Khurram’s Quorum – Ep 033: Vishal Shah on going plaintiff-side and the strategy in building a firm
Vishal Shah is the founder of Shah Litigation, a high-stakes employment litigation firm. Vishal is one of my good friends, and we both launched businesses at about the same time. This is a unique opportunity to hear how a biglaw associate at Morgan Lewis made the leap to the plaintiff side, built a firm from scratch, and developed a litigation practice rooted in strategic precision rather than volume.
In this episode, we dig into the decision to switch to the other side of the v., how Vishal researched the opportunity by interviewing dozens of lawyers before launching, his approach to building a national trial practice on referrals alone, the unique collegiality of the plaintiffs' bar, and how he thinks about case selection, co-counseling, and the business development strategy that keeps his firm growing.
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:
- Research Before You Leap: Before launching Shah Litigation, Vishal interviewed 35 to 45 lawyers and compiled their lessons into a single document. He collected their challenges and failures so he could preemptively address them in his own business plan.
- Cash Flow Is King: The most memorable advice Vishal received was "cash flow, cash flow, cash flow." He structured his practice with roughly 60% contingency and 40% hourly or flat-fee work so that money keeps coming in while the bigger contingency cases work through the system.
- Referrals as the Lifeblood: Every single case at Shah Litigation has come through a personal or professional referral. Vishal sees each referral as more than a business lead. It is a personal vote of confidence that carries social obligation and trust on all sides.
- Case Selection Over Volume: Shah Litigation turns down roughly 95% of intakes. Vishal evaluates cases on the merits, the defendant's profile, and whether the plaintiff can tell their story convincingly. Quality over quantity is the foundation of the firm's approach.
- The Plaintiffs' Bar Is Uniquely Collaborative: Unlike the defense side, plaintiff-side employment lawyers freely share case law, brief drafts, and mediator recommendations. The driving principle is that rising tides raise all ships, and better outcomes in one case create precedent that benefits everyone.
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Full Transcript
Khurram Naik: This is Khurram with Khurram's Quorum. My guest today is Vishal Shah. Vishal is the founder of Shah Litigation, a plaintiff-side employment law firm. I've been friends with Vishal for years and he and I both launched businesses at the same time. This is a really unique opportunity to hear how a biglaw lawyer launched a plaintiff-side firm. We'll dive into the business and the strategy of the law firm. So if you have any interest in launching a law firm or are just curious about how that works, this is a great one to listen to. So here's Vishal.
Khurram Naik: Vishal, you're one of my good friends and so I am very happy to have you on here because your story is very compelling and we both started businesses at about the same time. And so I've been excited about your growth. You've been cheering me on and so I am really interested in diving into how you're running the business of your law firm, the business of law. And we'll get to that and your approach on litigation as well. But first I want to start with, you are, would you say you're a good old boy from Alabama? Is that fair to say?
Vishal Shah: You know, good old boy comes with certain connotations so I might not accept that but I'm definitely a Southern boy at heart. I'll definitely agree to that.
Khurram Naik: Okay. So I want to hear how a Southern boy from Alabama ended up in Boston with his own law firm.
Vishal Shah: Yeah, well, Khurram, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to speak with you just about my journey as I've gone through this whole process. And you know, coming from Alabama, I didn't really have a choice. My parents moved there for their business. I grew up there. I spent the first 26 years of my life in Alabama in a small town called Dothan. And just before that, a town called Eufaula, which was about an hour away. And I had an incredible childhood. I lived in a community where there were a lot of South Asian people, believe it or not. And my parents were heavily ingrained in that environment and in that community. So we were heavily ingrained and involved in that community. And a lot of it was family but there were other folks too who have become really, really close friends of mine over the years.
Vishal Shah: And when I was probably 14 or 15, that's when I really decided that I wanted to be a lawyer and I was really interested in it. Not because anything in particular had happened and that I really was driven to the law. But it was just always something that interested me. I loved courtroom scenes, watching Matlock, watching movies where lawyers were on TV. And I thought it was a neat job. And so I always told my parents I want to be a lawyer.
Vishal Shah: And so I went to undergrad down South, went to law school down South. And then after I worked at a place for about a year, a small litigation boutique in Birmingham, Alabama, I moved to Philadelphia for work at a firm called Drinker Biddle. It's an AmLaw, I think 100 or so firm at that time. And I was doing commercial litigation within the insurance space. So life insurance policies, long-term cash insurance policies dealing with litigation surrounding those. And worked there from about 2015 to 2017 and close to that 2017 timeframe, I decided that I wanted to change.
Vishal Shah: And I had a friend who was working at Morgan Lewis. He's actually still there now in their employment group. He was also a commercial litigator like I was. And we were just talking about potential opportunities over lunch one day. And he recommended that I apply. I never wanted to be an employment lawyer. I'm not specifically drawn to that field by any means, or I wasn't at the time. But it was litigation. And I knew I liked litigation. Morgan Lewis certainly has an incredible brand. And there are some great lawyers there. And so I made the leap and was at Morgan Lewis from 2017 through 2023. And then in 2020 moved from Philadelphia to Boston for a variety of reasons. But I've been in Boston since 2020 and it's been fantastic. It's certainly much, much different than small town Alabama.
Khurram Naik: Well, so I'm imagining that at some point you became aware that, of course, I'm sure you recognized early on, hey, it's unusual to be South Asian in Alabama. And yes, it sounds like there's a community there for sure. But what would you say now that you're in Boston, you were in Philadelphia before that, urban areas with plenty of diversity, maybe plenty of South Asian lawyers certainly in Boston. What would you say in your trajectory shaped your worldview in a way that maybe some of your peers who grew up differently didn't experience? I grew up in Texas the first 10 years and from there in New Jersey, went to college in Pittsburgh, and both high school and college were very diverse with a large Asian population. What would you say is different about your worldview?
Vishal Shah: There's probably two points to that. One is that I am what I'll call stupidly optimistic. I realize that there are risks in certain things, but I try to look at the positives and try to focus on the positives more than anything. And the second piece is that we as people certainly have way more similarities than we have differences. And so I think at an early age, that was something that I believed in, and I still believe in it today. But that sort of approach, that stupid optimism and this view of having more similarities than differences, I just jumped right in. I played sports, I was really active in school, I had friends come over, I went over to friends' places and just really tried to make my life for what it was. I didn't view it as a Black thing or a white thing or a Hispanic thing or an Indian thing. It was just the way life was. My friends would come over, we would play, and we would hang out when we got older, and it was just part of growing up.
Khurram Naik: So tell me about the path that took you from, you know, Morgan Lewis, a very strong labor and employment defense-side firm. What took you to jump to the other side of the v.?
Vishal Shah: So my plan since I was in law school was to always be a partner at a biglaw firm. That was my goal. And ever since before I graduated, that's what I was working towards. Getting the right sponsors internally to say your name in the rooms that you're not in, getting the right exposure to clients and other opportunities so you can elevate and build your brand both internally within the firm and externally. And then the third was having the right clients.
Vishal Shah: Partnership, especially at a place like Morgan Lewis, timing plays a big part of it. The clients that are your key clients as you're coming up, where are they from a business perspective as it relates to the firm? Are they one of the head companies giving a lot of work to the firm or has the work dwindled over time? And I think that's a really important thing. And so I was always trying to make sure that I had a diverse set of clients that, no matter what happened, I could bulletproof the timing issue as much as that was in my control. And a lot of it wasn't.
Vishal Shah: And so in the summer of 2022, I had had a number of really awesome successes. We had won a two-week jury trial in an eight-figure employment case in Delaware against a lawyer from California who was probably one of the best trial lawyers I've ever seen. And it was the first case I was assigned to when I started at Morgan Lewis in 2017. It's one that I handled from stem to stern. It was me and the partner primarily doing the work for five-plus years.
Vishal Shah: And so in that summer, we won the jury trial at the beginning of June and then within two or so weeks, I received a decision from a federal court where we had won a motion for summary judgment, which basically says, hey, judge, there's no disputed facts here and given the law, we win. And it basically ended the case right there. And it was a case that we were not expecting to win summary judgment on. And so the client was ecstatic and I was on a really, really professional high.
Vishal Shah: But we know that life isn't just all peaks, there are valleys that come with it. And so just two days before I got the summary judgment decision, I learned that two close family members had passed away. And that happened on the same day at the end of June. And then that was kind of very surprising. But then we had two more deaths in the next two months.
Vishal Shah: So in the beginning of August, my cousin's daughter, a super smart young woman who was traveling on a study abroad trip in Costa Rica, had an unfortunate accident and passed away. And she was just incredibly full of life, incredibly hungry for changing the world and making it a better place. All these idealistic ideas that you have, and she was going after it and she was super, super capable.
Vishal Shah: And then within a month, my first cousin who I was extremely close with passed away from an unexpected heart attack. He's much older than I am. My family has a wide range of ages on both my dad's side and my mom's side. And he was a very successful businessman. He was just starting to enter into what I'll call a cooling-out period where he was going to start traveling more and doing the things that he really wanted, but he wasn't able to. It was just all sort of tragically taken away from him when no one expected it.
Vishal Shah: So when all of this happened, we're now mid-September of 2022. It just so happened to coincide with the end of the fiscal year at the firm I was at. I was well beyond my hours requirement because of the trial, because of the summary judgment briefing. And so I decided to take a short leave. And I wasn't in this state where I thought I needed the time. I wasn't feeling down or depressed. I could still focus. I still had the same hunger. I could still do the same work. But something inside of me said, just take some time. Take a couple of weeks. It's not going to change anything in the grand scheme, but you might be in a state of shock and you need to just have a little time where you can think and sort of process what's just happened to you because these kinds of things don't happen often. And you want to make sure you appreciate them for what they are and not just breeze past them, because that would have been my other natural tendency.
Vishal Shah: So ultimately I took the time off and during that two weeks, I started thinking about where my priorities were, where they should be, and where there was alignment. And I realized that I no longer wanted to spend 80 hours a week on the road bouncing from airport to conference room to hotel and back. I wanted to do something where I was in control of my destiny more than anyone else.
Vishal Shah: And so this leads to the next obvious question on why plaintiff-side employment law. I didn't wake up one day just thinking, hey, I should start a law firm today. Nobody does that. Well, maybe some people do, but nobody I know has done that. And it wasn't like that for me. I started thinking about the various things I could do. I could go in-house, which is what most of my contemporaries do after they leave firm life. But I know that I love to litigate cases and I love to go to trial. So I knew that in-house would not be the right fit for me. I could move to another law firm, but I quickly realized that the same set of challenges would exist at any law firm in terms of being at a certain place at a certain time or having others in control of your destiny.
Vishal Shah: And so that was an option. But then I started looking at the plaintiff side and I knew a few people who had made the leap from the management side to the plaintiff side and they were doing great. They were enjoying it. They were practicing law at an extremely high level. And look, I had been trained by one of the best employment law firms in the world. And if I could leverage the training that I got to help level the playing field for individual employees, that was really neat. And I could try cases, I could do things the way I wanted to do them. And so I just quickly started to learn more about it.
Khurram Naik: Can I ask you something about going back to the realization that you want to have more control? Is there something about the other experiences you had with your family members that made you reflect on your trajectory? Like, you mentioned your cousin who had success professionally and then was now looking to shift to experiences and focusing on himself and other things that are important to him. And then that got cut short. Is there something about that discrepancy that influenced you to say, hey, it's really all about control for me? Because I'm trying to understand where that motivation for control over your destiny came from. You were doing well at the firm, making great progress, had a huge win that was tied to your hard work. So what was it? That system was working just fine for you. Tell me some more about what went into that realization that there was a values gap for you.
Vishal Shah: Well, I think I quickly realized that life is short and you might have your own plans for what you want your life to look like, but the universe will punch you in the mouth and tell you what your life is supposed to look like, whether you like it or not. And when I was facing these experiences, I realized that I could sketch out the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years of my life, but if I don't take some active control of that, it may not ever get there. Oh, and by the way, I might not see tomorrow. Anything could happen.
Vishal Shah: And so I think by understanding the fact that being at a big firm, there's a lot of institutional parameters that you're living by and navigating. And things don't happen in terms of what's best for you. Things happen in terms of what's best for the firm and what's best for the brand. And so when we were talking about having the right clients at the right time, that's something out of your control. But if the client that you've invested and poured hundreds of hours into for years suddenly gets a new GC and they change their law firm and they go to another law firm, well, what's your business case then at that point? Now, none of that happened to me, but I realized that I wanted to drive my career more than riding the bus of the biglaw brand.
Khurram Naik: Okay, yeah, that's helpful. Okay, so then fast forwarding, realizing that, hey, this skill set that I have from the defense side is going to be very good on the plaintiff side. What did you do then? What was the next step? You had this realization. What was the step from realization to action?
Vishal Shah: Well, it went into a deep research period and there are really two parts to that. I would read articles, I would listen to podcasts about just the business of having your own law firm, how to start, what does marketing look like, what does client acquisition look like, all of those things. And then I would speak to other lawyers and just vet my ideas and try to use them as a sounding board to get their real thoughts about what it would look like to start a firm. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think it's a bad idea? For the people who had already started their own firm, I wanted to learn from them. What would you do again? What would you not do? What is something that you wish you knew when you started that you know now?
Vishal Shah: And I collected all of that information from about 35 or 45 different people and put it into a document. And then I just started bulletproofing all of those things. And so it was really helpful to kind of get everybody else's challenges and then try to navigate them in my own approach. And I thought that was super helpful. And it helped me frame out a really decent and solid business plan for when I started.
Khurram Naik: All right, so tell me, give us the insights. What were the key findings you made from those conversations?
Vishal Shah: I still remember vividly sitting on a Zoom call. A plaintiff's lawyer in Alabama told me, when I asked him what was the most important thing you wish you knew when you started that you know now, he said cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. You got to make sure that every month there's some money coming into the firm because that's what keeps the lights on.
Vishal Shah: And it made a ton of sense. My practice, most plaintiff-side practices, and I'm talking about personal injury or employment, a lot of it is focused on contingency cases. "We don't get paid unless you get paid" type of advertising that you see all around town. But I took on a good segment of hourly and alternative fee work and maybe even some hybrid work that could help some cash come into the firm as some of the bigger, more lucrative contingency cases were working through the process.
Vishal Shah: And so by having these two tranches of matters, the ones that you're in for the long term and then the others that are short-term engagements where you're in and you're out but they're continuing to have some money flow, I think that was really, really helpful. And money is a necessary tool. It helps alleviate a lot of stress on a business owner because when you're not worried about where the next paycheck is coming from, you can focus on how to do things the right way and how to do things in the way that they should be done. And I think overall that provides for a better experience for everybody. I don't want to be flippant and make it sound like money doesn't matter. It is super, super important, but when you're not worried about it, it gives you the freedom to focus on things that really move the needle.
Khurram Naik: So what were other strategies that you considered at the time of launching? What were some different jumping-off points that you vetted in that period of time, and what was kind of the consensus on how to start?
Vishal Shah: Well, one of the first questions I would get when I told people I was starting my own law firm is, well, how are you going to get clients? And that is the first question my dad asked me, that is the first question most people asked me.
Vishal Shah: And so there are a number of ways to skin the cat. You have folks who are marketing in traditional ways, think billboards and radio advertisements, commercials, things of that nature. You have folks who are using the internet and they have Google ads and other ad campaigns going on as well as search engine optimization or SEO where they're trying to make sure that their firm comes up on the first couple of hits on Google when somebody is searching for their type of law firm. Both of those require a lot of money.
Vishal Shah: And so when you're starting a firm, you have to be very smart about where you're spending your dollars. For me, number one, I didn't have the infrastructure to deal with a high volume of intake calls. And number two, I didn't want to spend a lot of money getting it set up, at least initially. Now we will start doing that at some point, maybe not the billboards, but certainly the Google ads as well as the SEO. But that stuff takes a good amount of foundational investment from the firm and we weren't prepared to do that at the very beginning.
Vishal Shah: And so we trusted our network. It could be a personal network, it could be a professional network in terms of people that I know, but it could also be something like LinkedIn where I'm connected to so many people just because I've met them at a conference and then we've just stayed in touch or they've come across my profile and we've connected that way just through an informal Zoom or whatever the case might be. So I think client acquisition and marketing was a big piece of what I was focused on in those early days.
Khurram Naik: And then what about the potential strategies for subject matter? Did you know it was going to be specifically employment litigation or did you consider other options, and what was the consensus for you on how to approach that?
Vishal Shah: I wanted to eliminate variables to the extent that I could. I'm not a personal injury lawyer. I've never handled a personal injury case on the plaintiff side. And I certainly could learn it, but should I learn it? Should I spend the time to open my practice up to a different area? And for me, the time-value proposition wasn't there to learn a different area of the law at that stage. So I wanted to focus on employment law. I had that background coming from a place like Morgan Lewis. I had the training and I thought that there was a real value that I could provide to folks because I've seen it on both sides now. And I think being able to look at something from all angles really gives you a great perspective. And so that was why I stuck with employment law.
Khurram Naik: And so is there anything about the early days and how you thought you would build the law firm that your perspective today has changed on?
Vishal Shah: You know, nothing is coming to mind immediately. I think there is a significant amount of investment coming back into the operation side of the law firm itself. We are always thinking about how do we improve the experience for our clients. What makes it better? What removes obstacles to communication? Because I think the number one complaint that individuals have who hire lawyers is that they don't hear from their lawyer that often.
Vishal Shah: And so we have a really robust, awesome legal practice management software called Filevine. It's incredible and it's super customizable, which is really great. And everything that we do is run through that, from cases to administrative to payments. We're now working on putting together a client portal so clients can just log in and see where cases are, see where their matter is from time to time and what's coming up. We've also just signed up to revamp our entire intake system. So it's a constant focus on how to be better, how to improve, how to reinvest and just make the firm as operationally sound as we can.
Khurram Naik: And so what makes you, I guess we're diving more into the business of the law firm, which I think is really valuable. There are plenty of outlets that will talk about the substantive aspects of practicing law, but I really appreciate how we're diving into the business side. So how did you know that now, at this stage, you should allocate resources, time, and capital to the website and building out your SEO presence? How did you make that determination?
Vishal Shah: It's all an iterative process. So I knew when I started that we would be as lean as possible. This is an entrepreneur's story, a small business owner's story, but I didn't even sign up for Westlaw when I first started my firm because that comes with a significant cost. And until I was making some money, I didn't want to just sign up for something that would be a constant overhead cost. But I did sign up for something called the Social Law Library here in Boston, which for $455 a year, as opposed to a month, you can have access to Westlaw, LexisNexis, a bunch of different online resources. They've got a ton of books that you can check out. And I thought that staying lean in those early days was really, really smart. I think within two months, I realized that this is ridiculous and I don't need to be traveling downtown every week to go research. And so I quickly bit the bullet.
Vishal Shah: But that's just one example of how we started off lean and then did what we had to do. And then as we progressed, as we got some more matters under our belt and resolved them successfully, we just took those funds and started putting them back into how to improve the firm. So it's always been a plan to do it iteratively.
Khurram Naik: And so with the work you take on, if you think of it as a portfolio, you broke down this concept of a portfolio of contingency cases versus cases that are alternative fee or some sort of hourly fee. Do you have a rough rule of thumb for how much you want to have in terms of the breakdown between those in any given month? I recognize it changes month to month. No one can say I want exactly 20% this and 40% that. But do you have a rule of thumb for how you're allocating your time to those different kinds of work?
Vishal Shah: Well, once the cases are in, it doesn't matter whether it's hourly or contingency. We work up the cases according to our standard. And that doesn't change just because of the way that the financial model is structured. But in terms of the actual breakdown month to month, I like to do 60% contingency and then 40% on the hourly or flat fee side. And that shifts depending on what's coming in and what's going out, a lot of which is not in my control. But ideally, I think that breakdown is a solid one because you still have money coming in every month. And you still have tremendous upside in those contingency cases because it's just an investment. It's an investment in that case that you're putting in "free" time into until the case is resolved, if it's resolved.
Khurram Naik: And help us understand the financials. How would you help someone who's prospectively thinking about this wrap their head around the financials of a law firm and what you can expect?
Vishal Shah: You can start a law firm today for very, very little money. There's only a handful of things that you really need. You need the correct corporate structure for your given state. You need to make sure your bar licenses and whatnot are active. Malpractice insurance, which even if your state doesn't require it, you should get it. And actually you should also get cybersecurity insurance, but that's a topic for another day.
Vishal Shah: From a financial standpoint, there's not a lot of money that is outgoing if you don't want it to be. You can be lean if you want to. And then you just need to decide, well, based on the value that you're offering, what types of clients do you want? And how are you going to structure those engagements with them? For me, it's easy. It's a litigation-focused practice. It's either contingency or it's hourly, flat fee, or some sort of hybrid among those three options. But if you're doing something different, like counseling work or IP transactions, it's just really thinking through what the folks coming to you need and then how you offer that in a way that makes sense so that people want to go to you when they need legal advice.
Khurram Naik: And then apart from the breakdown of contingency versus hourly, is there some other way that you're thinking about how your work is structured as far as diversification goes? Are you thinking about having diversification of clients geographically or in different industries? How do you think about that aspect of your business? Because it could be a risk to say, hey, I focus all on Boston life science companies and that's my expertise. I don't have the expectation that employment lawyers focus that specifically on an industry, but I'm using that as an illustration of the risks of being specialized in one area where there's a downturn and you're really tied to it. How do you think about that?
Vishal Shah: Yeah, on the management side, there's certainly that specialization where you're the IP tech transactions lawyer within a particular industry. That certainly exists. On the plaintiff's side, you have people who niche into certain practice areas. They might be medical malpractice lawyers. They might be toxic tort asbestos lawyers or they might do employment law. And even within employment law, they might focus on wage and hour laws that are available at the federal level and sometimes state level. Or they might do discrimination cases where there's federal law but then certain states have their own law too.
Vishal Shah: I don't have a certain specialty in terms of only taking wage and hour cases or only taking discrimination cases. I take on cases that I think are really strong. And we are not a volume shop. We will never be a volume shop. That's not our goal. That's not related to our vision in any way. So we look for strong cases and there's a very rigorous process that we go through where we're looking for certain key indicators of a case. We're looking at the merits, of course, and making sure that it meets the elements and that it's going to pass certain stages within the litigation where it could be challenged.
Vishal Shah: And ultimately, if it passes that summary judgment test that we were talking about earlier, if I think that there's going to be a way for us to survive that, that's a great marker for me. That's something that I really focus on and love to have in all cases and really strive to have in all cases.
Vishal Shah: The other factor is who is the actual defendant? Who is the company? And where do people view them within just normal day-to-day living? Right now, given recent events, the insurance industry has not really been looked upon kindly. And so that might be a defendant where you want to think about external pressures as you're going through and evaluating a case.
Vishal Shah: I also look at the individual plaintiff themselves. Is this a person I like? Is this a person that I would go and have coffee with? Is this a person who can tell their story convincingly? That doesn't mean that they're the nicest person ever or that they're all warm and cuddly. They might be kind of prickly too. But are they telling their story in a convincing way? And is this person likable? Because ultimately, what you're going to ask a jury to do is believe your client over a whole host of defense witnesses and defense employees who are going to say your client is a liar, a cheat, and a thief. So thinking about the cases that we're bringing as a whole is really impactful because it needs to meet those markers for us to take it on. Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense.
Khurram Naik: And so you're focusing more on the quality of the case and not so much on any sort of prospective specialization. Do you expect to ever specialize, or is that a product of what's come in the door today? Do you think there could be a payoff to focusing on, say, wage and hour work or something like that?
Vishal Shah: The answer is I don't know. I do a lot of sexual harassment and assault cases within the workplace. I do a lot of discrimination cases of any type, whether it's race, gender, disability, any of the protected characteristics. And I do a lot of cases involving pay practices of companies, whether they're paying folks the right way or paying them on time the way that they need to be paid. So those are the three buckets of expertise that I have. And those are the same types of cases that I handled at Morgan Lewis. Handling them for so long, you get some insights and trends into how these cases are worked up. And I think that's really helpful.
Vishal Shah: Would there be a day that I branch out into the personal injury world or into civil RICO cases? Yeah, maybe. I think if the right opportunity presents itself, I'm always open to that. And I'm not necessarily wedded to only being an employment firm. The firm is called Shah Litigation. It's not called Shah Employment Law. And so the vision is for it to be nimble and be open to any opportunities that come along.
Khurram Naik: So on the topic of Shah Litigation, tell us about litigation. Tell us about how you're approaching, you know, switching yourself from biglaw defense lawyer to plaintiff-side trial lawyer. How is that process of self-education and training coming along?
Vishal Shah: So this is the absolute best part of the job. Litigation and preparing for trial is what I absolutely love. And as it relates to litigation, I see it as something that's far more nuanced than just filing complaints and going through the typical process of most cases.
Vishal Shah: Employment, aside from your health and your family, is the most important thing to most people. It represents a person's dignity, their sense of purpose, and often their entire identity. I think we all have folks that we know whose profession is really their personality. And so for us, every case that comes through the door represents someone's life story, their professional journey, and it's usually a pivotal moment in their career, and it's a moment that, if they're reaching out to me, hasn't been a pleasant one.
Vishal Shah: The way that I approach litigation reflects this understanding. I think many firms on the plaintiff's side take what I call the assembly-line approach to cases. They're filing similar complaints with slightly modified details and they're just going through the motions. We have a completely different philosophy. We believe in something called strategic precision. Think of it like a chess game where every move is carefully calculated and considered. It's not just considered for the immediate impact of that move or the next move. It's considered within how it shapes the entire trajectory of the case. If we take this position, how does it affect these other five things that we're not thinking about?
Vishal Shah: And so it's really using, by the way, the same approach that the really, really good defense firms use. And that's one way where the training hasn't changed. I still absolutely love the nitty-gritty details of a filing in terms of how to make it look polished. And that's something that I've just taken from biglaw that was really important to some partners that I worked for and it's become important to me. And I think it reflects well on the firm.
Vishal Shah: But going back to our litigation process, before we even file a complaint, we are really diving deep into the intake process. It's something that I call a blueprint for each case. It's the pre-litigation analysis that we do. We're looking at documents. We're talking to folks who we think matter. That may be an expert, that might be a witness. And that helps us understand the actual human story. It helps us understand what are the dynamics going on between these people at this workplace. What are the facts we know? What are the facts that we don't know? What should we be asking for? It just gives us a bigger holistic view of what's going on.
Vishal Shah: And I think when you couple that with legal research and you can identify theories that have landed and stuck with courts, I think that really makes the difference in employment cases. And this process might be a little surprising to people. I haven't looked at the exact numbers yet, but we turn down like 95% of the intakes that come our way. And that's not because we're some big bad exclusive firm. It's about being effective. When we can focus our resources on what we need to do for that particular case, it is a much better outcome for everybody. And I would much rather focus my time on a handful of cases than have hundreds that I'm trying to corral and just trying to get to the next stage. That's not really how I'm geared.
Khurram Naik: And so as you're thinking through these cases, how are you doing research to figure out how to position them and find precedent for cases that are really on point? Because it seems incredibly fact-intensive. How are you researching cases based on those kinds of fact patterns to really build the case? I'm assuming part of the diligence is, hey, what sort of legal precedent is there for prevailing under similar circumstances. So maybe you can speak to what drives your approach in finding that alignment of precedent.
Vishal Shah: The good news for employment cases is that there are many, many jurisdictions where the law is very similar. Now the way courts interpret that law and the way judges implement it can be different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But at the federal level, you have a ton of laws that apply in every state. And then some of those states have state-specific laws that largely track the federal laws or they might be more protective. Like Massachusetts, where state law is super protective on discrimination, retaliation, and harassment issues for employees.
Vishal Shah: And so there is a lot of law out there, a lot of circumstances factually that could be similar to the ones that we're evaluating. We're looking for key terms, just doing general Westlaw research. But a lot of it is also just discussing the issues with other lawyers, other plaintiff-side lawyers. And I do it with plaintiff-side lawyers and management-side lawyers. It doesn't really matter to me what side of the v. you're on. I just want somebody else's take to brainstorm how we attack a certain issue that we're facing. Whether that's at the intake stage or something that comes up later, it's usually just trying to leverage the resources that you have, whether that's Westlaw or people.
Khurram Naik: Tell me more about the people component, because I think running your own business can be very lonely. And then also, your biglaw friends are just not going to understand the process you're going through because they haven't experienced it. So how are you finding a network of plaintiff-side lawyers or other business founders to run these ideas by?
Vishal Shah: It's funny you say that, because when I left my old firm, my mentor said, when you go out on your own, it's going to be lonely. Make sure that you find times to meet with other lawyers and go to lunch, go have coffee, go to dinners, do all of those things to maintain a social professional life. And I took those words to heart because that guy is one of the smartest, strongest lawyers I've ever met. His name is Steve Wall at Morgan Lewis. And when he told me that, I took it to heart.
Vishal Shah: And so I try to go have coffee or lunch or dinner or grab drinks with people just to check in. It serves a dual purpose. One, it helps me stay top of mind whenever an employment issue comes up for a plaintiff. That's kind of a secondary piece of that. The other one is the social interaction piece of it. I really like hanging out with folks. And so meeting with people, learning about what's going on with them, bouncing ideas off of them and getting some insight is really, really helpful.
Vishal Shah: So aside from having these one-on-one meetings, I will also try to go to bar association events, South Asian Bar Association. We have a Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association, MELA, and then there's a national level as well called NELA, National Employment Lawyers Association. And I'm really involved with those as well. So I'm going to conferences and trying to meet people and make sure that you're not on this solo island of one.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I think that sounds very essential. And then tell me about referrals. What role have referrals played in the business, and how do you think about that channel of client development going forward?
Vishal Shah: So I mentioned earlier that we don't do any traditional advertising and we don't do any internet advertising or SEO at this stage. So what do we do? We focus on our network. Referrals play a massive, massive part of that. They are essentially how I've gotten every single case that I have ever had at my firm, through somebody that I know who has said, oh, you have an employment issue, you should talk to my buddy Vishal. He's an employment lawyer and he can possibly help or direct you in the right place.
Vishal Shah: So referrals are the lifeblood of my firm. That's how we operate. That's how we get cases. I don't expect that to ever change. I hope it never changes because to me, a referral is an even stronger connection to the client and your network than any of those other methods we were talking about. Because number one, somebody that they know, like, or trust has had an employment issue and they have thought of you as the person to help resolve that issue. And so there's a personal feeling of responsibility there. Oh, Khurram has referred his buddy to me, I need to do a good job for the buddy and I need to do a good job for Khurram because he's my boy. And like you said earlier, we've gone through this entire business-building process basically walking in it together. So I hope it never goes away. It's a vital source. And that's what we are always trying to focus on, making sure that referrals and the networks stay alive.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And for my business, referrals are enormous. It's just like you say, there's that social connection and obligation that creates this triangle of obligations that everyone is aligned on in making this a success. And it's also just gratifying to help people that you know or people in your network.
Vishal Shah: Well, look, I think we all have moments of self-doubt and we have moments of fleeting thoughts, and maybe not so fleeting thoughts, of, can I really do this? Did I make a huge mistake? And I think when people you know send you cases because they trust you to be able to handle it, that is reassuring. And it does more for me personally and mentally than it does for me financially. Because oftentimes a referral doesn't even play out into something that's actually generating revenue for the firm. But every referral, regardless of whether it's a legit case or not, is a stamp that, hey, I trust you, I trust you to take care of my buddy, go do it. And I know you can do it. And maybe that's not what they mean. Maybe it's more simple than that. But that's how I like to think of it because it helps me sort of process and keep going. Because for the reasons you explain, it can be lonely, it is somewhat like an island at times. And so to look for those little bright spots is really, really important.
Khurram Naik: Tell me about personal satisfaction. You're talking about both servicing the client and the professional competence of taking something to trial and prevailing. Those are two sources of gratification. Then there's the money. That's another source of gratification. So three sources. How do you think about those? And would you ever counsel someone that a strong reason for launching your own firm is for the income potential? Is that itself a reason to do it?
Vishal Shah: I think that it can be extremely lucrative if done the appropriate way. I think plaintiff-side practices in general are feast or famine. There are people who are scraping by to make it month by month. And there could be multiple reasons for that. And then there are folks who are really, really crushing it because there's a method to their madness in terms of how they go about litigating cases and how they handle them.
Vishal Shah: I've been really fortunate to see how some really great firms litigate and I've just taken those tools and put them in my pocket. I used them when I was at Morgan Lewis and then I use them now. And so I think learning from others can be really important in terms of how you're going to drive your own business. But I would never just say, hey, you should go be a plaintiff's lawyer because there's a ton of money to be made. There is money there, but there are easier ways to make money, and I think the money is not always there because it depends on a lot of circumstances that are outside of your control.
Vishal Shah: For example, I was vetting a case last month where everything looked great. What happened to this individual was extremely terrible and they had suffered a lot of both financial and emotional damages. The defendant would have not been a likable company, neither would the lead wrongdoer. But that company was not doing well financially and they were about to file bankruptcy. And so even if we took that case and worked it up all the way for three or four years and put our very best foot forward as we do in all of our matters, there may not be any money at the end of the road.
Vishal Shah: So there's a significant amount of risk, but I think if you're thoughtful and methodical and smart about your approach, I absolutely think that there is a way to make more money having your own firm than you would ever make at a biglaw firm.
Khurram Naik: I'm curious about mindset shifts in moving from largely billable-hour work to larger contingency work, because as a legal recruiter our work is contingency as well. You only make money upon placements. And so I've observed that a misapprehension a lot of lawyers have when you're at a big firm is you're largely getting paid by the hour and you're getting paid to do hard things. And so the skill in your work as a lawyer lies in your ability to prevail despite bad facts, let's say.
Khurram Naik: As a legal recruiter or anyone working contingency, the hard work you're doing is in finding outstanding people to work with that have strong credentials, a strong story, who are accomplished people that law firms are excited to work with. That's the hard work up front, getting that talent. And then when you have that talent, things are easier from there. There are still challenges on the way, like talented lawyers can have very particular needs, or maybe they're in a really strong position and really getting a firm to meet them requires skill in negotiation. But largely the challenge is getting the very best talent and then things are easier from there.
Khurram Naik: But what we don't do is take the edge-case person where the story is really hard to tell. Maybe they've made a few moves and you can maybe help the next firm understand why they need to make one more move, or maybe their credentials aren't very strong but they've got really strong experience. But that's a much harder road and you get paid the same either way, whether you take the outstanding candidate that's easy to explain or the person with a really hard story to tell. So you don't take the harder case, which I think is really counter to how litigators think, where it's like, hey, I'm getting paid to take on really hard facts. Have you encountered any challenges in transitioning from that billable-hour mindset to a contingency model?
Vishal Shah: Yeah, look, on the management side, the benefit is it doesn't matter what the facts are. They could be absolutely terrible. You're getting paid every single month. Bills go out, bills get paid, your salary is coming, your check is hitting the bank account on its regularly scheduled days no matter what.
Vishal Shah: On the plaintiff's side, the case really matters. If you have a dog of a case, you're not getting paid because it's a dog. And so you really have to be smart about the case selection process. That is the most important thing on the plaintiff's side.
Vishal Shah: And that's where I think you hear a lot of times, oh, this case is super weak, you're just filing it to file it. And then they try to offer some lowball amount, $5,000 or $10,000 to settle the case. And I always laugh at that approach because there's one law firm in particular where it does not matter what case I bring. I've brought four or five cases against this same firm, different offices, and every time I get the same response. This case is weak, we don't see any merit. Here's five or ten grand to go away.
Vishal Shah: And at first, I used to get frustrated. What do you mean this case is meritless? Are you serious? Look at all these allegations that are well detailed. Here's some supporting documents, here's some supporting evidence. And then I realized that it's two things. One, it's a tactic to get me to say okay, I'll take it, because other people have taken it in the past. And two, I think it is part of a playbook which underscores a bigger problem in that management lawyers are too busy. They have too much to do. And so they're not really looking under the rocks like plaintiff-side lawyers do. They're just going through the motions a lot of the time.
Vishal Shah: Now the really good management firms don't do that. But the vast majority just play through the playbook. And it's a matter of knowing what that playbook is. Thankfully, I do have a good sense of that. But also making sure your own plan as a plaintiff-side lawyer preemptively addresses those issues so you can navigate them.
Khurram Naik: Yeah. And maybe the point I had in mind is to what extent are lawyers referring you matters and maybe not comprehending the contingency component because they're so stuck in the billable-hour mindset that they can't really appreciate, hey, the case has to be strong, I don't get paid unless the case is strong.
Vishal Shah: Yeah, so I tell all of my network whenever this comes up, send me anything you have related to employment law. I don't need you to vet it. I don't need you to take a lot of time to do an investigation or have a discussion with somebody. It's an employment issue, okay, here's my buddy Vishal's information, give him a shout. And then I can take it from there in terms of evaluating whether it's a strong case or not. That's my field.
Vishal Shah: If I had to do something with recruiting legal professionals, you're the first person I would go to talk about what that looks like. And so I don't want referral partners to feel like they're obligated to only send me good cases. The only thing I ask is if it's employment, think of me and send them my way and I'll take care of the rest. Whether I can help them or get somebody else to help them, I'll do whatever I can to make sure they are taken care of in the best way that I can.
Khurram Naik: And now tell me about co-counseling. Have you co-counseled with other lawyers? And if so, how did that come about?
Vishal Shah: Yeah, absolutely. So plaintiff-side work is different from the management side in a lot of ways, like we've talked about. But one of the ways is the firm size and structure. Plaintiff-side firms on the employment side are necessarily much smaller than a lot of their defense counterparts. And so there is a ton of collegiality among the plaintiffs' bar, much more than on the management side.
Vishal Shah: On the management side, there's collegiality within the firm, but Firm A is not going to Firm B to talk about issues that they're having or what they're doing on AI, for example. In most cases, that is your competitive advantage. If you're sharing that information with a competitor, you're losing it. And you're vying for the same clients. The same is not really true on the plaintiff side. And so there's a much bigger, warmer sense of let's work together, let's go through this entire process. You need case law on this issue? Happy to provide it. You need a draft brief? Happy to provide it. Whatever it is, there are a lot of open hands willing to help you when you need that help.
Khurram Naik: I just want to pause there because that is extraordinary and rare to have. I mean, as a plaintiff-side employment lawyer, the potential number of people you can work with is in the hundreds of millions. So the odds of two lawyers literally chasing the same client are infinitesimally small. And so the structure you're describing of being able to communicate, collaborate, and learn from peers, that's got to be really special. A small universe of professionals that are all highly trained, and yet you are almost guaranteed not to be competing for the same clients. That is a really unique structure to fall into. And I think that itself is, if I was choosing different lines of work, I wouldn't have thought about that in advance. But that is a huge differentiator in choosing this line of work versus other kinds of work.
Vishal Shah: Yeah, I think one of the things I thought I was going to miss leaving the institution I left was we had this internal message board system where you can put up questions, like hey, does anybody know so-and-so as a mediator, and you get feedback from your colleagues within that one firm. I thought I was going to miss that because what am I going to do, message myself and try to get some information from me?
Vishal Shah: But the plaintiffs' bar has an organization, like I said, called NELA, where there is that same type of message board where you can say, does anybody know this mediator, let me know what thoughts you have. And people are really, really happy to share insights because one of the fundamental things that drives the plaintiff-side practice in terms of collegiality is this concept that rising tides raise all ships. If I do better in my case because somebody gave me some information, that's great. That's the precedent for them to then use what I did in my case for their next case. And it just builds and builds on top of each other, hopefully resulting in better outcomes for everybody on the plaintiff's side.
Vishal Shah: But so you were asking about co-counseling. I do co-counsel because of that collegiality. Sometimes you need help. Usually I am jumping onto other people's cases to help them. So in March, I have a trial in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and that is with a really, really good friend of mine whose wife and I worked together at Morgan Lewis for a while. He was also a biglaw lawyer who left and started his own firm a couple years before I did. And he and I are going to try this lawsuit together, which is going to be a ton of fun.
Vishal Shah: And then I have a co-counseling situation in April, which is when my next trial is. That's in San Antonio, federal court. And that is a situation where a guy that I know through this organization says, hey, you really like to try cases, you really know this stuff, do you want to come try this case for me? Now, it's a little crazy going back to back in trials that are far apart in the country, one is in Texas and one is in Pennsylvania. But this is the stuff that I absolutely love to do. So I'm more than happy to do it. This is a lot of fun.
Khurram Naik: You mentioned co-counseling and some of it can involve splitting fees. So how does that work? Is there a typical fee structure? Is it typically a third of recovery? Generally speaking, how do fees work?
Vishal Shah: So generally how fees work on the plaintiff side, assuming that it's not a flat fee or an hourly arrangement, it's contingency. When the case resolves, at whatever stage it resolves, a certain percentage of that amount goes to the lawyers. It depends on the jurisdiction, the types of cases, and the market. That percentage can be anywhere from 25 to 40%, maybe even more in other jurisdictions.
Vishal Shah: And then if you're layering on a co-counseling piece, there's a certain percentage of that contingency percentage that gets allocated towards lawyer one and then towards lawyer two. That allocation depends on where you are in the case, where everybody's expected to pitch in, and how much time is going to come into play. And a lot of it is just an upfront agreement. I like to have it all in writing. Hey, this is what we're doing, we're going to work together on this, and here's how we're going to split fees. Because I don't want to have any confusion later on where we're having a fight over money that we shouldn't be having.
Khurram Naik: To help me understand, I have a two-part question about how employment law has changed and the trajectory it's on, because what's top of mind for any lawyer is what's happened in my field. Am I in a field that's going to be growing and rising, or are there threats to it? Right now we have an administration change, and areas that have been very busy in the past number of years, things like antitrust or energy, there are questions about what those look like under the new administration. And aside from administration changes, there can be changes that impact the plaintiffs' bar. Can you give us a sketch of how employment law has changed in the past five years, which incredibly now encompasses the time of the pandemic? Have rights for employees become strengthened? Give us a sense of the trajectory.
Vishal Shah: That's a really good question. Employment law is similar to alcohol in that when times are good, people drink, and when times are bad, people drink. The same thing is true with employment law. There are issues that come up when the economy is booming and there are issues that come up when the economy is struggling.
Vishal Shah: For example, when COVID hit in 2020, most of the world was shutting down. M&A deals were shutting down. People didn't know what was going to happen in the near future. We were still trying to flatten the curve within those first couple of weeks in March and April of 2020. But we were incredibly busy as employment lawyers. We were monitoring every single court closure, every single stay-in-place mandate. All of these new things that were coming out hour by hour, we were super busy. Companies were laying off employees. So we got busy helping with that.
Vishal Shah: When the economy is bad, companies lay off folks. There's certain legal attention that's needed for plaintiffs at that time. And then when you're hiring folks, it's the same sort of deal. You're reviewing employment agreements and compensation packages and structuring things in a way that makes sense for your client.
Vishal Shah: So generally speaking, we're really, really busy and have enough to do on our plates, knock on wood. What we're focusing on changes over time. In the 2019 to 2020 period, there was a change and shift in the culture of the American people where it felt like there was a bigger anger towards big business. There was a bigger skepticism towards what companies were telling us, what the news was telling us, and how people were navigating those issues. And there was also a rise in being more sensitive and more mindful of people around you and how you approach conversations with certain people.
Vishal Shah: And I think the law tracks some of those changes. There were implementations of local laws at the state level that covered hairstyles, covered weight, covered all sorts of issues that weren't traditionally thought of as protected characteristics like race or gender or disability or age. And so there were evolutions in the law that came about in that way. Most recently, you've seen a lot with the NLRB striking down certain provisions and certain types of agreements like non-competes and stay-or-pay type agreements. It shifts and it changes. Staying on top of those trends is really, really important. And the EEOC does a great job of that. There are a ton of people on LinkedIn that post about great developments in the law. And just reading the news and looking at publications like Law360 to make sure that you're seeing where the trends are.
Khurram Naik: But what do you think is the biggest existential risk to the plaintiff side? It sounds like everything is really strong and it doesn't seem like there's going to be any rolling back of protection for employees. It's been a ratchet upward of more and more rights granted and the expansion of protected characteristics.
Vishal Shah: I think one of the biggest threats to the plaintiff-side employment practice is this concept of damages caps. For example, under Title VII, which is the primary discrimination law at the federal level prohibiting all sorts of discrimination, there are caps on how much money you can receive from a lawsuit. No matter what a judge says, no matter what a jury says, if you have this type of claim and the employer is of a certain size, it's capped at a certain amount. And the highest level for the biggest employer is $300,000. That figure has not changed since the 1970s. It hasn't adjusted for inflation. It hasn't accounted for the value of money and how people are experiencing these situations.
Vishal Shah: You will see these massive awards against companies who have done really bad things and a jury has found that they've done really bad things and awarded multiple millions of dollars to plaintiffs who have suffered. Remember, these are the folks who have seen the documents, listened to the witnesses, sat through a trial, and come to this decision while the company is telling them to do the exact opposite. So it's a considered approach. They value the case. They sign off on the damages number. And then a judge comes in after the fact because they're required to and has to lower the amount.
Vishal Shah: And I think $300,000 sounds like a lot of money. But when you factor in the cost of an attorney, when you factor in what happened to you, $300,000 just doesn't go the same length that it used to back in the 70s. And I think that's one of the biggest fears and biggest threats to the plaintiff-side practice. In Massachusetts, we're fortunate to have a state law that doesn't cap damages in that context. Some states don't have it. So my friends in Texas and my friends in Alabama, when they have a big verdict in a case that deserves a big verdict, it gets punched down because of these caps that haven't been adjusted for 50 years.
Khurram Naik: So let's switch gears here. Tell me about how you are thinking about counseling other people, because I'm sure you get people who reach out to you all the time from biglaw, curious about the path that you've struck. It is unusual to walk away from a big firm to launch and to jump to the other side of the v. So big picture, how should someone think about this? If someone is a first-year associate at a big firm and they're thinking about whether they prefer the biglaw platform, because there are plenty of great things about big firms, and you have the credibility you have now in part because you've been at a big firm, not to mention some financial capital you've set aside over the years. So there are a lot of things in favor of spending time in biglaw. But of course, there are plenty of opportunities outside of it. You and I are both operating outside of it and thriving. How do you counsel someone on the path through biglaw and success there, versus saying, hey, if you want to go plaintiff side or launch your own firm, here's the path?
Vishal Shah: So I think there is a ton of hate on biglaw generally. And maybe that's just the LinkedIn people that I see and follow or maybe it's on Reddit or whatever the case might be. But there's a lot of hate and I think some of it's deserved. I think a lot of it is not. I think biglaw is a great place to cut your teeth and to learn how to do things the right way and to learn how to do things in a way that moves the needle. Both from a business perspective for corporate clients but also from a litigation perspective.
Vishal Shah: Because the fundamental difference is, and we were talking about Apple so I'll use them as an example, Apple doesn't care about Ms. Jones' discrimination lawsuit. Apple cares about the portfolio of discrimination lawsuits that it has within certain geographical jurisdictions. Most companies tend to think of cases as a portfolio of risk, as opposed to, this is Ms. Jones, something terrible happened to her at work and now she's trying to seek some recovery for that, some justice for that. The way you view it is fundamentally different from the management side to the plaintiff side.
Vishal Shah: I think going back to biglaw in particular, if you're at the right firm, they should be investing in you, they should be pouring into your development, both as a business person and as a litigator or transactional lawyer or whatever your specialty is. So yes, you should be learning the nuts and bolts of an M&A transaction and the things that you need to be looking for and things that you need to be wary of. All of those things on how you do your job day to day, you should be number one learning that on the job and number two getting specific training towards that.
Vishal Shah: The second piece is the business side. What are the measures? The law is one piece of it, the business is another. How is the business functioning? How are we structuring this case on a financial model? Why do we do it this way? How do we make it the most profitable? What is utilization? And how do we use that? What is leverage? All of these terms are things floating around in biglaw business departments, but they're not being explained to the individual associates because they say, we don't want you to worry about that. Do the best job you can do on the task in front of you, and that's that.
Vishal Shah: But I think that's short-sighted because when that person makes partner or is getting close to that senior role, they have no idea what any of this means. And you're learning it then, as opposed to learning it on the front end. I think there are a lot of great training opportunities that you can get in biglaw. Less hands-on in most cases, but still training.
Vishal Shah: When you come over to having your own firm, it's deciding what you want to invest in. In my case, the day-to-day nuts and bolts of litigation, I don't need that type of training because I've done it for so long. What I do need more training on is how to take my trial practice to the next level. What are effective ways that some of the really, really successful trial lawyers are implementing? And how can I take that and put it into my practice? Thinking of it in a more nuanced approach helps in terms of how you're developing.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I think those are great observations. I remember I had a client call with a partner and after the call I said, hey, what comes next for you today? I already worked on some non-billable stuff, some business development. And I said, if you enjoy that. He said, not really. I didn't really have any experience with that. Then I said, well, I guess I should start learning that now. And he said, nope, you should just focus on doing good work. So that less-than-learned approach, right? Those are great things to be thinking about ahead.
Khurram Naik: And we're at time. This conversation flew by. I think there are so many questions I had to learn more about your business because it's fascinating to me, and to dive more into your trial preparation approach. But yeah, best wishes on those coming trials. I think you're going to crush it. And thanks for sharing your story about how you got here. I hope we can revisit this a year or two from now and talk about all the other successes you've had.
Vishal Shah: Man, from your lips to God's ears. I really, really appreciate the time. I've learned a ton in just talking about this whole process with you. So I probably gained from it as much as you gained from it or the listeners gained from it. So thanks for having me and really happy that we did this.