and people who really like you and you, you have that connection and you feel you just, the vibes are right. Right. It’s easy, it makes sense.

Like it’s just, there’s excitement behind it. Like, don’t ignore that. You gotta jump on that. Those moments don’t always come around a lot. And when you can find those partnerships with people it’s so important not to ignore that and not just take some, you know, what I did instead was I was like, oh no, let me evaluate these other offers.

And, you know, I think if I would’ve went for that firm, I don’t know what the hell would’ve happened. But I think I probably would’ve been employed. I don’t, [00:54:00] I think they love me. I think it would’ve been a great fit in retrospect, and I didn’t appreciate what they, I just didn’t know. Right? And just when there’s an excitement and there’s a connection, you just gotta go with it.

And if you’re in a position and you’re seeing that connection and that excitement somewhere else in some moment in your life just go for it, right? Like, it’ll, it usually, there’s usually a reason. And don’t ignore it. You know, like, don’t be all cold and objective and be like, oh no, I have to, I have to wait.

I have to evaluate all these other choices and think things through. Like, if something’s a hell yes, pull the trigger immediately. You don’t need to hesitate, you know,

Jonathan Hawkins: that that is, That is really great advice. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anybody say that that is. Dead on. So, yeah. Really good stuff. All right, man. So you’ve been at it for a while. I like to ask this question too. So looking towards the future what’s your vision, man?

What’s, what, you know, what do you want to [00:55:00] achieve at this firm or somewhere else or in your life? Whatever it is. What’s your vision?

Aaron Minc: I am trying to grow the business. I love business. I love my business. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m getting into some. Partnerships and ventures with some other companies trying to grow the digital risk protection service that we have into a larger, more robust and valuable offer. And that’s gonna be taken off soon.

I’m talking with a couple of reputation management companies about becoming a joint owner and that, and I’m you know, for the past seven years, I’ve been, maybe five years actually, I kind of shifted my role in the firm and wasn’t doing any legal work at all. And was just trying to do the CEO gig, the operator gig, the marketer gig.

And now I’m shifting mindsets. I’m getting in the weeds. I’m trying to be that expert. I wanna be the face of the firm, but I don’t wanna where I’d like to be now is just not [00:56:00] involved and any of the operational type stuff, I wanna be founder. Attorney and entrepreneur in terms of these ventures and these businesses, and let other people make it happen.

And I just love representing clients and I’m really good at it and have a lot of expertise that’s unique and can do a lot of good. I love getting results for people, figuring out who’s getting defamed, who’s behind that anonymous mask. And that’s what I just, you know, I’m probably gonna do that for the next five or 10 and try to get in the weeds of things and, and and find really good people to really run things for me at this point.

Rather than just trying to run it myself and getting out of the weeds. I’ve done a reversal, you know?

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool. Well, the good thing is when it’s your firm, you can decide what you wanna do, right?

Aaron Minc: exactly.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, that’s cool. So, all right, so for any attorneys out there that may be dealing with some of these online issues, some of the bad reviews or anything like that, or if they just wanna get in touch with you, what’s the best way to find you?

Aaron Minc: I think just go to our website, minclaw.com. Reach out to us by phone [00:57:00] contact form. Gimme an email at aminc@minclaw.com. And you know, we’ve got great team intake team. And look, if you found me on, on the podcast, as long as you don’t have a whole ton of stuff to look at and review we usually charge 500 bucks for a consultation.

As long as it’s not super in depth or complicated or something like that, I will just mention this and I will give you as a professional courtesy, especially if you’re another attorney a freebie on that. So, just reach out, my team will help you with it. Gather all the information and we’ll set you up and we’ll talk So.

Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. Aaron, I appreciate you coming on man. It’s been fun.

Aaron Minc: And I love your podcast too. I’ve been listening to leading up to all the the people you’ve on. It’s really interesting stuff, especially for any law firm owner, you know, to hear what’s going on. So reach

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I try to, I try to thank you. I try to get folks that are doing cool [00:58:00] stuff like you, so thanks for coming on.

Aaron Minc: Thank you. 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.