Show Notes:

Nick Rowley

Fend for yourself. “I was the only white kid in my class. I was one of maybe three or four in my school. And I got to learn about racism on the receiving end of it. I had the pulp beat out of me three, four days a week. I mean, beat up, I’d come home bloody. It went on for a couple years, you know, and even after I got to the point where I would fight back with everything that I possibly had, and I learned how to be a scrapper, I’d still get beat up. Those were formative years for me.”

A fighting spirit. “I became a fighter and no matter how hard I was hit or how bad I was knocked down and beaten, I would get back up with more energy and more rage than I had before. That became the catalyst for succeeding in life. No matter what I had gone through growing up, and even as a young lawyer, that hurt, that sucked, whether it was rejection or failure. I would use that as a motivator to work even harder. Nothing’s going to keep me down. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. You could kill me. That’s the only thing you can do. So if you can’t kill me, you’re never gonna be able to stop me.”

What to do when things go wrong. “Do you blame the jury? Do you blame the judge? Do you blame the witnesses or do you look at yourself and say, ‘What’s my role in this?’ I have this rule that if something goes bad, something goes bad. If you find a way to accept full responsibility for it, even if your role is only 1 percent, you accept full responsibility for it. It’s tough to do, but that’s what’s going to help you move forward, make you better, and achieve what you’re trying to accomplish. Accept full responsibility for whatever goes wrong.”

Ben Crump

The unfortunate truth. “We’ve been fighting racism and discrimination in America from the inception of the country being founded every day. We’re going to continue to hold a mirror to America’s face to say we’re better than this America. We’re better than the video of George Floyd being tortured to death. We’re better than this America where Ahmaud Arbery was lynched for jogging while Black — not in 1940, not in 1950, but in 2020.”

No justice, no peace. “We have to make America believe in the Declaration of Independence. I get in a lot of trouble every time I pick a jury because I literally go one by one and tell them, ‘I know you can recite the Declaration of Independence, but do you really believe that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equally, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness?’ We don’t have a chance if they can’t see Black people as equal to white people.”

We’ve got to do better. “In my home state of Florida and other states like Tennessee and many others, they say that one in every five Black men will be a convicted felon. They say that if that trend continues, in the next 25 years, one in every three Black men will be a convicted felon. Imagine you are a parent of a Black son. Imagine that you have a Black male nephew. Imagine that you have a Black male cousin. Imagine these three little Black boys playing and having fun, and as you observe them, try to figure out in the next 10 to 20 years which one of those little boys is going to become a convicted felon, living life as a second-class citizen.”

Robert Simon

The easy and hard parts of law school. “Getting to college was tough because we couldn’t really afford it. My dad took out a lot of union loans to get us there because it was expensive. We had some scholarships, but we were still working two or three jobs all throughout school, eating ramen noodles and eggs, and buying off the dollar menu at McDonald’s. But law school was still pretty easy for me. We weren’t allowed to work during our first year, so it was the first time I wasn’t working multiple jobs, and instead I could concentrate on the work I was doing — and it was easy.”

You can’t teach hungry. “You either have this insatiable appetite or you don’t. I think that growing up with something to prove means you’re more likely to have it. I came from a working class family, and I always thought that we could do better. I would think about companies we could start as a family and work together. My dream was to have a massive compound where we’re all working and hanging out together. I always wanted to take care of them, and to this day I will not stop working to make sure they’re okay. We all work together at my law firm and Justice HQ. Until every member of my family has financial independence, then I will know we’ve won.”

No crooks, no creeps. “I try to make everyone around me very successful — almost to a fault. I want their businesses to succeed. I really like helping my circle of friends intertwine with my other circles of friends. We all live close to each other and see each other all the time. I enjoy having the best people come together. If you have communities around you that don’t take you for granted, you’re doing well.”

Gary Falkowitz

Rain, sleet, snow, or hail. “I think that on average, law firms are losing up to 10 percent — sometimes more than 10 percent — of their leads because they don’t pick up the phones in a timely manner. I’m talking about all hours of the day, whether it’s 9:00 to 5:00, whether it’s 11:00 at night, whether it’s 8:00 on a Sunday morning. Right now, law firms are still trying to figure out how they can make that happen.”

Sell yourself. “I had an aversion to the term ‘sales’ early on and for quite some time. The conclusion I came to there is that the industry has become saturated. With saturation comes deep competition. Deep competition requires great sales skills. You need to be able to sell your services effectively, even to those folks that reach out to you.”

All night long. “When you’re creating a law firm, you must be open 24/7. When someone goes to your website, it should never say that your office is closed. It should never say Monday through Friday 9:00 to 5:00. It needs to be open 24/7.”

RESOURCES & REFERENCES
You Can’t Teach Hungry by John Morgan
Game Changers Summit
George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Ahmaud Arbery
National Trial Lawyers