Jay Ruane: [00:00:00] I have gotten my time and I can do the things that secure their job and really sort of live the life that I love. And so I’m happy where I am in life. I have stress, but I don’t have the type of stress that cripples me. I have the type of stress that invigorates me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. That is a powerful story there, man. But it you know, the other point there is no matter how much we plan, life’s gonna be thrown us curve balls.

Jay Ruane: Exactly. Exactly. And you need to when I never thought I’d have 45 employees. I never wanted it, I never thought I would. But each one is in their own individual. I have another employee overseas who is going through fertility treatments and you know, we’re trying to be supportive of her and do what she needs to do so that she could have a child with her spouse and you know, it’s all of those things. It’s taking people where they are and saying we’re trying to do something together and I know my people have the business, the firm. They’re gonna do the right thing by the firm. But I also want them to have a life where they can do the right thing [00:01:00] by themselves and the right thing by the firm.

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

Let’s dive in.

Jonathan Hawkins: Welcome to Founding Partner podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Hawkins. This is a podcast where I get to interview law firm owners, so I can learn about their past successes and maybe mistakes too and you get to listen and hopefully learn as well. Real excited about today’s guest. This is somebody that I have been, following from afar for many many years, but just now, actually got to meet today.

And that’s Jay Ruane. He’s a criminal defense [00:02:00] lawyer and firm owner. And Jay, welcome to the podcast and maybe tell us a little bit more about your firm and what you’re doing.

Jay Ruane: Sure. So thank you for having me you know, I’ve actually listened to your podcast for a while too, so it’s cool to finally make the connection and talking about my successes, I think we’re mainly gonna focus on my failures because I am an open book when it comes to those. I think that’s where we learn the most.

Anybody can brag but if you can, you know, unveil where you went wrong, I think that’s where we can all learn to be better in trial work in representing clients and also in scaling our firms.

But, you know, I’ve been a criminal defense lawyer now for nearly 28 years, which is mind blowing to say that. I never thought I was gonna last this long.

But in reality, you know, I, started my practice as a public defender 1998, right out of law school. I got a job making a hundred dollars a day as a public defender and I was hustling and this is back late nineties. The height of the drug game. I was a street [00:03:00] lawyer and, and that’s really, you know, that’s how I cut my teeth. I got into, private practice after I got passed over for a job. Then and I hung a shingle on my own. Eventually, you know, a year and a half later joined up with my father who separated from his partner at the time. and I said, look, I said, I need security. And the only way to get security in this business is to have a business and actually focus on the business. You know, my father I liken him to being in business with Pablo Picasso. He doesn’t want to know a thing about business. All he wants to do is paint for him. It was all he wanted to do is try cases and be a criminal defense lawyer. But I like the finer things I guess I like having food in the fridge and, my bills paid and I like taking nice vacations when I get to take ’em. So I said, you know, I need to build this into a business. And that’s where I put my head down and really started to focus and pay attention and you know, we’re blessed now that there’s all these podcasts and these Facebook groups and Slack communities and all that stuff. But when I started doing this in, you know, in 99 and 2000, [00:04:00] there was nothing.

And so I would go, you know, I was single. I had a dog. That was my only responsibility. I would go to the local Borders bookstore and see what new business books were out, and I would buy a business book or two, and a couple business magazines every week. And that was how I learned how to do all this stuff. And so that’s me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, definitely I wanna talk about that I remember you know, way back when there’s the Bible, what is it, Doomberg or whatever that,

Jay Ruane: which I never read. I bought my Amazon card, tells me that I bought it. I can’t find it and I don’t ever remember reading it.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, he is talking about typewriters and fax machines and you know, but yeah, it’s, that’s the thing. So, you know, back in the day, you know, like you said, now it’s, there’s a guru everywhere. There’s stuff everywhere. If you wanna find it, you can. I mean, you know, sort of the problem nowadays I feel like is sort of information overload. You don’t know what is good, what is bad what should you follow? What should you not? But back then there wasn’t really anything at all. [00:05:00] So, you know, how did you do it? I mean, you said you went to libraries. I mean, were you looking outside the law?

I mean.

Jay Ruane: There was nothing in law. There was nothing in law. I mean, well, that’s not true. I know. I read, John Morgan’s book years ago. and I was really impressed with that. And, I remember eating, Ferrazzi’s never eat alone, because I knew, you know, back then there it wasn’t as big as, reliance on digital. So I read that book that, and I read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow and I was like this is how we have to do it. We have to be different. And then, you know, I was lucky enough to be pointed in the direction of The niche of DUI defense within criminal law and those are clients who tend to have more money, tend to have higher stakes in their cases.

And so I threw myself, you know, not only into the business of law, but also into a very from in the criminal aspect, the most profitable niche and so I really, my first decade was focusing on being the best in my state in that niche. I still have that reputation at least I think I do. And for me it was [00:06:00] really, I wanted to know the field sobriety tests and the breath testing machines, And the blood testing machines because I wanted to be the best. And Then I started to say, okay, well now that I’ve got this knowledge and we’ve got the caseload, what else can I do? And I said, you know, I’m gonna throw myself into really getting into the business of how to run a firm the right way. And you know, for me as a criminal defense lawyer, you know, we don’t get those, you know, big home run hits and that type of thing that PI gets where you can dump $50,000 at the end of the year into something for the next year. I had to do it, you know, small bites at a time. So I never had a big budget to throw into something.

So I was doing a lot of step stuff, bootstrapping, just do, figuring out myself. You know, there was some, if there was something out there that I wanted to do, I figured out how to do it cheaper. And I think that’s one of the things that’s helped me is that, you know, I grew up in an inner city. We didn’t have everything that we wanted, but we figured out to get what we needed. I mean, I can remember playing basketball with a milk crate with the bottom cut out of it tack to a telephone pole. That’s what we did in [00:07:00] our neighborhood. So we figured stuff out. And I’ve done the same thing in my firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, sometimes it’s the constraints that actually allow you to grow the way you should. But you know like I said I’ve been following you and your stuff and one thing that I get a strong sense about you is sort of you, you’re a lifelong learner. And I could see where once you sort of figured out the DUI stuff you’re like I gotta go figure out something new to learn. But let’s talk about your firm for a second. So, you know, you’re, my understanding is you got the biggest criminal defense firm in the state of Connecticut. How many lawyers do you have now?

Jay Ruane: I think we’re 12 now. We had somebody who thought we thought was gonna pass the bar, didn’t, she’s gonna take it again this summer. So that’ll take us to to 13.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so, my sense is just from knowing a lot of lawyers and representing lawyers over the years that, you know, number one, scaling a firm is tough, just period from starting from nothing but scaling a criminal firm there just doesn’t seem to be that many big criminal defense firms around and I’m curious, [00:08:00] do you know why that is or,

Jay Ruane: yeah, I mean, I think I can speak to that you know, the only other bigger firms that I know of, I know there’s Steven Hamilton, the Andrew Grant in Texas. They have separate firms. At one point they were partners and they separated and they continue to scale. Both great business minded attorneys. That’s really it I mean, Seth’s got a criminal wing of his firm in DC with Price Benowitz, but it’s not just a criminal firm like our three firms that I mentioned. I think part of the problem with scaling criminal is, number one, it’s an incredibly lawyer centric type of law. People, you know, you can’t have a paralegal doing 99% of the stuff and the lawyer showing up for a deposition and a trial, Right. you know, the lawyer has to make all of the court appearances with the client. The client could be going to jail and wants to talk to the lawyer, doesn’t want to talk to the paralegal. We have to get paid upfront, which is an incredible hurdle compared to other things. And one of the challenges with getting paid upfront is, number one people [00:09:00] don’t like paying for their mistakes. You know, they like, they’d have no, if I, and I definitely do not. So if my wife is listening, I absolutely do not want to get divorced. But if I wanted to get divorced, I want it. I’ll find the money for it.

If you get arrested, you don’t want to have been arrested, you’re not gonna find the money for something.

I mean, I’ve had plenty of clients who’ve been like, well, I just took a vacation. I don’t have the money to pay you. I’m like, well, what are you talking about? I’m the one who’s keeping you outta jail. And they’re like, right, but I wanted a vacation. Nobody wants to be talking to me and so that’s difficult. So you have to build in I mean, right now I think I’ve got nearly $700,000 of accounts receivable. Now I have a team that I’ve put in place that to make sure that we track it.

That’s one of my biggest mistakes was not putting that team into place sooner. But, you know, between being, needing to get paid upfront. Needing to have a lawyer do the majority of the work, I think that’s one of the hardest parts of scaling a criminal practice.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah, that good point. do you think, [00:10:00] do you think there’s any personality, lawyer personality, elements too? So, you know, you’ve got these gun slinger, you know, I’m a trial lawyer, I’m sort of a solo guy by nature. Do you think there’s an element of that as well?

Jay Ruane: Well, yeah, I mean the criminal defense bar tracks the most dysfunctional lawyers for the most part. I mean, you know, I can name right now off the top of my head, a half a dozen lawyers who flamed out because of you know, they, I guess you could say they clo flew too close to the sun, right? They were partaking in some of the substances that maybe their clients were dealing ’em, they had monetary issues. They just were sort of living by the seat of their pants. And unfortunately, because criminal is lawyer dependent, you can survive. It’s just a true solo with a cell phone and hustle and scrape and make enough to you know, put food on your plate and pay your bills every week.

But, you know, some of those people just really walk that line and so I mean, even, even among my team, I, mean, we are a bunch of misfits like true misfits. We all [00:11:00] seem to work well together, so it kind of works out. And I have a mind for systems and I need that because of my ADHD. So it tends to work out.

Jonathan Hawkins: And so, you know, lot, lots of elements go into scaling a firm, but, you know, I guess one element, you gotta get cases, you gotta be able to get the work and then the other is you gotta, you gotta go get the people, to service the cases. So, you know, how have you sort of figured out both of those?

Jay Ruane: So I started, so I when I hung my shingle, my father had another firm with one other partner they had one associate, right? And when I quit my job, I walked into his office and I said, Hey, I just quit. And he goes, good luck with that. I don’t have any work for you. I’m scraping by myself. But he and the other guys in his office, they actually had another solo who was sharing space.

They were like, we got an empty office in a broken desk. You wanna use that? Go for it.

So they told me, okay, now you gotta get in the phone book. ’cause back then in 99, that’s what people did. And I called up the rep. And they [00:12:00] said, well, this is great. we’ll love to place an ad for you next year. The book closed two weeks ago and we can’t get you in. So my brother had gotten home that month from college. He had taken a rudimentary HDML class and I said, Hey, how about we build a website and see what we can do? And I mean, you can still see it on the internet archive. My first website was trash, trash, but it started to generate me clients. And those clients were able to fund my scaling. And so I paid my, I, I used, Google Pay per click for the first time, November of 2002. And you know, my first click cost me 7 cents. I mean, today. Think about that. So and I learned how to do it myself. I didn’t have a vendor that I could go to. I said, look, I got time and I got no money, so I’m gonna sit home at night and I’m gonna teach myself this stuff. And you know, still continue to I’m teaching myself AI. I’m learning how to do that stuff better even to this day. I think, you know, I, love learning new things it excites me. And you know, that’s [00:13:00] really, I’ve been able to get more clients because I’m knowledgeable in the area.

Other lawyers recognize that knowledge. I mean, I’ll tell you, I gave a speech probably two years into the practice of law, on how to defend A DUI case. ’cause I had started to make a name for myself and I opened the speech to, it was to the statewide Criminal Defense Lawyers Organization. And I opened the speech with it. So great to see all of these great names. And I started naming people in the audience, and I said, every single one of you wouldn’t give me a job 18 months ago. And now you’re here learning from me boy, who made a big mistake, right? and they all laughed. And but, but I just wanted to call ’em out for it. Like, none of you gave me a chance. I sent, I literally, I went through the criminal Defense Lawyer’s directory, and I said, every single one, I said, you know, Jim Ruane’s son, I’m looking for a job. I will work hard, give me a chance. And I got dozens of rejection letters and so I just had to do it on my own.

Jonathan Hawkins: So let’s talk [00:14:00] about, so the early days of the internet, so a thought came to my, my mind.

So, you know, you put up this website, you know, you said it’s trash, but it probably was the only one for a criminal defense firm up at the time. So, and then pay-per-click was super cheap, So, you probably got it’s you know, it’s almost like heroin. You’re probably getting a lot of leads outta that for cheap. But then the game changed when everybody started coming in. So, you know, this happens over and over and over in any business where you get in early and you ride it, you know, you really enjoy it, but eventually it’s sort of the steam runs out. So how did you sort of maneuver out of that over time?

Jay Ruane: So, the interesting thing about it is, is back in the early two thousands, there was a lot of federal money going into D-U-I-D-W-I enforcement. It was all over the news and that type of thing. So I happened to like build a website around the time that, it was really growing. For example, back in 2000.

And I looked this up recently. There were 18,000 DUI arrests in the state of [00:15:00] Connecticut back in the year 2000. And we were opening probably a hundred. Like, I mean, there was, there was plenty of opportunity there. Now, one of the challenges we have with criminal defense is, we compete with people who go pro se and people who get the public defender.

So there’s a significant chunk of arrestees who will never, ever become clients to anybody. But last year in Connecticut, there was only like 5,000 DUI arrests. and so not only was competition increasing on the digital atmosphere, because people started finding that, oh, I could put up a website and get some business out of it, but the available caseload, was dropping, at the same time.

So I said, you know, we can’t just be a DUI firm. We have to expand again. I mean, my father was a general criminal lawyer. I narrowed us down to DUI and then I said, you know about 15 years ago, we need to, I, I see a trend here, changes in social structure and that type of thing. Now, obviously with, you know, people, you know, back then it was people taking, staying home [00:16:00] and taking pills. Now it’s people staying home and smoking weed, at least in my state. And so, I said, we need to do something different. So we started to expand. My first hire really wasn’t, another lawyer. My first hire was a content copywriter. There was a young woman who grew up across the street from my wife who graduated, whose father was a local attorney, did residential real estate, and, she came outta college with an English degree.

And her father said, what are you gonna do with an English degree? And I said, well, are you looking for work? ’cause I can pay you like 30 grand a year to write content for me. And she was like I’ll take that job. And, she’s been with me now for, 12 years. she actually left after two years and got a master’s degree in technical writing and then came back to us and has been with us ever since. And, it’s been great. And it’s interesting too now with AI and AI tools and that type of thing. She said, you know, you wouldn’t need to hire me now. But now my experience and my degree in technical editing has [00:17:00] really allowed me to scale our content creation. And so we’re doing a lot more content now than ever before.

But you know, last, I think last week we created a million words of content for our website. So we’re still growing and pushing.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I want to talk, I wanna talk about that for sure. Maybe now is a good time. So, so you’ve got a podcast with Seth Price called The Law Firm Blueprint, which is really, really, really enjoy that one. And one of the things I really like about it is you guys go on there and maybe you each have a few questions and you just sorta spitball with each other live.

Jay Ruane: Literally like we text each other three topics and that’s it. Like, it’s no pre, it’s, there’s live without a net, basically.

Jonathan Hawkins: And it, is really good. So anybody out there who’s not following that needs to go follow that ’cause it, it’s really good. And the other thing is, you know, I’ve learned a lot about you,

Jay Ruane: Uh oh.

Jonathan Hawkins: just from listening, so, which is cool. And so, you know, one of the things on there, you know, there’s a few things I wanna talk about, but one of them is your, output of content.

I mean, it’s [00:18:00] amazing number. I mean, you’re using, you got help, you got ai, you got all this. But the other thing that amazes me is once you decide, it’s like the speed at which you actually execute is amazing. And it’s, you know, you go on your, on that podcast, I’ve heard you talk about, well, you know, this past weekend, I, I put together dozens and dozens of scripts for these videos, blah, blah, blah.

And then, you know, they’re in the queue. How did you get to that place? You know, somebody like me or anybody else who’s like, okay, I want to get there. how do you get there?

Jay Ruane: I mean, I guess you could say I’m a bit of a loser. I don’t really. Have any other hobbies? My hobby is trying to get this business to a place where it’s sustainable, and can afford me the lifestyle that I want. but, you know, I mean, I guess I, I mean, I bake bread. that’s my newest hobby and I’m learning to play guitar, so I guess that’s a hobby. But, I’m, I have a bias towards action and I think, you know, too many I can remember years ago like, I’m trying to think, this was back. I definitely like [00:19:00] 2003, 2004, 2005, I went out, I bought a teleprompter, I bought a camera. I had some friends. We were going to a conference in Vegas. I said, let’s get ourselves a suite. We can set up the camera, we can film a bunch of videos. Some of my videos from them are still on YouTube and still get views. I mean, that’s, it’s a long time ago. I edited ’em in iMovie. They look like absolute trash. and one of my other friends that was there was like, I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the script.

I had to look off camera once. I need to be more polished. I wanna do it in the studio. I don’t like the lighting. And he still doesn’t have any videos online. Now, this is 20 years later, like he doesn’t have any videos online. And I’ve got hundreds, if not thousands because it’s just a bias towards action, man. I’m, I know I’m gonna, but here’s the thing, right? like I put up videos in 2003 and They looked like trashed back then. They looked okay. Not great. They certainly weren’t high-end production, But we’ve learned how to make our productions look [00:20:00] better by doing it, messing it up and getting better at it.

So you could see the progression. I had that bias towards action. So I’ve gotten better at doing things. If someone else were to start now, they would not have had that time to figure out how to do it. And now they’d have to spend so much more money on bringing in a high-end editor and, you know, that type of thing and so I think it’s, my bias towards action is I jump at things early in the process, maybe too early, but by doing that I can fail or at least look ugly, and it’s still somewhat acceptable and because it’s new. I mean, we put out, I, put out a podcast during COVID ’cause we had nothing else going on.

And the podcast has like a hundred thousand downloads and it’s just hey, here are the scripts read ’em into the microphone, send me the microphone. And it’s not a well produced podcast, but it’s still ranking and it, and and it gets stuff, and it’s all about the criminal process in Connecticut and [00:21:00] all my old associates 90% of ’em aren’t even with me anymore, but their voice is still voicing a season of the podcast because I just said, I gotta take action.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, it’s, I mean, you know this, but most lawyers are sort of scared of making a mistake, scared of looking stupid. So they just do nothing you know, it reminds me of, I don’t know, Mr. Beast, whatever, his in Jimmy, whatever his name is, where he basically said First hundred are gonna suck. you just gotta know first. hundred are gonna suck, and you just get a little bit better on each one. Just gotta start somewhere.

Jay Ruane: For me too is I knew shit was gonna suck. Like I knew that it was not gonna look great. I mean, I just, and it wasn’t gonna sound great and it wasn’t gonna be scripted well, but I also, and maybe this is just I was a different type of law student. I graduated from college, came back to where I live, started working in a bar, worked my way through law school in a bar, made my friends in my hometown. I commuted an hour each way for night school for, for law school. I didn’t partake in the [00:22:00] law school community, because I knew I was gonna be back in my hometown practicing law. So I thought it was more beneficial to me to maintain my local connections. And I mean, I still, I mean I’ll tell you right now, Marty and Buca, my, my bartender friends from back in the day when I was broke college student, you know, I could go to their bar and go out and have a beer or two and they would always cover me. And that’s mean, they’re still my friends. Like I still hang out with them and talk to them regularly. I wasn’t, I don’t give a, I don’t care what other lawyers think about me because they’re not my social circle. My friends are bartenders, salesmen, you know, that type of thing. And I think a lot of lawyers are afraid about what o other lawyers might think about them. That’s never been me. I don’t really care what other lawyers think of me. I don’t care what judges think of me, I know I’m doing right. It’s funny, I ran my first billboard, you know, back in that day, back in 2000, 2001. And I still get judges calling me the billboard lawyer. Now, if you look around [00:23:00] my state, every PI lawyer in the state has multiple billboards up, but I’m still the billboard lawyer to these local judges because I basically had my name and a phone number and said, DWI I defense on it. Like, I don’t have campaigns. I don’t have all that stuff, and I haven’t done billboards in forever, but, you know, I’m willing to take a chance when other people aren’t.

Jonathan Hawkins: That’s a great point. So you’ve done, you’ve tried a lot of stuff. I mean, you’ve tried a lot of stuff. some work,

Jay Ruane: radio, billboards, digital. I mean, I’ve done it all.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so, and I know things change over time, but what, and without giving us your secrets what’s sort of your current sort of stack, what is it that’s really generating for you?

Jay Ruane: I’ll, give the secret away because nobody’s doing it. I’ve been doing it now for five plus years. in fact, it’s interesting though. I actually went to a vendor ’cause I didn’t know how to do it. And I was like, I’m kind of busy. Let me get a vendor to do this for me. And they couldn’t figure out how to do it. They weren’t doing what I wanted them to do. So then I said, [00:24:00] screw it. I’ll spend a Saturday morning and I’ll teach myself. And I taught myself. I watch a bunch of YouTube videos. If you’re not using YouTube pre-roll ads as a lawyer. They’re 15 second Unskipable pre-roll ads. You are doing yourself the biggest disservice on the planet. I love YouTube pre-roll unskipable ads. They say you YouTube is gonna go to a 32nd Unskipable ad. I can’t wait for that because you’re getting in front of your target audience in your community for 15 seconds before you get to the video that they wanna see. I’ve served over like 17 million of these in the last five years. And we are getting so many people that are calling us now, being like, dude, you’re everywhere. I can’t turn on youTube without seeing, seeing your ad. And there’s some things that you can do. You can set it up so that they also run on YouTube tv and you can avoid it being on apps and being on websites that, you know, the kid, the Blippy website that you don’t, you’re never gonna get a client from.

So there’s refinements that you can make to your [00:25:00] campaign, but I am so, so bullish on YouTube pre-roll ads, and I got everybody in my mastermind, doing them, and they’re seeing great results. And it’s great to build brand. So freaking cheap, man. So cheap. I mean, I’m getting views for, you know, two tenths of a cent for, someone to watch 15 seconds about me, I mean, in my home state. What’s better than that?

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. Wow. That’s awesome. So, okay, so I wanna shift, so we’ve talked a little about, you know, scaling their firm, getting the clients. The other part is, you know, building the team. And so, you know, how do you keep folks happy? and I mean, both staff And attorneys and, and I asked that question, but I’ll maybe give a little context, I think on one of your podcasts.

So a while back, you sort of, talked about you had a, a longtime staff person that back in the day you’d sort of gave them, I call it a special deal about maybe they got Fridays off during the summer because they had childcare. But the, their kids grownups outta the [00:26:00] house, they don’t need the childcare anymore.

And you said, we gotta dial that back. And you’re like, wait a second. No. But then you’ve gotta, you’ve got that, and then you’ve gotta balance that with all your other newer employees that don’t have the deal. So, you, know, things change over time. So how do you keep everybody happy?

Jay Ruane: It’s tough And you actually took some advice from Seth and I kept the Friday, you know, Friday days off for that longtime employee. and it’s, it’s interesting. it’s funny, well, it’s not funny that we’re talking about this now. That was like a struggle for me, a month ago. And I was like, you know, how do I deal this?

And then last week that longtime employee’s 18-year-old son just graduated from high school a month ago, was driving from Florida to South Carolina to go see his girlfriend, fell asleep at the wheel, drove off the highway, died in a single car accident. And so we’ve now been dealing with that as a firm.

Jonathan Hawkins: my gosh.

Jay Ruane: we said you know, we said to the employee, look, I, said to her, I said, listen, I got you. You take as long as you need. I don’t [00:27:00] expect you to come back anytime soon. I know you’re gonna be dealing. She’s a single mom of three boys. She’s just, she just went actually yesterday to pick up her son’s roommates and so, I think the good thing about my firm is that we allow each client the grace each each staff member, the grace of what they need. I try to be very very in tune with what they need as employees. and so what I gave to one, I may not give to others, but I’ll give the others what they need and I’ll probably catch something from, you know, HR or from an employment lawyer saying you can’t treat people differently but in reality, you know, what Krista needed at that time and now needs is different from what one of my Ashley’s I got, I, I have two different Ashley’s, but one of my Ashley’s needs? And so what she needs or they need, I’m gonna find a way to make that happen. And so I think everybody sort of appreciates that and I have said to everybody when they come here at my [00:28:00] annual meetings, I say, look, you are never gonna make a million dollars working at this law firm, but we are gonna make it possible and beneficial for you to have the family or the personal life that you want and you can travel or you can stay at home with your kids, or you can volunteer at your school, or you can coach a team. Like we will make that happen and we will work around y your life’s needs so that you have a fully fully connected life to all the aspects that you wanna do.

And I think everybody sort of appreciates that and, and I was being shortsighted. I was like, oh, I wanna get more work out of her. You know, I’m paying her $90,000 a year she she should work more than, four days a week. And I then, in the grand scheme of things, I could call her up. I could call her up today and say, Hey Krista, I need this. And she would drop preparing for the funeral for her son to do what she needed To do for me. I know she is a ride or die, so I need to be ride or [00:29:00] die for my people as well and that’s just, you know, that’s just my philosophy and I don’t make the kind of money that other lawyers make, and I’m okay with that.

I have gotten my time and I can do the things that secure their job, and really sort of live the life that I love. And so I’m, happy where I am in life. I have stress, but I don’t have the type of stress that cripples me. I have the type of stress that invigorates me.

Jonathan Hawkins: Wow. That is a powerful story there man. But it, you know, the other point there is, no matter how much we plan, life’s gonna be thrown us curve balls.

Jay Ruane: Exactly. Exactly. And you need to, when I, never thought i’d have 45 employees. I, never wanted it, I never thought I would. But each one is in their own individual. I have another employee overseas who is going through fertility treatments and you know, we’re trying to be supportive of her and do what she needs to do so that she could have a child with her spouse and you know, it’s, all of those things. It’s, taking people where they are and saying, we’re trying to do something [00:30:00] together and I know my people have the business the firm. They’re gonna do the right thing by the firm. But I also want them to have a life where they can do the right thing by themselves and the right thing by the firm.

And if there’s ever a conflict, then come to me and honestly say, this isn’t the place for me anymore. And we just had an employee leave on Friday. Who was great. She started in January and she made it six months. Great person, good employee, but the conversation was, I’m an introvert, I’m working remote, I’m in my house. If I don’t leave my house for a job, I can go weeks without talking to anybody outside of the firm. I need to have some sort of social interaction. Otherwise, it’s not healthy for me. I have to leave this job, even though I love it. Awesome. I’m happy you recognize that you can move on and we’ll figure it out and you’re part of the alumni association now.

Jonathan Hawkins: So you mentioned something else a minute ago that I also have heard you talk about [00:31:00] more than once I think on your podcast. And that is you know, you’re not there trying to squeeze out every last dollar of profit. So you have high Overhired or you have extra attorneys to make sure they’re there and you Jay don’t have to actually, you know, do all this, detailed attorney work. And so, you know, I commend you on that, I think that is knowing yourself and it’s, you know, back, and maybe it’s the Dan Martell buy back your time kind of concept, but it’s like you want this to be enjoyable for you and that extra squeezing out that extra dollar profit, you know, not worth it to you.

Jay Ruane: Well, there’s

Jonathan Hawkins: not many people out there that are, that are taking that approach.

Jay Ruane: Well, there’s different types of profit, right? I enjoy and I profit from being able to have dinner with my kids every night, you know, that’s important to me and I get a benefit from it. Yes, it’s not cash in my pocket, but I get that and I know my, my team makes that happen for me. And so I’ve deliberately decided to over hire. We have one extra [00:32:00] staff member who’s cross-trained on everything and we are in the process of adding that extra lawyer. I have my, my, like chief operating officer is an attorney, And I know If I didn’t want to go to court, I could say you go, no. Now there are other situations like, last year Dave, one of my one of my lawyers his wife had a baby. He had just joined us and then, you know, two months later, his wife was having a baby. I told him, you have to take your time off. Like that’s a non-negotiable. You don’t get that time back with a newborn.

And so I stepped in and I, I covered some continuance and I loved it. ’cause I go to his courthouses and so I’m so rarely I mean I try to avoid court like the plague. I show up there, I’m like, Hey, I’m here on this file.

And they look and they see our firm name on it and they’re like, oh, are you the new guy at Ruane’s office?

And I say, yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing. Dave’s wife just had a baby, So can you give me a continuance? of like, I’ll get you outta here. You know, don’t stress, you know, we’ll kick this out for a couple of weeks and Dave will be able to handle it later.

And I was like, awesome. Thank you so [00:33:00] much. And you know, ’cause I really don’t know what I’m doing. I haven’t been trained yet. But that’s the thing. Like I want, you know, I’ll go to court for that kind of stuff. I’m not taking cases anymore. I’ve handled thousands of cases and I just got burned out on that.

So now I’m trying to do stuff that I can contribute to the firm that other people can’t. you know, ’cause I have a vision, I have a, a, way of looking at things. and so I think I serve the firm well in my capacity. But I could always jump in if I needed to.

Jonathan Hawkins: Yeah. so the way I sort of talk about it is, is, you know, I think it’s healthy for a firm to have, what I call it, slack. If everybody is stretched to the absolute maximum, or a 100 or 110%, if you add anything new to it, it’s, something’s gonna break. But if you have some slack you know, you can push it around and sometimes, you get to, you know, somebody leaves and you don’t have the slack. But the goal is, in my opinion, for a healthy organization law firm or not is to have some slack in there so you can fill in where you need.

Real quick. Thanks for listening. If you’re getting any value out of this podcast, please take two seconds to hit the [00:34:00] subscribe button and leave a five star review. It would really mean a lot to me. Now back to the show.

Jonathan Hawkins: So that leads me to my next question you mentioned sort of you know, what it is you do now? So what is your role now? what’s a typical week like for you?

Jay Ruane: So I have a meeting at Tuesdays at two o’clock with my CRM developer. We you know I started so long ago. The only thing that was out there in the space for managing lawyer’s time was a a server based time matters. If anybody remembers, time matters from 30 years ago. That was the only CRM that existed. And, that was basically for civil firms, not for criminal.

So, one of my interns at the time had recently graduated from college had some friends that were into database, engineering. I said, why don’t we build our own? Then we went out, we found a database developer. We’ve been with them now for 25 years. So I have a weekly meeting with my database team to update our CRM. So [00:35:00] we have a in-house home brewed CRM that does everything we needed to do. Nothing. We don’t, and it costs me, you know, probably 25 to $30,000 a year in improvements and upgrades and stuff. But other than that, I, I’m not paying a per license, you know, all that stuff. So that’s been phenomenal. and then I have my leadership meeting 10 AM on Thursday. Other than that, my week is wide open. I have no other requirements. So I have a two hour time block, one hour, one day, one hour, the other day, and then the rest of the day is do whatever you want, Jay. so I, you know, I will go down the rabbit hole of, Hey, how can I use AI to make my lawyers’ lives easier?

How can I make our representation better? I’m doing something now in my in my mastermind, we’ve used AI to develop a tool to do a either a form interview, like a 60 question interview of the client, their background, their education, their family history, their mental health, all of that [00:36:00] stuff. And then we use a good prompt and we upload it and we get these eight to 12 to 20 page mitigation reports. And those things are revolutionary because nobody’s been doing stuff like that in, at that, at scale using ai and getting so deep. I mean, we can run, them through the PTSD social worker tests, the anxiety one, the craft for substance abuse, all of those tests and get a scoring that we could then supply to the courts and the prosecutors and so I was able to develop all that stuff and then I gave it to the people in my mastermind because they’re also criminal defense lawyers all over the country. But, and I mean, I just got in, I got a Slack message earlier today from one of my mastermind members who’s in court right now and use the mitigation packet that the AI prompted. So literally like send the client the questions and upload it with the prompt and you get a report, takes the lawyer, takes less than three minutes of their time and they’re getting these 20 page documents, which are [00:37:00] beautiful. He’s, he was in court this morning down in Florida and he just took somebody from a felony with mandatory jail down to two misdemeanors with probation, because of the mitigation packet that they put forward and his, you know, advocacy, and he’s like, this thing just is worth a million dollars. You know, because, and I could not have had the time to say, where could I take these and where could I go with this using AI if I didn’t have the time freedom that I have because of my role. So I’m able to get creative and I think that’s one of my my, my secret strengths is I look at things differently than most lawyers do because I don’t define myself as an attorney. I define myself as a legal entrepreneur who happens to work in the criminal law firm space. And so that’s really has been tremendous.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I want to go down the AI path with you, but before we go there, I want you, you mentioned your mastermind, so, so tell me about that. So, you know, there are lots of masterminds out there. You have one that’s focused on criminal. How long have you been doing it? You know, how many people are in [00:38:00] it, how, you know, how do you get in it? What’s, what’s, tell me about it.

Jay Ruane: So it’s simple. We were, I was looking for, because I had so much time freedom.

A couple of years ago, I started A social media marketing company for law firms called Firm Flex. And that started the September before COVID hit. And we had great momentum and then COVID hit and what was one of the first things that law firms cut was their social media marketing. ’cause it was an easy thing to say, Hey, let’s cut this expense. So that business worked well for about a year and then slowly started to bleed out. And then I, you know, I like anything, you lose interest. And, my partners lost interest as well. They had businesses that were growing And so we shuttered that last year. and I had some bandwidth and my wife was pushing me. She’s saying, you take these calls from these lawyers all over the country, why don’t you just do something with that? And I’ve been to John Fisher’s mastermind. I love the idea of it. And I have been to Pilmma, I’ve been to, you know, all of [00:39:00] these other PI focused groups. And I said, you know, no one does this in criminal. In fact, I brought to some major criminal organizations and said, why aren’t you doing anything about how to do this business better? And a lot of times the pushback was, if we talk about money than people think of us as those scumbag lawyers who were just worried about getting paid and not, not, you know, not focusing on the results.

And I said, well, there’s a way that you can have both and be balanced. But those organizations didn’t wanna do anything with business.

So I just said at one point, screw it. I’m gonna do it on my own. So I literally, I posted, you know, I’m thinking about doing this Mastermind. Is anybody interested in joining? I got 10 emails back. If you do that, I’m there. So I just decided, all right, what am I gonna call this thing? You know, elite builder, blah, blah, blah. And I just was sitting around and I was like, the criminal Mastermind. There you go. That’s it. Right? That’s it’s the perfect name.

So I went [00:40:00] out and Darn it, the domain name was available. So actually a little over three years ago, I registered domain name. My brother still builds websites. So I said, Hey, throw me together a quick website. And I sent those people and I still have, I mean, I was just looking at my membership list of the 10 people that sent me those email, eight of ’em are still members.

One of ’em isn’t a member because they became a judge. I mean, they’re seeing value in, in our meetings and we’ve been doing it. and I try to price it, you know, so that people who are criminal defense lawyers, I’m not breaking the bank over the course of a year. It’s like one case covers it. but I go out and I try to find the best subject matter experts to come in and speak to us twice a month. Sometimes I’ll lead the lecture because it’s something that I know, like coming up in a couple of weeks, I’m doing one about onboarding starts with the job post and how to really get your culture ingrained from the start when you start, you know. Bringing people in. but then I’ll, I’ll reach out and I’ll bring in creative speakers. We’ve had people on at SEO, digital marketing hiring, firing, [00:41:00] how to, you know, how to structure your business. We just had somebody on hr, but I’ll go outside, like I have people coming in on AI that are not related to the law field whatsoever. We did an AI thing two years ago with, a woman who is an influencer in the AI space, and I reached out to her and, we’ve maintained a relationship. She’ll be coming back in 2026. but I even have somebody speaking, in October about how to get the best value out of the points on credit cards. as a, you know, you’re spending all this money on, on your credit cards and you’re accumulating these points, how do you use them tactically to get the best value out of ’em? so the, you know, I’m trying to, I’m trying to bring in speakers that can make a difference. So we do focus on intake and that type of thing. but it’s all focused on criminal defense lawyer issues. So getting paid, how to get the right credit card processor, how to protect yourself so that, you’re not, you know, you’re not, stuck trying a case for nothing. Those types of things.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I’m a criminal defense lawyer out there who’s not in it, hasn’t heard of it. How do I get in? Is there an application?

Jay Ruane: Yeah. Just come, just come to the [00:42:00] criminal mastermind.com. Click apply, sign up right there, then and there. you know, what we’ll do is I’ll do an onboarding with you if you, if it turns out that it’s not the right place for you, there’s no long-term commitments or anything like that. I’ll just cancel you gotta go Have a nice day. If it’s early enough in the process, I’ll refund your money. you know, once You start, you know, coming to sessions, obviously you gotta pay for, it because I pay to bring in the speakers. Like, I don’t, I don’t Let Let people come in and not get paid That’s important to me. and, I don’t have any sponsors, you know, we’re, self-funded in that respect, like, you know, we’re getting true unvarnished opinions from people and it’s been helpful I think to all the lawyers. A number of lawyers were, you know, I do 50% criminal, but I also do, you know, 25% residential real estate, 25% trust estates. And a lot of ’em have said, Hey, because of the stuff that we’ve learned, I’ve been able to get rid of all the stuff that I didn’t wanna do that I was doing to, you know, to keep the doors open. Now I’m doing all criminal and I’m loving it. And that’s really helpful to me.

Jonathan Hawkins: So what, what’s the website?

Jay Ruane: The criminalmastermind.com.

Jonathan Hawkins: Alright, [00:43:00] so, alright, perfect. So I want to talk ai, I know you, I’ve been seeing you post on, you know, in best, best era. I’ve heard you talk about it.

you know, this is a rabbit hole that I’m starting to go down. I’m, I’m much farther behind than you. but there are lots of lawyers out there there are still scared as hell on this thing Oh, there’s a fake case. I can’t even touch it. so let’s go. So, I guess you’ve been at it, how long have you been at it and sort of what was your gateway into it? Was it ChatGPT, like everybody else or I.

Jay Ruane: So ChatGPT launched and I signed up that very first day. I said, I gotta check this thing out. and I, you know, with fits and starts, I was like, oh, can you create me a script for this? And, eh, and I got better at prompting and really now what I’m finding is I will, I like Claude in terms of the content.

It creates that when I’m creating content. for example. I will defer to Claude as a better tool for that, but I’ll use ChatGPT to help me parse out my [00:44:00] prompts. So I’ll say to him, here’s what I wanna do. How do I prompt it? and it’ll give me, and then I’ll refine the prompt multiple times in ChatGPT, and then I’ll take it to Claude to execute, or I’ll take it from ChatGPT, you know, to another AI tool to execute. so I have multiple accounts going, at any one time because I think, you know, it’s good for me.

Like, I mean, grock has its limitations. I don’t like the way it writes, but it has access to real-time data from, from X that you can’t get in some of the other, other things. So everything has its place. I mean, just like you know, you might go to Chick-fil-A one day and you might go to five guys another day, or Shake Shack, you know, everything has, its, its role.

And so you should be using multiple AI platforms, I think, to get what you need out of all the, and I was, I actually sent a Slack message last night to Ryan McKean, and I said, you know. You could vibe, code, vibe, coding is, the ability to, tell AI what you want in an [00:45:00] app or what you want in the code and it just does it for you and so there’s things like rur, which is an a vibe coding platform and I was messing around with it last week. I have a son who has ADHD and so making sure that he gets all of his assignments done is very difficult ’cause he forgets to write ’em down. So I coded him an app for his phone in an hour that we installed. And so now he’s able to track all of his assignments and he gets reminders, pings to be able to input the data and that type of thing. So I said to Ryan, I said, you know, you could probably vibe code yourself your own custom CRM, tie it to your Google Drive and never have to pay for a CRM ever again.

Jonathan Hawkins: I saw somebody post on Twitter that the other day, basically said HubSpot, all these big, they’re like, they’re done. It’s like, I vi I vibe coded this thing. And you know, it’s so yeah. Now that’s the thing that I, I’m seeing it, I’m watching the videos and I’m completely overwhelmed. I’m like, how the hell do I [00:46:00] personally get there? And so there’s a lot of people out there that are even further behind. So I wanna sort of walk through the evolution for those people who are still. you know, brand new to ai. I mean, most people use it start out as almost like a Google then, and then what’s the progression? You know, what, what do you see as the progression?

Jay Ruane: I’ll tell you, I think what the biggest problem is, and I actually put this in my newsletter that goes out tomorrow. The biggest problem is it’s a wide open world of ai, especially with the videos, with the you know, the speaker list YouTube videos that you could create at massive scale and and all the content you could create for websites and all the coding you could do.

There’s so much potential out there that it feels like you’re drinking from a fire hose. What you really need to do is identify what is it that you need? One thing. And focus on just getting that one thing done. And that may thing may take 15 iterations. I’ll give you a perfect example to everybody who’s listening. I have an idea of something that I wanna do in my mastermind. It’s [00:47:00] a end of the year sprint. We’re gonna do eight private coaching sessions with people over four months. and we’re gonna have a, a goal and that type of thing. And I said, I know I could get AI to help me develop the curriculum and the offering and the emails that’ll go out and all that other stuff and it took 37 revisions in Claude to be able to come out with the final product. But now I have all the scripted emails, I have the agenda, I have the worksheets, I have everything. And it took me probably, you know, an afternoon to get all that stuff done, 37 revisions. but the problem is, is, that it wouldn’t have started until I said I’d like to build a, a four month program for my, mastermind. and I have my AI has been trained on my mastermind and has access to the documents. I said, what documents have I already created that can help me, build this thing? And AI started accessing my stuff and we had a conversation, you know, asked me 30 questions about my goal and ask me 10 questions about what my client should get out of it. and [00:48:00] so really you just gotta start with one thing and try to, you know, do that one thing. So if you’re in pi, maybe you like the idea of having a client, like how did the injury hurt you? How did the injury affect your life? interview. Well, you could do that. Have them fill that out, and then prompt AI to create the story so that you could read that to the jury.

Here’s what they say in their own words, that type of thing. Maybe that’s the one thing you could start with. Don’t try to do a million things all at once. Don’t tell your staff here, I want you to med Chrons with it. I want you to do, you know, a buy like one, pick one thing, master that one thing because while you’re doing that one thing, you’re gonna be getting skills that you could use to do more things and that’s really the, the most important thing. I didn’t come with my mitigation prompt until I was two years into using ai. Now we have it set up with a provider where we will trigger a text message to our [00:49:00] client and they will say, do you wanna answer this? in a form? Or do you want us to call you and we have an AI agent that will call the client and talk them through the thing. And they’ll talk to ’em in Spanish or in French or in English or in Portuguese, you know, whatever language that they need. And then they’ll translate the answers to us, send it to us, and then we could use that to drop it into a Google Drive, which automatically goes to Claude with the correct prompt and then creates that and then emails that to us so that we have it. But I didn’t start with that. I started with Hey, I bet you Claude could do a better job writing a narrative than I could.

Hey, you know, ChatGPT, what questions should I be asking for this? and they’ll, you’ll get that outta them even better.

Jonathan Hawkins: You know, that just what you just went through sounds amazing. and also intimidating as hell. And the thing is, is so I listen to, yeah, I listen to people like you and I’m like, holy crap, I’m so far [00:50:00] behind. I need to remember it, that there’s like, you know, 80%, 90% of the people are, are behind me. But yeah, that’s,

Jay Ruane: of the people that are behind you. I mean, that’s the reality. I mean, my father loves the client narratives. He’s still practicing at 76. He sees, he is like, this is amazing. I’ve been practicing for 48 years. I’ve never had something this good to advocate for my client. I love it. He loves the byproduct. He just, he’s not actively doing it ’cause I’ve automated the whole thing but he loves the output and can use that at court for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so let me ask about some of the automation. What tools do you use to help automate the AI stuff?

Jay Ruane: So I’ve just been using the native integrations with Claude and with Google Drive and with Gmail. We’re using Zapier for some things.

In fact, I need to email Zapier to do a open AI connection for me because they don’t have, what they need built natively, but they will set it up for you. So I mean, it’s really just using the native tools. I know Dan Schnider Bush, uses [00:51:00] make.com a lot. I’m old, you know, I’m over 50.

So Zapier or Zapier, whatever, it’s however it’s pronounced. I mean it’s a French company, so I would think it’d be Zapier, but everyone says Zapier. I just, you know, stick with what I know and that’s part of the problem.

Like, you know, I, my, my MailChimp account for my law firm is probably a mess. ’cause I’ve had it for 20 years. The new MailChimp account for the Mastermind is so much cleaner and nicer. you know, I I, I stick with the tools that work rather than try to invest in. And I think that’s the other thing too. Too many people just love to buy things as a lawyer because they think there’s gonna, they’re buying a magic wand. There is no magic wand.

You have to do the work or you have to understand to do the work. Joey Vitale makes a great point that when you have a problem, there’s two solutions. You can either learn what the problem is and how to fix it. And even if you don’t fix it yourself, you understand it. Or you could just throw money at it. And Make that not a problem for today. The problem is, that there’s always gonna be problems and you’re gonna have to throw more and more money at it. So in reality, it’s better to learn and know, okay, I know I can [00:52:00] understand the concepts, maybe I don’t have to be the one to executing it you know, I had a problem with Google Analytics last month and I said to my marketing, I said, we could do this, we could figure this out. We can get somebody on Upwork and they can have it done in an hour. Let’s just pay somebody. ’cause I wanna move forward.

Jonathan Hawkins: So, so Jay you’ve been very kind and I have probably about three hours more of questions and we don’t, we don’t have time for that. So but I do have a few. I do have a few that I wanna make sure I ask you.

So, we had talked about this offline, but I’m curious, you know, is there a sort of a a strong opinion or life philosophy that you have that you live by?

Jay Ruane: Yes I do. And I try to teach it to my kids, and I tell everybody that I interact with that. This is my philosophy. As humans we have the infinite capacity for only two things. That is love and that is knowledge. You should seek out as much of them as you possibly can.

Jonathan Hawkins: Beautiful. That’s beautiful. And AI can never replace that, [00:53:00] so.

Jay Ruane: That’s true. That’s true. I mean, you know, the reality is that at the end of the day, people connect with people. I mean if I can use AI to allow me to connect with more people, I win all around. I’m using a tool that’s out there And, I think we could all do better connecting. You know, we come into our offices, our door gets shut, we put our head down, and we do work as lawyers, but you know, people look to lawyers to solve problems they can’t solve themselves and that’s really, you know, a challenge that we have. And it’s, an honorable profession to have. So I think, we could really do better by each other for sure.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I do have another question before we go there. You’ve written a number of books, there any you want to plug? You know, I’ve read Tiger Tactics. I guess I read the first one. I think there’s a second one. I Don’t think read that

Jay Ruane: should be outta copy. I actually just released book last week, Connecticut Trial Handbook that was helped me you know, it’s funny, I started it during COVID. I had written a book back in 2014, “DUI Trial Handbook”, just to sort of keep [00:54:00] building my name in DUI and, I said in COVID I was gonna do work on that and update it.

And it went from being, you know, 200 pages to 450 pages and I couldn’t get it over the finish line. And I said a month ago, shit, I could just have Claude help me out, reformulate a couple of these chapters and I put the right prompt in. I used ChatGPT and Claude melded them together. I got the book out, it’s on available online now. the Connecticut Criminal Trial Handbook. And I did that knowing that I would be able to use some benefit as being known as the author of this criminal trial handbook in Connecticut. They would, I would get some love on the internet because of it. I also wrote the one day MBA for lawyers because I had been looking for something like that, for years and there really wasn’t anything out there.

So back in December, I said, you know what? I’m just gonna do it. I used ChatGPT I said, I wanna write a book called the one Day MBA for lawyers. Give me 12 [00:55:00] chapters. What should the book be? So he gave me the 12 chapters. He said, now outline the chapters for me. So I basically had the entire book outlined by ChatGPT and then I was able to just sit down and just type away. ’cause it was, I knew all the stuff to answer those questions. And I got the book done in like a day and a half of just sitting at a keyboard and banging it out. so you know, it’s, you know, I’m, and just last week I said I have an idea for another book, so I got another one that’s gonna come out in July. And it’s kind of crazy seeing my name on all these books. But, you know, as a nerdy, you know, high school kid, who just wanted to read a book, write a book, I got a bunch out there. I still have to do some fiction. But I have an idea for that. I started writing one when I was in law school, so I may try to use AI to help me finish that up.

Jonathan Hawkins: So I’m curious. I’m in the middle of a book for myself, and it’ll come out hopefully by early October. I’m curious what sort of impact has that had on you, your practice, your life, [00:56:00] whatever,

Jay Ruane: Well, I.

Jonathan Hawkins: I you, anything you can point out.

Jay Ruane: Well, I mean for tiger Tactics for that series of books, it introduced me to an amazing group of other lawyer entrepreneurs that are out there. Got me a bunch of speaking gigs to audiences that I wouldn’t otherwise have been in front of. And I enjoy helping other people. you know, I grew up. I’m not very religious, but I went to a Jesuit high school in Jesuit college. and so I believe

in their philosophy of being a man for others, and giving back as much as you can. So that’s really what steers me. And if I could write a book and, be honest about the struggles that I’ve had, maybe somebody else who’s in those struggles says, okay, I. These are not insurmountable.

They are just part of the process. And so, you know, when you look back, you say, oh God, that hill look so large. but I got over it and now it doesn’t look so large. and that’s really what I wanna encourage people to do. Like, you can do this. You’re smart. If you got into law school, If you passed the bar, you’re smart enough to do most of these things.

You’re smart enough to understand what your marketing vendor is, is trying to do for you. and you would owe it to [00:57:00] yourself to actually learn enough about that, that you can have an intelligent conversation because you can’t just say, go do it. ’cause that’s when you get ripped off, right? So, you wanna know a little bit, you wanna have like a a t level of knowledge.

You go deep in an area, but you have a wide variety of knowledge going across the top. I think I probably have a, I’m more like a WI go up and down and up and down in multiple sections.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love it. So Jay, you know, as a, as an outside observer, you know, I mean, you’ve done, you’ve had an incredible run as a legal entrepreneur. You’ve done a ton of stuff. I mean, it, I mean, we’ve talked about some of it, there’s a ton we didn’t talk about. But as you sit here today and you’re looking forward, you know, what’s the vision for the next 10, 15 years? What is it that you haven’t done yet that you want to do?

Jay Ruane: Really my vision for I only have eight more years in practice. I announced that two years ago. I do a state of the Union type of speech every December when we end the year to my whole team. And I announced that, when I turned 62, I’m retiring and so I [00:58:00] announced that because I wanted to hold myself accountable. I only have eight more annual meetings left. and I am, I’m purposely now building my firm to function and survive without me. I mean, I had last year, 2024, we had seven babies born to my office among all of the people and they all are younger mothers and fathers who need to know that they have a secure job for the next 30, 40 years. So my job over the next eight is to make it so that this firm can sustain their life in a way that they want. And they’re not looking for a job in nine years or 10 years. I want them to be able to take the keys to this car and continue to drive it and so I’m doing everything possible to make that happen. I’m relying on my leadership team to make decisions more and more. I’m deferring to them to make decisions.

I mean, one of the main reasons why I built the Criminal Mastermind and I record everything is so that I can give it to my leadership team and say, [00:59:00] here, we’ve covered that in one of our sessions with an expert and so you can release them to this when you have that problem and you know, like Emily and Theresa who will take over running this firm along with the other people, you know, they’re gonna have 20, 30 years ahead of them being able to run a firm that is set up for them to do that. And, I have full confidence in them so it’s really kind of just me. Allowing myself to get outta the way. And, I’m excited for that. And then come come, eight more years. My daughter graduates from high school and I’m done.

Jonathan Hawkins: I love the goal and I love the public declaration. I think that’s key. That’s key. Most people forget that part, and they just, it just drags on

Jay Ruane: Well, if you don’t say it out loud, it’s not true. I mean, you know, it’s, I it’s just, you gotta commit to something. and I have goals for when I am retired, things I want to do, that I’m building in now, so that I am able to do that and that’s what it’s all about. It’s, finding the next thing that really, [01:00:00] really inspires you. Lights your soul on fire. I don’t define myself as just a lawyer, and if you do, that’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with being like, I just wanna be a lawyer and If that’s the case, run towards that. Be the best lawyer you could possibly be in your subject matter. Become nationally or internationally known.

Take every class you can get, start teaching the classes. Really embrace it. If that’s what you wanna be, go for it. I encourage you because if that, if that fulfills you, man, you should be doing it. but don’t do anything half-assed. that’s the takeaway.

Jonathan Hawkins: So Jay, for somebody out there that wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way?

Jay Ruane: You can shoot me an email Jay@Ruaneattorneys or Jay@thecriminalmastermind.com. Either one of those will get to me. you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I don’t do that much compared to what I used to. I thought there are no criminal defense lawyers in great capacity on LinkedIn. I don’t know why, but, you know, there’s a lot of civil lawyers that, are engaged in it. [01:01:00] So I’m, I’m, there. I’ll post things but you can get me on LinkedIn. You can get me on any of the social platforms, usually at JayRuane, J-A-Y-R-U-A-N-E. But shoot me an email. I’m happy to I’m happy to connect with anybody that’s out there.

Jonathan Hawkins: Well, Jay, man, this has been great. I’ve enjoyed this. Thank you for coming on. I look forward to meeting you, meeting you in person soon.

Jay Ruane: Yeah, definitely. We’ll have to get together at some event. I, you know, you know, as my kids get a little older, I’ll and my daughter starts driving, like we talked about before, coming on the air you know, I’ll be able to escape more and get back on the seminar circuit. So I’m looking forward to that

Jonathan Hawkins: Awesome. Well, I appreciate it.

Jay Ruane: Thank you so much.

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 [01:02:00] www.lawfirmgc.com. We’ll see you next time for more origin stories and insights from successful law firm founders.