Mike Morse

Show Notes

In this compelling season finale of Celebrating Justice, we sit down with Mike Morse of the Mike Morse Law Firm, the largest personal injury firm in Michigan. Known for his groundbreaking Fireproof methodology, Mike shares his personal journey marked by resilience, innovation, and a deep commitment to justice. Starting with his early inspirations and challenges, including his father’s influence, tragic setbacks, and a literal fire that gutted his office, Mike explains how these “fires” led to his Fireproof approach to business resilience. He shares insights on everything from crafting the memorable advertising campaigns that propelled his success in Detroit’s competitive market to his expertise in mastering law firm operations.

Mike’s two standout cases illustrate his profound dedication to his clients. In one case, he won a $75 million wrongful death verdict for a grieving family. In another, he secured the release of a wrongfully convicted man who was set to spend the rest of his life behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.

For his “Closing Argument,” Mike concludes by sharing his passion for helping law firms achieve their potential through strategic planning and “Cherry Garcia” differentiation by pursuing cases that elevate you, focusing on client outcomes, and building a law firm that’s truly “fireproof” against adversity.

Chapters

1:16 – Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?
3:38 – What makes you unique?
31:36 – A case(s) that matters.
45:05 – Mike’s “Closing Argument”

Key Takeaways

• Standing Out in a Competitive Field: Memorable ads helped Mike dominate the crowded personal injury market and he urges lawyers to find their unique “Cherry Garcia” to connect authentically with their audience.
• Resilience Through Crises: From losing 70% of his business in 2011 to an office fire in 2007, Mike shares how he overcame challenges by betting on himself.
• Fighting for Justice: Highlighting his $75 million wrongful death verdict and freeing a wrongfully convicted man, Mike illustrates his commitment to seeking justice beyond financial rewards.
• Building Sustainable Firms: Through masterminds and Fireproof, Mike teaches lawyers how to run efficient, disaster-ready practices that focus on delegation, strong leadership teams, and work-life balance.
• Community Engagement: Mike’s initiatives, like pet adoption events and outreach programs, reflect his belief in building strong ties with the community that supports his firm.

Transcript

[Theme Song Plays]

Mike Morse: What’s moving me now is helping lawyers be happier. On a night in the middle of the summer in July, I got a call at three in the morning saying, “Your office is on fire.” Nobody knew who I was in 2011. You could walk around Detroit and ask 10 people, “Who’s Mike Morse?” Nobody would know who I was.

Narrator: Welcome to Celebrating Justice, presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen legal cloud platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Get inspired by the nation’s top trial lawyers and share in the stories that shape our pursuit of justice. Follow the podcast and join our community at triallawyersjournal.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of Marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Chad Sands: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Season One finale of Celebrating Justice. In this episode, we’re sitting down with the one and only Mike Morse from Mike Morse Law Firm in Michigan. The author and man behind the Fireproof method is not only one of the most influential trial lawyers in our country; I would call him a legit, bona fide winner. To get to the stories, I asked him, “Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?”

Mike Morse: Well, thinking back to my childhood and my high school years, which is when you usually figure that stuff out, I had no other thoughts on what to do. I remember wanting to be a firefighter or a doctor before I was 10 years old, and then that quickly dissipated when I realized I didn’t love school. My dad was a trial lawyer.

He made it look fun. He never complained about it. I used to go to the office with him. Starting at age six or seven, every Saturday morning we would drive downtown Detroit. We’d have a ritual. I remember getting donuts every morning, riding up in this crazy inside parking ramp, going to his building, playing with his copy machines, and emptying the dots out of his paper punchers. He’d have clients coming in.

He’d have workers in the building. He was super nice to all of them. They were super nice to him. And it was just…I don’t know, I remember it being a really nice, fun, warm, and fuzzy environment, and I did that basically my whole life. I was a general business major and was taking all these classes in finance, accounting, and economics, and basically hated them all. As college was ending, I started taking the LSAT, did okay on it—nothing great—got enough of a score to get into a law school in Detroit so I could be near my dad, move home, practice with him, learn from him, be in his office because that’s all I knew. I thought he was making a good living, and it looked like, “Okay, I could do this; I could have some fun doing this.” And that’s what I did.

Chad Sands: So you decided to follow in your father’s footsteps and headed to law school. And your dad was a solo, right?

Mike Morse: My dad was a solo, very small office, two or three total people, shared space with others. I thought that was normal. I didn’t know that people had bigger firms at that point in time, but that was his setup.

Chad Sands: So, personal injury is very competitive. You have to cut through the noise and stand out. Second question I like to ask is, what makes you unique as a trial lawyer? Or maybe I should ask you, why are you Cherry Garcia and not Vanilla?

Mike Morse: Because that’s the best flavor. That’s the only flavor. You know, I know you’ve read the book and I appreciate that. And for anybody who hasn’t read the book, I have had lots of fires in my life and I’ve been able to bounce back from them pretty quickly. That’s why the name of the book is Fireproof.

One of the fires was in 2011, when the person who was sending me 70 percent of my business basically pulled the rug out in front of me in a five-minute meeting in my office. I had 40 employees and my own family to support, and I didn’t know how I was going to make up those 70 percent of cases. I didn’t know how to do it other than going on TV, going on billboards, going on other media, and trying to get attention. Right? Nobody knew who I was in 2011. You could walk around Detroit and ask 10 people, “Who’s Mike Morse?” Nobody would know who I was. As I started quickly surveying the landscape of personal injury lawyers, I learned that they were spending over $30 million a year on TV and billboards. There were a lot of billboards. It was a crowded market. All the commercials were boring. They were all vanilla. They were all the same. I was going to have to take money out of my bank account and my savings and compete. Part of me was like, “I can’t just put up the same old garbage. I’m not going to get the attention I need. I need to get attention.”

So we started experimenting with me talking to strangers with a microphone in my face and doing something different. Me standing out on street corners acting like a reporter. Then I started introducing my mom and my dog and my sister in the commercials. And that kind of sparked people’s interest, and people started calling and saying they loved my mom and were hiring me because my mom approves of me. They didn’t even know if it was my real mom, but it was fun and different. Then we started doing some satirical-type stuff, trying to make some points with messages. My commercial where I’m chasing an ambulance is people’s favorite ad that I’ve ever done. It’s on YouTube under “Mike Morse Law Firm.” To this day, that was 10 years ago. It’s different. It’s memorable. My commercials are memorable. My billboards are memorable. My social media is memorable. People are talking about them around the water cooler, whereas my competitors’ ads around this country are not memorable.

Chad Sands: They’re not saying it. Now, they might be getting calls, and people might still use their businesses. I’m not saying they don’t work. I’m saying I couldn’t, number one, stomach it—risk a million dollars out of my bank account. I didn’t have a lot of money, and I didn’t think it was going to work at the scale I needed. So I had to come up with something different. I think I did. Over the last 10, 11, 12 years, in almost every market that I research, yeah, some of the commercials are getting better. I’d like to take a tiny, tiny bit of credit for that. I do get national recognition on my awards to the national trial lawyers. I’ve won the best 30-second spot since they’ve been giving out awards. I think it’s been five or six years now. Lawyers are starting to see them. They’re calling me. There are 10 or 11 law firms around this country who are using the guy who comes up with my ads, who’s a Detroit local—great guy, Ross Lerner, who is a dear friend of mine.

He has had cataclysmic success because of the success we’ve had here in Detroit, which makes me really, really happy. My friends and people who helped me kill it—I want them to kill it. I’m a huge promoter of people. So, Cherry Garcia is, you know, and I talk on stages all over the country about this: it’s about just getting people’s attention, becoming memorable, and avoiding doing the same thing as everybody else. I had this mentality, too, so I’m going to own this. I looked at this; I surveyed the landscape. I thought, “They’re all wealthy attorneys. They’ve been doing it for a long time. They’re driving nice cars. They have big firms. They’re successful. Why don’t I just do the exact same thing as them?” And I think that’s how most people think.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Mike Morse: I’m going to copy them; I’m going to follow them. I thought that for a minute and a half—I really did. But then I realized that wasn’t going to work for me. So I found my differentiator. Cherry Garcia is just such a fun way of saying it. I just found out what makes me different. What makes you stand out? What makes you special? What makes you who you are, right? You’ve got to find those things and not be afraid to go after them. Even if it’s not on TV, you can stand out on social media. You can stand out on platforms, have a podcast—do whatever it is you do, but just be different. How are you going to get your community’s attention, right?

We do dog events. We do backpack events. We do things to make us stand out, and it works. You’ve got to do a lot of different things to stand out. That’s a long answer to explain what Cherry Garcia is, but I love talking about it. I love the concept. I think that most lawyers fail at it, but the ones who get it right are seeing success.

Chad Sands: Fireproof is an amazing name. And you talk about the twin tragedies, as you called them in the book, when you were fired out of the blue by your dad’s best friend on your dad’s birthday. Then you have to get it together over the weekend, open up your own firm on Monday. Can you take me back to before you got fired, after you got fired, and what you did over the weekend to restart and rebuild?

Mike Morse: My dad died when I was in law school, so he and I weren’t able to practice. I got my first job after my first year of law school, which my dad actually set up for me before he died, with the largest personal injury firm in Michigan—which is a little ironic because I’m now the largest personal injury firm in Michigan. They’ve disbanded—a great firm, Lopatin Miller. I’ll give them a shout-out because I learned a lot during those three months—a ton. I was only there three months, but I learned a ton, and I learned how to hustle. You know, my dad died. I realized that I’m on my own. Like nobody’s there saving me. Nobody’s going to help me. Nobody’s going to take me under their wing and totally protect me. I kind of thought they would, but they didn’t—they ended up screwing me really badly. But I learned early on that I had to do this on my own. My best friend, my mentor, my dad was gone. I didn’t have anybody else to rely on.

I remember those days vividly, just trying to figure it all out to be successful. Then after law school, like you mentioned, my dad’s friend took me under his wing—or so I thought it was a wing that was going to help me. I worked there for three years. I learned everything I needed. I learned how to work up a file, how to sign up a file, how to do depositions, how to try a case, how to interact with staff, how to interact with secretaries, office politics—the works. I was good at all of it. I just was. I was 25 years old. I was good at bringing in cases. I brought in hundreds of cases. I was good at keeping clients happy. I was good at getting clients to send more people. If a case was to settle, I was good at talking the clients into settling the case or trying the case, or… I had a decent personality and I was able to figure it out. I thought everything was going really well at this firm. There are a lot of details to this that I’m leaving out, but they’re in the book, and it was a good three years, I thought. Then, on September 21, 1995, my dad’s best friend didn’t take me to lunch, but his two partners took me to lunch, sat me down, and said—I thought we were just going to lunch. I didn’t take anything off my desk. I thought we’d just go to lunch on Friday. “Hey, Mike, let’s go to lunch.” Okay. They said, “You drive separately.” Okay. In hindsight, I’m walking out of my office and they’re changing the locks. Already. This was a whole big plan.

They took me to lunch, and they said—before we ordered, and I’ve said this—I wasn’t planning on leaving that firm. I’d probably be there today, 30-some-odd years later. My good friends will disagree with that. They thought I always had it in me to go on my own. But at that exact moment, I never thought about it. Never once, never once did I do the math and say, “I should be doing this on my own.” Never once. They fired me. They gave me no reason. I drove off. I remember running out of there, shaking, catatonic basically, driving home. I remember calling my dad’s friend and saying, “What just happened?” And he said, “They told me you were leaving. You were going to steal files and blah, blah, blah.” And I said, “That’s not true.” I don’t remember. And then we hung up, and I—I remember my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife and is now my ex-wife. We drove to Chicago. My mom and stepdad were there and I just needed to get away and clear my head. I called my best friend from law school, Jason, and I said, “This just happened.” And he was referring me some cases. He said, “Come see me Monday morning at 9 a.m. at my office,” which was 10 minutes from my old office. I walked in and it was one of these joint lawyer situations, spaces. There were 12 lawyers with 12 offices and a shared receptionist and a shared library. They happened to have an open one. The owner of the suite, his name was Miles, came down and said, “You want this office? It’s a thousand dollars a month.” Which was a lot of money at that time, but you get the receptionist included; you get everything included. I negotiated really quickly. It was a really old, beat-up, ugly desk with an ugly, beat-up chair and two guest chairs and a decent-sized office. I said, “Can you throw those in?” And he said, “Sure.” He might’ve even said for an extra hundred bucks a month or something. I’m like, “Okay.” I haven’t told this story in such a long time.

So Jason, who’d been practicing for three years on his own, taught me how to get a phone number, set up bank accounts, get malpractice insurance, and come up with a name for a law firm. And, you know, do all that stuff. I did all of that on Monday morning. I got business cards printed. I think I bought a computer. This worked out as a business arrangement where he would continue to send me cases. I would teach him how to work them up because he wasn’t doing personal injury. We shared—we split the fees, I believe—and he was going to front the costs because I had no money. It was a great arrangement, and Jason is now one of the best trial lawyers, PI lawyers, you know, in town. It was a win-win for me because I was getting a case flow, and I had no money for anything.

You know, I think I was paying 100 for the back of a Bragi magazine, and I think I also went into the Yellow Pages. I couldn’t afford the big ads; there were 84 full-page ads where people were paying thousands of dollars a month. I’d be like, “How am I going to get the front of the Yellow Pages?” I don’t know. I saw this somewhere, something like, “An accident attorney works for you.” And I put an ad in, and the phone did start ringing a little bit with some crappy cases. I went around to every law firm owner in town saying, “I’m on my own. Let me try your cases. Please refer me cases.” I treated them like gold.

If I got a referral fee, I’d run it to their office. I never was upset about writing a referral fee. There are so many lawyers out there who are jerks about it, who don’t like it, and they send the check back with negative energy. I never understood that—these people are helping me eat. I remember thanking people profusely, and I remember thinking about my clients. I was so grateful for everything I had. I didn’t even know it was a super strength or a superpower or whatever, but I was really grateful for everything because I had been literally kicked to the street, which, as a 26- or 27-year-old, is just not a nice feeling.

You know, your dad had just died. You thought everything was going well. You were working hard, you were ethical, you were doing everything right, and then this happened. I’ve had an extreme sense of gratitude ever since. I mean, it is the number one thing that I practice and think about. It probably helps me be successful, but I am grateful for everyone and everything that helps me in my job and my life. I think about it all the time. I have a gratefulness practice in my mornings and nights. I think about gratefulness. I write things down. So many people have helped me, including Jason, the guy who gave me that office, and all the lawyers around town who helped me get back on my feet.

So, it was a scrappy time. Getting fired and losing that confidence definitely was a massive fire.

Chad Sands: You do have other fires in your life. I actually wanted to talk about the second fire you mention in the book—when your firm actually burned down to the ground. Can you tell that story?

Mike Morse: So, that’s 2007.

Between 1995 and 2007, over 12 years, I connected with Sid, who’s a major lawyer in my town who sent me thousands of cases a year.

Chad Sands: He was like 70 percent of your caseload, right?

Mike Morse: Correct.

So, stuff started going really well. My firm took off. I went from solo to 30, 40 employees. I had to move out of the town center, which is where I was with Jason.

He and I bought a small building, and then that took off. Before you knew it, in a space that was meant for 10 employees, I had 35 working out of it. I had eight lawyers sitting around a conference room table. It was crazy growth—all based upon no advertising, no marketing. My advertising budget was zero. It was based upon all the good, hard work that we’ve been talking about, you know—treating people well, being grateful, paying referral fees, and all that stuff.

In 2007, everything was great. I was in this new office building, 6,400 square feet. I had just spent a lot of money building it out. I loved it. It could fit us all. And one night in the middle of the summer, in July, I got a call at three in the morning saying, “Your office is on fire.” I jumped out of bed and drove there. I remember being able to smell the smoke when I was still a mile away. I pulled up to the parking lot—fire trucks and firefighters were running around everywhere.

My secretary Laurie was in the parking lot. She grabbed me. We cried. We looked at this building that I hadn’t even been in a year yet. It was crazy. And, yeah, that was a fire, but we were paperless. We were one of the first firms in the country to be paperless. My IT team went down and saved our server.

We were answering phone calls that morning from my parking lot. They strung the phones out to the parking lot. My team set up tents. My lawyers were in court that morning—it was a Friday morning. Fridays are busy here in Detroit. They were all in court. We didn’t miss a beat. Another reason we use the term Fireproof is because even a major fire didn’t take us down.

It was amazing. And that was definitely one of the major fires.

Chad Sands: You had a couple other early fires in your life, especially with your stepfather, who was a psychologist. And then you guys had to move town because of him? Wasn’t it because you were like a senior in high school, and you had to basically just move towns because your stepdad was…a dirtbag?

Mike Morse: Just a bad guy. And actually, it was eighth grade, which was worse than senior year of high school. Yeah, my mom’s second husband was a disaster choice. He was an abusive guy. So, that was eighth grade, and we had to move to a new district where I knew nobody.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Mike Morse: High school was kind of a mess because of that. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Detroit. Went to Arizona for college. And that was…you know, I don’t even list that as a fire, really. And you’re smart to pick up on that. But that was absolutely another fire in my childhood. You know, the divorce, getting bullied throughout high school, having to move, my dad dying in my first year of law school. I mean, there’s a lot that went on in my life. My mom says to me, “If those things didn’t happen, you wouldn’t be who you are today.” And I agree with that. It’s not an easy pill to swallow because she made some bad choices, other people made bad choices. I don’t necessarily wish that on anybody.

Did it make me who I am today? Probably. Of course, right? All of the stuff that happens to us as kids makes us who we are, but that was absolutely another fire.

Chad Sands: I saw on LinkedIn that it’s your 29th anniversary at Mike Morse Law Firm, and you talked about it a little bit when you kind of had to make a gamble and you saw this opportunity to jump into TV. I think your spots are really good. Do you have a favorite commercial that you’ve done?

Mike Morse: So, I mean, look — “Ambulance Chaser” is great. Yeah, I mean, it was well-shot. I have a ton of spots with my mom—making my mom the superstar. We have three more we’re shooting tomorrow, actually. Three more mom spots. All mom spots! Everybody I see wants more mom spots—more mom spots.

So right now, we’re playing with the concept of her being way more popular and famous than me.

Chad Sands: Yes. Yes.

Mike Morse: And we have—they’re all focused on that, and people love it. I love it. My mom loves it. You know, I just want to clarify one thing, Chad, because for people who are listening, I think it wasn’t a risk to go on TV.

Chad Sands: Okay.

Mike Morse: It was out of necessity. What else? I—to this day, all these years later, that was 2011. So when Sid walked into my office and said, “We’re done,” after this massive 10-, 12-year run—like, I was sending him $4 million a year in referral fees, and I was making a nice living. I was on top of the world.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Mike Morse: Like, I’d made it. “Dude, made it” is an understatement. I felt grateful. I never wanted to be on TV. I never wanted anybody outside of my office building to know my name. But, but think about that, right? So, you’re killing it. You’ve got 40 employees; you’re feeding them and their families. You have young kids. Seventy percent of your business went out the window.

And this is—and being a lawyer, a personal injury lawyer, is not easy to get cases. You can’t just put a sign up and say, “Send me cases.” Like, what was I to do? So out of necessity, the only thing I could think of at the time—and as I sit here all these years later, 13 years later, I don’t know what I could have done differently.

So, out of necessity—luckily I had money in the bank—but I knew that if it didn’t work, I was just flushing it down the toilet. I could have laid off a bunch of people, closed up shop, or gone back down to three or four people. I didn’t have the stomach for that. That was really never even an option.

I just…I couldn’t do it. So I bet on myself. I’ve always bet on myself, right? So in 2011, I had some track record, I had some history of my work ethic, of success, of who I am as a person, of all the fires that I’d been through. And I said, “I can make this work. I know it’s going to take some time.” And I took the risk on myself. I took the gamble. I bet the money. And luckily, it worked.

Chad Sands: I think the best Oscar goes to your performance in “Sue’s Son.”

Mike Morse: I know the one you’re talking about—that put my mom on the map. Like, she’s the celebrity because that’s the one where I’m sitting in a diner and this African American woman comes up and says, “Are you Mike?” I’m like, “Yeah.” “You’re Sue’s son.” Yeah, so now when I go places, it’s, “Love your mom!” You know, “Is that really your mom?” I’m like, “Nope, that’s an actress.” I just mess with people, and they laugh. And the community here has embraced me, has embraced my mom, embraced the spots. That’s why I do so much for the community because they have done so much for us.

It is so amazing, the synergies between this community and my law firm and my mom. It’s so fun.

Chad Sands: I can’t cover everything you do, but something that stands out to me because I’m an animal lover is that you’re a big supporter of animals. Where did that love for animals come from? Did it come from your childhood?

Mike Morse: No. I didn’t get my first dog until I was in my twenties, I think. I’ve had two dogs in my life—both the loves of my life. One of them is here with me today, Jessie. She’s taking a nap in the corner—10 years old. Both are from Michigan Humane, which is my favorite nonprofit here in Detroit.

We support them; we’re partners with them. We do lots of dog adoption events here at my law office. We call it the Mike Morse Paw Firm for the day. And I’m a huge believer in adopting. I judge my friends who shop and go spend $5,000 for a doodle, but I can’t help it. And you could judge me for judging them, but I do, every single day.

And I love these rescues. My kids love it. And it just makes the world a better place when you’re adopting, saving, and rescuing these animals.

Chad Sands: Agreed. Maybe you could share some tips for other attorneys out there who are, you know, looking to get on board. Are you still doing mainly broadcast and local TV? Have you guys started doing streaming or OTT, Hulu ads? Share a little bit about what you’re doing for your marketing strategy for TV spots.

Mike Morse: If you’re going to spend on TV, you need to have a really good CMO—chief marketing officer. I have a coaching program. I currently coach over 50 law firms on how to do this.

We have a mastermind program, and we sit around and talk about best practices. The most successful law firms have somebody dedicated at their firm to making those decisions. The worst-performing law firms are the ones where one visionary lawyer is doing it all, and I try to convince them not to.

So I have to give that shout-out because I’m not an expert in that stuff. I don’t know how to buy media. The answer is: oh yeah, we’re everywhere. We’re doing OTT, we’re doing YouTube, we’re doing streaming, we’re doing Google AdWords, radio—not a ton—tons of billboards, broadcast, very little cable, sports, NIL deals. We’re doing tons of stuff, yes. And our budget can afford it. I wouldn’t do all these things if my budget were a half-million dollars, of course, but that’s what a CMO helps you figure out. Where are you going to get the most bang for your buck? You know, the good thing about the world we’re living in now is that with a small budget, you can go out there and get people’s attention on social media and other things. It’s like guerrilla marketing. It’s guerrilla warfare out there trying to get attention for any business these days. But you gotta be smart, right? If you came to me with a million dollars, I’m not going to say, “Go throw it on radio.” Right. I’m not going to say, “Go to OTT only.”

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Mike Morse: You need smart people to help you make those decisions.

Chad Sands: You mentioned in the book, and we talked about it a little bit already—your dad was kind of the only reason you were in law school or went to law school. Do you ever think about what you would be doing with your life if you weren’t a lawyer or if you didn’t stay in law school and follow that path your dad wanted for you, in terms of his legacy of helping others?

Mike Morse: I truly don’t. Back then, I was just lost. I didn’t know—I had no direction. If you asked me today, I would probably go into some kind of advertising or marketing role. I would be selling something. I’m very entrepreneurial. I come up with new ideas every single day. I was on two entrepreneurial-type calls this morning already. I’m bullish on masterminds. For any business. Okay. This is not just for lawyers. 

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Mike Morse: I have learned a lot in the last five years. I’ve been in consistent masterminds. And for those of your listeners who don’t know what a mastermind is, Chad, it’s just 10 smart people who do exactly what you do in a room, sharing what’s working, what’s not working—ideas and networking. I have been doing that, and I’ve learned more from those than anything else. I’ve made some of my best friends from those, and it’s usually not people in your market, right?

So, I’m not going to sit down with 10 of the personal injury law firms in Detroit and do this. But I have friends now in Atlanta, Miami, New York, Vegas, and LA, and we all sit around and talk about what’s working, what’s not working. Now, we’re setting up a network of masterminds for smaller firms: comp firms, criminal law firms, family law firms, personal injury law firms, under the Fireproof Mastermind concept. And I’m bullish on it because I’m gonna lead them, my team’s gonna lead them, and we’re gonna meet a bunch of new lawyers, have fun with them, teach them.

You know, where I’m at, at this stage of my life, I’m all about experiences. I’m not buying more houses, I’m not buying art, I’m not buying cars. I’m looking for great experiences. And I have the most fun teaching, coaching, getting to know people, and connecting with people. So I’m really bullish on masterminds. And if any of your people are thinking, “Wow, that sounds cool,” call me, email me, get ahold of me—it’s changed my firm over the last five years.

I could give you a hundred examples, but how I’m learning from these—sometimes more successful firms than me, sometimes firms trying to catch up to me—doesn’t matter. They’re doing things in their markets that I’m not doing. We’re looking at our numbers, we’re looking at our finances.

We’re looking at our percentage of income to revenue, we’re looking at cost per case, how long it takes to get a case through the system, average fees—I want to know what it is in Vegas, Chicago, LA, and Miami and compare that to Detroit. What can I learn from them? Percentage of your employees, percentage of your marketing, percentage of all this stuff.

It’s super exciting. So that’s just one example of what I would be doing if I wasn’t practicing. But I’m doing it while I’m practicing because I am a really good delegator. I have a really good executive leadership team who backs me up, and I can leave for a month or two months and my team is just running the show, making sure our clients are getting world-class experiences and outcomes and results without me even being here—which, I think, is the true vision for any lawyer.

Chad Sands: Yeah, I agree. Fireproof is not just a book for lawyers or law firms. I mean, even the “Legal Jumbotron” chapter is basically like a marketing masterclass on KPIs and what you should be tracking as a firm or business in general. So yeah, not just for law firms.

Mike Morse: Three of my last three speeches — one was to a financial institution, one was to a group of nonprofits, and one was to a bunch of mortgage guys.

And it all applies, dude. It just all applies across the board. So you’re right, Chad. You’re right. I wouldn’t pigeonhole it to lawyers. All of these concepts in the book, and what I like to talk about, it just goes across all mediums.

Chad Sands: All right, let’s get back to the stories. So after 32 years, I know it’s hard to choose one, but could you share a story about a case that had a significant impact on you?

Mike Morse: Most recent, there’s two, and they’re completely different. Let me just think which one I want to dive into. One was a personal injury case where I came back out of retirement, basically, in my trial world and got a $75 million verdict six weeks ago for a wrongful death case in Detroit. That sounds like a Tom Cruise or John Grisham movie right there.

Maybe it might be one day. The other one is a case that I had no business taking. A man was wrongfully convicted, and the Michigan Innocence Project called me and said, “Michael, we need your help on it.” Long story short, I got him out of prison after two years of work.

So he’s out of prison. He just had a baby at home, and he was supposed to die in prison. All right. Those are your two stories. You get to pick which one I tell in detail.

Chad Sands: All right. I want both. So you can start with the wrongful conviction.

Mike Morse: I was bored during COVID. I started a podcast, and the guy who was helping me load up my show with great guests was a great guy named Kevin Dietz, who used to be a former newscaster here in town. And he started loading me up with these wrongfully convicted people who had already gotten out. There wasn’t an episode where I didn’t have tears in my eyes thinking, “This system totally screwed these people.”

And I wasn’t looking for cases. I wasn’t looking for anything other than to tell a good story and learn. And that’s it, man. Just try to entertain, really, right? Trying to do something interesting with my time off. And I loved these people. Mostly men. There was a woman, Julie, who was wrongfully convicted. I got to dive in for two or three hours—you know, like you like stories.

These were unbelievable stories that weren’t told, and they saddened me. But that was it. I mean, I wasn’t thinking, “How am I going to monetize this? How am I going to help these people?” I’m a personal injury lawyer; I’ve never handled a criminal case in my life.

So a few years ago, Dave Moran, who runs the Michigan Innocence Project in Ann Arbor—which is obviously one of the top law schools in the country, if not the top—I did not go there. I did not have the grades to go there. Amazing institution in Ann Arbor, 35 minutes from my house. He called me one day and said, “Can we talk?” and I took his call. I had heard of him. I actually had lunch with him. Somebody wanted to introduce us because he ran one of the first and best and most successful innocence projects in the country.

A sweet, soft-spoken guy who’s supposed to be an amazing lawyer, but I didn’t really know him. And he said, “Michael, we got a case. Case name is Michael Griffin. He was convicted of murder in Flint, Michigan, and we don’t think he got a fair trial. We don’t know if he did it.” And I said, “Well, why are you calling me, David?”

“I’ve never handled a criminal case in my entire life—not even anything other than parking, other than speeding tickets.” And he said, “Michael, I’ve listened to some of your podcasts with these wrongfully convicted people. You have a, you know, passion behind you to expose the truth in these things.”

He gave me some nice accolades that I won’t repeat. And he said, “I think you can do it.” And I pushed back a little. I said, “All right, David, send me the transcripts.” So he sent me the files and the transcripts.

They were small. So for you lawyers on this podcast who are listening, you know that a trial transcript can be inches and inches thick if you still print them out. A lot of people now are doing them digital. These were printed out and sent to me, and they were half an inch thick for the trial. So that was my first red flag. I remember reading them in an hour because they were so short. And again, Chad, I’ve never tried a criminal case, nor have I ever read a criminal transcript in 30 years.

But red flags were coming up because this guy was sentenced to life, and the transcript was half an inch thick. The defense attorney who was appointed to him, of course, because he was poor, living in Flint, barely asked questions on cross, didn’t do a great opening, didn’t do a great close, didn’t present a single witness—an expert witness—the prosecution had nine.

Now, I didn’t know if that was good or bad or illegal or unethical, but it just felt weird. No wonder he was convicted in 17 minutes, or whatever the heck it was. I don’t even remember that. I made that up—17 minutes.

Chad Sands: It was short. It was not a three-day —

Mike Morse: Deliberation. And my gut was, “This isn’t right.” Of course, I hadn’t even met the guy. They were accusing him of shaking his baby and killing her, which—I mean, I have three daughters—I’m not an advocate for murderers or anything like that, but I am an advocate for fairness and justice, and it didn’t seem fair. And again, I didn’t meet him; I didn’t know if he did it or not, but he certainly didn’t get a good defense, right?

And so I said, “Yes.” I got my team together. I have an appellate team, and I said, “What do you guys think?” and they’re like, “Let’s help this guy. This is not right.” Two years in the making. I mean, there’s lots of stories there, but I met with him.

He was up in prison. And so we had a few phone calls. He was appreciative of my help. Mind you, the University of Michigan wasn’t going to— I mean, they didn’t have the manpower during COVID. They didn’t have the students. They didn’t have the help. I don’t know if they would have passed on it. There are thousands and thousands of people sending these letters saying, “I’m innocent,” by the way.

I mean, we could go into this. We could do another podcast on this. Luckily, he got Michigan’s attention. Luckily, they called me. Luckily, I said yes. Two years later, he’s out. He’s had a baby since he’s been out. We were able to get him some wrongful incarceration money, so he’s got a little bit of money in the bank now.

And it’s a wonderful, great-feeling story. We all feel amazing about it. And it did change me, and it changed my outlook, and it changed my firm and the lawyers who worked on it with me. There’s a couple of lawyers who’ve been practicing a long time who said that was the best day of their career. You know, walking him out of prison, righting a wrong—was everything. I mean, it was just amazing. And as I’m saying these words to you, Chad, like, I don’t know how it’s changed me. I don’t know. It hasn’t changed my practice. I don’t have a big wrongful conviction department in my practice right now. I haven’t taken on another one, although some are coming and they’re asking me to. But it was just…you know, it was…it showed the power of what we, as trial lawyers, can do.

I have been on stages trying to encourage lawyers. I was on a stage recently with 300 lawyers in the room. I said, “If you all take a case that means something to you, to your community, to the world, and you all did your best work, imagine the impact we could make.” As trial lawyers, and it had to do with Cherry Garcia and it had to do with being different and it had to be with that kind of stuff. But really, that message is true, right?

I haven’t gotten a single personal injury case because of it. I haven’t made a dollar off it. I didn’t charge anybody anything, but it made me feel really good. It made my firm feel really good. It made the people who work here feel really good. And that’s important. I think the impacts of that case are long-lasting.

I’m proud of it. I’m proud of my team. I’m happy that I said yes. Proud of myself, I guess. Right? I don’t pat myself on the back that much, but I’m proud that we took that case and made a difference. And when I see that he’s happy and he’s got a baby, and we were able to really change a man’s life—because what’s worse than being in prison for the rest of your life for something you didn’t do?

And most of those people I interviewed on my show absolutely didn’t do it. It wasn’t just that they didn’t get a fair trial. But, you know, at the end of the case, people came out and said, “I’m sorry, it wasn’t you” — like, on some of these people. And they spent 10, 20, 30, 50 years in prison. Like —

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Mike Morse: Those things drove me crazy. And if I could help every one of these people, I would. That to me is the biggest injustice of them all. And if I — I don’t talk about it much; this is the most I’ve talked about it. I mean, I wish that every law firm in the country would take one of these cases once in their life. I think, you know, they’re saying 10 percent of the people in prison probably shouldn’t be there, wrongfully convicted or didn’t get fair trials.

Ten percent. That’s tens of thousands of people, if not more. That just freaks me out and it makes me really sad.

Chad Sands: Well, you should be proud, and you should talk about it. But you mentioned the other case that kind of brought you out of retirement.

Mike Morse: So, full transparency—I’m not retired, but I hadn’t tried a case in over 10 years. I was focused on growing my firm and raising my family and doing other things. And I hired great trial lawyers, but this case spoke to me. The family came in—this was five years ago—and they told me this tragic story of their son, 21-year-old, beautiful son who was at a friend’s house trying to study for a test.

He asked them for an Adderall. One of the idiots gave him Molly instead. He went down, and they wouldn’t call 911 to save him even though he was clearly struggling, and they let him die in the house without calling 911. That’s an obviously short version of the story. It moved me. I remember crying with his family and saying, “I will get you justice.”

I will, even if there’s no money here, I will get you justice. I will try this case if I have to. Fast forward four and a half years, came to trial. I still felt the same way. And I prepared and tried the case to a Wayne County jury, and a jury awarded $75 million for his life, which was the largest wrongful death verdict in Michigan history.

And another thing I’m proud of is that this family was able to get justice, this family was able to sleep at night after this verdict. They got to tell their story. It was a big deal for everybody, including my firm. And that just happened, so I’m not even sure all the life-changing things that that’s going to involve, but that was a meaningful thing.

Chad Sands: I was watching some of the press conference about it, and they just gave this kid Molly, thinking that it was a joke or something.

Mike Morse: Yes. This one kid, Nick Remington, was a drug dealer, and we proved that at trial. My lawyers who backed me up on this case—mind you, they worked up, my lawyers worked up this case for four and a half years. I came in and tried it, took all the glory at the end of the case, as I like to say. This one bad actor gave him Molly and kept giving him Molly throughout the night, videotaped him, put him on Snapchat, didn’t help him. People are freaking out. People are recording it on their own devices, then sending it to the police.

I mean, it was horrific. And he died in their home. I remember hearing about that case—I went right home to my children, told them the story. There was emotion talking to my kids and just saying, “You don’t know who you can trust.” Because this boy, Dennis, thought he was trusting a good friend, and he was at his friend’s house.

And then his friend’s friend gave him a “study aid.” He said, “Here, try this; this will help you study.” And it was a high, high, high dose of Molly. He died with 81 times more Molly in his system than he should have had, and it obviously killed him. They could have saved his life by calling 911. It was a tragic, horrific story that could have been prevented.

And that case, the Michael Griffin case, and other cases that are going to come, and we have a lot of big cases in our office that we’re trying to make a difference with and bring justice. And I know most lawyers talk about that stuff, and I’m blessed to be in this position. It’s a place where people are calling me and trusting me to do this for their loved ones.

And I put my heart and soul into it, and I put a really good team behind it, and we take it seriously. Interestingly, neither one of those two cases that I just talked about—never thought about this till this second, yet—had anything to do with money. It wasn’t about money. It was about doing the right thing and justice, and it just keeps propelling you forward, and your employees feel it, and your community feels it.

And it’s another reason why I think I became a lawyer without knowing why I became a lawyer back in the day. Things are evolving 32 years later. But this is the stuff that I hope to be able to keep doing for the rest of my career.

Narrator: At CloudLex, we understand the challenges personal injury law firms face every day. That’s why we’ve built the legal cloud platform to help you stay productive and keep your cases moving forward. CloudLex provides a comprehensive suite of applications and features to support every stage of intake, pre-litigation, trial, and more. From innovative case management to insightful analytics and HIPAA-secure client communication, CloudLex empowers your firm with the technology to thrive, build your firm of the future, and see for yourself.

Now, here is this episode’s closing argument.

Mike Morse: I love this profession. I love helping people. I love helping other lawyers get to where I feel like I’m at, which is working in my sweet spot, which I define as working on things I love to do and things I’m great at. I’ve helped over 40,000 clients throughout my career. I’m handling thousands of cases right now, but what’s moving me now is helping lawyers be happier, helping lawyers be better.

And that lights me up. I’m seeing lawyers become happier. I’m seeing lawyers move into their sweet spots, making less money while being able to be home with their children more. I’ve never been a workaholic, and I think some of these business skills that we’re teaching about delegation and having great teams and making sure you’re hiring the right people is so important.

Right now, I’m super pumped up about helping law firms and law firm owners figure out their “Cherry Garcia” and, you know, making their firms more fireproof. All they need to do is understand that their law firms are businesses. Some people call my firm the best-run firm in the country. I’m still working on my firm every week, and so I encourage others to do the same thing.

And I’m just out there now teaching firms how to make sure you’re ready for that disaster in your market. And I think that if you do the things that we talk about in Fireproof, you wouldn’t have to shut down for an earthquake, for a tornado, for a hurricane, for COVID, for a fire. I’d love to see every lawyer in the country in a mastermind one day, whether it’s run by Fireproof or run by somebody else.

They are just so helpful, and I don’t think everybody even knows about them.

I’m going to keep meeting new people, keep getting on stages and sharing all of this fun stuff, encouraging law firms to take on that case that’s not going to make you any money, but it’s going to make you a better person. It’s going to make your law firm better. It’s going to make your lawyers love you.

It’s going to make your communities be in awe of you and why you’re taking it. In these cases, these things are not that hard. You just have to commit to them and think differently.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Mike Morse, also known as Sue’s son. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Mike, the Fireproof method, and his firm, visit www.855mikewins.com. All right, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. See you next season.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Celebrating Justice, presented by CloudLex and the Trial Lawyers Journal. Remember, the stories don’t end here. Visit triallawyersjournal.com to become part of our community. Keep the conversation going, and for a deeper dive into the tools that empower personal injury law firms, visit cloudlex.com/tlj to learn more.