Gregg Goldfarb: Staying Profitable in a Changing Legal Landscape

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Gregg Goldfarb discuss:

• Evolving legal marketing strategies
• Non-lawyer ownership in law firms
• Revenue growth through referrals and partnerships
• Networking and education for lawyers

Key Takeaways:

• Lawyers can expand their revenue streams by engaging in referral marketing, where they identify cases outside their expertise and refer them to other firms, earning a fee for the referral​.
• Non-lawyer owned firms are now possible in states like Arizona, allowing lawyers to partner with marketers or business professionals to focus on legal work while leveraging external business expertise for growth.
• Legal professionals should invest in their personal growth through education, coaching, and attending legal conferences to learn new strategies for marketing, networking, and expanding their business horizons.
• The legal industry is seeing increased involvement from financial entities like Wall Street, which is providing capital to law firms for mass tort cases, highlighting the growing intersection of finance and law.

“The legal conferences now are much better… it’s entertainment, it’s information, it’s connections.” —  Gregg Goldfarb

Read more from Steve at Above the Law: AboveTheLaw.com/tag/Steve-Fretzin/

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Episode References: 

The Daily Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736

About Gregg Goldfarb: Gregg Goldfarb is a trial lawyer with over 30 years of experience, focusing on, among other things, mass torts. Gregg also hosts his own podcast called Cut to the Chase, which covers public interest issues ranging from law, the environment, and anti-Semitism to the arts.

Connect with Gregg Goldfarb:  

Website: https://gregggoldfarb.com/

Phone: 305-374-7000

Show: Cut To The Chase Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cut-to-the-chase-podcast-hosted-by-gregg-goldfarb/id1551362164

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregggoldfarb/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masstortguy/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, before we get to the show, I just want to share that I’m now writing for Above the Law. If you enjoy this podcast, you might also enjoy my monthly columns. You can go to Above the Law and type my name into the magnifying glass in the top right corner to read my latest articles. Thanks and enjoy the show.

[00:00:21] Narrator: You’re listening to be that lawyer life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice Each episode your host author and lawyer coach steve fretzin Will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results Now here’s your host steve fretzin 

[00:00:42] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome back to the be that lawyer with fretzin podcast I am steve fretzin the host and I hope that you’re Having a lovely day.

[00:00:51] Steve Fretzin: And we’ve got a lot of crazy weather going around the country, but this is not a show about the weather. Guess what? It’s a show about helping you to be that lawyer, someone confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. That’s what we do here. And whether it’s listening to the show, that’s a great way to go.

[00:01:05] Steve Fretzin: I’ve also written a number of books on business development and networking. You can check out on Amazon. And continue to plug out, you know, videos and all kinds of content to help you to be that lawyer confident organized in a skilled rainmaker, even writing for above the law. Now, Greg, can you believe that?

[00:01:20] Steve Fretzin: That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s a lot of fun. It’s like, that’s a little bit of an, you know, an interesting platform. And some people, most people love it. Some people are a little, you know, I’m not sure about it. Because they’re a little racy at times but I think, yeah, but high quality, high quality. And they’ve, I think they get a good volume of lawyers.

[00:01:36] Steve Fretzin: So, you know, hopefully my articles will, will touch people in a friendly way and help them to advance their interests. Greg, so much. So happy that you’re here. You had me on your podcast and and it’s called the cut to the chase podcast. And We’re going to talk about that in a few minutes, but I do want to bring up a quote from your mother, which is a rare special occasion that we get a mother quote.

[00:01:58] Steve Fretzin: And it is, you need to spend money to make money. And I, that’s very true. So tell, tell us about how your mother came about giving you that wonderful advice. You know, I, 

[00:02:07] Gregg Goldfarb: she just, she’s, she, you know, like, I can’t, like, if you said to me, like, give me all your mother’s famous quotes and she’s, you know, was really big on the quotes, you know, I couldn’t really do it, but in the, in context.

[00:02:21] Gregg Goldfarb: They just come out of my mouth and I’m like, Oh my God, that’s my mother used to say that. Yeah, that’s, you know, she was really about, you know, spending money to make money. She didn’t think you know, my father was really not, and he’s actually still a practicing lawyer, 93 years old, but he doesn’t want to spend any money.

[00:02:37] Gregg Goldfarb: His, his, his M. O. is. You know, watch your expenses. My mother was like, go for it. Spend the money. Wow. You’re not going to grow unless you spend the money. And not that she was really like a business person. Although she was, you know, she did work, but you know, that, that was her, one of her famous sayings.

[00:02:55] Gregg Goldfarb: She 

[00:02:55] Steve Fretzin: picked it up and went with it. My father was very much, you know, the saver and just like, you know, put it in the market, put it in the market. And I I’m all for that. But here’s the, here’s the, here’s the rub. If you put it in the market and you get 8 percent back, that’s wonderful. But what if you put some of your money into yourself?

[00:03:13] Steve Fretzin: What if you invest it in coaching, training, marketing, branding, another business starting your own thing, invested in you because you’re the one you can rely on. That’s been my, my dad also always taught me to be an entrepreneur. He always set me up to be an entrepreneur from, from a very young age. And that, that was because he wouldn’t give me any money.

[00:03:32] Steve Fretzin: He made me work, which was, which was at the time pissed me off. But today I go, thank you. That was actually a very, very good luck. And my son, by the way, same thing. He works his ass off and takes jobs and, you know, he’s away all summer at a job. And so, you know, this is the kind of stuff but, but in the point, going back to it, Greg, Investing in yourself and spending money to make money.

[00:03:52] Steve Fretzin: I’m all for it. 

[00:03:53] Gregg Goldfarb: And she also, that was another one of hers was, you know, your best investment is your, the investment in yourself. She used to say that to me. And 

[00:04:02] Steve Fretzin: I don’t get the mindset of people that don’t, that don’t get that, but that’s sort of not my problem. That’s their problem. I can only help people that want to be helped and, and advise people that, you know, everyone’s going to be my teenager.

[00:04:13] Steve Fretzin: No one’s going to listen to me. So anyway, there’s that to go in on. He’s back from his his summer away and, and, and full of a piss and vinegar. So so listen, man, I want to share with everybody Greg Goldfarb is a managing partner, Greg Goldfarb, LLP. And give us your background because what we’re going to talk about today and your background, they sort of go hand in hand.

[00:04:35] Gregg Goldfarb: My background. So I’ve been practicing lawyer for a little over 30 years. I was not a, I was, you know, I had peaked academically in high school, got to Virginia, University of Virginia, you know, met, started to chase women and then things went downhill. And got into law school. And by that time I was like, you know what, I better go with the law school.

[00:04:56] Gregg Goldfarb: Way that will select me and be that I think can help me market myself down the road. So I chose diversity Miami because my father is a practicing lawyer. Miami. I figured that was the way to go. I was a big environmentalist when I was growing up. So I started a nonprofit called clean Miami river, which.

[00:05:13] Gregg Goldfarb: Was going to use the clean water act to try to clean the Miami river. And from there I got involved in a bunch of environmental litigation in the Everglades, and I really learned how to try cases. We had five week trials, we had eight week trials really interesting stuff, exciting stuff. And then I just sort of kind of moved on to my, you know, sole practice, got involved with some other partners.

[00:05:37] Gregg Goldfarb: And you know, here I am 30 years later, I’ve pretty much covered the gamut of what I would call plaintiff’s litigation. I don’t do transactional work, but I mean, I’ve done everything from whistleblowers you know fraud cases, civil cases, business law cases, accident cases, slip and falls, and now a lot of mass torts and insurance claims.

[00:05:59] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. 

[00:05:59] Gregg Goldfarb: So, and then I have my podcast. Yeah. 

[00:06:02] Steve Fretzin: The podcast cut to the chase. Tell us 30 seconds about that. Okay. So, 

[00:06:06] Gregg Goldfarb: so about 4 or 5 years ago, I started to realize that my bread and butter work was dying out. I got into mass tort world not actively litigating the cases, but just acquiring them and sending them out.

[00:06:18] Gregg Goldfarb: And I said, you know what, I need a platform to develop my persona in the mass tort space. So I decided to do this podcast covering mass tort issues that are public interest in nature and it’s kind of grown beyond the mass tort world, where now I just kind of focus on public interest. In addition to mass store case, 

[00:06:40] Steve Fretzin: and I think one, an area that lawyers may not realize or may not be taking full advantage of is the ability to find business and give it to someone else to do and make and make money on it.

[00:06:52] Steve Fretzin: And that that’s unique in the legal space. And I’ll just say my late great father, Larry, the lawyer had his best year ever when he got paid out on a personal injury. And I think the number was 685, 000 that he got paid as the referral fee for essentially making a phone call not a bad payday, not a bad, you know, year for him.

[00:07:12] Steve Fretzin: And so you know, that’s one, one of many ways. And I’m teaching my lawyer clients all the time. How to cross market, right? So you bring in the business, you, you get the stuff that you don’t do, but you have partners that can do and people that can handle it. You get the origination, right? Build your book of business, keep the relationship, but you’re not actually billing those hours, which is a great way to grow.

[00:07:34] Steve Fretzin: But what’s your, what’s your take on all that? 

[00:07:36] Gregg Goldfarb: Well, I mean, that’s where I’m at right now. I, I, you know, I bounced around between different specialties based upon what the wind was, where the wind was blowing. So at one point, Rodney King, the police brutality. In California and all of a sudden I got involved in police brutality and I became the name in Florida and I still get calls for that, but then that became difficult.

[00:07:59] Gregg Goldfarb: You know, the courts were very difficult on the, you know, cause they wanted to protect the police departments and I understand that or whatever. After about seven years of really trying to bang that out and making a big name for myself, but winning a trial and then losing at the appellate court, all that stuff, I moved on and I kept moving on from one practice area, sexual harassment became, everybody was doing sexual, wanted to do sexual harassment, and then that kind of dried out also, so I basically got to the point where I knew a lot, and I said, you know what, let me Look into being a referring attorney because people were calling me for a lot of things that I knew enough about to assess whether, hey, you know, it sounds like an interesting case.

[00:08:39] Gregg Goldfarb: And I actually know somebody that is doing this. And so that’s, that’s sort of what, you know, kind of got me going in that world. 

[00:08:47] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And then what, so what do we want to kind of teach lawyers about the world of referral marketing, referral networking to, yes, handle the work that you do and that you do best, you know, what’s your superpower is.

[00:09:02] Steve Fretzin: But then to either keep your eye out or we actually, you know, target and look for things that you can farm out to other lawyers that could be profitable and, and everybody wins in that scenario. 

[00:09:12] Gregg Goldfarb: Well, Steve, you know that the world of marketing now is really much different than it was 10 years ago. For sure.

[00:09:18] Gregg Goldfarb: 20 years ago. You know, when I started as an attorney or whatever, you really even weren’t allowed to market. And it was, you know, I guess the Yiddish word is verboten. Yeah. You know, you were frowned upon and, and so how was somebody to survive as an attorney? You know, you go to all these associations and try to meet other attorneys and get their, their rejects and all that.

[00:09:39] Gregg Goldfarb: And it, you know, it just became obvious when the marketing changed. That you could market, even if you didn’t have a big name, you didn’t have to be the top of the food chain or a name that people could. Oh, yeah, no, I know that person. I trust that person. All of a sudden, that little trust factor sort of, you know, the winds changed and you know, all of a sudden TV ads.

[00:10:03] Gregg Goldfarb: And, and then it became social media and people nowadays are not looking at, I mean, there are still a lot of people that if they have a big accident in the family or a friend or whatever, you know, they’re going to call up somebody and they’re, you know, that still happens. But a lot of the world is like this.

[00:10:22] Gregg Goldfarb: They see an ad and they make a reach out to the lawyer. And if that lawyer does not call them back, I mean, that’s what they want. If that lawyer does not call them back right away or pick up, 

[00:10:31] Steve Fretzin: right. Or just pick up the phone. Right. I mean, you’re calling. I mean, what’s our patients level as consumers right now?

[00:10:38] Steve Fretzin: If I call someone and I get a voicemail, I may not even leave the voicemail, right? I might just say, Hey, I’ve got a list of five things. I’m just going to go to number two. Like if somebody doesn’t pick, you know, it’s gotten to the point where we just have very little patience for waiting for things. 

[00:10:53] Gregg Goldfarb: And if you think about it, and it makes complete sense, you’re somebody looking for a lawyer, you know, even though maybe it’s your legal matter or it’s somebody close to you and you want a good result and you’re willing to spend a little, a little time to make sure.

[00:11:06] Gregg Goldfarb: I mean, your first thing is I want to make one call, get it right, get it off my hands, get a great result. And I don’t want to have to call anybody back and get an update and what’s going on. No, I want the check as soon as possible. And that’s what people are expecting. And to some degree that does happen.

[00:11:22] Gregg Goldfarb: And so people hear about that. And that’s, I think the way of the world right now. 

[00:11:26] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So then what are some things that lawyers can do to, or that they are doing to market their business to, to, to bring it in and get that first call? 

[00:11:37] Gregg Goldfarb: Yeah. A lot. Listen, there are so many marketers. Okay. But there’s a lot of bad ones.

[00:11:43] Gregg Goldfarb: So, you know, before I go out and say, Hey, listen, go find yourself a marketer, tell them you want social security cases. You don’t do social security cases, but your buddy down the block does. And he’s really not more or she’s not really marketing it. I think I could get a lot of social security work. Send it off to my friend and make a nice little chunk of change or state cases, right?

[00:12:05] Gregg Goldfarb: So you got to make sure if you’re listening and you’re like, you know what a my line of work is going out of business Maybe I got fired. Maybe I want to leave my firm. Maybe I want to start a firm Maybe I want to add a division to my law firm or bring in some business and hey I’m listening to this guy Greg Olfar saying I can find a marketer and even though I don’t have a big name I You got to have money.

[00:12:27] Gregg Goldfarb: Okay. Either you have to have money or you have to go out and get it. And this kind of goes back to what my mother would say. You can do it. You can, if you get good qualified marketers and you get a game plan and you know what you’re doing, you’re going to have to do a little research. You can make it happen.

[00:12:43] Gregg Goldfarb: So a lot of the research that I did, and I’ve been doing this now for four, four years and change. I’d go to legal conferences. There are some excellent, excellent legal conferences that will bring the marketers. We’ll bring lenders. I mean, the, basically in the, in the mass tort space, wall Street has come into the mass tort space.

[00:13:04] Gregg Goldfarb: People would say to themselves, what are you talking about? Wall Street. They’re not lawyers. You are, they lend money to lawyers and law firms. And I’m not talking about like 25,000, a hundred thousand. You got a 200,000 line of credit, you think you’re a hotshot ’cause you got $200,000. You know, some of these lenders will lend a really big pile of money now that might not be good because it’s going to put pressure on you and you’re not going to get like a 6 percent interest rate.

[00:13:31] Gregg Goldfarb: But if you do it right, and you get a good game plan, and you talk to people that have done it. You can make it happen, whether it’s in the mass towards spaces, which is what I selected, or you, you know, the, we call it mass towards and single event cases. So the single event cases are like your accident case, your slip and fall case.

[00:13:49] Gregg Goldfarb: It’s one thing that happened to one person or a couple of people, the mass sorts are different, you know, animal altogether, but you can do both. And, and some people do some people pay marketers to go get the mass towards. And single event cases. Why the single event cases? Because those typically will turn over quicker.

[00:14:07] Gregg Goldfarb: Do you have the capital or the ability to get the capital? Do you have the risk tolerance? And do you have the patience? Because some of these things can pay out real big, but they might take a long time. And I’m not talking two years. They might take 10 years before they finally. Payout. 

[00:14:22] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, it’s something else.

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[00:16:05] Steve Fretzin: Where else does this exist? If you’re a managing partner who’s looking to get off your lonely island and talk shop, With America’s top rate makers, please go to my website, fretzin. com and apply for membership today. I had an attorney and I’m trying to remember who it was on my podcast, not that long ago, who was talking about when he introduces himself to people, he just says he’s a lawyer and he doesn’t really get into the specifics.

[00:16:31] Steve Fretzin: And most, mostly when I teach infomercials and writing them, I talk about, you know, you want to let people know the specific area that you practice. So you’re memorable. He wanted to do the opposite because he just wanted to get, Oh, I know you’re a lawyer. I’ve got this thing and it didn’t matter what it was.

[00:16:45] Steve Fretzin: But he either could handle it or he could refer it out either way He sort of had an opportunity to win as a friend or he had an opportunity to win financially And I thought wow, that’s that goes against what i’ve been kind of talking about, but I liked it I like that. He was leaving it vague and and there’s certain people are for everybody I’m, not sure which it was but it I think it’s really interesting in that lawyers can can expand without necessarily Learning, you know, an entire like going from real estate to estate planning, right?

[00:17:11] Steve Fretzin: There’s a in adding estate planning. There’s a curve to learning that into into becoming an expert at estate planning Some people spend their entire careers just you know Continue to learn that space and it sounds like you can get into some of these other areas with a little less Knowledge you still have to know what you’re talking about and maybe just the ability to know good people you could refer to 

[00:17:31] Gregg Goldfarb: Yeah, I mean, that was, that’s the missing ingredient to capital, you know, knowledge, patience, and then also referring it out.

[00:17:39] Gregg Goldfarb: So, you know, and that’s what I do. I’m like, okay, this Camp Lejeune thing sounds too good to be true. It’s the United States government that’s going to be paying it out. You don’t have to worry about them filing for bankruptcy, running out of money. And they want to, you know, this was all about Congress deciding they, they created a disaster that affected, you know, maybe up to a million people or whatever.

[00:18:01] Gregg Goldfarb: So that was like, that checked off all the bases. And so at that point, I’m thinking to myself, well, I could either handle the cases myself, okay, and the phone calls. Remember, if you’re marketing, you’re going to have the phone ringing and you don’t want to spend the money and then find out, hey, I didn’t have the phone intake.

[00:18:19] Gregg Goldfarb: System set up and I lost all this money because I didn’t receive the call. So a lot of the marketers essentially give you sort of like a turnkey solution where they have excellent call centers. That’s all these call centers do is legal matters. They know the exact questions you get. You set up your own criteria.

[00:18:42] Gregg Goldfarb: A lot of the marketers will tell you the best criteria. Here are the injuries. This is what’s going to do the liability and all that. The call center set up and then they’ll even hook you up with the law firms. And they’ll tell you who’s on the leadership. In other words, who’s trying the cases and who’s settling them.

[00:19:01] Gregg Goldfarb: You might have a thousand law firms doing Camp Lejeune, but there’s only maybe five law firms that are really, you 

[00:19:08] Steve Fretzin: know, 

[00:19:09] Gregg Goldfarb: handling the whole quote 

[00:19:10] Steve Fretzin: unquote doing it. Right. 

[00:19:11] Gregg Goldfarb: Yeah. So, you know, you, you want to be with the, you know, you want to be with the leaders. And you want to make sure that the leaders are going to keep you up to date.

[00:19:19] Gregg Goldfarb: Because a lot of times you get the best lawyers or law firms, but you don’t get the best communication. You could have people calling you up, asking you for an update, and they rarely do. Usually they’ll call the lead firm, but you want to be able to like, you know, contact the lead firm and say, Hey, listen, this person wants an update.

[00:19:36] Gregg Goldfarb: You don’t want to hear two weeks later. They never call that person back. Right. You know, so you got to sort of. Grow with it and, you know, figure out where your spot is and who you’re going to work with. 

[00:19:47] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s interesting. And the other, the other thing that I wanted to bring up, that might be a moneymaker for either lawyers or non lawyers like myself, are that, you know, that, that in some states, including, you know, in primarily Arizona, that they’re allowing non lawyer Own firms and I don’t know all the all the gory details of that, but it’s intriguing to me and I want and I think you’ve got some real good insights on this.

[00:20:11] Steve Fretzin: I’d love to ask you about I mean, if you’re a lawyer and you’re not comfortable with the marketing business development side of things, I mean, theoretically, you could partner with. Someone who is a marketer that’s a non lawyer and you do the legal work or you figure whatever you need to do out in the so talk a little bit about that.

[00:20:27] Steve Fretzin: What’s been going on in that space? 

[00:20:29] Gregg Goldfarb: All right, so for years, the legal industry basically did not want non lawyers partnering up and, you know, and with law firms because, you know, basically the idea was or the thought was. They’re not lawyers, they’re not going to think like lawyers, they’re going to essentially cause ethical problems or, you know, other kinds of problems.

[00:20:50] Gregg Goldfarb: And over the years, the debate has continued, even though it was kind of, you know, like for me, I thought, well, that’ll never change. But then all of a sudden, there was a lot of people that were really very persuasive about the fact that, let’s just say you have a business law firm. And there’s a high end CPA that is really going to help your law firm, even if all your, even if the only thing that CPA is doing is bringing in clients, right?

[00:21:15] Gregg Goldfarb: And you’re like, hey, I’d love for you to be a partner, but you can’t. So that conversation built up ahead of steam, and Arizona was the first state to basically allow non lawyers to partner. So what does that mean in, like, my world of mass torts and referring cases? I have friends that have money. They want to invest.

[00:21:34] Gregg Goldfarb: They want aggressive investments and an alternative, you know, they could go the cryptocurrency route, or they could actually get into some of these mass sorts that can, I didn’t say will, but it can produce a tenfold return. So if you invest, you know, 100, 000, you could get back a million dollars. At the end of the day, if you play your, if you play, if everything works out right, 

[00:22:00] Steve Fretzin: there’s no guarantees, no guarantees, but there’s smart ways and there’s, there’s dumb ways.

[00:22:04] Steve Fretzin: And you’re saying if you do it smart, 

[00:22:06] Gregg Goldfarb: yeah. And you could always sign clients up that disappear. You can’t get, you know, like all of a sudden they settled. You’re like, I just need you to sign. God bless it. Would you pick up your phone? You can’t find them and you know, so you lose that case or whatever. So a tenfold return, like some people, you know, invest money in the stock market and they’re looking for a 10%, 10% return, not a 10 x, but a 10%, or they want, you know, to double their money in five years.

[00:22:34] Gregg Goldfarb: So this offers some people that. Maybe you just want 10 percent of your investment portfolio in a super aggressive type of alternative investment and you want to be the cool kid on the block. And so what you could do is you partner, you, you, you know, you could call me up and I could set you up with the law firm that I work with in Arizona.

[00:22:57] Gregg Goldfarb: I’ve already put four people. In the camp lejeune litigation and the talcum powder litigation, they meet with the law firm in Arizona. You know, we do a zoom call, whatever they get an explanation and they, they’re like a lawyer and they’re doing nothing more than I’m doing, which is essentially writing a check to the marketer and, you know, crossing my fingers that it all works out good.

[00:23:21] Gregg Goldfarb: But, you know, like any big alternative investment, you know, there’s the risk reward is high, but, you know, you could also. Lose the whole thing. Yeah. 

[00:23:31] Steve Fretzin: Well, yeah, I mean, that’s the thing about investing it. There’s always risk. However, I, I guess where I wanted to go to is let’s say that I have the gumption to partner with a lawyer in Arizona, and we’re going to start a firm together, or I’m going to jump in and invest in that firm or whatever.

[00:23:47] Steve Fretzin: They invite me to be a part of it. I’m not suggesting I want to do that at this stage, but that might be a down the road, you know, part time or time. I mean, do you know much about that Situation of just, of just what it means to be a non lawyer owner. 

[00:24:02] Gregg Goldfarb: Well, I mean, it’s basically if let’s just say you have a lawyer friend, okay.

[00:24:09] Gregg Goldfarb: Maybe the lawyer friend doesn’t even live in Arizona and you’re like, Hey, listen. I think that I could bring you a tremendous amount of tax related work, okay? But I’m only gonna do it if you let me be a partner. Well, alright, so what you do is you get the licensed. The lawyer part of the deal would get a license in Arizona.

[00:24:33] Gregg Goldfarb: And they start a law from there. They don’t even need to be their president. You know, they don’t need to like have a brick and mortars and sit down in Arizona. They just need to be licensed and all that. And then they have, you know, you just have a, like a partnership agreement and that the partner, so you, maybe you’re not making, bringing in business, but your buddy, who’s not a lawyer could.

[00:24:53] Gregg Goldfarb: So this offers you that opportunity. There’s nothing unethical and there are plenty of people in Arizona or plenty ethics attorneys that I know that can, you know, if you’re like, yeah, you know, this guy, I don’t know. He doesn’t. Doesn’t seem too trustworthy or whatever, but maybe I’ll talk to an ethics attorney who knows this particular.

[00:25:12] Gregg Goldfarb: Field upside, you know, and it’s it’s listen, it’s only been going on. I think maybe 6 years that Arizona changed the law. And I know we talked before that. You think a couple of other states. I know there’s there’s discussion and I think if it works out, it’s probably going to, you know. Get a head of steam and other states might want to do it Why wouldn’t they want to help out these law firms because they’ll get more tax revenue down the road 

[00:25:34] Steve Fretzin: Well, they may not have a they may not have an option.

[00:25:36] Steve Fretzin: I was talking to someone In india and you know the you know There’s so many big corporations and companies coming in and in competing with law firms that have been around for you know 100 years And they’re, they’re just, you know, they’re going to gobble up all the talent and they’re going to, they got all the money and they’re going to really hurt these these.

[00:25:55] Steve Fretzin: So I think, I think it’s probably, you know, think about it like a Deloitte or think about a Google, you know, getting involved in, in the law space and how that can impact. You know, the bigger mid market firms, maybe even, I don’t know, maybe not the small firms, but I don’t know. It’s just, it’s, it’s a kind of a grab bag of, of potential options and opportunities of what’s going to happen out there.

[00:26:14] Steve Fretzin: But it’s for some lawyers, they’re very scared about the non lawyer run. And I would be too, to some degree, because if you’re competing against expert marketers and you’re not, you’re just good at the law, they’re going to have lawyers that are maybe as good as you just not, but, but they’re going to have a marketing advantage by far.

[00:26:30] Gregg Goldfarb: That’s right. And you know, I mean, to me, I think the, the space that would be most likely to move into this space would be Wall Street. So think about it. If Wall Street’s got a lot of money, a lot of capital to deploy, and they, or even insurance companies, sometimes they, they’re like, what do we do with our money?

[00:26:49] Gregg Goldfarb: I mean, my, my group of friends in Miami have been approached by insurance companies. And they’re like, what can we do with our money in the legal space? And the last time I had that conversation was, I would say seven years ago before I even knew about the Arizona. So I said, I don’t know, you know, I have no idea.

[00:27:07] Gregg Goldfarb: I was stunned because I usually sue the insurance companies and they’re like, look, we’ve given you enough money, but you know, we got a lot more. Can you help us out? Or whatever. I was like amazed that I actually had that conversation, but. 

[00:27:19] Steve Fretzin: Wow. Well, listen, I, we’ve got just a few minutes left. Any other.

[00:27:23] Steve Fretzin: Other tactical actionable things that lawyers could or should be doing to, you know, grow revenue or to do something maybe outside of the box a little bit as it relates to, you know, building business outside of their traditional practice area. 

[00:27:37] Gregg Goldfarb: I definitely would say reading some of your books. And I think the, you know, the legal conferences now, Are excellent in the old days.

[00:27:45] Gregg Goldfarb: I go to these, you know, because you got to get continuing legal education. So you go to these conferences and you’d have a speaker in the first 15 minutes. They’d be talking about how great they were and I’d be like, oh, my God, when is this thing going to end? Can I just get my credits and get out of here?

[00:28:00] Gregg Goldfarb: Well, the legal conferences now are much better. You don’t really get that. So, like, trial lawyers has puts on a great conference. Mass tort made perfect. They put on one in Vegas and it’s a great conference. I mean, it’s entertainment, it’s information, it’s connections and you can go there for three days and even if you don’t have an idea, even if you’re like, wow, I am struggling.

[00:28:25] Gregg Goldfarb: I want to get out of working for this. You know, law firm, I need to do something different. Take a vacation, go to one of these conferences and brainstorm. Just talk to people, you know, you could do this for 24 hours a day. So at Vegas, some of these people are like making deals at four or five in the morning, right?

[00:28:42] Gregg Goldfarb: You know, they’re just. So hungry for new ideas and new money. So, you know, and again, if you don’t have the money, you can meet with more some of these lenders and they are exceptionally, you could sit down with a lender and say, I have no idea what I want to do. I don’t have any money, but I have 10 years as a lawyer.

[00:28:59] Gregg Goldfarb: Give me an idea and they you’d be surprised what they can tell you and it might it’s not just Necessarily mass towards you can mark it in pretty much any space. 

[00:29:08] Steve Fretzin: Okay Well, they may have to reach out to you to learn more about that as well And we’ll ask we’ll get your contact information in a minute.

[00:29:14] Steve Fretzin: Let’s wrap up with with our game changing podcast and if this is the same one that I think it is I listen to it literally every day that it’s on other than sunday the daily that’s with the michael barbara You 

[00:29:26] Gregg Goldfarb: Yeah. 

[00:29:26] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. I love it. I absolutely love it. You know, and look, I know it leans a certain direction, but that’s, you know, but the news is the news.

[00:29:33] Steve Fretzin: I, I, I really do believe that they, they are giving an accurate reporting of what’s going on in the world. So what do you love about the daily? 

[00:29:40] Gregg Goldfarb: You know, I love the production. I love the music that they play. I like their voice, their sound. It actually can help me go to sleep at night. And you know, I try to follow all sides of the coin.

[00:29:51] Gregg Goldfarb: So, you know, I’ll listen to Other, you know, the opposite voice as well. I’m a Jew, so I, you know, really want to, I have to dig deep into the entirety of the discussion and not just be pro one way or pro the other way. I want to hear all the voices or whatever, but I think that they really put on a good show.

[00:30:10] Gregg Goldfarb: It’s very informative. You know, and a lot of times I’ll have a drive with my girlfriend. We’ll have like an hour long drive and I’m like, you know, you got to really Get to know this topic and we just pop it on there and, and she likes it. So that’s also one of the things we can do together in the car.

[00:30:25] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. 

[00:30:26] Gregg Goldfarb: Aside from listening to your podcast as well. 

[00:30:28] Steve Fretzin: Oh, there you go. All right. Well, I appreciate that very much. Yeah. So for, for those listening check out the daily and Greg, thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you, what are the best ways for them to reach you? 

[00:30:39] Gregg Goldfarb: I am mass tort guy at Instagram, so you can look for my handle, send me a DM.

[00:30:45] Gregg Goldfarb: That’s the easiest way. You can go to Gigi. I mean, you can go to greggoldfarb. com, my website, and also contact me that way. 305 374 7000 is the office number. I would give out my cell phone number, but you know, I decided I’m no longer doing that. 

[00:31:01] Steve Fretzin: That’s okay. Some people just, 

[00:31:03] Gregg Goldfarb: I got to get a burner phone or whatever and do that, but I’m not there yet.

[00:31:06] Gregg Goldfarb: So, yeah. 

[00:31:07] Steve Fretzin: But all in all your contact information will be will be loaded into the show notes to everybody. So if you want to check out Greg that way and of course we want to thank our sponsors Get Staffed Up and PymCon coming up in mid September for personal injury. So check out PymCon, everybody.

[00:31:22] Steve Fretzin: Thank you, Greg. This was great. And it’s interesting to talk about, you know, The legal side of things outside of the practice series that people are familiar with. It’s great to talk about outside money. It’s great to just talk about not the non lawyer space. I want to get deeper into that because I not not not it is a business for myself, but deeper into the into into really studying and understanding what that means for the future of law.

[00:31:44] Steve Fretzin: I had I’m running like a legal tech round table now. I don’t know how I got that, but there, there are folks that have been on my show and they got into talking about AI and it may, it may not matter about, about non lawyer owned firms if AI takes over and beats up law further. Anyway, but thanks again, man.

[00:32:02] Steve Fretzin: This was a great conversation. I’m just happy that we were able to To get together and do it. All right. Thanks for having me on steve Yeah, thank you everybody for spending time with greg and I today on the be that lawyer with fretzin podcast hopefully you got some good takeaways from today as usual and we will help you every single week, twice a week to be that lawyer, confident, organized and a skilled rainmaker.

[00:32:20] Steve Fretzin: Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. We’ll talk again soon.

[00:32:27] Narrator: Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s link.