Pursuing Your “Love & Great” with Adam Rossen

Adam Rossen: [00:00:00] And so anytime you niche down and you tie it in with your core values, it’s gonna be better for you, it’s gonna be better for them. It’s gonna be better for the business, the company, everything. Our lawyers, I mean, we have some brilliant interns. Oh my God, amazing. And yeah. So that’s how we do it. And live and learn.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I mean, it’s, really sounds incredible. I mean, it is, like you said, good way to give back a good way to find, you know, find people for the future, for your firm. A way to get your branding out there, really across the country, it sounds like more and more it just sounds, a lot of work, but really cool.

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

Let’s [00:01:00] dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. Today we’re talking with Adam Rossen of the Rossen Law Firm down in South Florida. He is a founder and I’m not sure what his role is exactly now. We’ll, we will talk about that, but it’s a criminal defense firm a growing criminal defense firm.

And want to get his perspective. He’s done a lot of cool stuff. He’s been on a lot of podcasts. I gotta see him speak few weeks ago. We’ll talk about some of that too. So, Adam, welcome to the show. Why don’t you introduce yourself? Tell us about your firm.

Adam Rossen: yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on, Jonathan. I mean, I own the Ross and law firm. I don’t know, it could be CEO, founder, visionary. We got a few not safe work names that we affectionately like to call me. I don’t care. Call me the damn janitor. It doesn’t really matter. But I started Ross in law firm 17 years ago.

So I’ve, had a criminal defense firm for 17 years, which is pretty cool, pretty crazy. I’m not like the young 26-year-old that [00:02:00] I was when I started anymore, but I got tons of energy and we’re still in the mindset of that. We’re just getting started.

Jonathan Hawkins: You got a lot of wisdom too. Right?

Adam Rossen: Oh, I’ve, yeah. You know, and there’s, wisdom comes with age, but I think it, it comes with making mistakes mostly of just being unafraid to try something. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t, well that’s okay too. What did you learn from it? And so with that barometer then I’m pretty wise.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know the interesting thing, I wanna ask you this, so I know you’re in a lot of groups. I’ve been in groups and you know, part of the benefit of groups is you get, to learn from others and hear perspective, but on some level you can hear something over and over and over, but until you do it and you make the mistake and learn the lesson, it just doesn’t stick.

Have you found that to be the case for you?

Adam Rossen: Oh, so many, so many times. And it’s easy to sit there in that mastermind group and go, I know what her problem is. I can [00:03:00] fix everything If only she does X, Y, and Z. And then when you get up there on the hot seat, it’s so similar and yet you can’t see it. And so I’ve been there and, done that so many different ways.

One in particular, I’ll tell you was about three years ago, actually it was April, three years ago, we were at a GLM Mastermind. And finally it clicked that we can have virtual assistants. Doing legal work in other parts of the country before we were so against it. Oh, maybe intake, maybe a little bit of marketing fine, whatever, but not for legal.

No way. Blah, blah, blah. And then Mandy and I were sitting there in, in the GLM mastermind and somebody brought it up and I said, you know, it was like an epiphany moment. I was like, I think you’re right. I think now’s the time. And they’re like, Adam, we’ve been telling you that for six months. I’m like, I know, but I we’re in.

I finally figured it out and Manny still didn’t really think about it as something we could do. And we just worked it out, and within three months we had two VAs and within [00:04:00] six months we had four VAs. And it’s been a big part of, our legal team, and they’re amazing. So just that’s one quick thing that comes to mind.

Jonathan Hawkins: It is funny. So have you written a book? Have you got a book out there?

Adam Rossen: Yeah. I have one now and I’m in the middle of finishing three more.

Jonathan Hawkins: Nice. So that’s another one that I’ve known of. Like, people have been telling me they gotta do it, you gotta do it. So I’ve sort of started and stopped it, and now I’m in the middle of it, so hopefully I get one. So what was it like before the book and after the book, any discernible difference has, did it help from your So credibility?

Adam Rossen: Oh, absolutely. So ours is a DUI book. well we have a direct mail campaign where we send that with the boxes and different things, more of like a shock and awe package. Jail mail in South Florida tends to be cheap and hire me because I’m cheap. Right? So it’s, a postcard, it’s a flyer and it’s hire me ’cause I’m cheap.

And that’s nowhere near on brand for us. So now we have a [00:05:00] box that basically says, hire us because we’re the best and we’re the authority on this. And we send a copy of the book. The book is great for when I meet people, I. Just out and about at lectures at different places. And the book has really helped us for our sales process. So when we’re in a, you know, when our intake team is talking with a PNC or you know, we’re meeting, one of our lawyers is meeting with a potential new client, and we’re selling the fact that we’re experts. Well, how are we experts? Well, I’ve, written a 200 page book on it. It’s not a 40 page flyer, right?

It’s not a little tinny thing. Like it has field to it. It’s a real thing. And so that has helped us tremendously, I would say, in that sales process.

Jonathan Hawkins: So take me through the sales process for a criminal defense lawyer, at least for your firm. You know, my, sense of it. Which is probably totally wrong. I’ve never done any criminal defense is that, you know, they’re in jail and they need somebody now, and they’re like, they got their [00:06:00] call and they’re like, we need you.

So, you know, how are you able to fit into that process? Here’s the book, here’s the, this, here’s the, that.

Adam Rossen: Yeah. Well, well, speed is so important. It is so important. A lot of times it’s family members calling for their loved ones who got arrested. A lot of times it’s the women in the men’s lives who are doing the research, finding us. Most people though, call us after they’ve already gotten out of jail, but the best thing you can do is actually call us while a loved one’s in jail, because then we can go to first appearance court and negotiate better terms of release, usually faster, easier, cheaper, and all that.

So that is really good. But yeah we have more of that urgency, the Stop the Shop, which is what I learned from Ben through GLM. And so our, sales process definitely is fast. I mean, we want to get people on the phone or in, or a butt in a seat in our conference room the same day, usually immediately. We found that anything after. Two, three days show up rates just nonexistent.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. So I want to get into more of some [00:07:00] of the stuff you do, but let’s go back. Let’s go back. So, after law school, did you start out as a prosecutor? Is that sort of your, how your first job.

Adam Rossen: Yeah, I was, I was a prosecutor in Fort Lauderdale. Loved it some of the best times of my life.

Jonathan Hawkins: So did you know you were gonna eventually start your firm and switch sides that something that evolved?

Adam Rossen: It evolved and it evolved quickly. I originally, I wanted to be a homicide prosecutor. I wanted to get to homicide within 10 years, which at that time for that office was unheard of. I wanted to be one of the best trial lawyers in South Florida. Those were my goals and I don’t have a problem with authority when it makes sense. I do have a problem with authority when it doesn’t make sense, or I don’t feel as though I’m being valued or cared about. And very quickly I learned that I was just a cog in the wheel. Nobody cared about me. And I’m sitting there going, okay, well I’m barely making any money. I can’t pay my student loans.

Why am I working so hard? You know, if I’m gonna work so hard it’s [00:08:00] gonna be for me. And so me and my roommate, who was a prosecutor with me we lasted 18 months and we started our own firm. And I always like to say we, we were in a way, kind of too dumb to fail because we didn’t we were 26. We had no, we weren’t married, no kids, no real responsibilities.

So we didn’t need to make a lot of money to survive. And you know, we kind of stumbled through for about eight years and, you know, here we are now.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. In some sense that’s maybe the best way to do it before you’ve got all the, all right responsibilities. Just do it. So, so you guys go out how did you start getting clients? Were your colleagues referring people to you? How,

Adam Rossen: Well, so that, that’s the thing. I mean, if we were public defenders, we could have gotten, I think, more referrals faster and easier. But we were prosecutors, we didn’t have any clients that we could have brought with us. So we had this plan. It was maybe three to six months in the making, and it was terrible.

I mean, looking back, it was so stupid. But we stumbled into a few things. And of course, [00:09:00] if I had to do it all over again I, I would do it totally differently. But you know, I know we would definitely be an eight figure firm right now. If I knew what I, you know, if I knew then what I know now, I mean it, you know, we’d probably be

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, I’m gonna ask you about that in a minute, so put a pin in that. We just got lucky. We stumbled in a few things, you know on Friday, you know, our last day was a Friday and just randomly one criminal defense attorney that we were friendly with came over and said, Hey guys, come by my office at 11 o’clock on Monday. I got a case for you. We’re like, what?

Like, we’re not expecting this. And so one of the big things, if there was this lawyer who just out of the goodness of his heart just helped us totally unexpectedly. And I don’t know if we would’ve made it without him. I really don’t. And so I still have so much gratitude towards him for what he did. We never asked.

I never expected it. And that really got us a good jump. We also stumbled into some things, so one of,

Jonathan Hawkins: I think my special talents is seizing opportunities. Some people say I’m, [00:10:00] I’ve had some coaches say I’m a little too opportunistic. So I try to be reflective and balance that because I do want to be focused.

But I was court ordered to go to traffic school. I got a really bad speeding ticket when at the end of my term as a prosecutor, and I got court ordered to this, go to this school. It was a comedy school. I show up, I’m there for eight hours. Nobody wants to be there. There’s only 15 people in the room.

And for maybe the last hour or two, the instructor, she starts talking about DUI. And I raised my hand and I was like, well, you’re wrong about this. And this is the way it really is. Oh no. This is different. What you’re saying is not that accurate. Here’s what it’s, and then everybody’s like, okay, well are you the class jerk?

You know, there’s always somebody, right? And I said, no, I’m a prosecutor. I’m starting, I’m gonna be starting my own criminal defense firm. Here’s what it is. And the next hour or the final hour turned into kind of an AMA before an AMA was a real thing. Everybody was asking me questions and I let it, and I had so much fun.

And afterwards I go home, I talk to my roommate, [00:11:00] I tell him like, this is great. And he says, oh, Adam, why don’t we lecture there for free? And I said, amazing. The girl, the ladies loved me, like, who owned the school? So we, I called ’em up, I’m like, I wanna come in a few days. I wanna introduce you to my partner, bill.

You know, we’re leaving, start our own firm. So we did. And they were like, oh, do you want to come in lecture for an hour and a half every Saturday? Every other Saturday? I was like, hell yeah. So we did that and it generated almost instant revenue. It was crazy. And so that, that was one of the things that really got me into lecturing.

And we had fun with it. I mean, and,

Jonathan Hawkins: and I believe I think I brought this up. I was. On the GLM stage, I want to say in 2019 at the 2019 summit, maybe 2018 summit, and I calculated from rough estimate that from oh eight to 2013 for the time that I lectured there, that five, six year period, I think we generated about 400 grand in revenue.

I mean, now, you know, I was busting my butt. I gave up a lot of time on [00:12:00] weekends to do it. But yeah, it’s, you know, I mean, it was a great source of revenue. We were two young struggling attorneys trying to

Nice. Nice. You know, You talk to a lot of lawyers we both do, but you know, there are pros and cons, all different types of practice areas, you know, if you’re gonna go and contingency practice. One of the pros is you can conceivably make a lot of money, but one of the cons is you gotta wait 12, 18 months before you get, you know, from when you sign a client to when you get paid.

One of the pros for criminal defense, I would think, is you sign a client, they’re paying you like that day, right?

Adam Rossen: Yep.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so you’re getting cash in the door. If you’re signing clients, you know, cash flow is probably not an issue as long as you’re getting clients early on at least.

Adam Rossen: Right, right. It, I know it’s a lot easier to start a criminal defense firm that way. I, I know some PI lawyers have started doing criminal and PI, and then criminal kind of pays the bills, and then PI is where the profit is, and they’ve either kept it that way or once they’ve generated enough of kind of that revenue stream with PI, [00:13:00] then they’ve kind of jettisoned the criminal just really to focus on the PI.

So I, it just depends. But I’ve heard a lot of people in the space really talk about that they believe that criminal and immigration are a lot faster to scale because of that immediate revenue coming in.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I wanna talk about how you’re scaling your firm. But before we get there, so you, started your firm with your partner, I think you said Manny. At some point you guys decided to sort of go your separate ways. Uh, Tell me a

Adam Rossen: was my old, yeah, that was my old partner Bill. So Manny’s the managing partner now of the firm who you got to meet, you know, at a variety of places he, you know.

Jonathan Hawkins: Okay, so let’s talk about Bill. So your, first partner at some point. You guys parted ways, so you maybe give a little background there.

Adam Rossen: Yeah. So, you know, Bill’s still a great friend to this day. we both started I wanna, what is it, August 1st, 2006. And then within a month I needed a place to live and he needed a place to live. And we’re like, Hey, like, we get along, we’re having fun. Let’s just be roommates together.

We, we rented a place right across the street from the courthouse. There was about [00:14:00] 30 prosecutors that they hired in 2006. And our place was just, it, I mean, it was College 3.0. It really was, in a way, it was kinda like Grey’s Anatomy, but for prosecutors and PDs we had a amazing time. And so we decided, we were, we were both two of, the, I think two of the best.

Young prosecutor, so we said, well, screw it. Let’s start a law firm. So we did, originally we were gonna dabble in family, you know, just see what came in in addition to criminal. But Bill’s future mother-in-law was an immigration paralegal and she taught him immigration law. So we really settled into a niche of criminal and immigration, and we were together from oh eight to 2015, and Bill got really good at immigration and then I realized, I just don’t wanna do it.

It’s complicated. I know, criminal. And so I was doing majority of the criminal bill was doing a little bit of the criminal and all of the immigration. And it just, it got to a point where Bill had gotten married, bill had two kids. By [00:15:00] 2015, I was still not married and single, no kids. And we were just wanting a little bit of different things with the business, with the practice, with our life.

It just gotta the point where we had a few different conversations and then Bill thought about it over Christmas, maybe in 20, I don’t know, 2014. And then in January, 2015, he just came to me and he is like, look, I just think it makes sense if we just split it. And we didn’t really have anything to split, which was interesting.

And that’s, I think why it was, it went so well for 78 years. We had no staff. We never had staff. 90, 95% of the revenue went directly into our pockets. So we didn’t have a business. We were just two young good lawyers. That was it. And so we worked out that transition. And for better or worse, it was, you know, me saying, okay, well, on one hand, you know, I don’t like, I’m the one bringing in a majority of the revenue anyway, so that’s pretty good.

But on the other hand, I don’t think I would’ve ever left the prosecutor’s office, certainly not then if I didn’t have my buddy’s, you know, hand ahold while we made that [00:16:00] jump. And it was nice. We had revenue coming in from immigration and different things. And also, you know, when you’re a prosecutor or a pd, it’s such a social job. And then when you start your own law firm it, it’s very, you know, lonely and we had each other, but that was it. And, you know, so it was totally different. But I felt like, you know, my back was against the wall. I happened to do pretty well when my back is against the wall. And I was like, I need to immerse myself in marketing and how to grow this, how to get more clients.

And in 2015, 2016, 2017, that’s just what I did. I just became obsessed with it.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you’re on your own around there, 2015 you’ve been really almost like a solo with No, I mean, you had a partner, but basically a solo. And now you’ve got a, you’ve got a big firm. It’s a business. And so what was it, you know, it’s one thing to go try to get more clients, but what was the moment or what clicked in your head when you said, all right, [00:17:00] I’m gonna start building a business as opposed to just keep practicing law.

Adam Rossen: So yeah, I would say 2015 and 2016 and 2017 were all about learning how to market and just hustle, market sell, you know, and I know our, friend Charlie Mann usually says, you can get to a million dollar law firm or close to it just based on the sheer will and determination of the owner hustle, market sell and that’s kind of what I did.

And then it really wasn’t until I joined the mastermind the GLM Mastermind, which must have been around maybe 17, 18, 19. Yeah, I was definitely in it at 19. Where then I was like, okay, we’re at three people. We’re, we’ve grown now to five people. Right. In 2019, actually. I. How do I take this to the next level? I need to learn about actual business and marketing and or not marketing business and management leadership. I’ve always known about a lot about leadership. You know, coaching basketball for 10 years I think has helped tremendously with that. [00:18:00] And then it just, you know, but still, even then, 2019, if you asked me what I wanted, I would’ve said, you know, just more money, more cases, more people.

Well Adam, what does that look like to you? I don’t know, just wanna cross a million dollars, want more money, you know, like this, like that. And I would really say it was going through 2020 and covid, and not just surviving, but thriving from it. And then starting EOS in January, 2021, that’s when we got so much clarity around mission, vision.

Core values. And it’s funny ’cause those are things that, that Ben and Charlie talked to me about in 2018 and I was like, yeah, we’re only three, four people. I read traction. We can’t implement this now. You know, and I but luckily to my, you know, we talk about wisdom, right? So that was a mistake ’cause I could have definitely put some things in around 20 [00:19:00] 17, 20 18, but I saw the hockey stick growth coming at the end of 2020 and I said, I gotta do it and we gotta do it now, and if we don’t, we’re gonna be hurting.

So at least the second go around, I made up for it.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you saw it coming in? You know, I always tell people, in my opinion, at least, you know, you can sort of grow organically, affirm, but at some point, if you really want to grow, it’s a decision. You gotta decide because then you gotta start, you gotta start making decisions. You know, you are gonna, you got limited resources and you gotta allocate them in a certain way, and you can put all the cash in your pocket, go home every weekend.

Or you can say, all right, I’m gonna reinvest it. We’re gonna, we’re gonna grow this baby. And you decided to grow up. But before we get to that, so Covid, you said you thrived in Covid. How, tell me about that. ’cause a lot of people esp,

Adam Rossen: right,

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, you got trials, you know, you’re not having them. So how did you do it?

Adam Rossen: Well, we are in the free state of Florida here, and [00:20:00] so we opened up pretty quickly, which was amazing. And look it did hurt for a little bit don’t get me wrong. I mean, prior to Covid we were averaging maybe about 12 new clients a month. And in April we had three, and in May we had five. And in June, I think we had maybe 10. Yeah, but by July we had, I think 15, and by September it was 17 and October it was 20, and we were just like, boom, what’s going on? And so I think it was the fact that Florida opened up very quickly. A lot of people were going through mental health and substance abuse crises, and because of those people got arrested the police brought back the proactive patrolling and proactive investigations in full force, because let’s be real, they needed revenue. And one thing, again, we talk about wisdom. So look at this time during [00:21:00] Covid, what was I, 39 years old? 39 40. So I’m not old, but I’m not young. I. I’ve learned enough and studied enough and lived through, you know, the great recession. I started my firm March 1st, 2008. Great recession, I think started September, 2008.

Now, it didn’t really affect us because we had no business anyway, you know, like we had no business, no expenses. So it was fine. But I learned the old Warren Buffet adage, which, you know, I’m sure I’ll butcher it, but it’s basically it’s sell when everybody’s buying and buy when everybody’s selling.

Right. Do the opposite. And so I saw everybody putting their head in their sand cuts, you know, all, all over the place, people getting laid off and people slashing their marketing budget and everything. And I said to myself, I’m like that, look, this is gonna pass. Either we’re all gonna die or it’s gonna pass.

Right? It’s not gonna be it’s gonna be one of those two, and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna pass and. So I’m like, we have to be strong. [00:22:00] We had just grown to six employees. Three of those six had been with us less than 90 days. So the easy thing would’ve just been to let them go. And I said, well, I don’t wanna do that.

We had, it was two lawyers, we had a marketing director and we had three kind of do it all legal assistants slash reception intake. You know, we weren’t segmented and so we just said, all right, all six of us are going into marketing right now. That’s it. I had a lot of marketing plans, a lot of things that I had wanted to do, a lot of projects.

And we just did ’em. We just said, screw it. And like, y’all want a job? We’re all marketing now ’cause we don’t have any real court to handle. So we’re all in marketing. And we did, and then we took on 13 interns and they, we gave them a great experience and there was this big SEO project that I wanted to do and we got about 30,000 words on the website.

And again, it was. In the GLM Mastermind, we had gone to weekly meetings from our like, you know, monthly meetings. And a lot of it was what, you know, my coaches and mentors [00:23:00] said of, look if you think you are, you know, you do things the right way and build the right law firm, then you have a moral and ethical obligation to grow.

And I said to myself, well, if we say that we’re community and relationship builders and pillars of our community, like, we say we are, then we have a moral and ethical obligation to take on 13 interns and to not let anybody go. And I’m very proud of the fact that the only one in the firm who made less money in 2020 than they did in 2019 was me.

And in 2021 and that laid the, found the foundation for the firm to triple in revenue. So from 2020 to 2021. And so I was very proud of that, and that was just something that, it was just that hockey stick growth. Yeah. Thank you. You know, and it’s things that I continue to think about today of right when things are going on, how we’re gonna deal with those things and leadership and, and and I screw up every day.

I screw up every week. But [00:24:00] that was something that I do think I, I knocked it outta the park on,

Jonathan Hawkins: so let’s talk about growing your firm. And you got, I think, what, six attorneys now or so?

Adam Rossen: so we, yeah we have six. We’ve had as many as eight. You know, just kind of shuffling caseload and different things. Yeah.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so, you know, going from one attorney to six attorneys, that’s a lot. That’s a lot. And I mean, I know personally, I know lots of people, you know, growing a firm in terms of again, another thing, I believe it, I think it’s almost easier to get more clients than it is to actually build a team of lawyers.

Especially when you’re small. Lawyers are risk averse and they look over and they’re like, Adam, it’s just you. Why would I join you when I could do something else over here? So how did you know, what challenges did you face in trying to recruit and attract attorneys?

Adam Rossen: Right. And you know, as you’re asking me this it’s really making me think about going through, going down memory lane because it has been quite an evolution. So Manny joined the firm in 2018. Manny is now the managing partner. I was Manny’s high school basketball coach. We’ve known each other now [00:25:00] 21 years, which is amazing.

You know, I was think 23 in law school and I hated law school. And I went back to my alma mater to be the head JV basketball coach. Manny was 15 and he was one of my players and he interned for me. It was just, you know, it was a great relationship. And at his wedding we were both kind of drunk and we were just talking about it and I convinced him.

And then we had a few meetings afterwards and I convinced him to join. So that first hire was. It wasn’t just luck, but in order to get that first hire, right, like if I didn’t get that first hire right, I don’t know where we would be, right? So we knocked it outta the park with that one which made it so much easier.

So much easier. And then in 2021, we hired three lawyers in eight months. So we went from two lawyers to five lawyers in eight months. And the fifth lawyer was the one that got me out of production. That was, we were looking at it as a luxury, but we had somebody who was very [00:26:00] talented, who came on the market.

And it was one of those kind of things where like within three days I was like, you know, hiring her is gonna get me out of production, which will allow me to continue to grow the firm and do all the other things. Screw it, doing it. We did. So that was a bit of a leap, but hire lawyers three and four. I mean, were so badly needed because of just that hockey stick growth.

And we got lucky too. So, I mean, lawyers three and four, David and Susan, they’re still at the firm today. They’re both doing amazing. And again we got, I don’t wanna say lucky, but we learned enough with our coaches and mentors and being in masterminds of hire slow fire fast and getting the enrollment or the buy-in is so important because my firm is not an easy firm to work at.

We run it like a high performance sports team, maybe like a nascar. I mean, we’re going, our pit stops are fast, you know, we’re burning rubber, right? We’re riding that clutch, whatever. I mean, we’re we [00:27:00] move fast and we’re a bunch of high achievers. And so we really learned too that.

Making sure that we’re aligned is so important in the vision of the firm in the day-to-day stuff, because a lot of people could be, especially now that we have this great reputation and there’s so many prosecutors and PDs that wanna work with us, it’s different. We don’t really need to recruit. We, you know, the firm sells itself.

And we do a lot on social media too, with the firm selling itself. But a lot of our hiring process is really of, look, what do you think this is? And let me tell you what it really is. And through behavioral testing and open and honest conversations, a lot of it’s like, look, I would hate for anybody to come here, be with us for six months and go, that is not what I expected.

This place sucks for me. Because then they’ve wasted their time, they’ve given up the safety and security of the government to come to us to. We’re wasting our time. So a lot of what we talk about, it’s funny actually, we were talking with a lawyer recently [00:28:00] who we don’t know that much about and she’s like, so I’ve gone through like three interviews and we’ve barely talked about my legal skill.

Like you don’t even know if I’m a good lawyer or not. You know? And it’s funny because Manny and I looked at each other and this, was like the third or fourth interview we’re in office. We’re like, yeah, like we, we will get to that. Like, you know, you are a homicide prosecutor, you’ve had your own firm for a while, like being a very, an excellent lawyer.

That’s the floor. It’s all about culture here all about. And we interviewed her three or four times all about culture, our culture. And for a lot of now it’s to the point where whether it’s a lawyer or not, my part of the interview, especially with non-lawyers, ’cause I just kind of come in at the very last step and my thing is, alright, here’s like the 30 ways you’re gonna hate working here at this place sucks.

You know, and we do an in-office workday, a paid in-office workday. And it’s like if you’re driving home and you’re like, oh my God, this was the most amazing thing and we offer you, then come on in and jump into the deep end of the pool. And if it’s a 75 out of a hundred and we happen to offer you, [00:29:00] please decline.

‘ cause you’re not gonna like it. You know? And you’re gonna you’re gonna be unhappy. And I don’t want anybody to be unhappy. I want everybody to be here and be happy. So we’ve evolved quite a bit.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love that approach. I think you’re right. You hire the wrong person. It’s bad for you, bad for them, and it’s just a waste of time. So that’s good. You know, repel the people that don’t want to be there. So you mentioned basketball coach and that you run your firm sort of like a team.

Is there anything from your coaching experience that you apply now in your role at the firm? Is there some overlap at all?

Adam Rossen: Oh tons. And I still screw this up too. And look, and I try to stay outta management. I try I really want to be in the biz dev. The marketing we’re looking at acquisitions. Growth by acquisition, the planning, the plotting, the scheming. You know, that’s really where having conversations with you, right? Going to masterminds and conferences.

And so I don’t wanna be the managing partner, and I haven’t been the managing partner for like, three, four [00:30:00] years. And for me, you know, that it’s, a lot of it’s knowing first about me, what I like and what I don’t like. EOS has helped with that too. The delegate and elevate chart.

One of the things I really learned from coaching basketball, look I’m sure it won’t be a surprise, like I was a hardcore tough coach. I’ve won at every single place I’ve been. I’ve improved every single team that I’ve ever coached. I’ve coached at four different high schools. Every single team and program was better off, you know, after I got there than before I got there.

And I’m very proud of that. In fact, even though I was never a head coach, I was, you know, an assistant. But coaching very high level one, a state championship. I’ve learned one of the number one things that I learned is that you need to treat people differently. You should treat people differently.

And so the whole kind of, oh, treat everybody the same. I could not disagree more with that. Certain people get motivated differently. Certain people can take criticism differently. Sometimes, you know, some times and people need it public or need it private, [00:31:00] right? Some need, you know, just being on them some need the gentle soft encouragement.

And so it’s about reaching and motivating people and so you have to know your people. Also a lot about being, you know, working within a coaching staff is very similar to a leadership team in any business. And seeing, well, how does the head coach approach it? Is the head coach more of the CEO and delegates a lot of different things to the assistant coaches.

I’ve been pa a part of a few programs that did it that way. And then there’s a few others where the head coaches disorganized and just basically a, a good trainer. Who happens to have the title of head coach? Right. And you know, is it more strategy or is it just more motivation? Right. Based. So I mean, I’ve learned so much through, through coaching.

Right,

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s cool.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now [00:32:00] back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk, let’s go back to your firm. So you’ve got, you’ve built this thing, you’ve got six attorneys. You’ve got, I look at your website and you’re in South Florida, but you’ve got multiple offices. I don’t know if those are true offices or, or not. You can explain that. But, you know, talk about what it was like building out sort of the different locations and how do you manage that?

And then maybe the next step what’s next? Are you gonna start moving up, up Florida, or, you know, what’s your vision there?

Adam Rossen: Right. Great. Great question. So right now we have three real offices or staffed offices and six satellite offices. The plan is, yes we definitely wanna grow. We’re going to go deeper in the geographies that we’re at, and we also wanna grow by expansion and acquisition. So we have a lot of cases in Miami right now, but we don’t have a physical office there.

We have three virtual offices that we can meet anybody there. And so we’re looking into Miami. Do we hire a lawyer and build it from scratch [00:33:00] or do we look at, you know, a good lawyer who has a decent book of business but just hates running their business? Well, we can come in, right? So, and we can come in and take that and accelerate that through our structure, our marketing, our management, our policies, our procedures, right?

Same, you know, with up through Palm Beach County, you know, we have an office in Boca. We have an office in Fort Lauderdale and Sunrise, which is West Fort Lauderdale. Do we go to Naples or Fort Myers? Yes. I want to. Just, when do we go up to the Treasure Coast? Yes, I want to, when do we go to Tampa? You know, different things.

We handle federal cases nationwide, so how can we get more cases in other geographies and in South Florida? So I look at it as, when you, and this is me that, you know, I’m a Florida boy, not a, a Texan. But when you think about it, if you got those oil rigs in Texas, you gotta drill deep to get oil.

Not wide, but you drill really deep, you get oil, that first rig is [00:34:00] producing. Then how do you grow? Well, you start a second rig and you go deep, and then you start a third rig and you go deep. So we know we can still go deeper where we’re already at, but then we do need to start expanding and going wider.

And for us the quality of lawyering and. The quality of relationships with our clients and their families are so important, and our culture is so important that we’re only gonna do it if it’s the right fit. You know, we’re not a high volume, low fee chop shop. We’re not charging $3,000 for DUIs and you know, pleading people out at the first or second court appearance.

It’s actually easier to scale a statewide law firm that way. But that’s not what we’re doing because I have no interest in doing that because I want us to be the best. So we do have a good amount of volume, but we’ve slowed back on the volume and the growth to make sure that the quality is nothing short of Excellent.

And I’m [00:35:00] totally okay with that actually. I prefer that.

Jonathan Hawkins: I would imagine Miami is somewhere you can go very deep.

Adam Rossen: Yeah. Yeah. Especially in the Spanish market. Well, it’s, well, but it’s also saturated. Criminal is very saturated. But you know, when you have personal relationships with people and you happen to be a good marketer, tho those things matter a lot. And you know there’s certain things in the Spanish market that we want to do.

I mean, there’s so many ideas and yeah. Miami is ripe. You know, they’re just going hard into, so we are,

Jonathan Hawkins: So, you know, I’ll make a statement here. You know, lawyers you and I we are in sort of the people we hang around with are different in, in terms of lawyers. Most lawyers are not business people. They don’t thinking about that. They, some love the law, some just sort of, you know, they’re just sort of.

Floating along. And I know some criminal lawyers other than you, that are business people that are pretty savvy, but most of them are not. And so I would imagine somebody like you that has sort of a business mind and big vision that you could really do [00:36:00] something special in the criminal space.

I don’t know if you’ve sort of looked out at your quote competitors you don’t have to name any of them, but what’s your sense about your, the opportunity for you to really grow this? baby?

Adam Rossen: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s so many opportunities and that’s why I think it’s a lot of, it’s gonna be growth by acquisition too, with people that are good lawyers that just don’t, or they’re overwhelmed. They’re trustee sidekick. Right? ’cause most criminal lawyers, you know, it’s better called Saul or the Lincoln Lawyer, and we’ve turned it into suits.

We have a firm. We want to be strong and powerful and stand for something. We are a mission-based business as well. I mean, we really do believe in our mission to help good people and bad things happen.

And to defend and protect people’s rights against the government. We’re all kind of, you know, we, we have people on, on all sides of the political landscape here, which I love, but we all do have a little bit of that libertarian screw the government you know, whether we lean left or lean right.

in us. And I think that is another thing that [00:37:00] really makes us special. But when we’re talking about, you know, whether it’s, and I don’t really look at the solo lawyers as competitors and we have a few firms that are similar to us in some ways, but they don’t, they’re most of them, it’s.

There’s, they’re not running EOS, they don’t have departments, divisions, they don’t have a mission statement. They don’t have a core values, a one, three and five year and 10 year plan like we do. So a lot of them is we’ll just grow to make more money, put more money in the owner’s pockets. And so when we have these dedicated plans and a different culture, it’s different than any other firm.

But again it’s by, you know, acquiring, I mean acquisition there. There’s still a lot of baby boomers that are coming upon retirement soon, and there’s gonna be a lot of older Gen Xers that are coming upon retirement soon. And so we think it’s, we’re in a perfect position to start building bridges with them and say, look, here’s a way for you to continue to make money in your later years while you slow down.

Because if you’re 63 years old and you [00:38:00] die of a heart attack, your firm is worthless. So I’ll give you a few pennies on the dollar for your cell phone number and your, most of them run their firms through their cell phone or through your, you know, through your business number.

But it’s also been a little challenging because we’ve seen a lot of people who overvalue themselves, which I’m sure you deal with quite a bit in, through your mergers and acquisitions. Because you know, when you don’t have a sellable asset that, you know, they don’t have a good website. Like what’s, what are the assets?

The assets are usually the cell phone number, the business number, and the referral sources, which it’s all random because of course they don’t have a client list. They’re not nurturing the list through an e through an email sequence, social media or a mailed monthly newsletter. It may be contacts in their cell phone that literally we’re gonna have to pay somebody in the Philippines to go through and figure out and categorize who is this?

Is this your, aunt? Or is this a client who sent you three referrals? You [00:39:00] know. Right. So that has been a struggle. We’re learning. We are definitely learning.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, and we talked about this, but you know, I think it is a compelling win-win for the right people. You know, especially when you’re young, you have energy and you can deal with the client work and sort of barely managing, you know, you’re spending plates basically, you know, you’re doing some client work, you’re doing some business work you’re doing paying the bills, but at some point, you know, why not get into a well old machine where you get to just do the client work, which you’re good at and all that other stuff’s taken care of.

And then you have an opportunity really to grow the pie because you’re not. Doing all that other stuff that you would be doing. I think, you know, you just keep sending that message out there. I think you’re gonna get some takers on that. Let’s shift gears a little bit and the thing that I, I last saw you on was you gave a little talk about your summer internship at your firm which sounds really cool.

So why don’t you talk about what it is, the history of it and all of that, because there’s some really cool stories you told outta that.

Adam Rossen: [00:40:00] Yeah, Yeah. You know, and I know our, our friend Jay well, TGR Live was a great conference. Jay Berkowitz is, you know, he’s a friend. I’ve known him for a few years now but he only gave me seven minutes, so I, now it’s nice that we can talk more than seven minutes about it. So, for anybody listen to this and, and Jonathan, I don’t know if, it was, you know, if you have this, but I’m 26 years old.

In 2008, I have a law firm, and before I know it, it’s, oh well. Adam, can you know, I have a friend who wants to go to law school. Can she intern with you? Sure. Come hang out Two months later, oh, I got somebody else. Or I know somebody who knows somebody. Sure. Come hang out. And internships are such a big part of the prosecutor and the public defender’s office that, you know, I was a CLI certified legal intern.

I got to try five jury trials before I graduated law school. So, and then when I became a prosecutor, I had an intern, I think after I was a prosecutor for two months. So that’s such a part of the way it is down here. And I just, I always wanna give back. I’m so blessed to have so many mentors in my [00:41:00] life, so many coaches.

So I always, you know, loved it. So I would take people on and that was kind of version 1.0 and 2.0 for the, you know, really until covid it was just come and hang out. Manny was an intern. He just came and he hung out and we had little things here and there from to do, but it was really just shadowing.

That’s what it was. Something good to put on the resume, have conversations, learn stuff. But I didn’t know what to give him. I didn’t have a plan. It was just come hang out. And then in 2020 things changed. We said yes to 13 interns. Manny thought I was nuts and I am nuts. But again, knowing that we, you know, have that core value and the belief that we are pillars of our community, I said, it’s our moral obligation.

And I go, what else do we have to do? We’re doing marketing right now and we’re on Zoom court. And Zoom Court is a big waste of time because in the criminal system, very similar to PI [00:42:00] litigation, the only way to move cases along is with the threat of trial. So we’re sitting here in Zoom Court where there’s no trials yet.

We’re just wasting our time unless it’s a client who needs to get outta jail. Other than that, it was a big waste of time. And, And then we did a lot of depositions on Zoom, so that was good. And we just, I had a little time to be creative and the George Floyd murder happened. And so I took our interns and I said, all right, guys.

Next Wednesday, block off from one 30 to five 30, we got a special project and they all hop on. And I had it all prepared. I said, all right, guys, the law school final exam, you got four hours. And what we’re gonna do in this law school final exam is we’ve been hired to represent Derek Chauvin. Here are the three charges that he’s been arrested for.

Here is the toxicology report of George Floyd. Write me a legal memo saying We’re gonna defend him and we’re gonna win. I purposely made it hard, right? I didn’t want them copping out with [00:43:00] the easy one. And I told him, I I’m gonna grade you against each other. So we’re gonna rate you one through 13 just like they do in law school, right?

Because there’s a curve. And we did, and it was awesome and they loved it. And number one was a law student, but numbers two and three were not. And I was, so we had some people in high school, we had some people in college. We had some people in law school and you know, we gave ’em the grades and we went through it with ’em and it was just so much fun.

And we had a lot of time to debrief about the depositions. You know, we prepare for them before and then they would be on. And it was also pretty nice when you can kind of be intimidating to an officer, a cop on Zoom when you have 13 people sitting there watching you on Zoom. So that was cool too. And it really got me thinking.

And when that experience was over, I just, I had a little bit of time to reflect on it. And say, okay, well this is great. How can it be better? And in 2021, we did the same thing, but it was in person. Okay. And really that 21 and 22 was version 3.0. And then, so I said, all right, how can we make [00:44:00] this better?

And I had the help of two very good employees at the firm one of which is on Harvard Law Review right now. She’s at Harvard Law School. And we worked it out and we said, okay, I want this to be an actual program. I want this to be, you know, so what did we do? We made a, webpage on our website.

We SEOed it up and boom, here we are on the first page of Google, right? Our website, our webpage about our criminal defense, criminal justice internship. So we’re like right under indeed for a bunch of searches. So we come up organically. I said, great. We’re gonna take maybe like six to eight interns.

It’s gonna be in person, but we’re gonna build a curriculum for them. So we started get building a speaker series and we would get people locally in criminal law and outside criminal law. And this time, you know, at this point it was not criminal law focused. Obviously what we do is criminal law, but we would take people who, you know, were like, oh I, I’m still leaning towards business law, but sure, I’d love to learn about criminal law or, well, I think I wanna be a prosecutor, but I still wanna, you know, so, [00:45:00] but I wanna learn about it.

And that was version 4.0 was 23, 24. Yeah. 20 22, 20 23 and 2024. Just building this curriculum, building an alumni network. We have our alumni come back, we’ve connected people. We have a real cool. Pipeline to, you know, to Penn and Cornell and a bunch of other really prestigious schools. And we’ve been able to connect each other and just have it where it’s more, much more structured.

They get assigned, you know, to our, we have four lawyers that are primarily in production. I’m not, and Manny has, you know, Manny’s caseload fluctuates. So Manny and I don’t get an intern. But we tell ’em, I go you, you’re gonna get a worse experience if you’re my intern. So I run the curriculum. I, you know, we just, last year I added in a book club component.

So we book club a book. We’ve watched some really important documentaries and we’ve talked philosophically about criminal justice and [00:46:00] incarceration and just different, you know, topics. And then they’re working as basically a, a a legal assistant hand in hand or a law clerk with. Lawyers, they’re in trial with our lawyers.

They’re in motions to suppress. They’re in court every day. It’s rigorous, it is rigorous, it’s hard. All this for an unpaid internship, and last summer we had 10. It was amazing. And now we’re in 5.0 version, which I’m really proud about. Over Thanksgiving I had some time again to be reflective and just think, which as you know, for the law firm owner who’s really busy, it’s hard to come by. And I said, all right, how can we make this even better? How can we niche down? Right? A lot of our mentors, and especially in the marketing space, the niches are in the riches, or the riches are in the niches, and you gotta niche down even more. So I said, all right, we’re gonna make this criminal defense focused.

No longer is it criminal law focused. ’cause in 23, in 22 and [00:47:00] 23, it was more general in 24 last year when I took it back over the entire program, we made it more criminal law focused. And now I said, alright, we’re making this criminal defense focused, criminal justice focused. Meaning if you wanna be a prosecutor, we’re probably not gonna take you.

Okay. And I’m looking at this as a way to niche down even more. We’re gonna attract better candidates who are even more passionate and we can start partnering with criminal justice organizations across the country. You know, we have partnered with the Innocence Project for a few years. They’ve always spoken to our interns, but how can we do it with more and really use it as a way to build the internship?

Build the firm’s brand. ’cause now we’re at that point where, you know, we’re way over a million dollars in revenue. It’s, yes, we will always have hustle, market sell as part of lfs DNA, but now it’s a lot more about the branding. Right? Because, you know, just where we’re at in revenue [00:48:00] and in order to get to that eight figure and, beyond Mark branding becomes so important.

You know, when you’re a solo lawyer and your gross income is 150, 200 K, I’ve always had the opinion of anybody selling you on branding. They’re selling you. They’re robbing you blind. You need to hustle, market sell. You need cases, not a brand at that level. But now we have a brand, we have like a 50 page brand guidelines book uh, you know, thing.

And I mean, it’s crazy. So. Building that brand of knowing that we can be the, that private for-profit, criminal defense law firm that is big and powerful, that can choose to take low bono or pro bono cases and can partner with criminal justice orgs, bring them to speak to our interns. ’cause maybe today’s intern becomes their intern next summer. Maybe they, they’re so inspired that when they become a lawyer, they work for that public interest corporation or, or [00:49:00] company nonprofit instead of going to the PD or the prosecutor’s office or my firm and building with them. And also from a marketing perspective, there’s a lot that we want to do with digital media with them, social media with them.

And also it’s great for getting back links to be able to get back links from criminal justice organizations and writing blog posts and different, you know, news media articles and public relations that are really difficult for other. SEO vendors to get for my competitors. So again, I look at this as an entire flywheel ecosystem.

I always say it’s like eating all parts of the pig for, from a Cubans down here in Miami. That’s what they do. And just building that. And by niching down it’s so much more authentic and real. And it is a big part of our core values and our, our value beliefs and system.

So that’s really where we’re at with it. And the next thing that I want to talk about is, as me and my team have [00:50:00] really been thinking this through the last two or three months of how do we evolve, one thing that’s really stuck out that we keep coming back to is, okay, there’s a bit of elitism in this internship where look. We take people from lesser schools who are like me, just will hustle and outwork somebody. You know, look, I went to University of Florida. UF is an amazing school. It’s an elite school. But we’ll take people from other schools or the non elite schools, if I think hustle makes up for everything and desire, but not everybody can afford, even if you live in South Florida, to basically work a full-time unpaid internship for 12 weeks this summer alone, we have a law student from Penn State and Duke who are moving here and they’re gonna be roommates at an Airbnb out of their own pocket to handle and to basically, you know, experience my internship program.

So I have immense respect for them, but a lot [00:51:00] of people can’t do that. So we said, okay. I. What can we do for the regular person? And what we’re gonna be, what we’re gonna be announcing is we’re gonna create a mentorship program that will be paid and it’s gonna be geared towards non-traditional students.

We’re only gonna take one at a time. And it might be somebody who’s in vocational school or in a career college, or maybe somebody who, who’s been in and outta jail or went to prison and can’t get, wants to get into criminal justice, criminal defense. But Public Defender’s office just can’t hire them because they’re still a government agency, right?

No, they have no experience. Well, we’re gonna have it where they can spend maybe six months at a time with us. We’ll do it outside of the summer internship window and it’ll be the Rossin Law Firm mentorship or fellowship program that hopefully will lead to direct full-time employment with us. And if not, then they’ve gained the [00:52:00] skills and now they have it on their resume and we can, you know, use our network to maybe place them, you know, with one of our friends, another competing criminal defense firm or whoever.

So that’s something I’m we haven’t, I’m starting to tell people that it’s gonna happen starting in about January, but we still have to work through the logistics of it. But I’m, I’m just so happy and proud that we can do something like that. And I could never do that if we were still a four person, you know, total law firm, you know, if we didn’t build the 25 person law firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: I mean, there’s so much to unpack there. I’m not gonna be able, we don’t have time to do it, but that is just so cool. I mean, the thing that I really like is, you know, your first version was just come hang out. Where now it’s like, it’s a real structured program which is a ton of work. I mean, and I know it evolves, it gets better every year, but that’s a shit ton of work to build.

I know. So that’s, you know, kudos to you. So how do you market that now? So how, I know you’ve got an alumni, but you’ve got your landing page, but how do you go out and [00:53:00] let people know this is here? Because I’m sure you’re getting sounds like you’re probably getting every year more and more candidates.

Then you gotta go through the process of how do you pick ’em? Right?

Adam Rossen: Right? Yeah. So before when we just really marketed through just organic SEO, we would get anywhere from 30 to maybe 50 applicants for 6-8 spots. Now we’re getting over 300 applicants for 10 to 12 spots. And we use Wise Hire for our hiring and that pushes it out to indeed LinkedIn. A lot of the job boards, like kind of the legacy job and career boards, you know, and so, and we’ve, pushed some money behind it on LinkedIn and other avenues of our social media.

That’s helped tremendously over the last two years for us to just skyrocket the number of applicants we have to be protective of our time. So we require four things. A cover letter, a custom cover letter, and I want to know about you and I want to [00:54:00] know about why you think this will be good for you.

What I really want to know about is your passion and why are you gonna be good for us? And I think, I don’t know who’s teaching people how to write cover letters, but then again, maybe it’s just me being non-traditional. It’s like I see the same boring stuff over and over and over again. And I can tell when it’s plug and played, you know, from one job to another, or one internship to another.

Show me passion for criminal defense. Show me how you are going to be a benefit to me and how the firm is gonna benefit from having you as one of our interns. Right? I already know what I’m giving you. Okay? And so I care a lot about that. We have a writing sample. Money cares more about the writing sample ’cause he wants good writers.

I care less. We need a transcript because I need to know that you are really in school and that you’re not some, you know, person that’s gonna catfish us. And we need a resume. So we need those four things. So some of it is just, can you follow directions? Okay, well [00:55:00] can you, can’t you? And then we’re going through and I’m looking at them and then what we decided to do the last two years is we do group interviews.

I don’t have the time to give everybody who I want to speak to an hour or 30, or a full 30 minutes. So we’ll usually do an hour and a half up to about five or six people. And then from there we can get a pretty good idea. And I do try to group them. So we’ll try to go law school together, college together.

And then as we go through that process, then we get more and more Kenneth, then I’ll kind of bunch them together. And if there’s a few people where I’m not so sure about, but we’re intrigued, but we want more than we’ll do maybe a two at a time where we even have done 25, you know, 20 to 30 minutes individual.

And it’s just a little organic. We open it up in January and again, learning from mistakes. So we open it in from January, really to, to April 1st. We’re probably gonna go in next week a little bit, you know, January to mid-April. And we have a few spots reserved for college, a few spots [00:56:00] reserved for law school, and then we have a few spots reserved for high school.

But the high school is only limited to American Heritage, which is a local school down in South Florida that I actually also teach at. And so we have these kind of slots and we go through it and we, but we tell them in the beginning, we say, look, if you need to get paid, this isn’t the right place for you.

If you don’t have reliable transportation and you want a hybrid, this isn’t the right spot for you. If you want to, and again, wisdom trial and error. If you’re, you can be here three weeks and then you can, you need to take off too. And then you’ll be here, and then you’re for three more, and then you’re spending 4th of July in Spain.

Have an amazing summer, but it can’t be with us here. Maybe next year the integrity of the program will suffer, you know, and since this is an actual program, right? Again, come hang out, no problem. But because we have a structured, rigorous program, I just, we can’t do it live and learn. And we also say, if you’re not ready to commit within 24 [00:57:00] hours, then you don’t have the passion.

And we can’t, you gotta let us know. Because if we offer, it’s, you’re signing an integrity statement and, and your NDA within 24 hours, or we revoke the offer and why? Well, we’ve had people sign or say, commit verbally, commit in January or December, and then they get maybe a paid internship or they get a judicial internship.

Which the law schools are pushing as if they’re better. And there’s, there is no better, it’s just different. It’s what do you want? So again, it’s like our employment, like, like our hiring, it’s, we attract and repel. So I tell ’em, I go, if you can’t meet this criteria, let me know. And it’s totally fine.

And I mean, I mean again, we have, we have over 300 applicants and I’d rather be open and honest with people you know, have us be authentic and let other people be authentic with us so that we’re happy. Because again, we have 10 to 12 spots and they fill [00:58:00] up fast. And we want the people who are like, oh my God, this is my dream. I don’t need the money. I don’t care about the money. I will sacrifice. Right. Not that I’m wealthy, but I’ll just, I will it because we do look at this as a sacrifice, because this is my calling criminal defense. And we’re able to attract just the best of the best because of it.

And so anytime you niche down and you tie it in with your core values, it’s gonna be better for you, it’s gonna be better for them. It’s gonna be better for the business, the company, everything. Our lawyers, I mean, we have some brilliant interns. Oh my God, amazing. And yeah. So that’s how we do it. And live and learn.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, I mean, it’s really sounds incredible. I mean, it is, like you said, good way to give back a good way to find, you know, find people for the future, for your firm. A way to get your branding out there, really across the country, it sounds like more and more it just sounds, a lot of work, but really cool.

So, we’ve been going a while, man. I, I wanna be respectful of your time, but before [00:59:00] we wrap up, I do. Earlier you said, you know, when you started your firm you made a lot of mistakes. You learn a lot of lessons and you would, there’s some things you, if you could go back, maybe you do early or do sooner, or maybe not do.

So as you’re sitting here today, can you throw out, you know, a few things that maybe for people out there that are, or, you know, behind you in the journey, what are some pieces of advice you’d give them?

Adam Rossen: What I would’ve done in 2008 might be a little different than I do today, but in two thou, I mean, we paid a thousand dollars for a website that was probably lost us clients because when it was so bad that when we got referrals, and referrals looked us up on Google, it was probably a detractor. It was a negative rather than a positive.

So invest in digital marketing, invest in a website. Even if you don’t have plans to like a big budget, you need a website that at least looks good and that has good content on there. Back in the day, I would’ve invested heavily in avo now. No don’t waste your time or money on AVO or [01:00:00] some of those directories.

They’re a waste back then. Oh my god, you know, it was like a gold mine and we didn’t, I didn’t even really focus on those until 2015 and 2015 to 2018. I think they were pretty good, but now I think they’re kind of back down. So I wouldn’t really do that. But I wish I knew in what I knew in 20 15, 16 and 17.

Look, Google runs everything, but now there’s AI and there’s different things that are really coming in into play. I think building relationships is key with your clients. I think listening to, you know, get developing mentors so important and get mentors from in and out of your space. You can get mentors completely out of the law space.

’cause most lawyers don’t know how to run businesses. Then get a few lawyers that are in your space you know, that, that are willing to mentor you. The, The law profession is very giving. It is, but also take the time to think about what your core values are. And this is something that I, this is maybe 20, 21 version of me that I think is still [01:01:00] so important. Decide what your core values are gonna be personal and professional. Decide what you want to build. Because I always say if I’m speaking on stage or on a podcast, just because, or in a mastermind, just because I’m talking about what I want for me doesn’t mean that’s what you should want for you.

Because, you know, there’s days where I come home and I’m like, oh man, I wish there was four of us, five of us here. Should I burn it all to the ground and just make a super highly profitable firm? And every single time it’s no. And why? Because for me, that’s not what I want. I don’t wanna get back into casework full-time. I want to have a big powerful team so we can leverage our power to do, you know, more good in the community. And I wanna have a social environment and I want to have the flexibility of not being in cases. So I can travel, I can go to conferences, I can do the other business things that [01:02:00] I want to build because, you know, owning this law firm is not going to be my sole source of revenue or income for me and my family.

So a lot of other things that I want to be involved in and do. So for me it’s no. But if that’s for you and you say, look, I still really like the law. For me case work is like and good, but it’s not love and great anymore. It used to be. But the business is love and great. So if your love and great is in the law, then grow a little bit. But you don’t, don’t be like me at all. That would be a huge mistake for you. And I think a lot of people can go to some of these fancy conferences and see the ones that are like rock shows where they’re paying a hundred grand for a comedian, or they’re paying for, you know, a, an r and b group, or they’re giving away major cars and prizes and those are great for rah rah.

I mean, those are amazingly fun. But you don’t have to go there and say, well, that has to be me. It doesn’t, [01:03:00] and I’m just, I’m a big believer in that, you know, people have to really understand what they want and then you can craft your own future.

Jonathan Hawkins: Great message. I think we end with that one, but Adam, this has been fun, man. It’s been great. I love what you’re doing. For anybody out there that wants to get in touch with you or maybe get more information on your internship, what’s the best way to find you and that?

Adam Rossen: Yeah, so now it’s LinkedIn. I’m trying to be committing, committed to really using LinkedIn a lot more. So LinkedIn’s great. Find me there. We’re all over the place. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, my email is adam@rossenlawfirm.com, R-O-S-S-E-N law firm.com. Email me if I can help in any way. It would truly, genuinely be my pleasure to help.

Jonathan Hawkins: An internship. How do people find that?

Adam Rossen: Oh, yes. CriminalInternships.com takes you to whatever landing page we have on the website, so www.criminalinternships, plural with the s. Dot com [01:04:00] criminalinternships.com. We have a really cool four minute video that maybe we can drop in the show notes. That gives really a good overview of, the program.

That was something that we had last year’s group film and we produced it in December, and I’m, I’m very proud of it. I think it’s a really cool video. And yeah, definitely we we’re still, as of this we have about one or two slots left, so if you are hearing this, please apply. If there’s anybody who’s, who’s listening to this that has a connection with the criminal justice organization, please, we want to partner with more and more of them.

So I would be so appreciative if anybody can make an introduction for that. Actually, I was on Ben’s podcast three weeks ago. He made an amazing introduction and I’m very excited about the partnership that we’re gonna have with the Institute for Justice. So they have a, they’re based out of Arlington, Virginia.

They have a major field office in Miami and we’re, we have big things ahead with them, so. Thanks Ben for that and anybody else listening, we really appreciate it.

Jonathan Hawkins: [01:05:00] Nice. Well, thanks again Adam and uh, everybody reach out.

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.