I’ve been doing this for 31 years, and so you have so many impactful moments to where that just grows you as a trial lawyer and your law firm and things like that. But I think back to the first seven figure result I got back in the 90s so that was a bigger deal than it would be now obviously. But it was Bisnar and Associates back in those days and I had this difficult case.

I have a letter I used to have framed where the lawyer said the case was the biggest sham he’d ever seen and they would never pay a penny. Just a real arrogant letter. Long story short, we litigated it. It was a very righteous case. Started the trial and then the case settled in seven figures. And the impact of that isn’t so much the result, although personally it’s always nice to get a good result like that. And I really loved it for my client, Dorothy Darnell. I’ll never forget her. But that result allowed me to form my partnership with John Bisnar.

So that was the beginning of Bisnar and Chase. And then from there, John and I, maybe for younger lawyers when they’re trying to figure out how to grow their law firm, you know, John and I partnered up and we went from just your sort of generic personal injury law firm doing the ordinary everyday cases (although I’m reluctant to say that because no case is ordinary). They’re very personal for each person.

Back at that moment when I got that result and I partnered up with John, he was a great marketer. We had a website back when it was thought to be cheesy. I was actually against it. I go, “We don’t need a website. Our clients don’t have computers.” So John took over running the business and running the marketing. He didn’t want to try cases. And then that just gave me free rein and he gave me full support to be in trial all the time. And so one of the biggest impacts was Dorothy Darnell’s case. It allowed me to do some really good work, get my name on the map a little bit with that settlement. But then what John and I have been able to do over the last 30 years from there, I mean, you know, it’s mind boggling. Then I can go every few years with another landmark thing that allows us to get to another level and to another landmark thing to get to another level.

As I was saying earlier, I think whenever I talk to younger lawyers, you’ve always got to keep hustling. I mean, I go back to “You’re always a hamster on a wheel.” I don’t care if you’re 30 years old or 75 or 80 years old, if you’re still practicing, you know, you’ve got to keep on grinding, which is why you have to love it. I don’t feel like what I do is a grind at all. I love what I do. I have a big passion for what I do. I look forward to being a bigger hamster on a bigger wheel. I’ve got no desire to get off of it. There’s no shortcuts. You just gotta put in the time. And I learned that going all the way back to the Baby Faye where I spent, you know, four days in the basement scouring through microfiche. Now, to some people, they’d rather put a toothpick in their eye than do that. For me, I’m like, “My God, this is amazing.” And I still have that same fire and desire today. Now, a gazillion years later.

Take your time. Take your time to learn your clients. Take your time to learn the law. There’s a lot of new attorneys out there that feel that they know everything. And you never know everything. It’s about realizing that there’s always something new that you’re going to learn every day. I wouldn’t be able to be as successful as I am today if it weren’t for the people around me. I mean just my family, I mean for the ones that work with me day in and day out. The ones we spend most of our time with.

The last message I want to throw out there to all the attorneys, don’t settle for those low numbers. Let the defense counsel know what you’re about. You’re not going to shy down to the fight. Hold your ground, because there’s money to be made out there. And I look forward to it every single time I walk into the court.

Another mentor I had at the time, I law clerked for him while I was waiting for the bar exam. Results come in, his name is Paul Marin, out of Long Beach, another shout out, great guy. I called him and I tell him about it he’s like, “Okay.” He’s like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” “What do you mean?” “Well, yeah, I mean, I can see how you could lose that too. I mean, sure, you’re gonna lose many more. So, test yourself up and go hang on the next one. There’ll be better cases, bigger cases. You’re gonna win some, you’re definitely gonna lose some. So what, you’re a smart guy, you’ll figure it out.”

And he was just so nonchalant and cavalier about it, but not in an indifferent way, but just, “This is what happens and this is what we do.” And this is not like a defining thing. It just teaches you something that you can use the next time around. And I think that that’s something I’ve really tried to hold onto throughout my career, is that my job is to do whatever I can within my power to make this outcome for my client and if that’s, you know, advising them to settle when they need to settle, great. If that’s advising them to go to task and go to trial and try and really get what you deserve and what’s fair, let’s do that. But no matter what happens along the way, you just have to look at it as an opportunity to put something from that experience forward in the next.

Another lawyer I once met a long time ago, I forget his name to be quite frank, he once told me, “It’s the height of arrogance to think that this is about you. It’s not about you. It’s never about us. It’s always about the client. You have your pity party for one night if you take an L and then you wake up the next day and go work for the next client that needs you. Don’t make it about yourself.” True words have really never been spoken as it relates to trial lawyers. It’s true. You just gotta do it. You take L’s, you’re gonna have great wins, you’re gonna have really crappy losses, but you get up, you do it again the next day, and you do it because those people need you to do that job.

But they were mine and I learned it. And right now you’re not seeing people who get that kind of experience anywhere. And we need that because there will always be a need for lawyers who are really able to try cases. I’m very proud of the fact that I am a trial lawyer. I’m not a litigator. I don’t flog the file and then settle it at the last minute. Didn’t do it as a defense lawyer. I don’t do it now. And you’ve got to be able to go in and present a case to a court or a jury and be able to do it effectively. I think that is absolutely critical for justice in our country. And I would say that even as a defense lawyer, you’ve got to have that ability to go in there and present the case.

Yes, if everybody’s doing everything right, and cases are being evaluated right, and being worked up right, the vast majority of them will settle. And they should settle, but there are ones that will not. And it is painful to go to court and watch some lawyer who just has no idea what he or she is doing. Not because they’re a bad individual, not because they’re dumb, they just simply haven’t had the experience. We need trial lawyers.

Let me give you kind of an example of what happens when you don’t have an ability to go to court on something. Active duty military members could not sue for many years under the Federal Drug Claims Act simply because they were on active duty. End of discussion. They could cut the wrong leg off, kill them, didn’t matter. Too bad. What was called the Ferries Doctrine barred it. Well, about three or four years ago, Congress did fix ferries. So they didn’t really fix it, because they enabled a provision where you could bring a claim for malpractice in a military hospital, but there was no recourse of being able to go to court. So, guess how well that has worked? The Army, the Air Force, and the Navy, they’re sort of like, “Eh, so what?,” you know? “We’ll get to it when we get to it, and like, no, we’re not going to pay you anything on that. You don’t like it? Oh, too bad. Too bad.”

And we’ve also dealt with that in what’s called the Military Claims Act, which are for overseas claims where, I mean, one of the worst cases I ever saw was where they just killed a baby in Korea. They just killed the baby. And the Army comes along and says, “Oh, we’ll pay you $125,000 for it, $125,000.” And I said, “Well, but look at this case, look at that.” It doesn’t matter, this is an MCA case. In the end of the day, it’s like, take it or leave it, you have no recourse. You’ve got to have that ability to have a recourse to court and you’ve got to have people who can go to court.

And recognizing that our industry is near the top, if not at the top, in terms of anxiety, depression, suicide, alcoholism, divorce, all those things that you want to avoid. But we also make a lot of money. And there are ways in your career to pull two levers, to make more money and to spend less money, to create options for yourself, even if you’re somebody who graduated law school with $150,000, $200,000 in debt. And life is all about having those options so that when you get to pivot points, you can say, no, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to do this kind of law anymore. I don’t want to live here anymore. And creating the ability to go and, you know, kind of live the life that you want to live. I call it “Living Life by Design.”

And so one pivotal moment for me and the reason that I joined my dad’s firm back in 2019, I was at a firm, I was a partner, I’d been a partner only for about 18 months. My name was on the door. A couple of things happened. We had somebody quit. We made a decision not to expand office space into the office next door. And then my wife, when she gave birth to our third boy, like almost died. 16 units of blood transfused. She was in the ICU for a couple of days. He was in the NICU for 10 days. And at the time my dad was 60 and I just thought like, if I don’t go and do it now, I might never get a chance to go and practice with them.

And having the ability in your life to make those kinds of life altering decisions is really important. And knowing, at the end of the day, what it is that you want. And one of the things that I wanted before we got to the end of my career was a chance to practice with my dad. And he’s gone through a little bit of a health scare this year. And so we’re working through that and we’ve built here now a firm that’s grown 4X in the five years that we’ve been here and it’s a lot of fun.

If you find yourself in a practice and it’s not a lot of fun, you want to have the flexibility and the capability to hit the reset button and go and do something that is, because that’s why we’re here. So I’m 40. Statistically speaking, I’m half way through my life. But by the time you’re 65, you maybe can’t do all the things that you can do at 40. And so not putting off until the end of your life, the travel and the time with family.

Most lawyers were just not very intentional about our careers and our lives. And so I would challenge lawyers to spend a little bit of time thinking about what the hell do I actually want out of this thing? And then what would I have to sacrifice in order to get it?

When the jury read its verdict and gave me, to the penny, everything that I asked for, there was a scream in the courtroom. It came from behind me. I turned around to see what it was. It was my client. He had collapsed into tears, crying openly like a baby in front of the jury, in front of the judge, in front of me. He did not care that anyone saw him, because he saw that his destroyed life had been returned. He had a way to go back into business, to get houses back, to rebuild from what this company stole from him. That is the joy and glory of being a trial attorney.

Like I said, when I got my LSAT scores, they weren’t the best. I got into law school, said, hey, you know what? This might not be the place for you, your first year, first semester. I had to turn things around, and I had to look at myself in the mirror and say, do you want this? Go get it and live for that, and that’s what I do. Early on, I interned in the district attorney’s office. I did some criminal defense. Then I did medical malpractice defense for about five years. Then after that, I started to see a different path, a path where I could really take what all I have to bear to the table for my clients, which is myself and my experiences and understanding their experiences will give me the edge in their case. And that’s why I use the word tireless, relentless. Because I accept that awesome responsibility and I advocate for them and I go for it. We truly have people’s lives on our hands, understanding that carries with it, a great deal of responsibility and awesome responsibility. And so whatever you have to grapple with, whatever you have to bring to the table, bring it full force because this is where it matters. This is the arena of litigation.