Khurram’s Quorum – Ep 036: Randy Gaw on niching and storytelling for firm founders
Randy Gaw left BigLaw in 2012 after an 11-month trial in San Diego convinced him he'd never get first-chair trial work on the partnership track. So he built Gaw Poe LLP—a boutique that runs on contingency cases, high-value business litigation, and an unusual case selection filter: "What's the narrative we'll tell at trial?"
In this conversation, Randy breaks down why he won't take litigation funding at 20-30% interest anymore (he and his partner are $1.2M out-of-pocket on current cases), how explaining complex legal ideas to non-lawyer parents at school sharpens his storytelling muscles, and why playing poker teaches litigators to stick with the right process even when outcomes go sideways. He also shares the moment he realized other firms passed on a case because they were "too conventional" in their legal analysis—and how thinking in edge cases led to class certification and a lucrative settlement.
We cover the business model of a plaintiff-side boutique (his ideal mix: 1/3 hourly, 2/3 contingency by time invested), why jury consultants who go to trial 20+ times a year know what resonates better than any lawyer, and how to reverse-engineer a litigation strategy by asking "Will this case win at trial?" before deciding which claims to pursue.
Keep reading below for the full link to the episode and the full transcript of our conversation.
Top Insights
Below are the highlights of our conversation:
- Narrative-First Case Selection: Randy evaluates every contingency case by asking "What story will we tell at trial?"—not just "What are the legal claims?" If the jury won't like the client even when the law is on their side, that's a red flag. Starting with the end narrative drives every strategic decision: which claims to pursue, what discovery to develop, and whether to take the case at all.
- The Hidden Cost of Litigation Funding: After paying 20-30% annual interest on a funded case, Randy realized: "If I'm confident enough to take this case, why am I giving away so much upside to de-risk it?" Now he and his partner self-fund $1.2M+ in contingency work, reserving third-party funding only for cases they couldn't afford to take otherwise—because believing in your process means backing it with your own capital.
- Poker, Parenting, and Storytelling Muscles: Randy credits Texas Hold'em for teaching him to model probabilities, handle bad outcomes when the process was right, and recognize when luck bailed him out. Explaining cases to non-lawyer parents at school? That's his storytelling gym—reducing complex ideas to something people want to understand more about, with respect and authenticity.
- Why Jury Consultants Change Everything: Randy's firm goes to trial 1-2x/year. Jury consultants go 20+ times annually and have done it for decades. Hiring them as trial approaches gives Randy insights on what resonates with juries that he couldn't develop on his own—turning good trial prep into great trial prep by learning from people who've seen every narrative play out.
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Full Transcript
Khurram Naik: This is Khurram with Khurram's Quorum. My guest today is Randy Gaw. Randy is a co-founder of the law firm Gaw Poe. I found Randy through his posts on LinkedIn and was struck by his somewhat unconventional approach to thinking about and talking about the kinds of cases he litigates. In this episode, we talk about the path from Big Law to launching your own firm, the business of a boutique law firm, case selection, strategy—a lot to cover here that will be very interesting for anyone who is looking to launch their own law firm or curious about what it's like to jump to the other side of the V. Here's Randy.
Khurram Naik: Randy, thanks so much for getting on the podcast. I am really interested to have you on because of your path to building your own law firm. You started in Big Law and then launched your own law firm, which has grown since then, and you're doing some interesting work. I always think it's just really interesting when people leave Big Law to go to the other side of the V. So, excited to have you on here to share your story.
Randy Gaw: Thanks, Khurram. It’s very nice to meet you and thanks for having me.
Khurram Naik: So let's start with your motivations for launching your firm. You had been at two great law firms, had significant experience doing largely defense-side commercial litigation work. I'm curious about what was the inflection point that said, "Hey, you know what?" Any number of lawyers I think express curiosity in launching their own law firm and any number do. In your case, can you recall any inflection point that said, "You know what? I think this is beyond just an idea, I think this is something that I can really do," and then start to take steps to implement?
Randy Gaw: Yeah, sure. I had an interesting genesis, that's for sure. Part of it was formed by the immediate experience that I had, which is in 2007 through 2008, I was involved in an 11-month trial down in San Diego. I’m normally based out of San Francisco, but I was down in San Diego and I was there for 13 months on an 11-month bench trial, which was, as you might imagine, a lot of hard work and a fantastic experience. But one thing that I observed in my role on that case—and I was one of many senior associates—was that just the way the Big Law firm structure worked, the senior partners, you know, they made the decisions.
In my specific field, litigation and trial work, the senior partners are the ones who are doing all the work at trial. They're the ones who examine the witnesses, who give opening statements, closing arguments, and so on and so forth, right? They're paid the big bucks literally, so that's what they do. Just kind of like game-planning it out years into the future, there wasn't a path that I saw where I would be getting to do similar type work for a long period of time. And that's even assuming that, you know, I was made partner, which of course the odds are pretty difficult in a large law firm. Not only do you have to impress the partnership, but there has to be a business case for you. In my particular field, business litigation, it wasn't like I had any particular specialty or novel set of skills that I could make a case for myself.
So just kind of looking at it all, it was a situation where, well, I don't know if I would make partner, but even if I made partner, I don't know if I would feel fulfilled necessarily for a long period of time because if you do litigation, you want to be in front of a jury. You want to be in front of the judge, getting to make the arguments, getting to examine witnesses and so forth. And that wasn't looking like it would happen to me, at least at the firm that I was with at the time. So I embarked on a period of reflection, thinking about "What is it that I want? How do I go about getting what I want?"
Kind of serendipitously, around that period of time—so we're now in 2009—there were one or two articles written in the local legal media about attorneys like me: Big Law firm lawyers who had ventured off and started their own solo practices or boutique law firms. I read those articles. I knew some of the people who were involved; some of them were my former colleagues. So I reached out to them to kind of gather their thoughts. You know, "What’s your experience been like? Do you find it rewarding?" and so forth. One thing led to another and ultimately I decided to take the plunge, I guess so to speak, and do my own thing.
Khurram Naik: What was it you learned from those former colleagues that helped you wrap your head around how they were approaching their firms and your approach? Like, what was it that you learned that said, "Okay, there's a plan here and I can act on it"?
Randy Gaw: Well, I learned that, one, it's doable, right? So there were all these people who were doing it, who were lawyers first and who had become entrepreneurs out of necessity. It was a kind of intimidating idea for me initially because I didn't consider myself a business person. But to kind of see these people go through with it and to thrive, that was very reassuring. And I think, other than just sort of talking logistics and other things that kind of involve starting a law firm—which I was wholly ignorant about—just hearing all of these people talk about the extreme satisfaction that they felt with the decision that they made.
I mean, these were people who had taken ownership of their careers and were doing what they wanted to do, who were getting their own clients, who were going to court, who were making money. You know, everything that at the time I was thinking, "Is this even possible for me?" These people who had gone ahead and done it ahead of me showed me it is indeed possible and it's something you can actually be good at, despite not having any prior experience in those areas.
Khurram Naik: Did that, in terms of implementing next steps, what takeaways did you have for "Okay, here's the tangible next steps" after you had those conversations? Like, what came next from that?
Randy Gaw: Well, the main next step for me after kind of talking to people and learning from them that it can be done and deciding that this is something that I definitely wanted to pursue was to really more look into the business side of things, like what does it take to open a law firm? I think I spent like the better part of a year just looking into these things. Looking into the difference between a solo practice versus a professional corporation or limited liability partnership. Looking into legal software, cloud software to run the business. Modeling out things like, well, how much do I need to charge? What are my expenses?
I mean, stuff that I think business folks probably would just say, "Oh yeah, that's intuitive, you would do this all the time." But at least for me as a non-business person, it wasn't necessarily intuitive. And so I spent time just kind of learning and reading up about what it is to open a business. What do you have to do? Why should you do X instead of doing Y? There was actually a very helpful book by an author named Carolyn Elefant, I believe that's her name, who had her own solo practice in Washington D.C. She wrote a book, I think it's called Solo by Choice. It was highly recommended by multiple people and I read it and it was just great advice about what it is you need to do, what you need to think about, and why you should go into solo practice if that is what you want to do. So, a lot of research for me, which is kind of very consistent with sort of my approach to the practice of law in the first place.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, okay. So you took this very research-intensive approach, which as you say, I think is very common among experienced litigators. It’s interesting because this theme of a business mindset as being novel just keeps on coming up here. And so then how did you take that leap? How did you say, "I've done enough research, now I have to act"?
Randy Gaw: Well, you just kind of like give yourself a deadline for doing things, right? To force yourself into action. Because inertia is powerful. It's very easy to just keep sliding along and doing what you're doing, but you kind of give yourself a deadline for getting something done and it's very motivating.
In my particular case, I was actually coming on my 10th law school anniversary. I went to Stanford and graduated in 2002. September, I think, 2012 was my 10-year reunion, which I was definitely going towards too. And so it just kind of intuitively made sense: "Hey, I want to have started this by the time of my 10th reunion." And so that was motivating to kind of get things done by then. I actually launched on September 1, 2012.
And in my particular case also, my wife gave birth to our first child in January 2012. And so that actually kind of—originally I was thinking, "Oh, I might want to launch in late 2011," but I kind of realized, "You know, that might be just a little too much on my plate, juggling so many things." The firm that I was with, O'Melveny & Myers, had a very generous paternity policy, so I took advantage of that. They're very good about sort of like getting people time to take time off for children and so forth. So I took advantage of that and then kind of like just gradually sort of worked up to the point of launching in September 2012.
Khurram Naik: You know, I'm struck with that. I also launched my business when my first child was pretty young. I ran this by a very successful lawyer and he said, "You know, really, changes come all at once and so they're really associated with each other and feed into each other." How did you find that? Because that's a hell of a lot on your plate at once. How did you experience that? Do you feel like there was a momentum effect to going through all these changes? What was that like?
Randy Gaw: I’m sure psychologically that had something to do with it, right? I mean, if you're changing like one thing, why not change the other things you've been meaning to do all at once? It's sort of like if you're remodeling—well, just don't remodel like a room; if you want to have all these other changes, assuming you can afford it, do it all at once, get it over with.
For me also, it was recognition that if I waited too long after my kid was born, I would become risk-averse because I have an additional person that I have to now think of; I have to provide think of their future, provide for them, and I might not want to take chances at that point. And so taking the leap now before I had any kind of concrete expectations, before I had settled into something where I need to sustain a certain minimum lifestyle—that was the time to do it, before I scared myself into thinking that it was too late.
And as it turned out, because I didn't have any clients to start—I certainly made no effort to poach firm clients or anything like that, I wanted to kind of do things the right way—the first like couple of months were certainly like extremely slow. Really, it took like a full year to kind of ramp up to full capacity, which gave me the free time to basically spend with my wife and my firstborn. I could leave work early most days and just kind of enjoy the time, enjoy watching him grow. Take advantage of a period probably that I'll never have again in my career where there were very low pressure environments, there were very low expectations, and I could just sort of be. I could just exist without worrying too much.
Khurram Naik: Tell me about what that ramp-up period was like. It took a year to get ramped up. What does "ramped up," by the way, mean? What does that mean?
Randy Gaw: In terms of just being fully occupied with clients such that I had kind of like a full plate of work most days.
Khurram Naik: So did you have an expectation heading into it? September 1st, 2012 start date. Did you have an expectation heading into it for how long it would take to get to that point?
Randy Gaw: No, because I just didn't really know, right? Even the people who had gone ahead and done it before, they had their own unique experiences. Some of them knew clients already or were just kind of like more natural networkers or business developers and so I only knew for myself. I didn't know what to expect. I'd certainly not done any business development of any kind before.
In terms of preparing a business plan, one of the reasons why I felt comfortable going off and doing what I did was because I modeled that I'd saved enough money that I could go two years without literally making any revenue. And so I was like, "Okay, I know I have enough runway to kind of really give this a try for some period of time." And if it completely fails, I can just pick myself up and try to do some where else, go work for another firm, go work for the government. I figured that I'm a talented enough lawyer that I can probably get someone to hire me somewhere. But, you know, so I had no expectations. And the first three to four months, you know, I picked up the odd client here and there, but nothing really big. But then I think I got like an arbitration matter probably two or three months in and that, you know, started taking up some time. Naturally, I just started picking up more and more significant type of work which would be able to occupy me.
Khurram Naik: How did you get these matters? Is this through some effort you were taking? Or just people said, "I'm thinking of Randy, I'm going to send him work"? How did it all happen?
Randy Gaw: Yeah, I'm thinking of Randy and I'm going to send him work. It was all referrals and it, to this day, our firm, I would say like 95% of our cases are referrals. It was nice kind of like launching when I did in September 2012 in that everybody at the reunion that I met, I would talk up about that I'd started my own firm. People were naturally supportive and wanting to help. I made sure to let everybody know that I had started a new firm. I got the word out. And so I was top of mind at that moment. Friends had prospective clients come to them, say "This is something that happened to me," and they sent them my way. The rest is history.
Khurram Naik: And then how did you skill up? I mean, had you had an arbitration before?
Randy Gaw: I mean, certainly as part of a team, right? Like, I worked on those matters for my 10 years at Big Law. But this was my first time being the sole decision maker. Like, before I would either—my job was to execute specific action items or perhaps kind of help formulate strategy. Even as a senior associate, you're kind of helping to think about ideas and whatnot, but I had never been the architect, so to speak, right? It was always someone else's plan that I was following no matter how much I contributed to the overall plans. And now it was on me. I had to think of the strategy, I had to execute it, and it was a brand new kind of challenge. And it was a fun one.
Khurram Naik: How did you bridge that gap?
Randy Gaw: I mean, the only way to do it is to have practice in it and do it repeatedly. And so I did my best in the first arbitration. I got a pretty decent result and I certainly have learned from it to become better at the second arbitration and the third arbitration and the fourth arbitration. Kind of like every case that I handle today, I'm always learning something new. Partly because I'm not in a high-volume type of litigation practice, where we try to handle matters only of a certain amount of value. And so we only work on a certain number of cases at a time. And really, all of them end up being unique learning experiences where you can kind of apply to the next such experience.
Khurram Naik: How did you manage expectations early on? So this is your first arbitration matter. How did you communicate expectations to the client? The client says, "Hey, how many of these have you handled?" and you told them… Or with any of the early clients, how did you communicate or manage expectations around your level of experience and what they could expect?
Randy Gaw: Sure. I mean, first of all, just be transparent, right? The people who hired me for the first arbitration, they knew that I had just started my firm two or three months prior. And in my particular case, I had not been the lead on this thing, but they knew about my very significant experience for 10 years doing arbitrations and trials. In my particular example, I probably had a lot more trial experience than the average Big Law lawyer. I mean, when you have an 11-month trial, then in terms of just sheer quantity, you've had more months at trial than almost anyone at a firm. But you know, I had at least two trials, I think, which is pretty rare in Big Law, and I had multiple arbitrations. And so I was pretty experienced on that front. I definitely knew what I was doing. It was just my first time in the driver's seat, so to speak.
Randy’s reason for leaving BigLaw — wanting to be on his feet in a courtroom — is the same thing that drove Priyanka Timblo to leave Paul Weiss for a five-year-old litigation boutique. She went on to win a $101 million verdict against Walmart.
Khurram Naik: And then you also mentioned a couple different points that, you know, you didn't have a business mindset into this, you thought of yourself as a lawyer first and that you didn't identify then as an entrepreneur. Do you see yourself differently now? Or do you still share those same views?
Randy Gaw: Um, I mean, I've reluctantly come around to the idea that I am an entrepreneur and I have to be entrepreneurial. For the first number of years, I tried to ignore it as much as possible, but you know, that's just the reality. You're running a business, you have to think like a business, and you have to do things like business development and whatnot. But in my heart of hearts, I consider myself a lawyer first. And so I'm happiest working on cases and not trying to think about the business side, so to speak. Which is probably partly why we enjoy doing contingency fee lawsuits so much, because you're not sending out constant bills or worrying about the time you spend and whatever, right? You can just kind of focus on the practice of law and let the business stuff sort itself out. But no, I mean, we are very much now aware of the business of law and doing what we can to operate under reasonable, sensible business principles.
Khurram Naik: What does that business mindset or entrepreneurial mindset change? So somebody who is adopting that approach, how does that impact the work you do and the structure of the firm? What are the implications of taking on a business or entrepreneurial mindset?
Randy Gaw: Hmm, that's a good question. I would say, I mean like one, probably you always have to be thinking about your next source of revenue, right? Like in the sales context, I guess, you always have to be thinking about your next lead. You can't only be working on your existing lead. You have to have the pipeline, I guess as they say. And I think that's an idea that certainly is—I don't want to say foreign—but it's not something which many lawyers are comfortable with. We're probably comfortable just working on our existing work and not having to think about like, "Well, how does the next case come in? Where do we get that next case? Where do we get the next client?" And that's sort of, at least for us, a transition where we now are always thinking about "Well, where is that next case?" in addition to, as we're working on the existing cases. And it's a little challenging because litigation doesn't tend to have too many repeat players, at least for us. We don't have too many repeat players, so we have to really think strategically about where can we get future clients and especially the clients that we want to get. What can we do to make it easier for future clients to either find us or to be comfortable with us or to seek us out?
Khurram Naik: And what's your answer to that question today?
Randy Gaw: One, we're still trying to figure it out, right? But I would say one thing that at least I think has been effective for others that I've seen is getting people to understand that you're out there, who you are, that you're out there doing the work and that you're getting good results, right? I think there are certainly many people who are kind of not comfortable with what might be considered self-promotion, but call it what you will, it is very effective for getting people to realize that you are out there or to getting you on top of mind for the people that you do know. And I suppose it just really has to do with how you present yourself, right? If you're presenting yourself in an authentic manner, then it's less self-promotion and really more just kind of like keeping people abreast of what it is you do and why you're a good fit for people out there.
Khurram Naik: You know, I think you're doing a really good job with that. I think that's a key part of why I was drawn to your story and saying "Hey, you know, without being very ham-handed on it, when you talk about some of the plans you're taking in these class action cases and some of the companies that you're suing and the counsel that you're representing them, it's you know, it's a light version of David versus Goliath. And so that's a classic story for a reason, and so those storytelling principles are effective that you're not gloating or going on and on about how amazing you are, but just simple narratives I think that do draw people in and say, "Hey yeah, this is a skilled lawyer taking on an interesting case," and I think that's a compelling story that itself is a compelling story that people are drawn to.
Randy Gaw: Oh thank you. I mean, I'm glad that you think so. It shows that at least I'm doing something right on that field. But also, I mean, it's good practice for what it is that I'm doing. Not the marketing part, but the fact that we're in litigation, we do trials, you're telling stories about trials. And if you're unable to tell your own story effectively, how can you expect to tell someone else's story effectively, right? You have to be the best at telling your own story. And so certainly whatever it is that I'm doing where I'm trying to educate people on what it is that I've done or give people updates as to how our firm has accomplished this or what, or even like failed at something, right? Like I'm pretty open about talking about setbacks that we have. It’s also exercising kind of like the storytelling muscles that we have. You don't get better at something unless you practice it repeatedly. And practice can kind of come in all sorts of different forms that you don't even necessarily think of as practice. You know, like that movie The Karate Kid, right, where the guy is washing a car and not realizing that that is actually kind of developing muscle memory and certain skills that translate into the various karate moves that he ends up executing later in the movie.
Khurram Naik: That's a great Karate Kid reference. I'm so glad we got into that. Every podcast episode should have a Karate Kid reference.
Randy Gaw: Great movie.
Khurram Naik: So okay, so early on, unless you're able—you said, "Hey, I can finance my law firm for two years." That would be a very aggressive timetable for contingency work, let's say class action work. So then what was the transition from billable work to contingency work? What was the draw to that and then how did you know that you're ready to do that in terms of the business of it, in terms of the substantive work? Tell me about that transition to taking on contingency work.
Randy Gaw: Sure. So we took on our first contingency case in 2014. So I basically went a year and a half or so doing only hourly work. And truth be told, I did not envision myself doing contingency work at the time I started my firm. Probably because I was still—I was entrepreneurial enough to start my own firm, but I was like, "Wait a minute, hold on, I don't get paid unless I collect? That might be a bridge too far." But it kind of came about in 2014 in our first case, and we had met a client who had a great case, had been paying hourly for his current attorneys and was not getting a very effective result by them and basically had run out of money. And I remember, a friend of mine at another firm, he found this client somehow. He introduced me to that person and kind of said, "You know, would you be willing to join me in working on contingency?" And so it was like back then, it wasn't something I expressly proposed, it was my friend who kind of proposed it out of necessity because this client couldn't afford hourly attorneys.
Thinking about it, it was like, well, A: the risk is mitigated somewhat because, you know, my friend's firm was also doing it, right? So it wouldn't be us just shouldering the burden, we'd be working together on this contingency case. And two, it was a client who really couldn't afford hourly rates anymore, and so it was like a binary question of: "Do we just take… we can't have this client otherwise, right?" So it's like, is this a good case or is this not a good case? And so if this is a good case, why wouldn't we take it? Because ultimately if you think that you can do a good job and if you know the defendant is in the position to pay, you know, one way or the other, this is an opportunity.
And that first case kind of made me realize that there was a market for contingency cases in the business litigation standpoint because a lot of firms wouldn't even consider it, right? Like their business model just says "No, we don't do any contingency work at all" or we do very limited contingency work. And this client was considering us solely, really, because no other firm that they approached was willing to do it on a contingency. So I kind of realized, "Well, hey, there's less competition in the business litigation world if you're willing to do cases on a contingency fee basis. And if you're confident in your own skills, you will probably be rewarded for doing so, and rewarded well." Like we ended up getting a good result on that case and it was, you know, our cut of it of this resulting settlement was definitely much higher than what our hourly rate at the time was. And that kind of like led on to taking that on as a business model.
Khurram Naik: And so do you have a target, like how do you identify how much contingency work you should be doing, how much hourly work you should be doing? How do you identify that mix?
Randy Gaw: I would say in an ideal world we're 50/50, you know, up to maybe 33% hourly, 66% contingency.
Khurram Naik: Is that based on time put in or revenue?
Randy’s narrative-first approach to trial — asking “What story will we tell?” before anything else — aligns with Joe Ahmad’s philosophy that juries are “phony detectors” who respond to authenticity over polish.
Randy Gaw: Time put in. So in an ideal world, you know, where 50/50 but, you know, certainly 1/3 hourly, 2/3 contingency we have done many times. We've probably gone over 2/3 contingency. That is kind of like I said in an ideal world. It's not a rule at our firm because the reality is if there are really, really high-quality contingency cases and they just came in one right after the other, we're going to take them and we'll find a way to pay for it or make it work, right? Like we're debt-free and my partner and I have certainly invested a lot of money into contingency cases. And it's just a good investment, you know? It's sort of like if you're a venture capital fund, you don't turn down future investments just because you've already deployed funds. It's like if this is something that hits all of your checklists and you realize that you're going to get a high probability of getting a really good result, you take it on, you know? Like we're in the risk business, so take risks.
Khurram Naik: How did you identify that ratio as being ideal for you?
Randy Gaw: I mean, just because it's always nice to have monthly revenue come in on an hourly basis, right? It's nice to know that you're making payroll without any problems, you know, that you pay rent without any problems. And frankly, those are pretty low cost relatively speaking in running a firm. In a contingency firm, the big costs are paying for the contingency cases, right? The experts cost a lot of money. Electronic discovery costs a lot of money. So really it's kind of like keeping the lights on so that you can pay for all of this stuff. Especially since under tax rules, contingency case expenses aren't deductible as business expenses, right? They go on your balance sheet. And so really you're using your after-tax dollars to pay for these contingency cases. Having at least 1/3 of your cases be hourly cases, that covers your contingency costs, which are high. Like currently, you know, my partner and I are out, I don't know, 1.2 million or something out of pocket or something on contingency cases, so you gotta be making enough hourly and other contingency cases to pay for all of that.
Khurram Naik: Have you used funding in the past?
Randy Gaw: We have, regretfully.
Khurram Naik: What made it regretful?
Randy Gaw: The high interest rates, sure. You know, it's something actually I mentioned on LinkedIn. We took funding and the interest rate was between 20 to 30% annually. And how they pitch it to you is: "Well, it’s non-recourse, right? So you don't have to worry about paying us back if you don't hit." Which is like, "Okay." So you kind of think about it and you're like, "Well yeah, okay, they deserve a 20% or 25% interest rate since they're shouldering all that risk." But then, you know, we eventually did hit and then we paid them out a lot of money because of that interest and just kind of I realized, "Like wait a minute, why was I so worried about it not hitting in the first place? If I'm worried about the case not hitting the first place, I shouldn't be taking it on contingency in the first place, right?" I mean, you're taking it on because you are very confident that you're going to get a good result, knowing of course sometimes things happen and you don't. But if you're confident that you're going to get a good result then don't "de-risk" by giving away a very substantial part of your upside. When you de-risk, do it on a more appropriate level. And so that kind of changed, those experiences kind of changed at least my mindset about taking funding. Like funding is really only for those cases where you can't even take it on in the first place unless you have the capital provided to you by funding. So then in that case, funding makes the case possible. But if you're taking on a case if you already have the ability to self-finance a case then just believe in yourself, you know? Take your own risk. You save so much money, like an unbelievable amount of money, because 20 to 30% every year really adds up, obviously.
Khurram Naik: To your point about taking on marginal cases to the extent that you can, like in the analogy of a VC, a VC might say "Hey, this option is too good to pass up, let's go to our LPs and get some additional capital to invest." So you're saying by way of analogy, your goal is to self-fund a plate of cases that you identify and then to the extent that you know—it sounds to me that to the extent there is an additional case that is too good to pass up but you can't finance it on your own, that's a scenario where you think funding would be helpful.
Randy Gaw: For us, yeah.
Khurram Naik: And so yeah, I get your premise about adverse selection where to the extent that you're leaning on somebody else for financing… Like say in the context of people, a personal residence. Any number of people might… Buying a personal residence is in the eyes of many a financial decision, sometimes people perceive it to be purely a decision about consumption. But you can definitely make the case that the existence of mortgages, subsidized mortgages, whatever, make it easier to spring for larger prices because, "Hey, you know, just someone else is throwing money at this too." But so I wonder how you think about adverse selection in the context of case selection to begin with, because when you said earlier, "Hey, this company had gone to several other firms and nobody chose to take them on contingency," there's two ways to interpret that: one is "Hey, there's not a lot of competition for this and so this plays into our strengths because we're lean and efficient so we can take this on." and another interpretation is "Hey, this is a dog of a case," right? Now how do you… So it seems to me there's potential for adverse selection even in taking on those cases to begin with. So what is your vetting criteria to mitigate the risk of adverse selection at that stage?
Randy Gaw: Sure. Well, I mean, you definitely take into account if someone had passed on this case who does contingency work, right? And at least in our case, a lot of times when cases come our way it’s been passed on by people who do hourly cases as opposed to contingency cases, so we don't necessarily have another contingency firm's feedback as to why they chose to take or not take a case. But, you know, definitely if you know that a comparable law firm has passed on this case, you ask yourself questions and you vet it a lot more carefully as to whether or not it makes sense for you to take on this case. And sometimes we reach a similar conclusion as the other law firm and sometimes we don't because, you know, we have a certain view of things, we have a certain view of our skills and we feel like we can get a better result perhaps than what the other firm did or maybe the other firm is just better at making decisions than us. Ultimately, it could be both or or neither.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, right. I mean the thing about legal work is, of course, the reason why we're compensated—I mean you were talking earlier about this litigation funder they're to be charging 20 to 30% whatever interest rate is because you're taking on this risk and so too with lawyers. The risk comes from ambiguity, right? You don't know what the outcome is. If you had certainty around the outcome, then it would cost a lot less to finance it, right? And so yeah, legal work product I think so much about understanding the business of law flows from understanding particularly in litigation that litigation is inherently unpredictable. That's how… if litigation was predictable it'd be some other thing other than the nature that it is right now. That's the essence of litigation work is that it's largely unpredictable and of course your goal is to do things to make it as predictable as possible but just you can never abstract away that risk. And so yeah, I think that makes sense that in the context of investing, any number of times you have one very successful investor taking a large equity stake in a company while another one is exiting. They just have different theses on the nature of that opportunity and they potentially can both be right depending on their time horizon. That also plays into your comment on being able to finance these cases, maybe it doesn't make sense in the short term but maybe it makes sense in the long term.
Randy Gaw: Yeah, and I mean, a lot of firms I think who consider maybe have passed on the cases that we've taken on, I don't know necessarily what their evaluation criteria is or if they're a larger firm they can't afford to take on a miss, whereas us being a smaller firm, you know, we have fewer mouths to feed and so we can be more aggressive in taking on a risky case, you know, compared to them. And then frankly sometimes there are people who I just think are less creative than we are. Because, you know, a lot of kind of a success in the law, in litigation, comes from edge cases. And sometimes there are people who are just a little too conventional thinking about the law or applying the law to the specific facts, and they don't realize that, you know what, there is an interesting edge case that you can make out of this and you have an avenue for success. So there are definitely people who are I think a little too rigid with their analysis and sometimes we're the beneficiaries of that because we're willing to kind of like think of multiple angles in order to pursue a particular path to success for our clients. I'm actually thinking of this one case that we did as a class action and the client had gone to multiple law firms, some really big law firms, and absolutely none of them were willing to take it on contingency because their kind of very traditional analysis just didn't, you know, have like a strong… I guess they didn't see it as the strongest claim or something. I don't know. All I know is kind of reviewing their emails afterwards when we collected our client's emails and filter them out for privilege and all that stuff, you kind of look at what they were saying to other law firms and what they were telling them, like "Oh, that's interesting." But, you know, we had approached it from a somewhat different angle and we were ultimately successful and validated in that approach. We got class certified, we got a class action settlement, you know, we did well financially and so it's like we're kind of rewarded for our ability to identify kind of new angles and our willingness to take them.
Khurram Naik: Can you give us some more inside baseball, like what was the legal theory or what did you identify that was—you used the phrase "edge case"—what was it that you identified that previous counsel didn't?
Randy Gaw: I mean, I don't remember the specifics exactly, and some of it is still a lot of it is confidential attorney-client privilege. But the kind of gist of it is there was a contract between the parties and people just kind of like looked at the contract and said, "Well under this contract you can do this or you can do X or you can't do this." There are things that say you can't recover for this, so therefore you can't recover for this. And we kind of did a more holistic approach and it was like, well, what were they saying? What was the defendant saying contemporaneously at the time they entered this contract? What did they say after that? Is this language ambiguous? Are there certain industry norms or standards that apply here that people understand that help interpret what this means? Things like that, you know. And so we were able to survive motions to dismiss, we were able to get class certification and ultimately kind of present like a viable case. At the end of the day, we don't know if we would have won or lost at trial, although we were actually pretty confident, but we found we were willing to kind of challenge conventional thinking and in that particular example we were rewarded.
Khurram Naik: I wonder if the ability to be more creative comes from taking on fewer cases, having more space and just being able to think more about fewer cases. Like can you speak to where that creativity comes from? Because I imagine some of these other people at the firms in the past there's any number of comparably skilled litigators maybe with similar experience to you but maybe the conditions of the pressure they face at those firms are such that they or you know, they have more matters or they're stretched thin, however you want to put it. What do you attribute to why you're able to, for somebody who is comparably skilled to you as a litigator, why you're able to apply this or generate this creativity?
Randy Gaw: I mean, I think you identified one of those reasons, right? We have more time or we're able to allocate more time into thinking about these cases at the prospect stage. So that's certainly one of it. Other than that, all I can say is part of it is a kind of inherent judgment ability by lawyers, right? Some lawyers are able to think out of the box a little better than other lawyers, but in return they have like probably worse skill sets in other areas compared to those other lawyers. Like I would just say my partner and I, Mark, we just happen to be pretty good about thinking creatively and doing kind of like doing the basic law school stuff. It’s like, "You know, what is the basic principle of law here? How do the facts fit in this principle and how can you… if you kind of know what the correct—like correct in the sense of like: what is the just outcome? Is there a wrong that is in search of a remedy?" Well, then you kind of think, "Well, there are, you know, the law usually tries to find a way to remedy wrongs." And so you kind of just look with that approach to seeing what other ways you can pursue this to get the remedy that the client deserves.
Khurram Naik: How often are you able to identify or can you give examples of a time when a client thought there was a certain wrong and actually there was a much more significant wrong?
Randy Gaw: That's a good one. I would say it probably at least in my experience happens more in the sense that when you kind of dive into the facts of this case you probably realize that the scope or scale of the wrong being occurred is much greater than what you had thought as opposed to kind of like discovering a whole discrete different wrong that had taken place. I’m sure it has happened, I just can't necessarily think of an example sitting here right now.
Khurram Naik: Can you talk some more about, you know, earlier in when you're building out the firm, you're taking the work that you can get and then over time you start to get more work. So I think there's two aspects of that I'm interested in: is case selection in terms of how you choose to niche? So we talked some about billable versus contingency. I'm interested also in practice areas. Like, how do you choose areas of law that you're saying, "Hey, let's focus on"? I guess we'll start with that and then I'll kind of work in the other jumping-off points.
The boutique model Randy describes — flexible, no traditional billable hour pressure — is one Rakesh Kilaru also embraced at Wilkinson Stekloff, where the firm eliminated billable hours entirely.
Randy Gaw: Sure. Areas of law. So I sometimes have to jokingly tell people when they ask me what kind of litigation do I do and I say, "Well, I do opportunistic litigation." And so if there's a case that comes across my radar and if I think that either it's interesting or lucrative and that we won't end up committing malpractice if we take the case, then, you know, we'll try to pitch for that particular kind of work. You know, one of the benefits of being a small law firm is that you have the flexibility to do that sort of thing. You just need the owners to agree, "Yeah, let's see if we can take on this kind of work."
But you know, to kind of give a more serious answer to your question, I think ultimately for us the areas of practice that we focus on are influenced by: one, can you make a good living off of that? Right? Because we want to do high-margin work, not low-margin work. And two, is this something that kind of is intellectually stimulating for us? Which is not a requirement for any case, of course, but it certainly kind of we're more willing to kind of go beyond our boundaries if it's a case that we think is interesting. And you know, also third, is this a case where we feel like we're helping people as opposed to not helping people? And that's not a requirement either, but again it kind of makes for an edge case for us. It’s like, "You know what, we want to kind of expand beyond kind of our personal comfort zone if we feel like we're in a position to help people." So there are definitely cases that we've taken on in the past that we normally don't handle because one of us felt, "Yeah, you know, we kind of feel sorry for these people, so let's see if we can help them out."
Khurram Naik: Helping people versus not helping people… you just mean like people who have a particularly sympathetic cause that may not be financially rewarding?
Randy Gaw: Yeah, well, you know, yes. We don't gratuitously do like, you know, low-margin work. So, you know, we certainly when we're taking on a case we want to make sure like, "Hey, it has at least the prospect of making money for us." But you know, we certainly recognize there are some cases that are unlikely to be particularly rewarding, you know, maybe we'll break even, but we still do it because we think we're in a position to help somebody and others won't do as good a job or are unwilling to do a job. But you know, I don't want to make it seem like we're these crusaders out there. For example, we don't deal in immigration law or civil rights or things of that sort because that's just not our background, that's not our skill set and there are a lot of other people doing like really good work in this field. And as much as sympathetic as we might be, we're just it's too much for us to like learn like this whole area of law or other sets of procedures potentially that we just don't know anything about. But within the kind of realm of work that we do, we will sometimes go out of our comfort zone if we feel we're in a position to help people.
Khurram Naik: How should boutiques think about opportunistic versus strategic, niche versus diversification?
Randy Gaw: I think every owner has to decide for themselves, really, because it kind of goes back as to what it is they want to get out of owning their own law firm. Is it just about like making as much money as they reasonably can? Or not? Because the decisions are different, right? Like if you wanted to maximize your revenue, you probably are better off just kind of really specializing in one or two, holding yourself out as an expert in one or two areas and relentlessly marketing that and not getting distracted with other stuff. Which is, by the way, perfectly valid. I think there are people who are doing a great job of that and I admire them very much. But if your kind of goal is to also just sort of keep yourself intellectually stimulated about something, the work that you do, then your decision-making calculus is different. It's not just "Oh, am I making enough money from this?" It's like "Is this an area of law that I'm doing that can actually keep my creative juices flowing for one reason or another?"
And I'll just use our firm as an example. We obviously do business litigation; that's bread and butter, like every—most civil litigation firms do business litigation, right? Like that keeps the lights on and it can certainly be very interesting in its own right. We take on, we selectively take on personal injury cases, catastrophic injury cases, that are high value. And we take them on partly because, I mean even though the law's not particularly complex in those areas, they have like really interesting human stories. And so working on those cases kind of goes back to almost like when you're in law school in the first place, like thinking "Why do I want to become a lawyer?" Well, you know, this person was injured because of the wrongful conduct of another person and I'm in a position to tell their story and to help them get some justice for the ills that have befallen them. So personal injury kind of satisfies the interesting facts component. And then we also do antitrust work. We have a particular expertise in this real niche area called the Robinson-Patman Act; it's the federal price discrimination. And that kind of is an intellectual exercise for us because it is an area of law that involves a lot of economics, for example. It involves like the application of some very esoteric laws regarding that particular statute. And that's intellectually interesting, just kind of dealing with sort of these almost policy-type arguments in the law and keeps things kind of interesting for us. And it can certainly pay well too if you know what you're doing. So it kind of checks off all the boxes for us.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, it's really interesting to identify these different practice areas not by necessarily the economics of them or from any anything structural to that area. Privacy is just there's no reason to think privacy is going in any direction but becoming more important and higher stakes. But it's interesting to talk in terms of motivations and personal motivations and the feel that you get from these different practice areas. I think that's a very interesting lens to choose work.
Randy Gaw: Yeah, I mean one could say it's a way we choose work, one could say it's a way that work is chosen for us, right? Like if you're kind of just getting solicitations for certain types of work, it's low-hanging fruit and so you're kind of like, "Okay, well let's like really look into these kinds of cases more and more," and you kind of maybe unintentionally develop an expertise in them and it becomes self-reinforcing at a point, I suppose.
Khurram Naik: So yeah, I think that motivation sounds like an important criteria. But like heading into a year, I mean, going back to this business/entrepreneur mindset, how do you plan ahead for the year? What are your time horizons for your goals? How do you define goals for your firm?
Randy Gaw: We're not huge into concrete goal setting and perhaps we should be; we're still very much learning about optimizing the business of law. But I would say for us, we just more have abstract ideas of, you know, okay, we're working on like these nine cases, right? So the goal for this next year is to "How do we get good results in those types of cases?" Like what do we do, how do we set up ourselves to get the best possible result in those cases?
But then beyond that, the next case that I mentioned earlier: where are we getting our next cases from? Our goals are probably be more loosely abstracted to "What cases do we want to get in the future? What do we do to position ourselves to try to get those cases? How do we get cases like that of higher value as opposed to lower value?" Like do we need to go out and talk to people more in order to do that? Do we need to maximize our results in these other cases and publicize that in order to achieve this outcome? So we're kind of like thinking about our goals, the only kind of goals that our firm has as typically speaking is "What can we do to maximize our opportunities to get the kinds of cases that we want to work on?" because we don't set goals in terms of head count, we don't set goals in terms of revenue or whatever. Like that stuff works itself out. We just set goals on what kind of work we want to get and how do we get it.
Khurram Naik: If you execute on the ideas and the work that you're doing now, how will your firm be different two years from now?
Randy Gaw: Well, probably a little bit bigger. Like if we successfully do what everything that we want to do, then naturally we'll get bigger and bigger cases to work on, which means that we have to get more and more people to work on them. And then kind of like there's a positive feedback loop in that you're getting even bigger and more interesting cases to work on, which means you have to get even more people to work on those cases and so forth. And so that's why I say like the revenue and head count thing, you know, all that stuff, it works itself out. If you're doing what you want to be doing, you'll naturally make more money, you'll naturally have more people because you need the more people to make the more money in the first place.
Khurram Naik: And when you picture having more people to work on those cases, what will be different about the cases that you're doing? Is there something specific that you can picture as an expectation for the mix of work you'd be doing, the stakes of the cases?
Randy Gaw: I would say, so on the business litigation side, it would be… we're kind of pretty consistently working on seven-figure, eight-figure type cases, and it would be getting to the nine-figure level, right? Consistently working on nine-figure cases, whether that's 1v1 or a class action type cases. In the Robinson-Patman Act field, similar thing: like we are typically working on high seven-figure, low eight-figure type cases. Going to mid eight-figure type cases, maybe even like high eight-figure type cases in this particular world. Or taking on really, really big targets in this particular field. So far, the people that we've sued have largely been manufacturers of well-known products, but they're not necessarily the products that every household has. And so kind of going on to the next step would be those defendants that are making the products that every household has.
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In the personal injury context, it's like the types of cases where there is just some massive harm that was perpetuated on a large group of people and you're getting redress for that all at once as opposed to a 1v1 type of harm. Although I will say in the personal injury field, I don't think we ever necessarily want to get into the mass tort field or something that involves like multi-district litigation, MDLs. That's a level of administrative complexity that I don't know if we necessarily want to deal with since we just sort of do this stuff on the side. But for the other two cases, that's certainly what I could set out as goals and visions for the next five to ten years.
Khurram Naik: And you've talked about the skill of identifying interesting fact patterns and then the role that motivation has for you for finding work that's compelling that way, then also the importance of storytelling—that’s a recurring theme. Can you talk some more about storytelling in your trial work? How have you developed the principles of storytelling that you use? Are there recurring principles? Is there a technique, a formula, a process that you use for arriving at effective storytelling?
Randy Gaw: Sure. I mean, when you get to trials, that's all about telling a story. There's the story that the plaintiff has to tell about how the plaintiff was wronged by the defendant and then the defendant's story is like, "No, you're not hearing the whole truth, this is the real story." And so when you're at that point, it is incumbent upon you to figure out a way to present your story as cogently, as compassionately as possible so that the jury wants to go for your client instead of the other client. Trial is about motivating the jury into wanting to support your side as opposed to the other side. Because that ultimately colors how they view the law and how they view the facts. Because if they want to go for your client, when they're looking at a set of facts, they'll be interpreting it in the light that's favorable to your client as opposed to the light that's favorable to the other side's client.
So I think effectively telling the story is… at least how we would go about doing it is done through one of certain ways. One, at the very start of the case, you kind of need to have a sense of what the story is. We as lawyers are trained as to like legal analysis; we're like, "Okay, so this is the cause of action or this is the affirmative defense," which is all great, but you have to kind of go beyond that and just say, "What is the core narrative that is driving this story? What do I want the decision maker to be thinking about when the time comes for them to make the decision?" And at least for us when we analyze a case—unless it's strictly a numbers-based kind of thing, which sometimes happens like when you have a claims that just involve accounting or whatever—at the end of the day when we are taking on a case, we have in mind there is this story to be told, this is what we want people to know.
And when you kind of have figured out like the story to be told—which by the way is kind of what helps us decide whether to take a case on contingency or not—because if you're thinking, "Oh man, this is a terrible narrative for a jury, the jury is not going to like our client even if the law may be on their side," that definitely cautions you about taking the case. When you kind of have in your mind what the ultimate narrative is, then you start thinking, "Well, what do I need to do? What do I need to develop both on the legal and the factual side so that I can tell this story at trial?" And so kind of like when you're thinking of that story at the very inception of the case, that drives your strategic decision making for the rest of this case: what you choose to pursue, what you choose not to pursue, why you're bringing this claim and not that claim. And so kind of like when you have like this end goal in sight, it helps you make decisions as to what to do in the first place.
And then also, I do not pretend that we know everything about everything, especially storytelling. There are some very good experts out there who are much better at telling stories than we are, and because we know there are other people out there who can do it, we get their help too. Jury consultants, for example. We go to trial once or twice a year on average, which is kind of a lot for a firm that does sophisticated commercial litigation. But a jury consultant is going to trial like 20 times a year, more, and they've done it for decades. They know all the stories out there, they know everything that resonates. So at least what we typically do is as we're getting close to kind of like the jury trial phase, we hire the jury consultant and say, "This is what our case is about, what do you think? What should we pursue? What resonates most with the jury?" and we get great insights from the people who are in the business of predicting what juries like and don't like. And that usually helps us hone the message quite effectively.
Khurram Naik: When you say "what you pursue," what do you mean by that?
Randy Gaw: I didn't mean that in terms of the jury consultant; it was just more at our stage, early stage, when we kind of envision the narrative. You may choose to make certain claims and not make certain claims because you realize it's inconsistent with your narrative.
Khurram Naik: Have you ever taken a claims-first approach, a legal issue-first approach over a storytelling-first approach?
Randy Gaw: Sure, because some cases don't involve particularly sophisticated themes. And so you have a narrative, but the narrative is like, "Well, you have a contract and this person breached." Like it's clear-cut: there is a contract, service was supposed to be provided or good was supposed to be provided, they didn't do it. This is not one where you're going to be searching long and hard for like particular narratives and themes at trial, so certainly you kind of go for a claims-first approach.
And then when you're on the defense side, sometimes you do do a claims-first approach because if you feel like this case has severe deficiencies, you can knock it out before it gets to a jury. Then yeah, you absolutely analyze it from a technical perspective because your job is to make sure it never gets to the jury.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, that makes sense. Would you think all things considered contract disputes are more amenable to a legal approach as opposed to say tort claims, which are much more amenable to storytelling?
Randy Gaw: But tort claims sometimes frankly are the easiest to go from a simple claims perspective. If there's clear negligence or clear wrongdoing and someone was harmed, the claims write the narrative almost—like you don't have to deep-dig into those. We had recently a claim where we handled the unfortunate case of a woman who died because her fertility doctors gave her the wrong medication and clearly breached standards of care in doing so. It was like an awful story. We had a great narrative for it—like our complaint and our mediation brief especially—the mediation brief was like, you can move someone to tears from it. But, you know, I don't want to pretend that that was what caused it. It was just like, "Look, that's just a simple legal claim issue. There's clear negligence, there's clear harm." And we—any number of other lawyers probably could have gotten the exact same result as us. I'm underselling our capabilities there because sometimes the harm is so clear and sometimes the legal claims are so clear that it's kind of silly to argue that one law firm's skill is going to get a materially different result. All I can tell prospective clients is how we would approach this case, how we would work it up, how I would personally give my personal attention to this as opposed to delegating it off to somebody else. And you decide for yourself whether that appeals to you or doesn't appeal to you. Because sometimes the facts are so compelling that it's just a question of whether the client works better with one approach as opposed to another approach, as opposed to any inherent skill by a lawyer.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, and I have come to appreciate in my work and the work of other skilled professionals is that there is plenty of room for skill and plenty of room for personal preference because, again, much of any kind of white-collar work is inherently ambiguous and so there's many potential paths to success and different approaches that resonate with some people over others. Having factored that in for looking at comparably skilled litigators maybe in boutiques, maybe with comparable experience as you have, what do you think does differentiate your approach over a comparably skilled peer?
Randy Gaw: I would say just at least based on my personal experience, we're a little unique in that, like I said, we look at the narrative first. We look at the end result, we kind of how we look at it is: what will it be like to be at trial? Is this a case that we can win at trial? Is this a case we want to take to trial? Is this a case we're comfortable taking to trial? And so I would say we kind of look—we have a further time horizon in terms of evaluating the case and presenting it. And I would say also another thing that differentiates us is that we tend to kind of present matters to the client in terms of strategy with framing and with long-term goals in mind as opposed to, "Well, what's the next step? What's the next step? What's the next step?" You know, sometimes when you're in litigation, you're literally just kind of working on the next procedural step and you don't think too much further beyond that. But we tend to try to like predict, "Well, this is what we think will happen and so we do this and then that leads to this and that leads to that and then they're going to do this and that leads to that," and so on and so forth. And so we're just trying to map things out as much as possible and make sure that the client is kind of informed and aligned with us every step of the way.
Khurram Naik: I talk to people who use ideas from different disciplines. I was at a conference recently and a keynote speaker was formerly a consultant who's very successful then got really into chess, studied it for a couple years and now applies ideas from chess strategy for coaching as an executive coach for sports teams. I had Tim Yu of Bird Marella on the podcast and so he talked about his love of professional wrestling and the ideas that he's learned from there about storytelling. So there's different disciplines that we can draw on for our work. Are there disciplines that come to mind or principles or that you draw on into your work?
Randy Gaw: I like that question because for whatever reason I've been reading a fair amount of opinion pieces and thought pieces about, "Well, I really like X and that have helped me practice law for the following reasons." It's always interesting to hear all this stuff. I would say like first I'll give a global answer: it's like whatever works for people, whatever works, right? It's like ultimately my kind of takeaway from it is if you are passionate about something, you can always find an application of your passion to make yourself better at whatever it is you do. It could be a better parent, to be a better lawyer, to be a better whatever. Because there is something that we always can learn from doing something and we can apply to other things. Because there are principles that are universal, like there are ways of dealing with unfavorable outcomes or favorable outcomes in one activity that we can apply to others because it's like the process of coming to understand, coming to coming to accept certain outcomes or the your learning what your decision-making process is that helps you realize I can apply that to other activities to help drive a better outcome.
I haven't read the or heard the anecdote about professional wrestling, but you know, I'm sure it works for this individual in a really good manner. For me, there is nothing in particular that I could honestly say I referenced this or I derived my personal experience from that to help me become a better lawyer. I would just say there is a lot of things that I just try to take from what I do in my kind of day-to-day life or in if I'm just doing something for fun that I realize has application to my job. For example, going to school and talking to other parents, very mundane stuff, right? All of us do it. A lot of the other parents at school are not lawyers; they have no idea what it is that we do other than some mythsized version of what they see on TV. How does that help me? It's my storytelling exercise. It's my storytelling muscles. Like, I have to take a complex idea and reduce it to a level where people can understand but also want to understand more. Like people want to have follow-up questions and engage and do it a way that's not condescending to other people, to explain it to them with respect, with sincerity, with authenticity, and get their interest, get them wanting to learn more.
I love playing poker, Texas Hold'em. That's kind of like the quintessential litigator's kind of practice because you're anticipating what people are doing. You're trying to model out outcomes and probabilities. You're trying to bluff. You're trying to calculate the best kind of value proposition for yourself: "Well if I take this action, what's going to happen here?" And you have to come to grips with disappointment, knowing that sometimes you have your decision-making process was correct and you get outcome a bad outcome, sometimes a really bad outcome. And then you just have to pick yourself up and realize that, you know what, sometimes these things happen and you can only learn from the experience and figure out whether there's anything you could do better. And if you conclude you did most of the things correct or you couldn't do anything better, then have the conviction to do it again because you have to have confidence in yourself that ultimately you do this long enough, you will get the right outcome most of the time because you're following the right process. And at the same time if you sometimes luck into winning a hand, you play it horribly but you get like a huge jackpot through sheer luck, having the humility to recognize that that was because of luck and you realize "I need to improve in this and this and this and this so that I'm not in a position again where I need blind luck to bail me out." In trials, there have been times where we've done everything that we thought we could have done and we didn't get the result we wanted but, you know, you just have to like say, "Well, we got to do this again because we know this was the right process." And then there are times where we got a result and it's like, "Oh, you know, this we didn't necessarily anticipate this and so we probably need to figure out how can we do a better job of anticipating this in the future or what can we do to kind of exploit this particular kind of tendency or predilection by the jury." Learning from it and adapting so that the next time we're better positioned.
Khurram Naik: Let's take somebody who is a commercial litigator, 10 years experience in Big Law, has quality substantial experience, someone in a similar situation to you at the time that you left your firm. What counsel do you have for that person for how to think about the decision to open a firm and an approach?
Randy Gaw: Do you want to be the decision-maker or not? If you want to be the decision-maker, then make it happen. Just do the research, all of us can do the research, talk to people, educate yourself, but then make sure you find reasons to go forward as opposed to reasons to not do it. Because ultimately if you want to be the person who drives decisions, who architects litigation strategy from start to finish, who's the one who tells a client "I think we should do X and not Y," the one who's giving the opening statements or the closing arguments at trial, then yeah, start your own firm because for most people in Big Law—not all people, but for most people—that will accelerate your ability to become the person who makes the decisions as opposed to having to wait your turn. But if you do not want to be the person making those calls, then don't do it because starting your own firm is not conducive to your skill set, to your mindset, and you're not putting yourself in the position to succeed. We have to have an honest conversation with ourselves: what am I good at, what do I want to do? And there are some people who are—will I think find that they are very happy not being in the driver's seat. They're very happy being the second chair, they're very happy executing someone else's stuff and that's great. I think that's a great career and there are people who are very fulfilled and do an excellent job at that. And there are times where when I see the profits per partner metrics of these Big Law firms, I’m like, "You know, to be a service partner at some of these firms doesn't sound so bad at all!" You just sit down and do the work and have fun. But yeah, you just need to have an honest conversation with yourself as to what you want and what you're capable of doing.
Khurram Naik: Well Randy, thanks for sharing your experiences. It’s really interesting to hear some of the recurring themes around particularly around motivation and how you've really reverse-engineered work that you find motivating. I think that's—I don't know a lot of people thinking about work in those terms, so I think that's a really helpful additional lens on work. And so thanks for taking the time to sit down and share your story.
Randy Gaw: Appreciate it, Khurram. Very happy that I was able to talk about some of these issues.