Michael Alder

[Theme Music Plays]

Michael Alder: When I moved out here, I just thought everybody was helpful… They’re saying she’s lying, she’s faking, everything’s a cheat, the lawyer’s your cheat… Obstacles are not in the way. Your ability to solve and get through those obstacles is the way to help the person who has relied on you to help them.

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 www.triallawyersjournal.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands. 

Chad Sands: Welcome back friends to “Celebrating Justice.” In this episode, we hear stories from trial lawyer Michael Alder of Alder Law, PC. Michael reflects on a career built from honest beginnings, relentless reps, and deliberate generosity. To get to the stories, I asked him, “Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?” 

Michael Alder: So I was a sophomore in college at LSU in a fraternity, kind of semi-drunk on the front lawn of the fraternity. And a woman who ultimately became my first wife came by and said, “Hey, what do you want to do?” And I’m like, “Well, I’d kind of like to have another beer. What do you want to do?” And she’s like, “I’m going to go to law school, move to California, go to law school, and I’m going to be an entertainment lawyer in LA.” And that was really the first time law school was ever even remotely on my radar. I didn’t know anybody, didn’t know any lawyers. I was a little 700-person town. My parents were teachers and preachers. I’m like, “Law school?”

And we wound up getting married pretty quickly, soon thereafter. And sure enough, two years later, we go to law school together. We went to LSU. She was number one in our law school class for most of the three years. And so first semester, number one in the class, she gets an offer for a U.S. Fifth Circuit clerkship by a Fifth Circuit federal appellate judge in Jackson, Mississippi. So here we are two and a half years later after we graduate, we’re going to live in Jackson, Mississippi for a year. And I’m like, “I’m not first in the class. I’ve helped the top 50% get there. What’s going to happen?”

Somehow, God saved me, talked my way into a clerkship on the Mississippi Supreme Court, which happened to be across the street from where my then-wife was working. And it was one of the justices who was a trial lawyer who was cool and would take the clerks to his chambers after hours. His name is Chuck McCrae, just an amazing man. And he would tell war stories. And that’s literally how I was exposed to plaintiff’s law trial work. And I’m like, I have no clue what kind of law I want to practice. That sounds like fun.

And it was with his help that he connected me with people out in LA. I had never been to California. First time I was even west of Austin was when I came out to California to interview after law school, and I was 0 for 7, I think, with all of the then big dogs. I mean, Tom Girardi was a big dog back then. Brown, Green, and many of the names that probably the two generations after me don’t really recognize that much. But a guy named Dave Harney offered me a job. It was the only job offer I had after several rejections, and I took it. And that’s how I got into plaintiff’s law.

I mean, I’m sorry that that’s not… sexy and interesting, but you know what? Most stuff is not that interesting or sexy. Most of your cases are not sexy and interesting. They’re real. Yeah. You know, and we try to spend a lot of times making them overly interesting. And sometimes we forget about the fact that these are real people, real good people, that they are legitimately hurt. And we’re not trying to gild the lily. We’re trying to put that case forward. And that’s kind of what happened with me.

Chad Sands: You guys came out to LA and then you got hired and then you were working plaintiff for a while, and then you decided to hang your own shingle? 

Michael Alder: I worked for a man whose name was Dave Harney, who really came to fame way back when Ralph Nader, the guy who ran for president, he was the auto advocate, safety advocate, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” and way back when General Motors put essentially a character assassination hit on him. And Dave Harney was his lawyer. Dave Harney became one of the top medical malpractice trial lawyers in the country. But I caught him at the very tail end of his career, and his firm kind of fell apart a couple of years in, and I got fired with about half the firm.

And then I went to work for my then mentor, a guy named Michael Pughes, who was the best trial lawyer I’ve ever seen and trained many of the best trial lawyers here in LA. Dordick came through with me, Pat McNicholas. He was very close with Garro Moderosian. Jeff Wells is the current president of the Trial Lawyers of California. We all spent time in the Pughes trial fire.

And so total, I worked for other people for about seven years, got fired from Pughes or quit—whichever way—and I opened my own firm out of my house with one case. My wife then was still practicing, making good money as an entertainment lawyer. So that’s how I started my firm. Again, that’s real life. That’s probably what most of the people that are watching this have experienced. It’s not some, you know… burning bush, went to the top of the mountain and was told by God to start a practice. I mean, it was necessity, and you’re never ready. There’s no real perfect time.

And luckily I was trained really well. I knew more than I knew that I knew. So when I started to try more cases and I learned how to try cases again, it wasn’t like this intention. It just kind of was exposure, and I was good at it. But I didn’t know I was good at it. So then when I opened my own firm and I put the word out that I would try anything that moved, I did. And I’m doing eight, nine, ten, eleven trials a year. And I progressively got better at it. And that’s how I built my practice.  

Chad Sands: I mean, in terms of all the talk and the resources you share, do you think that kind of stems from maybe those early mentors of yours who introduced you to this and mentored you along, and you’re paying it forward?  

Michael Alder: I mean, God bless them both. They were excellent at what they did, but I attribute me giving to my upbringing with my parents and my family coming from the South. When I moved out here, I just thought everybody was helpful and that you helped people. I wrote personal notes. You were kind to people. I’m like, there’s no dog-eat-dog world, right? We’re all a pack. And that turned out not necessarily to be a frequently held belief out here, but it is my belief and it is what I’m always going to do for the rest of my life.

I’ve always felt like we all can rise together. I’m very much a true believer in giving unconditionally without asking anything back. It’s good life. It’s good karma. It’s good business. It’s just good. And I’m never going to change that. And if people take advantage of me… well, if I know about it, then maybe I stop helping them. But until otherwise notified, I’m happy to help anybody. 

Chad Sands: You’ve been doing this a long time. There’s a lot of big-time trial lawyers in this town and across this country, including yourself. What makes you unique from the other guys? What do you bring to the table that sets you apart?

Michael Alder: I don’t even know that I do. I mean, there are so many good, excellent, wonderful lawyers better than me. Again, just phenomenal, great, incredible. And I’ve got to tell you, I’m a believer that no matter what we do, there’s always somebody better, faster, stronger, richer, better looking, better speaker, luckier, family money. If you can lift up a hundred pounds, somebody can lift a hundred and one.

My ability to understand that and to help myself get out of the way and to recognize FOMO and recognize when it’s starting to really materially affect my mental health is as it may be. If that’s the secret weapon, it’s understanding that I can be very, very good and there will be plenty of people just as good or better. And that’s okay. As long as I’m taking care of myself and I’m doing the best that I can do and I’m growing, it’s good.

The business part of it, the networking, is if I’m at a high level, great. And that’s something I’m always working to get better. But very few people refer cases to me just because they think I’m the best in the entire world. They think I’m really good. They’ve experienced that I know what I’m doing or they’ve heard me talk. But it’s much more when they have a case to refer that I’m one of the people that is close in time.

Why do I do social media? Why do I write a book? Why do I send notes? Why do I help? Why do I, you know, write them a personal note? Why are they on my newsletter list? Why do I invite them to parties? Why do I invite them to Laker games? One, I like them. One, I want to help them. But also… let’s say I touched that relationship in different ways over a year period of time, and now they have a case to refer. They can refer it to ten people I could think of right now that would probably do at least as good a job as I can. We’re all at a very relatively high level. But they’re referring it to me because I’m closer in mind.

So when I talk to newer lawyers—notice I didn’t say younger, because how you talk… that means I’m older if they’re younger. No, I’m just more experienced and they’re less experienced. People don’t understand that: “I’ve got to get cases by being the best in the entire… number one, like there’s tests that we all can take to be the number one lawyer.” ⁓ “I’ve got to have millions of dollars to have billboards and TV ads,” when we forget about the tried-and-true relationship building, that you touch that relationship in different ways. That is the vast majority of how most people get work.

And social media is an extension of that. Helping people is an extension of that. Saying hello, remembering that their dog is named Fifi and asking about Fifi goes way further than me having a billboard. Yeah. What’s the secret? You give a shit about people and actually want to help. Sucker. 

Chad Sands: A lot of people don’t have that perspective though. 

Michael Alder: Well, what a gift to those of us who do. 

Chad Sands: Well said. So I know you’ve been doing this a long time and I know it’s hard to choose one and you could maybe share one or two, but do you have a case that you could share that really had an impact on you? 

Michael Alder: I mean, I’ve tried well over a hundred cases now, probably had a—God knows what—5,000 cases. I don’t even know. It’s so hard. Let me, if you don’t mind, I’ll just use it as example of the case that you came down and saw in Santa Barbara, just as something that was impactful. That was the trial we just did a couple of months ago, where our client, wonderful woman, they’re saying she’s lying, she’s faking, everything’s a cheat. The lawyer’s your cheat. Everything, you know.

And what was so gratifying about that verdict was I was all in. I believed her completely. And she was a really good person. We were legit. It was not bullshit. And that came through—and that came through in the face of, as you may remember seeing some of it, the defense being as dark as you possibly could imagine. That was the most difficult person I’ve dealt with in a long time. And saying that basically everyone from the lawyer to the doctors to the client are crooks. And that works sometimes. But it was so gratifying that twelve people said, no, that’s not true. That’s not correct.

What a… and knowing that we’ve made a major difference in this woman’s life. That’s as gratifying as any case I’ve ever done. And what a wonderful person. I don’t know if you got a chance to meet her, but she just—she needed help. 

Chad Sands: I did not. I mean, I heard your opening and I’ve not been in very many courtrooms. The last time I was in a courtroom was actually in one of the Santa Barbara courtrooms when I got called into the jury box. And so to kind of go back in there and watch that opening, and I saw you, and then I saw the defense come up, and even I was a little blown away by her tactic. Like, I didn’t think that she would just come up and literally say—which I will read:

“We are here today because the plaintiff is asking for an astronomical amount of damages in association with an accident that occurred five years ago. All of us are bombarded constantly with advertisements by plaintiffs’ attorneys where they say, get in an accident, you get a million dollars. We see it every other freeway exit. If you listen to the radio, it comes on every half hour. If you’re watching TV, there’s Sweet James—an accident equals a million dollars.” 

Michael Alder: I was like, oh, what? I mean, it caught me by such surprise. I didn’t know to object or not. I was like, what the —

Chad Sands: You’ve never seen anything like that? 

Michael Alder: Once or twice in 25 years now. It backfired on her, right? It backfired on her — rightfully so, rightfully so. But I mean, I was just flabbergasted.  

Chad Sands: It was almost like out of a movie how that was her game plan. And she knew, and she didn’t take less than twenty seconds, and that—this is what she was going to lead with. And I really believe she thought she was going to be able to convince those jurors that, as you said, all of you guys are lying, and that she wasn’t in any pain, and this case wasn’t close to a million dollars. And yet you got, I think, over three times that. 

Michael Alder: Yeah, I forget what the interest is—probably now about four million bucks. But it was like three-two, something like that. We’ve got a new trial and JNOV motion coming up, hearing in a week and a half, and 10% interest from a $1.5 million 998 four years ago. I think they offered a hundred grand maybe. 

Chad Sands: Do you still feel like most of the public has that same perception as that defense lawyer? 

Michael Alder: Well, I think that that is something that bubbles underneath the boat, that is certainly—with certain arguments and factual scenarios that allow managers to pick up that line of argument—yeah. Of course. That’s what authenticity, that’s what credibility is all about. That’s what not gilding the lily and trying to say that you have a traumatic brain injury in every case.

Yeah, sure, you get a concussion, you got a traumatic brain injury. That does not mean that your case is worth $50 million. It might be if it’s legit. But this is what many of the carriers—the carriers are bombarded with this from these mill firms, these billboard firms, where, and I know, my managing attorney ran Farmers In-House Insurance for 15 years. He’s now here. He’s like, we get generic policy demands a thousand times a day.

Yeah. Where every case is a catastrophic injury. The plaintiff is forever detrimentally—cannot do anything, can’t even lift their head. And they’re like, it’s such bullshit. And you don’t realize how you lose credibility so much where you list every differential diagnosis. So we have a team meeting going over some cases here, and I was with some new people.

I was explaining that, you know, medicine is a differential-diagnosis type of thing. What that means is if you hit your head and you go to the ER, they’re going to put: potential closed head injury, brain bleed, hemorrhage. But then they do tests, and then they reevaluate you in a few weeks, and they weed down the potentials to what is more likely until they can make a diagnosis.

So yeah, if you have in your records “traumatic brain injury with brain bleed,” and that’s just a possibility that they’re trying to weed out, but you put that in your complaint or your demand, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And yet they do that and then go, “I don’t know what your policy is, but pay it.” That’s what… people think you’re going to get a lottery win with Sweet James. That’s what that woman is playing off of. Right. And it works sometimes because it’s the reality of what many—yeah—not very, in my humble opinion, high-quality legal work firms do. Yeah.  

Chad Sands: Because it’s such a perception of personal injury. I mean, how do you fight or battle these firms that are creating that perception? 

Michael Alder: Send them to the State Bar when you see it. I do. I mean, I’ve seen—you know, I’ve done a lot of stuff on my social media, and I see some of these firms illegally charging lien negotiation fees and contingency fees plus monthly fees, not informing the client about all of the costs with specificity, etc. I mean, that’s a State Bar issue. I mean, I’m not a district attorney.

So I just, you know, I welcome those State Farm, Allstate sweeping fraud, Medicare fraud lawsuits. Do it. Do it every week, because that’s what is going to chill the really negative cheating behavior—the cheating of these legitimate clients that are getting, in my opinion, cheated by these firms. You settle a case for a client for 50 grand and that client gets $6,000. That’s a crime. It’s a crime.

And yet it happens, and there are certain philosophies and personalities of certain firms that just don’t give a shit. And conversely, there are many, many, many, many caring, ethical, wonderful lawyers. ⁓ You know, you just hope that the State Bar gets involved as many times as you can. Yeah.  

Chad Sands: Did you mention that your dad was a pastor? He lived down in Louisiana.

Michael Alder: He and my mom were basically traveling preachers before I was born, and then in the first several years of my life they couldn’t make ends meet. 

Chad Sands: Have you seen that movie “Leap of Faith”? Steve Martin’s in it. I think he’s a traveling —

Michael Alder: No, but I know exactly what they’re talking about. You Pentecostal Christian kind of pretty conservative, you you take a Baptist and you turn them a little far righter than the Baptist and that’s Pentecostal. So I was born in Delaware, lived there for a month as on the way through to, you know, traveling around. And so my mom was born and raised in a very, very backwards rural area of Louisiana.

And that’s what we moved back to when I was very little so that they could make ends meet actually. Then they became teachers and that’s where I grew up and that’s where I’m from. And that’s where I like a 700 person town. And I went to high school in the adjacent, I went to LSU for college a little bit further down the road. But my parents were good people. I maybe didn’t realize that when I was younger, but now… learning about them and learning about what they were doing that they didn’t tell me about. I respect them immensely. They’ve taught me so much. I realized I picked up a lot of their philosophy. And it was not the Jimmy Swagger, Jim Baker, Bible thumping, leap of faith, steal your money type. It was conservative, like a little crazy sometime, religious, but they mellowed.

My dad mellowed, my mom died a long time ago, but my dad mellowed and he died in COVID. And I realized that I learned way more than I thought I did. Most of my life philosophy is about being a good person and helping people. That’s directly from my parents.

Chad Sands: You guys do a lot of giving back. I mean, even just recently with the fires, I’ve seen what you guys have been doing and it’s pretty, pretty special.

Michael Alder: Well, I mean, that’s nice to say, and I appreciate that. It’s only special if it is special because not that many people will go there. And I wish that more people did. Again, it’s not like it’s… I don’t know. It is just what it is. It’s something we… When my wife Gina and I first met, I mean, we met where she was looking for lawyers to do free legal services for the Latino community downtown. And she’s like, “Look, all you big dogs in West LA make most of your money off the Latino community and you don’t do anything for them.” And I’m like, “You’re right. What can I do?” And that’s how we met. And then it was kind of working through that, that at some point she went through a divorce and became more available. And I’m like, “Hey,” … then here we go.

Chad Sands: And now you’re like, you know, the LA power couple, right? With all the stars. 

Michael Alder: Yeah, right. know, my, you know, my wife, Gina is a power woman, but then COVID happened right after we, you we got married in COVID. But that was another opportunity. mean, COVID happened and we transitioned immediately to feeding people. I got involved heavily in the YMCA, got on the board. So when the fires happened and we kind of said, okay, let’s buy a bunch of hotels. Let’s get the word out. Let’s set up this infrastructure.

We had actually had that in place because we had been doing it since COVID. So you don’t realize the websites and the forums and the tables and the bags and the connections and all that stuff that allowed us to just kind of go click. And then that allowed other people who wanted to help use us as their infrastructure. And then it just kind of blew up. But that’s just a function of providing people a way to to do good stuff and people showed up, it was great.

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Now here is this episode’s “Closing argument.”

Michael Alder: So let me talk to the lawyers and the staff of the firms.

For people who have a more serious injury, you have to understand that this is one of the top five or six things in their life. You’re going to get married, you’re going to have a child, you’re going to get divorced, you lose a loved one, you get sick, and then you get seriously injured. And you have to understand that most everyone who gets seriously injured doesn’t know anything about litigation. So putting yourself in their shoes makes it a lot easier to understand why they’re calling you so much. Why it’s important to check in with that client and just even to let them know that you’re thinking about them and that you’re working on the case. Less so exactly the specifics, but let them know that you’re working on the case. Not getting angry at the client for calling you so much, but really turning it around and understanding that this must be something that’s really bothering them. And that goes to understanding in that you have a fiduciary ethical responsibility as a lawyer who has been gifted the opportunity to practice law, but also just a common decency of helping people obligation.

Helping people who need your expertise and your help. And so if you come at it from that perspective, that aggravating client is not an aggravating client. There’s someone who needs help and they’re trying to tell you that. And when you help that person, how gratifying is it to help them, but to understand that this is their only case. This is not a widget. It is not, let me milk the file for as much money as I can get. If I can get away with it, that is not the measuring stick of whether you should. You can make plenty of money, the top, top, top, and still be ethical, fair, kind, and caring. And so if it’s anything that I would say is don’t call cases dogs.

Don’t give grades of A, B, C, D, and F, because we think Ds and Fs aren’t worth anything. We think dogs aren’t worth anything. The case may not be that valuable. The case may have difficulties, may have obstacles, but goddamn it, isn’t that why they hired you?

Obstacles are not in the way. Your ability to solve and get through those obstacles is the way to help the person who has relied on you to help them. So just that change of perspective not only helps your clients, but doesn’t it help you as well? Isn’t it something that you want to live your life that way?

Rather than just measure yourself on the one thing of how much money I can milk out of this life.

What about to add? 

Isn’t that more well-rounded? Isn’t that what you want to teach your children?

That’s what I would say.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Michael Alder. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Michael and his firm, visit their website alderlaw.com. All right, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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