Celebrating 30 Years: Feat. Attorneys Matt Morgan & Keith Mitnik
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We get to know the attorneys who’ve been with us from the beginning, and the young guns working with them to take us to the next 30 years.
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We tried a case together while he was learning and he already was way ahead of his time, but already, and how long has it been? How long have you been here?
First when we trial was four years ago, five year ago.
Years. So in five years, which may sound like a long time, but it's not. There's a lot of lawyers in five years and tried one or two cases and haven't advanced one iota. He's now at a stage where he's gotten so good at it, he's one of the best in the firm and I honestly would have him represent my family and be at peace and be able to sit back and know it was being done like very few people can do it.
He's a genius, and I don't use that term lightly, but in the way that he's able to phrase really complex issues to make it so a jury can understand it in an instant is nothing short of genius. He is driven by the concept of justice and not many lawyers are. Many lawyers are driven by their position, they want to be right, period. The thing that makes Keith Mitnik different is he's not interested whether he's right or wrong. What he's interested in is if justice is served and when he prays before juries come back with verdicts, he says a prayer to lady justice, and he says, just bring back a fair and just result. Not don't let me win, but if we're right, let me win. If we're wrong, let us lose. Let's have justice be done.
There's a special kind of drive that he has that is unique. And he has a drive to maximize justice for his client like nobody I've ever seen. He's just fierce about it. He is determined the other side is going to pay top dollar for his clients. There's going to be no discount and if you try to discount it, we're going to trial. When we get in front of the jury, we're going to pursue maximum justice for our client. And he's just eaten up with that. And it is actually rubbed off on me some. He does it for the right reasons and he has a burning desire to make it right and stop the wrong and I respect that highly, it's something that's near and dear to my heart and I have very few people to truly share that with. And I think we do share that he is a righteous lawyer.
He has a striking magnetism. It comes from he genuinely loves people. We can't go to court, we can't go to lunch, we can't get on an elevator. He stops and talk, everyone recognizes him because he's on TV. But it's one thing to be recognized, it's what you do when the people approach you. He inherited this by the way from his daddy, his dad's the same way, you can't go to lunch it takes 45 minutes. Not because, hey, I love the attention, it's something far purer than that. He loves people. And while I think that is a really admirable thing in his life, when you bring that quality in the courtroom and you've got six strangers who you're trying to persuade and there's someone on the other side trying to derail justice, when someone can walk in with that natural magnetism, it gives you a leadership role to help bring the jury down the right path to justice so they don't end up down the wrong path. He's kind of like a sweet tiger, he's warm and fuzzy, but don't get in between him and justice.
When we try cases together, I'll get calls starting at four o'clock in the morning and going until four o'clock in the morning. There's a relentless aspect to Keith Mitnik. If you see the lab that he works in at his home, he's got this beautiful home on a lake and he's got a whole area of the house that's dedicated to just preparing for trial. And if you see this lab in full swing, it looks like there's a scientist at work, there's white boards all over the place and his mind is working at such a high pace and high level that he just spits it out all over the boards. And then it comes together succinctly in the courtroom and you'd have no idea that there were so many thoughts that were flowing. It just seems like it's all a natural progression that just kind of came to be.
We have meetings here where he comes in and he mentors all of the young attorneys and he gives us his thoughts on trials and he gives us his new strategies that he's using and then everybody can implement those in their own trials. So that's the wild thing is really every single trial technique that I have is Keith's, so much so that I've now forgotten from time to time that they are Keith's and I've presented them as my own and he says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that's chapter three, paragraph 17 of my book.
Then you're telling me, hey, call me, you got to do this. I said I got it. He said no, really you got to do this. I said, I got it, I wrote it down, I'm going to do it, I like it. Like five minutes later he calls and tells me something. I said, don't forget Matt, you know I came up with that, that's in my book. And he started laughing because I forgot.
Yeah. Yeah. I got, I mean, so it's like-
And it's the ultimate compliment because it's become my stuff is no longer my stuff, it's become his and he's put his own personality into it.
So that's the unique thing is from beginning to end, every time I do anything in a case it's a direct mirror and reflection of something that he's taught me.
I'm an old dog and I don't learn a lot of new tricks from young lawyers and I've learned some from him. Where I would say that's maximum recovery and really believe it, Matt would say, I think the maximum justice for our client is this, and it'd be more. And I'd resist some, thinking and I know better and we don't want to go beyond where we take a jury to a place where they're uncomfortable. Matt's relentless with that and I said, all right, let's go. And he's actually, I have pushed my own self up some because of what I first thought was youth and lack of experience and hard lessons are going to come and I realized the old man learned some lessons. So his passion for that has rubbed off on me some. So he does do my stuff and he does it really well, but don't cut yourself short. You're doing a lot of stuff that's coming from your heart and soul.