#519: How to Build a Brand Beyond the Courtroom, with Jordan Marsh

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts 

 

 

Stephanie Everett (00:35): 

Hi, I’m Stephanie Everett. 

  

Sara Muender (00:36): 

And I’m Sara Muender And this is episode 519 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today I’m talking with our Labster, Jordan Marsh about his new book Try Your Own Case. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:49): 

So Sara, today you’re talking with Jordan about a topic that comes up a lot, I think, among lawyers especially, which is how we sell our services, and really even more specifically, is there an opportunity to productize our knowledge. 

  

Sara Muender (01:05): 

And I’ve been working with Jordan, he’s my lab drum, his coach for a while now, and I’ve been really impressed with the way that he has kind of built this whole new business model, which starts with his book that he just wrote and published as sort of the hub of it. And there’s this whole world of opportunity that we’re going to be building around this expertise that he’s now captured in his book. We’ve talked about the next step in the process is to do an online course, and then there’s even a potential opportunity to build a membership and offer some kind of legal coaching. So I think it’s worth everyone who has a law firm business to tune into and pay attention to because I think that there’s more opportunities to support their law firm than maybe what they’ve been doing. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:53): 

Yeah, I would say for most lawyers hard, sometimes for us to even think about the knowledge and the expertise we have, the value that we can bring in a way that isn’t practicing law. So I think this is one of the fun things we get to do as coaches is to help kind of pick that apart and ask the right questions and figure out, is there something else you’re interested in doing? What could that look like and how can you monetize it? 

  

Sara Muender (02:16): 

Yeah. This is such a great mind opening conversation about some ways to get creative and you haven’t thought about before in a way that might just bring an additional source of revenue into the firm. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:28): 

Absolutely. Well, with that, let’s hear more about your conversation with Jordan. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:36): 

Hey y’all. Zack, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist. Today, I’d like to talk to you about marketing plans. That’s a big topic in the legal community, but a lot of people stop just simply with the word marketing and don’t continue with the word plans. And so we’ve got Marc Cerniglia from Spotlight Branding here once again to suss out a little bit more of the marketing plans, how to plan, and what to think about when you’re dealing with your marketing plan. And this is our third session with Marc, the previous session. You can find in episode 509, if you want to hear a little bit more. Marc, once again, welcome to the show. 

  

Marc Cerniglia (03:12): 

Yeah, hey, glad to be here. Yeah, last time I was here, we talked about marketing plans and we talked about some of the pieces that are really important in a marketing plan that might get overlooked, like the importance of creating categories, the importance of creating goals or projections for your marketing plan and what some ideas are of a good marketing plan. And people can get that from the episode you just mentioned. I think you said it was 509. Yeah. But we got good feedback from that conversation. I want to continue it today and talk about a smaller piece of the overall marketing plan for a law firm, which is projecting and tracking success. And so what does success mean for different kinds of marketing? Because overall, yes, it’s getting more clients, but you can’t look at every single marketing activity in a vacuum of did it get me clients or not? It all works together. And to actually measure it in pieces, you have to understand some of the different things that different marketing activities do. And so I want to spend a couple minutes talking about how to measure things and what some of those differences are from one thing to the next. 

  

Zack Glaser (04:19): 

Yeah, that’d be fantastic because I think there’s obviously a difference between spending money on Google PPC and sponsoring a local baseball team or t-ball team or something like that, or just getting out and setting up a tent at the local farmer’s market and trying to help people or Yeah, there’s obviously a lot of different ways that we can do marketing, and if you just say, did this directly lead to me getting a good paying client, you’ll probably miss things. Yeah. So let’s dig in. 

  

Marc Cerniglia (04:48): 

Yeah, those are a couple of great examples, honestly, and let’s start off with the one you brought at the beginning. Things like Google Ads, paid ads, internet ads, search ads. Yeah. I mean, the bottom line of that really is clients. Now, technically speaking, when you’re analyzing the results, you really do have to look at how those A created leads because they might’ve been great leads and maybe your sales process, your intake process failed you, but overall, it’s reasonable to maybe look at things like search ads and judge that based on leads and clients kind of the bottom line. But you brought up community events, you could decide that’s a lead generating activity for you. But some law firms are going to look at that more as like pr, creating a positive image in the community. It’s not going to be about if we got any business from it or not, but exactly right. 

  

(05:36): 

Not all marketing is measured by if it got us clients, but how are you going to measure if that event was a success? Is it going to be by attendance? Is it going to be by a survey that you do to get feedback on the value you provided and being there? And then we, at Spotlight Branding, we focus on content marketing, solely content marketing. And the majority of the time our clients, when they do that with us, they’re focused more on building their brand, staying in touch with their existing leads. So the ROI there is more referrals, repeat business. It’s a little bit different than other kinds of marketing. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:14): 

Right. Well, and so specifically, how do you track the value of Instagram reels is that way it takes a little bit of time to create those things, but that’s not going to end in a phone call to my office most of the time, but I imagine it’s got value. So yeah, how would we put value to that? 

  

Marc Cerniglia (06:34): 

Yeah, I mean, well, that’s a really great specific example as well because, okay, I mean real quick, right, because we’ll try to knock this conversation out in a few minutes. But number one, I would say with Instagram, it’s also not necessarily about impressions or the likes or if anybody commented, it can be if that’s what you’re aiming for. And that’s why projecting your marketing is important because the same marketing activity at two different law firms might have two different initiatives or focuses or goals. So if a law firm wants to focus on the reach and the engagement of their social content, I’m not going to fault them for that, but we tend to see social media as more of a tool that helps build credibility and rapport. So you might not see a lot of engagement, but you see correlation to other areas of your practice. 

  

(07:25): 

And so we’ve seen social media increase referrals because people are staying more top of mind. And we’ve seen things like social media, not by itself, but as part of a bigger marketing and image reputation building approach, social media can be part of the equation that helps you charge higher rates or attract more of the kinds of business you want because you’ve built a brand. So the ROI on your social media might not be clients, it might not be likes and followers. It might be that you’re able to charge premium rates in your market, and social media is an ingredient to that brand you’ve built. So deciding what you want that market to accomplish, and then you work backwards from that and you realize different things are going to be measured differently, and some things are going to be more of a correlated analysis, kind of like the one I just said with, I’ll kind of wrap up with this and if you have anything to add, go for it. 

  

(08:19): 

But we’ve all heard the old saying, the best clients go to the best marketers, but does that just mean the best law firm at running Google Ads or search? No. I mean, that’s part of it, right? It could be, but no, it’s the ones that build a good brand that market themselves intelligently that stay in touch with people that are held in high regard. And so social media and Instagram reel, for example, could just be part of that equation. And so if you were to judge your Instagram and if you got a client from it, you might quickly dismiss Instagram and not understand it’s actually doing other things. So I mention real quick, if anybody didn’t get the marketing plan template from the last episode or they didn’t listen to it yet, we still have a free marketing plan template available that has a bunch of categories. It has room for your goals or your projections, and people can get that at spotlightbranding.com slash Lawyerist marketing plan, and that’s a free marketing plan template if anybody wants that. 

  

Zack Glaser (09:17): 

Awesome. Yeah. Again, spotlight branding.com/all one word Lawyerist marketing plan. We’ll also have it in the show notes anywhere that you’re getting this episode, Marc, jam packed. Thank you for all this information. Obviously, if anybody wants to know more information from you guys, they can just go to spotlight branding.com and hitch all up. So again, Marc, thanks for being with me. 

  

Marc Cerniglia (09:40): 

Always glad to be here. Thanks, Zack. 

  

Jordan Marsh (09:46): 

Hi, I am Jordan Marsh. I’m a trial lawyer and I have my own practice aply titled The Law Office of Jordan Marsh. We do primarily civil rights police and law enforcement misconduct. We also do personal injury. I’ve been on my own for about five years. I spent most of my early career working for the city of Chicago law department defending police officers and city employees and personal injury and civil rights lawsuits, and now I’m on the other side and representing citizens against the government. And just hopefully at some point in the next few days, I’ll be a published author, which I’m sure we’re going to talk about, but also a Lawyerist Labster, and I’m looking forward to talking about all that stuff. 

  

Sara Muender (10:28): 

Thanks for coming on the Lawyerist podcast, Jordan. I’ve been waiting for this moment. Me too. It’s been so awesome working with you as your coach. I’m just honestly really impressed with what you’ve been able to pull together from, we’ll talk about this too, some of the challenges of running a contingency based practice and how you turned those challenges into something really, really cool and meaningful. So just to tease out what we are going to talk about today, I’ll let you be the one to introduce. You said you’re about to be a published author and you were doing big stuff with that, but why don’t you just say what it’s so I can stop talking? 

  

Jordan Marsh (11:08): 

Sure. I wrote a book called Try Your Own Case, and it’s a guide for pro se litigants, meaning unrepresented. I assume most people on this podcast listening to this podcast know what pro se means, but for those who just wandered by it’s self-represented litigants who do not have an attorney, we have to turn away so many people and my colleagues have to turn away so many people. And that’s I’m sure the case with every law office, and it really sucks to have to turn people away and not give them anything at all to work with. So I wanted to do something for people who ultimately may not end up having an attorney or those who need to file case to satisfy the statute of limitations, the statutory deadline, and are not able to find an attorney prior to that point. So need to get a complaint on file. I also think it’s something that’ll be very helpful for young lawyers, young litigators law students, and then also anyone who may be represented by a council, but who wants to follow along and get the backstory. Anyone who wants to learn about litigation, I think this is a good resource and it’s written in a very, I don’t know if conversational is the right word, but accessible tone with some bad jokes along the way so they can feel at least comedically superior to the author. 

  

Sara Muender (12:33): 

Well, Jordan, one thing that I know for sure about you in getting to know you is you have a big heart and you really care about people, and that’s evident in the work that you do, and there’s no doubt that you have created the Try Your own case brand. And we’re going to talk about what that brand is and how we’re kind of building this new brand around the book as the hub of it. But you’ve also tapped into an untapped market, not just to help people, but as a revenue stream, if not streams in your business. So talk to us a little bit about, from your perspective, what led to you writing this book, and then let’s just start with the book and some of the challenges or opportunities, if you will, that you face in your law firm and how that led into the idea to write this book. 

  

Jordan Marsh (13:26): 

Well, you and I have spoken about the amazing contingency business model where when you make an amazing sale and you get an amazing client with an amazing case, that essentially means that within one to two years, you may get paid a certain amount of money, you have no control, very little control over the timing, the amount or whether or not you in fact end up receiving any revenue at all from that amazing case. So as we’ve discussed, the contingency model is super challenging and adding the civil rights model on top of that where it’s not quite as cut and dry as a lot of personal injury cases, it’s like herding cats. And so it’s tough, and cashflow obviously is always an issue. So I was looking around for a way to achieve and obtain passive revenue and to put something out there in the world that could result in some passive revenue. 

  

(14:23): 

And I have all sorts of ideas for content all the time. So I just started waking up at five 30 in the morning and writing a book, and now it’s a book, and it’s just an amazing ride. Hopefully it will generate income, although I’ve put a bunch of money into it, so we’ll see. But then of course, as you and I have discussed at length, I’m going to be turning this into an online course and a resource for self-represented litigants so that I can expand on the concepts in the book and talk about specific areas, specific focuses of litigation, different kinds of litigation definitions, and really kind of explain a lot of the stuff that would’ve made the book far too long. So that’s another thing that hopefully will be the gift that keeps on giving both to myself and people who would benefit by it. In addition, the website itself is turning into a hub of resources, so it’s kind of thematic in that sense. And so I feel like it’s a win-win. 

  

Sara Muender (15:27): 

Yeah, for sure. And you are creating this whole brand, this new, I see it as the try your own case brand, which encompasses the book as kind of the main hub of it. And then we’ve talked about building this online course and you and I have started mapping it out and everything that’s really going to, just to kind of summarize what you said, is really going to take the concepts of the book and really guide people through actually putting it into practice. And so there’s a revenue stream with the book, there’s a revenue stream with the course, and then we’ve even talked about doing a subscription model around this. So one thing at a time, but I’m hoping that the listeners are starting to get some ideas of their own for how they can really productize their expertise. Really what we’re talking about here is you have a law firm that you get to do what you love as far as being a lawyer representing victims and doing what you do best. 

  

(16:24): 

But there are challenges with that in running a business if you’re a small business and it’s a hundred percent dependent on the outcome of the case. And like you said, there’s lots of time in between those settlements and when they come in. So I just love that you haven’t given up on your dreams of what you love doing as a lawyer, and instead you decided to add to the value that you give through your practice by actually doing this thing. You actually have done it, you’ve written the book and that that’s got to feel good. I mean, can you touch on that a little bit because I’m sure that there are people listening that have thought about writing a book, have thought about maybe productizing their expertise in some way, and now this is your opportunity to give them some motivation of why they should do it. 

  

Jordan Marsh (17:15): 

Yeah, I mean, it’s incredible for a number of reasons. And this, well, I tend to kind of chase the shiny object a lot of people do. And this job really lends itself in a way to that in the sense that I have 30 to 40 different cases with innumerable issues to think about and occupy my mind. And my mind is kind of able to bop around a pinball. There’s always things to bop around, but that can make it difficult to actually achieve outcomes and achieve goals. And so when I was able to actually not only write the book, writing the book was by no means the most difficult part of this, but get the book into reality, which entails a lot more than I thought it did. You really have to wake up every day and do the work and stay on task. And I’ve done that, which is an amazing statement to myself more than anything else, that I can do it and I can do the big stuff and I can do a big thing. So yeah, it’s awesome. One of the things that I think about is when you talk about productizing your expertise, first of all, I think there’s a whole market in turning nouns into verbs, and I think this is hard. So if someone could write a book about that, I think that’s an opportunity. But having said that 

  

Sara Muender (18:32): 

Different episode, 

  

Jordan Marsh (18:33): 

Exactly, stay tuned for the sequel. But having said that, I think if you sit here at one point in time at whatever age you’re at, if you’ve been a lawyer for a number of years, you just don’t realize how much you know, don’t realize it because it’s an everyday experience. It’s like when you take your kids to someone else’s house who haven’t seen them in a long time, and they feel cliche, oh, you’ve gotten so big. Kids love to hear that, but 

  

Sara Muender (19:02): 

Adults not so much. Exactly. 

  

Jordan Marsh (19:04): 

Right? Yeah. But it’s true for that person because they haven’t seen that kid in a long time. And I see this myself, and then when you see old pictures of your kids, but unless you do that, you don’t realize really how much they’ve grown because you see ’em every day. And so it’s the same thing with the knowledge you acquire. You’re acquiring knowledge every single day, and you don’t realize how much you’ve acquired. And maybe it’s also because what we do, and certainly what I do as a trial lawyer is kind of steeped in everyday concepts. It’s not like an engineer may remember the time when he first learned what a Plato blaster was or what it may be if it’s ever invented. 

  

Sara Muender (19:49): 

I just learned a new word. 

  

Jordan Marsh (19:50): 

Yeah, sure. Exactly. And then you could Plato blast things once you turn that into a verb. The point is, that’s something where maybe it’s a little easier to flag when you learn something, but as a lawyer, it’s just all the time and you don’t realize it, and you really have to sit down and think about it. And when I started working on the book, I started thinking about, well, how hard is it really to do discovery and how much do you really have to know? I mean, it’s just basic common sense. And you started getting into the weeds of it and you’re like, oh my, yeah, people aren’t going to necessarily know this. I mean, a lot of it has a common sense foundation, but then it goes way off the rails, and you’ve got to try to figure out, well, wait a minute, why does this rule say this? 

  

(20:34): 

And is there a rule for this? And is the rule statutory? Is it the case? Is it come from the constitution? Is it procedural? Is it substantive? What is hearsay? What’s a hearsay exception? All of these things that you deal with every day, not even realizing that it is very exotic and alien concept for most of the people on the planet. And if you can explain it, well, that’s an opportunity for you, and it’s an opportunity for people for whom it has not been explained well and are currently muddling through and a case on their own having really no idea what they’re doing. 

  

Sara Muender (21:09): 

Yeah. Oh my gosh, such a good point. The thought that we really take for granted what we know and the experience that we’ve had doing what we do for as long as we have. For those that are listening, one of the quickest ways to open up the floodgates of ideas and to kind of get you thinking about, all you really do know is write out an FAQs page for your potential clients out there, which you should be doing anyways, which would be great content for your website. Write on an FAQ’s page or a frequently misunderstood list of concepts related to what you do, and put yourself in the mind of these potential clients. And you’ll quickly realize what you really do take for granted. The most basic things that you as a lawyer, it comes second nature to you, if not first nature, especially if you’ve been doing this for a long time, but even probably not getting out of law school. 

  

(22:09): 

Once you start to flex those muscles a little bit, you kind of build that muscle memory. But for people, I’m hoping that those that are listening are really starting to think maybe there’s more opportunity in all of the knowledge and experience that I’ve gained than I had previously considered. So for the naysayers though, obviously we’ve got an audience of lawyers, so there’s always the other side of this, and one could probably say, well, this sounds great, but how many people out there really want to try their own case? So what do you have to say to that? How have you worked through those doubts? 

  

Jordan Marsh (22:47): 

Well, let me just say that there’s a big difference between the number of people who really want to try their own case and the number of people who are for whatever reason, trying their own case. I don’t think most people out there think so badly of lawyers that they’re like, I don’t need it. I’m going to do it on my own. There are some, but I think the vast majority of people, and there are tens of thousands of pro se litigants all over the country. I mean in federal court, in state court and all these state courts and all the federal courts throughout the country, 

  

Sara Muender (23:18): 

Did you do some research to find that out or is that just kind of commonly known? No. Yeah, 

  

Jordan Marsh (23:23): 

There’s all sorts of statistics. It’s an imperfect science to really nail it down. But at one point there was a study indicating that 75% of all cases involve at least one unrepresented party. Wow. So it’s not like people are out there saying, man, I want to do this on my, I want to DIY. This again, I’m sure some people are, but there’s so many different categories and reasons for people to be on their own, not by choice. So the question is how to find them. There’s not a specific demographic I think that you can look to. And so that’s one of the challenges and the opportunities that we’re facing is trying to market and find those people. And so marketing this thing is a fun challenge and it’s exciting, but the bottom line is there are tens of thousands of people every day who already are currently litigating their own cases by choice or not. 

  

(24:28): 

And then there are all sorts of people who are contemplating doing that. In addition to that, there are innumerable people who know they want to file a case. They just found out that they only have two years to file their case. And this incident occurred a year and a half ago, and they’ve got six months, maybe a month now they got to get a complaint together, they got to figure out how to file it, they’re going to have to figure out how to serve the defendants, all sorts of stuff. And there are people who have been sued by credit card companies and businesses or whatever and find themselves in court as well. So yeah, there are countless people out there who need to know how to do this. And again, not to do it. One of the things you point out in the book is this isn’t going to make you a lawyer. 

  

(25:12): 

It certainly is not equivalent to being a lawyer, being pro se. Even with this resource, it’s still not preferable to having a lawyer if you have a qualified competent attorney who believes in your case. That is the ideal situation. But as we know in life, many situations are far from ideal. So if you don’t have that at a minimum, you should have the tools to muddle your way through in a lot more educated way. And this book is the toolbox. And again, we’re going to put out a lot of content on video and all sorts of things, and it is going to be a two-way street or we’re going to solicit ideas from people, what do you want to see? What are the things that you’re struggling with? And hopefully really develop a community of people who can even talk to each other and really kind of become their own self-supporting group. Maybe we’ll call the non-lawyer 

  

Sara Muender (26:07): 

Just came up. Yeah, we might have to talk to some copyright, some copyright experts on that one. But yeah, the point is that there’s a huge market here, and I heard, I want to say it was Ed Mylet or he’s one of my favorite podcasters, I think it was him. But he said a goal is basically creating a space that wasn’t there before. And I think that lawyers are very smart people, obviously, but I think that sometimes they get an idea and they immediately stop when they start thinking about how, well, how is this going to work? How is this going to play out? How are we going to find people? But you actually took the time to explore the market and to think through the potential here, because the way I see it, at the very minimum, what your book does is well, it spreads this idea that you have options. 

  

(27:07): 

There might be some people out there who can’t find a lawyer, can’t afford a lawyer, no one will take them, and they think that’s where it ends. Have they even considered that they could represent themselves? I’m sure there’s lots of people that don’t realize that. So one, it’s bringing awareness without necessarily advocating. From my perspective, the way I see you approaching this is you’re not necessarily advocating for trying your own case. You’re not necessarily advocating for not working with a lawyer, but you understand that there are people out there that are going to, and so why not put something out there that’s going to help them? Because ultimately that’s going to help the judge that’s going to help all the people involved in the legal system. And at a very minimum, it’s going to educate people of what’s involved in the process so that maybe when they’re done reading your book, they decide, I don’t want to do this. There’s way more involved than I thought. 

  

Jordan Marsh (28:00): 

Absolutely. That’s definitely one of the things that people might learn, and that’s what we say in the book. But yeah, I mean one of the things that didn’t even hit me until the end of the book, until I was writing the conclusion, at least not in this way, is that first of all, there’s a statute that we cite that talks about the fact that people are able to use, at least for federal courts, they’re able to litigate using counsel or on their own right. It is embodied in a federal statute that you do not need to have an attorney. So the fact of the matter is there are all sorts of people out there who are using the federal court system, the state court system in all the states without an attorney. And there is no monopoly, is no surprise that a legal profession has grown out of this legal system. 

  

(28:50): 

And the fact that lawyers write all the rules, those rules can be a little bit complicated and arcane. And so it’s great for lawyers, right? So they’ve made it so that you need to be almost so that you need to be a lawyer to really figure it out, and that’s a problem. But while that system exists short of changing the entire system, you want at least give the opportunity to people to navigate that system because everyone has a right to use this court system. This is for all, and I say in the book, apologies to Judge Waner and Judge Judy, but our court system is the true people’s court. It has to be treated like the people’s Court, not just in Word and not just by the technical operation of a statute, but in real life, the courthouse doors need to be open to all of us, even those of us who for whatever reason do not have a lawyer because we don’t even think about that. 

  

(29:47): 

Oh yeah, this is for lawyers. And sometimes some person can’t get a lawyer, so they have to do what they can. But the courts are just as much there for non-lawyers and for self-represented people as they are for lawyers. Obviously as a practical matter, it’s far easier for lawyers to navigate. Lawyers have written the rules. And so it’s not nearly as easy for these people to use this system, but we have to, and this has been frankly, I think a journey for court administrators, for judges for decades, trying to make it more of an open system and trying to assist pro se litigants. And so this is just another in a series of attempts. We even have a pretty massive database now of se assistance programs in every single state in the country, and it’s thousands and thousands of entries, and that’s going to be on our website free of charge to anyone who wants it. 

  

Sara Muender (30:44): 

And I bet that’s helped you in doing some of your market research. 

  

Jordan Marsh (30:47): 

Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot going on there, but I don’t know that there’s any one source like this book that is going to go from soup to nuts, from investigating your case to the end of a jury trial or a bench trial all the way through every single part. And in a voice that is a real human voice that is written from the perspective of a lawyer who has never forgotten what it’s like not to be a lawyer and who always thinks about everything that he encounters as a lawyer, how does this look? Does this make actual sense in the world, even if you’re not some lawyer, knowing all the arcane rules. And I always look at it that way, not consciously, just because I’m still not even sure how to articulate it because I am technically and in all respects a lawyer. I went to law school, passed the bar, signed up all the papers, so I’m a real lawyer, but I always look at the system and how it works from the perspective of an outsider. And I think that is so valuable in speaking to non-lawyers, teaching them how the system works. 

  

Sara Muender (31:53): 

Yeah, it’s also really valuable even if you are just trying to run a law firm, not write a book or do any of this that we’re talking about too. It’s a good reminder. Put yourself in your clients and potential clients choose for anything just for the client experience and ways to improve that. So no doubt that this is going to do a lot of good for the world, and I honor your commitment to really helping people in the work that you do. But I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about how it benefits you and how it benefits your firm. And I see this as sort of like it’s not just a solution to the challenges of running a contingency based practice, but I also see it as an opportunity to enhance your contingency based practice. It can financially support it so that you can be a little bit Hoosier about the cases that you pick. I’m just thinking about if someone else were thinking about ways to add value to their firm. I mean, this is such a great way, but what have been some of the challenges along the way? 

  

Jordan Marsh (33:00): 

Well, taking that in order, the first thing that I think in terms of the benefits of something like this, here’s my analogy, like alcohol, there’s always been this back and forth in the research about whether or not having a glass of wine is good for you or not good for you, and you’re always reading new studies that change the way that we’ve always thought about things. And in terms of what food is good for you, should you eat eggs? Should you eat, only egg whites are yolks, okay, blah, blah, blah. So it’s back and forth, so you’re like, what do I do? But there are some things that are never going to change. No one’s ever going to come in there and say, smoking a cigarette is good food. Drinking pop is something you should always do. You’re not going to see that. And I feel the same way about putting good content out into the world. 

  

(33:54): 

There is no scenario where that is not a great thing on so many levels. So if you’re thinking about how complicated the world is, just think about not the easy, but the simple stuff. Putting good content out in the world, giving people the benefit of your expertise and putting content out there in a way that’s accessible. There is never going to be a study that says that’s going to cause cancer, never going to happen, or that people are going to be too dependent on you or whatever. It’s no reasonable person can say that. So go for the stuff that is simple. Again, not easy necessarily, but simple. And one of those things is putting this stuff out there. This will have benefits that I can’t even anticipate. But among those that I do anticipate, like you’re saying, obviously it’s always nice to have an independent revenue stream. 

  

(34:50): 

It’s always nice to say you’re a published author. That gives you credibility in so many different arenas, including with clients, but also with colleagues and judges and things like that. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with judges about this project judges who I will practice in front of, and it’s not going to make ’em necessarily change a ruling, but it’s always good for a judge to have a positive experience of you. And also when people read this book and they’ll say, this guy knows what’s going on, maybe I’ll run my case by him, maybe he will take my case. And the fact of the matter is I’ve done very well taking cases filed by pro se litigants and looking at them and saying, this has merit and have some really nice settlements from those cases. So there’s just no end to the benefits of doing something like this, but you got to work at it. It’s got to be a good product. It’s not something I think you can do lightly, but once you do it, there’s just no end to the benefits for you. And of course, I think the more value you add to the world, it’s just going to come back on you tenfold 

  

Sara Muender (36:02): 

In unexpected ways. 

  

Jordan Marsh (36:04): 

So just do the stuff that’s going to add value to people’s lives, and that’s what we do with Lawyerist, but this is just another way to do it. 

  

Sara Muender (36:12): 

So some of the challenges that you’ve experienced along the way. 

  

Jordan Marsh (36:16): 

It’s funny, as I mentioned before, the writing of the book was by far the easiest part of this. There’s so much to navigate. I was lucky enough that I had a content person who edited the book for me, and there are a ton of online resources for writing books, for marketing books, but going back and forth with the file, the PDF file, I’m using Book Baby as a distributor and there are different distributors. But first you got to figure out, first of all, am I going to publish my own book or am I going to use a big publishing house or try to get a big publishing house? I happen to think that it’s a no-brainer. You’re going to apply to Random House and they’re going to get back to you in two years and 99% of the time they’re going to reject you. And if they don’t, they just take every single dollar you would ever possibly make. 

  

(37:05): 

They’ll give you a $6,000 advance and you’re working against your advance for the next whatever. It just doesn’t seem like in my very, very idiosyncratic view and unique perspective. So you got to figure out if you want to have a try for a big publishing house or do it yourself. There’s so many opportunities for self-publishing now I don’t see why you wouldn’t do that, but there are different ways to self-publish. There are publishing, like I said, like Book Baby does certain way in terms of distributing on all the platforms that costs a certain amount of money. There’s something called Ingram Spark where it doesn’t cost you upfront or may not cost you as much upfront, but they take a cut. So there’s figuring all that out. There’s the graphics. I hired a graphics company to come up with a cover and the interior graphics and the charts and all that stuff. 

  

(37:55): 

And then they also set the whole book up. So it looks like a book that then they then turns into a PDF and you send it to Book Baby. But I didn’t know how to do that before. And at one point I am thinking about the marketing and I’m thinking about everything, and I realized I’ve never done this before and I’m the only one deciding how all this is going to happen. And it can get overwhelming. You can start to kind of freak out and be like, there are no grownups in the room. It’s just me who’s got the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old and I’m the one, this is all relying on me. There’s no one else who I’m going to say, boss, is this going to work? So that can be a scary thing, but there are so many resources out there, and obviously I’d be thrilled to talk to anyone who is looking at doing this and has any questions about it and wants to talk about mine. I can certainly speak to my experience if anyone has any interest in doing something like this. And so there are questions that I could not find answers to online and little things. And so there’s just so much. There’s just so much. 

  

Sara Muender (39:01): 

Well, I’ve also seen in working with you now for a little while, I’ve seen your confidence grow and I admire how, I mean you were a confident person when we started working together, but it’s like putting yourself through this process with this mindset of everything is figureoutable has, I think contributed to you getting this far and having the book done. Because like I said, that’s where most people stop as soon as they start thinking about how that’s where they stop and they just throw the whole idea away. But you’ve really embraced that everything is figureoutable and if you don’t know how to do it, there’s someone out there that does. 

  

Jordan Marsh (39:38): 

Yeah. And first of all, let me just not neglect to thank you again. None of this is is truly by yourself. And even though I’m the only one deciding this, at the end of the day, it’s all the product of coaching of people being supportive. You’ve given me a ton of practical advice on this stuff, but also obviously the encouragement and also someone to hold you accountable. What are you going to do this week to push this thing forward? And so no one’s on their own and no one achieves anything on their own. So you’ve been amazing. The Lawyerist community has been amazing. Having something like that is super helpful. 

  

Sara Muender (40:18): 

Well, I can’t speak to whether me being a part of the process counts as there being a grownup in the room. However, you are right in that no one can do anything alone, run a business alone, let alone go off on this fun new business model adventure. And so yeah, I appreciate you saying that and it’s been really, really cool to watch you through this process. What have been some other challenges? 

  

Jordan Marsh (40:45): 

I guess keeping on with it, I mean, not letting it die, although for whatever reason this has been different than all these other things. The world is littered with great ideas that just don’t get executed and certainly in my life. But once I started this, there was a point in time I can remember the points where I was thinking about doing something like this where I was generally thinking about writing a book and people podcast, they’re all like, market yourself, write a book. And I was like, oh, write a book. Who’s going to write a book? And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I know how to do this stuff. Why don’t I just write it down? And then it gets to a point where it’s like it’s there and it’s like nothing else I’ve ever done where other than, well, I guess not true. 

  

(41:31): 

I went to law school and started a law firm. All this stuff I don’t even think about, but I’m so used to beating myself up over not getting stuff done that I can’t even comprehend how this happened. There is never a time during this entire process when I did not think this was going to happen, when I did not entertain the possibility that I was going to let it go, and not because I just gritted my teeth and said, this is going to happen. It was just, if you have an opportunity to write a book, it’s just so cool if you’re so inclined, if that’s the kind of thing that motivates you, who doesn’t want to have written a book and all of a sudden you’ve got this content? And look, the fact of the matter is if you think about it. So this is kind of a way not to get overwhelmed by it. Think about the most basic part of this. You have this content, it’s good, you write it out. You could literally mimeograph it. If I can go back to the 1950s mimeograph and Xerox it through the 1960s and seventies, fax it through the 1980, I don’t know, I’m sorry about that. You can delete all this, but 

  

Sara Muender (42:38): 

Bend it on a dinosaur. 

  

Jordan Marsh (42:40): 

You make copies of this, you can give it to people. At the very minimum, you can just give it to people. It’s that basic if you want it to be that basic. And you can say, you wrote a book now at some point, if you can get an ISBN number, which is the international book category, whatever, that’s what all the books have. And then you’re like, this is going to the Library of Congress. But it’s still, even though there’s a lot to learn and there’s a lot to think about, you can be as simple as you want or as far reaching as you want because it’s all up to you. And if you just want to be able to say, I published a book, then publish a book, you send it to your clients, you now you go to million different websites, will literally print a book for you. 

  

(43:25): 

Amazon, when I first started looking at this, I created a journal on Amazon, which is two or currently on Amazon, none of which have sold anything. I haven’t done anything with ’em, but they will sell your thing for you. And so it’s so easy to actually get something out there. So that’s just a matter of how much do you want it and how sophisticated do you want it to get? And at some point I realized that this could get pretty far reaching and I think I wanted as many people as possible to know about it. So we’re marketing it in any number of ways. But in terms of other challenges, I would just say just obviously a lot of time 

  

Sara Muender (44:03): 

And you’re still running a law firm. 

  

Jordan Marsh (44:05): 

Yeah, exactly. I’ll tell you, it is rewarding in such a different way, in a way that it’s a dimension. It’s kind of like how I always felt about having kids. At one point I wasn’t into it, and then all of a sudden I realized I don’t want to live without that dimension of relationship in my life with my own children. And it’s like that. It’s a whole different dimension of giving obviously, of revenue that’s always there. But it’s just so fun to think because at the end of this, you’re going to be a published author. It’s like one of the best rewards you can possibly think of. So all of the challenges for this particular thing, I mean, being a lawyer and dealing with a wide variety of clients and judges and witnesses, there’s a lot of rewarding stuff. But really, really that can be a grind. Everyone who’s done this knows that this book thing is, it’s been such a pleasure. So it’s just different and fun, and it’s been exciting, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. We got it reviewed, we got reviews. All positive Kikis, who I know a lot of people don’t know, but it’s kind of a famous book reviewing thing. They gave it a thumbs up, and so there’s external validation it. So it’s all been great. 

  

Sara Muender (45:26): 

And I think that one thing I pulled out of that is for those who are listening who are wondering whether they should write a book or whether they should launch this new aspect of their business model, I love what you said about adding it as a dimension to your life. If you can fast forward to being at the end of your life, and not to make this a mortality conversation, but if you can fast forward and you can truly, honestly tell yourself, I will be okay. If I say I had never done that thing, well then maybe there are better things to pursue. But if you get to the end of their life and you don’t like the idea of saying at that point, well, I never did write a book. Well, now’s the time. So if you had any advice for listeners on anything we talked about, what would it be? 

  

Jordan Marsh (46:18): 

Just examine your mind frame, examine the way in which you see the things that you can do in your life throughout this process. I thought to myself like, well, how would an author do this? Or what have I seen before? What is the book spine supposed to look like? How long is the acknowledgement supposed to 

  

Sara Muender (46:38): 

Be right to the how? Just like I said, yeah, 

  

Jordan Marsh (46:41): 

All of these things. And then I thought, who cares? I can put the acknowledgement anywhere I want. You want people to recognize what it is. So you wouldn’t make it out of bologna, like literal bologna here, 

  

Sara Muender (46:53): 

Lady Gaga might have something to say about That’s true. 

  

Jordan Marsh (46:56): 

Yeah, exactly. So you’d sell at least one, although it might be worth it, but recalibrate all of those things that at this age, you have eliminated subconsciously about your ability to do things. Because writing a book can be anything you want it to be. 

  

Sara Muender (47:13): 

It could be an ebook. 

  

Jordan Marsh (47:15): 

Well, yeah, I mean, it could be an ebook, but I mean, you could write a novel. You could write a book of poem all about the law. You could write a book about, it could be funny, it could be stupid, it can be whatever. And so I think when people think of an author, they think about someone else. If you’ve never done that, if you are not an actual trained author, you think, well, yeah, but that person’s an author. Just the way, I’m sure a lot of pro se people think, oh, that person’s a lawyer. Not that they can automatically be a lawyer, but they can understand the concept. Once you break down the litigation process to people into its components and you realize, oh, there’s a reason for this, it makes sense. People can reframe the way they think about how they can act and conduct themselves in court. 

  

(47:58): 

And by the same token, people can reframe whether or not, and it’s not really investigate internally whether or not without even really consciously thinking about it, they’re eliminating possibilities for themselves that don’t have to be eliminated. So you can be an author, you can be an online course person or whatever, and you just got to get over yourself. That’s all you got to do. And it’s just a matter of releasing the limitations that you place on yourself and the world is kind of placed on you that you don’t even think about. And the world is much more your oyster than you can even imagine. 

  

Sara Muender (48:34): 

And hence why we’re such big proponents of coaching, because that’s an opportunity to challenge and explore what’s getting in the way of you really tapping into your full potential in your business and your life and bringing the value to the world. I mean, Jordan, I know this is going to be successful. I know it’s going to change a lot of lives. I’m really excited for you, and we’re going to have to do a part two and then talk about the process of building out the online course and everything around it. But for now, we’re celebrating congratulations on your book launch. Thank you for those that are listening, if they want to check it out, what should they do? Get in touch with you, what’s their next step? They 

  

Jordan Marsh (49:17): 

Can go to try your own case.com, which is currently up and running. It’s a functional website. It’s got resources, it’s got, once this thing goes live for presale and regular sale, you’ll be able to order books from there, and at some point they’ll be able to do everything from there. And then you can even join the mailing list and join the community. You can sign up there, so www.tryyourowncase.com. My office of the law, office of Jordan Marsh, you can contact me [email protected]. J-M-A-R-S-H-L-A w.com. It’s Jordan like Michael Jordan because obviously it’s an uncanny resemblance or they can do it at info at try your own case.com. So any number of ways to get in touch with me if they have any questions. If you want to get involved, you want to order a copy of the book, just go to the website and it’ll be, by the time this thing drops, it will definitely, the ebook should be available for instant download, and the presale for the print book will have begun, so it will be available. 

  

Sara Muender (50:15): 

Yeah, I mean, what a great resource for other lawyers who can point their potential clients who they’ve decided not to work with. We can point them in your direction. This can be a great resource for them. Jordan, thank so much for coming on the show and being in lab. It’s been such a joy working with you as your coach, and just really fun conversation. So much value. Thank you so much. 

  

Jordan Marsh (50:37): 

Thank you, Sara, and thanks for everything you’ve done for me. I couldn’t have done it without you. 

  

Zack Glaser (50:44): 

The Lawyerist podcast is edited by Brittany Felix, are you ready to implement the ideas we discussed here into your practice, wondering what to do next? Here are your first steps. First, if you haven’t read the Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the initial chapter for free at Lawyerist dot com slash book, looking for help beyond the book. Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities are right for you. Head to Lawyerist dot com slash community slash lab for more information. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you. 

 

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