Lawyer Archetypes

In the final segment of our conversation with Trevor Scott, Josh and Aaron dive into the archetypes people often associate with lawyers—and explore just how much truth there is behind those perceptions.

 FVF Law is a well-credentialed, overwhelmingly 5-star reviewed personal injury law firm in Austin, TX. FVF strives to be the educational resource for the injured, available to guide those with questions about what comes next. It is FVF’s mission to ensure clients are prioritized and informed throughout the injury claim process, and to secure the best possible outcome. Josh Fogelman and Aaron Von Flatern founded FVF Law to offer a different kind of injury law firm, and a dignified alternative in the marketplace. They hope to show injured Texans that consulting a lawyer after an injury is a natural, and responsible thing to do.

Transcript

0:00:00.0 Aaron: Hey, Trevor.

0:00:01.4 Trevor Scott: Hey. Hi, guys.

0:00:03.4 Josh: Hey.

0:00:03.8 Aaron: This is Josh Fogelman next to me.

0:00:04.3 TS: Hi, Josh. Yes.

0:00:05.2 Aaron: He practices law with me, but don't worry about him.

0:00:07.2 TS: Okay. Got that.

0:00:08.5 Aaron: Do you watch television? 

0:00:09.8 TS: I do. I do.

0:00:11.7 Aaron: What do you think about lawyers on TV? 

0:00:14.5 TS: That is a really great question.

0:00:15.5 Aaron: Or in the movies or in popular culture.

0:00:20.6 TS: Yeah. I think, I wonder, just as a viewer, I wonder how glamorized the process or the idea might be. And I wonder, is it all, is it all so serious? All the time.

0:00:38.0 Aaron: Yeah.

0:00:38.4 TS: I guess I would hope so. If you were my lawyer. I hope it is.

0:00:40.6 Aaron: So, I think you're referring to, like, if I can get real nerdy on you, like, there's an archetype of the Uber lawyer.

0:00:47.9 TS: Yes.

0:00:48.2 Aaron: Who...

0:00:49.0 TS: Power suit.

0:00:49.6 Aaron: Kind of got the power suit. He's got slicked back hair and just shreds people on cross-examination.

0:00:58.2 TS: Yeah. Makes them cry.

0:00:58.4 Aaron: Yeah.

0:00:58.5 Josh: Wears a bun and a beard into court.

0:01:00.9 Aaron: There's that guy too.

0:01:01.8 Josh: Drops the hammer.

0:01:02.4 Aaron: That's like a season four arc. That's a deep cut.

0:01:07.1 TS: Yeah.

0:01:07.3 Aaron: That's a deep cut for sure.

0:01:08.4 TS: Yeah.

0:01:08.6 Aaron: That's a sub-arc type, actually.

0:01:10.8 Josh: Just saying.

0:01:12.1 Aaron: Niche. Very niche.

0:01:14.5 Josh: Exactly.

0:01:15.9 Aaron: But you do have this idea of, like, the super lawyer coming in the middle of court, kind of solves the mystery, solves the murder, gets all the money, and then drives away.

0:01:26.5 Josh: Holds old food out of his beard and eats it in front of the judge.

0:01:30.2 TS: Oh, I can't see that.

0:01:31.8 Aaron: Well, okay. So, Josh is kind of leading us on the path of, there's also this other type of lawyer archetype. Let's just go over all of them. So, one of them is Uber lawyer.

0:01:41.7 TS: Yeah.

0:01:41.7 Aaron: We just talked, like, super lawyer.

0:01:42.9 Josh: That's something that comes to the front of my mind immediately. Super lawyer. Uber lawyer.

0:01:46.3 Aaron: And then you've got quirky but effective lawyer, which exists.

0:01:51.6 Josh: Let's go with that. Quirky but effective.

0:01:53.0 Aaron: You remember Ally...

0:01:54.0 TS: Pushing up your glasses a lot.

0:01:55.3 Aaron: You remember Ally McBeal? 

0:01:56.3 TS: Oh, yeah. That's right.

0:01:57.5 Aaron: He was, like, one of the greatest lawyers of TV history. He would get up and just start making, like, quacking noises during the opposing counsel's examination and...

0:02:07.0 Josh: Which is a tactic, by the way.

0:02:08.0 TS: I was going to say, is that an effective tactic? 

0:02:09.7 Aaron: Yeah. And he was willing to lie. He would just, like, the judge would be like, were you making noise? And he would just deny it and say no. But you loved him anyway, because he was quirky but effective. And he also was always, three steps ahead, and that was part of it, so, that's another type.

0:02:27.3 Josh: That's a good one.

0:02:28.6 Aaron: We've got, underhanded, sneaky, snake in the grass lawyer? 

0:02:34.0 Josh: Yeah. You've got that for sure. Then you've kind of got, like, yeah.

0:02:38.3 Aaron: Yeah. Cut the corners. Get the money.

0:02:40.5 Josh: Kind of got, like, incompetent, doesn't know what he's doing, underdog lawyer. Oh, okay. Like, My Cousin Vinny type situation.

0:02:51.4 Aaron: Yeah. There's two in that movie.

0:02:52.3 Josh: Potential.

0:02:53.4 Aaron: You've got My Cousin Vinny, you've also got the guy who was, like, the perfect lawyer for Ralph Macchio, but then he was, like, having trouble delivering the arguments. Remember that guy? He was their kind of other choice, so, yeah. The bumbling. Yeah.

0:03:11.4 Josh: Yeah.

0:03:11.8 Aaron: Bumbling guy, but figures it out eventually.

0:03:14.2 Josh: Gets there.

0:03:14.8 Aaron: Kind of lawyer.

0:03:15.5 Josh: Gets it done.

0:03:16.3 Aaron: That to me, is the most. That one really hits home.

0:03:19.1 TS: You like that? You respond to that? Yeah. It does. You do. Yeah.

0:03:21.9 Aaron: Yeah. We can stop.

0:03:22.6 Josh: Bit of a winding road.

0:03:24.5 Aaron: We can stop there.

0:03:24.6 Josh: But we're gonna get there.

0:03:25.3 Aaron: That's the best one. That's what every lawyer should do.

0:03:28.0 TS: Well, where are they coming from? Do you think they're based in reality in some way? Are people taking cues from what exists out there? Or is everything off base a little bit? 

0:03:37.4 Aaron: So, I'll ask Josh that. What do you think? 

0:03:40.1 Josh: I actually think that there is some truth behind all of those different types of characters. I have seen, in my practice, people that align in many ways with these very different types of personalities in the courtroom. Now, I think it's kind of a testament to the fact that, there is a lot of variety of personalities in the law and a lot of different ways to be an effective advocate, actually. Something that I have seen.

0:04:12.5 TS: Does it depend on your case, your client? Do you have to put on all of those hats at some point in your career? Does each case require a different tactic, a different approach? 

0:04:21.6 Aaron: Yeah, I think that, for us, the way we practice and the way all of our lawyers practice, I think, is in their authentic skins. They're going to be themselves and that's going to be effective. There are other law firms out there, and we've encountered them, who put on a front of, say, the Uber lawyer, and all of them are acting exactly like that because they've been told to. And it, to me, falls flat. It is effective in some contexts. It's just like anything else. If I came in this room and started shouting at everybody and being kind of aggressive, there's a certain percentage of people that are going to respond to that by listening to me and getting out of my way.

0:05:07.6 Aaron: So, yeah, is it effective in some short-term context? Yes. I think long-term, when you have to spend days, maybe weeks with jurors, and they have a chance to gauge your true character and feel whether you are competent and whether you are warm, you can't fake it. And I think that's why we try to tell our lawyers to be themselves. Do we ask them to be the best version of themselves? Yes. The service-minded. Put your client on your back. Take them up the mountain. Have a plan. If you're naturally not geared to having a plan, then fix that about yourself. Work on that about yourself. But still be your authentic self while you're doing the best job you can. That's our approach.

0:05:58.4 Josh: Yeah, one of the things, Trevor, that we talked about in one of our earlier podcasts in your journey to where you are now, we talked about what you, like, one of your passions of hosting and how you were always feeling, like, a strong desire to connect with people. That's actually, I was sitting there thinking that that's one of the things that actually your profession and ours has in common. And I commented on how genuine you are as a human being and how what you see on camera is what you get in real life. And I think that's a philosophy that Aaron and I have both, we both share as advocates is you can't, being a lawyer is not acting.

0:06:41.8 Josh: Like you're, I understand the high drama, I understand the appeal of trying to bring that type of excitement, but there are just certain things that can't be feigned. And when you're trying to ask a jury to make a decision that's going to permanently potentially impact your client's life, a huge part of that is connecting with the jury in a meaningful and genuine way so that they trust you and trust that the message that you're bringing them is an honest one.

0:07:18.7 Josh: And I think, trying to be something you're not and walking to the courtroom, like I'm going to act this way, I'm going to be the power lawyer if that's not really your personality. I mean, our jurors are people, they're human beings that have eyes and understand how to read rooms and they know when you're faking.

0:07:42.4 TS: They will see right through it. And I think that's a really important part to make. I've never really thought about how similar what we do, how similar that is, but it really truly is about being a safe space for people, putting people in their comfort zones, fostering, an idea of trust between you and your client, me and my guest, the jury being the audience, the story being the truth, that all is so very similar. And I've never really thought about really how, I've never really thought about that before. That strikes me too. That is very interesting. Yeah.

0:08:14.5 Aaron: Yeah. And Trevor, I know we didn't really introduce you in this podcast, Trevor Scott, a TV personality here in Austin who...

0:08:21.5 Josh: To be fair, you didn't actually introduce me really either.

0:08:24.9 Aaron: I think I told the listeners to disregard you. It's, the opposite of introduced you.

0:08:30.7 Josh: This is ringing a bell.

0:08:31.5 Aaron: The fact that I have to say that twice, is starting...

0:08:33.7 Josh: Feels a little needy.

0:08:35.3 Aaron: We'll talk after.

0:08:41.3 TS: Feels a little needy. Put that back in the box a little.

0:08:43.2 Aaron: So, Mr. Scott, as you were developing into the TV personality that you are today, I know you went through some, theater training. Did you encounter students who believed that the secret to acting was to fake stuff, to be dramatic, even though something didn't strike them as dramatic? And how did you, when and where did you kind of figure out that there's a different path? 

0:09:10.8 TS: I think a lot of that comes with, age and experience. I think you just don't realize how powerful and effective you can be as your most authentic self until you really kind of age into that, until you kind of experience that. So I think all of us probably when we're young, think that you have to try as hard as you possibly can to make something what it is, whether that's, putting on your big boy britches and, sucking it up, or if that's, just standing up taller in the meeting to make people perceive you in a certain way, or, putting your hand just so on the jury box. Is there such a thing? First of all, let's stop right there. Is there a jury box? I've never been in a courtroom, but I have been summoned for jury duty. That's something we can talk about offline. And I really need your help with that. And especially if you can help me get out of it. Yeah. That's a whole other conversation.

0:10:00.6 Aaron: Yes and yes, and yes.

0:10:01.1 Josh: Yes.

0:10:03.6 Aaron: Anyways.

0:10:05.6 TS: We're open to all these questions. There is a jury box and in law school, they literally do tell you where to put your hand.

0:10:12.0 Aaron: And wow. That's a thing. Yeah.

0:10:13.6 TS: Yeah. I mean, sometimes...

0:10:15.4 Josh: Courtroom presentation, the whole, it's a whole...

0:10:17.4 TS: But then at some point in your career and your experience and your time in the courtroom, you've probably figured out that's not working. And they are seeing that this is disingenuous or not authentic in some way. And you decided the way that this will work best is when I'm really truly connecting and being myself, right? 

0:10:35.1 Aaron: Yes. And I think that is where you turn the corner and become a real professional. When you stop...

0:10:42.5 Josh: That's so true.

0:10:44.5 Aaron: Like reading from a script and faking it because you think you're supposed to, and you just go in and say, the truth is on my side. I have nothing to fear and just put it out there. That's when you turn that corner. I feel like as professional that that's something that you maybe don't even realize you're doing. But I think that is something that separated you in the Austin TV community is that when you have guests you're in kind of a neutral position. I mean, we joked about not preparing too much for interviews and stuff.

0:11:16.3 TS: No too much. Yeah.

0:11:17.7 Aaron: I think if you show up and you listen and you just, you don't try to force anything. It's a really good trait.

0:11:24.6 TS: It works. Yeah. I really feel like that's when I realized that about FVF and the two of you, there was a point and it was really pretty early on. It was almost instantaneous when you realize, when we realized, I realized this is probably very much like the way they practice law. They are this, the way they are handling these topics their staff, this team that we came to know and got to meet these conversations.

0:11:50.0 TS: It was pretty quick. We thought this is probably exactly how they practice law. And this is probably exactly what the client experience was like with FVF, which I think then really kind of helped the friendship grow and the relationship foster and become what it is because we really realized that this is not, you mentioned it earlier, this is not one of those scream at you commercial firms, the, a million billboards and yelling on TV. We realized that this is a different kind of law firm and this must be the way that you do your job day in and day out and how great that must be.

0:12:24.8 Aaron: We're so grateful to have you here.

0:12:26.1 Josh: It's so true.

0:12:27.5 TS: But it really is true. I would not be in the seat if we didn't have that kind of relationship. You know what I mean? Like if one of those screaming guys was like, you wanna come be on my podcast? I'd be like, is this spam? Like that email, I don't know. Phish alert, I don't know. But you guys, clearly you walk the walk and talk the talk in the community. And I think that's why I enjoyed, wanted to come have a conversation with you. But then also learn a little bit, a peek behind your curtain, your big law firm curtain.

0:12:53.5 Josh: Yeah. I think we have always valued transparency and that permeates sort of every aspect of not only our personal lives, but our professional lives as well. And, there was a time when I was a younger lawyer, when you're trying to find akin to what you're talking about, you're trying to find your way, you're trying to find your voice. And it comes with time. It comes with the development of confidence. It comes with trial and error and learning lessons the hard way. And I can tell you, you watch, like you grew up, you mentioned earlier, you always knew that you wanted to be in this position.

0:13:33.0 Josh: You wanted to be delivering a message to people to an audience, connecting with an audience. I grew up always knowing that I wanted to be in a courtroom setting. I just knew it, I knew it from a very early age that that was something that really appealed to me and a skill that I felt was natural to me, that I always knew I wanted to take that road. And, but despite that, you still grow up like, like everyone watching lawyers on TV and seeing this fantasy of what it's like. And you decide, oh, I wanna be like that lawyer. I wanna be like that lawyer.

0:14:21.3 Josh: And then you realize when you get into the practice of law that you don't get to pick and choose which lawyer you're like, like you are who you are. You have the personality that you have. You have the gifts and the strengths and the weaknesses and you just have to figure out who you truly and genuinely are in order to be the most effective advocate that you can for your clients, kind of to the point where we're talking about earlier. Like if you're faking it, the people in the room are gonna know and you have to trust yourself and develop a degree of self-confidence to be effective at this job. I assume the same is very true for you.

0:15:00.5 TS: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, not to say, I feel like what if, what if like a 25 year old us were listening to this podcast, we would think we were such old, old men for talking about you youngsters don't even know yet until you get older, really how great life is. It's so true though, little Trevor, it's so true. But that is not to say that young people aren't capable of great things. I'm so sorry. First of all, let me set the record straight.

0:15:25.1 TS: We are young people. Younger people are very capable of that, but there is such value in age and experience. And something else I wonder too is a lot of what we've talked about when we're talking about these types of lawyers and the ideas of lawyers, we're seeing them all pretty much in the courtroom. And that is obviously a very important part of what you do, but it is definitely not all, can't be all.

0:15:48.4 Aaron: It's a great point. Most of the advocacy happens outside of the courtroom. And a lot of cases are won and lost in a conference room setting where you're doing depositions or way before that, at the beginning of the case, when you're performing what we, discovery, where you're sending back written requests and learning about the intricacies of some corporation, how they do business and what maybe they have covered up or what maybe they've done wrong that they don't want you to know about.

0:16:20.3 Aaron: And the drama can be hidden in some 10,000 page operating manual on page 745 and sub chapter B7. And you're reading through it and it's like, it feels to us as we come across these nuggets, as high drama, like on TV, except they would never make a TV show where a guy's just looking at a book and getting all excited.

0:16:43.0 TS: I'd watch. I don't know, give me some quiet like PBS version of like an attorney studying and Eureka moment that the highlighter comes on. I think that that's great. But I imagine that is as powerful as some big speech in the courtroom and a pounding on the bench. I imagine that's just as powerful feeling and important.

0:17:03.3 Aaron: Yeah.

0:17:03.3 Josh: It absolutely happens. And when it does, it's a very high, high, and those are the types of moments that keep you coming back for more. I mean, there are huge emotional swings throughout the duration of a case. And those kind of things do happen in the courtroom, but to Aaron's point, I mean, most of the time they're happening in a deposition, but they absolutely do happen.

0:17:29.1 TS: Is it a goal for you not to get to a trial, to go to a trial? Is that a success? Is that a win? Or do we come in at a point where that is predetermined and that's already happening? 

0:17:38.4 Aaron: I think it's not possible to set a goal for, any case to say, I want this to go to trial. I don't want this to go to trial. You got to play the cards you're dealt. And there's times when it makes sense to go all the way to trial and to ask your client to take that risk with you, 'cause it is sometimes, if you can imagine in some of these really good cases, they're offering quite a bit of money to resolve it. And so you're asking your client, which is their money, to give it all to you and say, let me go try to double your money in trial. It's a big, heavy responsibility for us. My favorite case to try are the ones where they don't wanna pay anything and you go in and get the community to respond in a way that they're just not, they haven't been willing to listen to until they hear it from those 12 people in the box.

0:18:32.4 TS: That's a great point. Yeah.

0:18:33.6 Josh: One of the things that I think separates our firm from some of the larger... I mean, there's a lot to say about this, but in a nutshell, I would say that, it's really hard to find great young lawyers. And to me, that necessarily means that law firms that have lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of lawyers are probably letting some of their clients slip through the cracks. That's my suspicion.

0:19:05.4 TS: That seems fair. Yeah.

0:19:06.3 Josh: And we have really made a concerted effort not to allow that to happen in a part of why that's super important to us is to get the best results for your clients. Most of the time you have to prepare a case from the very beginning as though it is going to go to trial. Statistically speaking, most of them do not go to trial. And we know that. And oftentimes, most of the times it's because when you have handled the case like that from the beginning, you create so much risk for the insurance companies who are liable to pay for the defendant's bad conduct, that it makes the case untriable from them.

0:19:50.0 Josh: There's too much risk and they have an obligation to the person that they are protecting to pay enough money to make it go away. And when you treat every single case that way you really create the best opportunities to get cases resolved and therefore you don't make it to trial as often as another law firm who isn't maybe handling the cases that well, or the cases aren't that strong. But every now and again they do. You get to go and, and take the swing. And, and to Aaron's point, it's a lot of fun when they're just not offering anything reasonable and you have nothing to lose.

0:20:31.5 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. That's the cool hand. Luke case. Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand. Sorry.

0:20:38.2 TS: No, that's good.

0:20:40.3 Josh: Aaron, do you remember that time when you made a video in the vein of cool hand loop wherein you ate 13 Tiff's Treats cookies in a day simply to best my record of 12? 

0:20:54.8 TS: A baker's dozen Tiff's Treats? 

0:20:55.0 Aaron: Nah, that's not the way it went down. Josh. You challenged me in front of everybody to eat 13 cookies.

0:21:02.4 Josh: What's it gonna do? 

0:21:03.5 Aaron: And then I had to do it, so I documented it and I...

0:21:07.3 TS: What was the timeframe? 

0:21:09.4 Aaron: This was like...

0:21:10.4 TS: Like an over a day or an hour? 

0:21:11.5 Aaron: Early pandemic.

0:21:13.5 Josh: How long did it take you to eat 13? 

0:21:15.3 TS: I mean, how long did that take? 

0:21:16.4 Aaron: Oh I think I got it all down by 2:00 PM.

0:21:20.4 Josh: Starting when? 

0:21:22.7 Aaron: 8:00 in the morning.

0:21:23.5 Josh: Alright, so I ate my dozen within an hour.

0:21:26.6 Aaron: Oh wait, no, it wasn't an hour. Yeah. Let me re-answer that question. How long did it take? Yeah. I did it inside of an hour.

0:21:35.3 Josh: And I have proof.

0:21:37.4 Aaron: I've documented.

0:21:38.2 Josh: You can't handle the truth.

0:21:40.5 TS: Excellent point. Nobody can eat 50 eggs. Are we just throwing out quotes? 

0:21:44.2 Josh: Possible.

0:21:46.3 TS: That was that was applicable though. That was a good one. Speaking of lawyer law ideas, fantasy.

0:21:54.1 TS: All right, well...

0:21:54.4 Josh: So there's equal amounts of, to answer your original question Trevor.

0:21:56.9 TS: Sure.

0:21:58.4 Josh: There is an equal amount of drama in cookie eating challenges as there is in the actual courtroom. That's my final word. Yeah.

0:22:09.5 TS: What else could he say? That's it.

0:22:12.6 Aaron: I remember being so nauseous.

0:22:14.5 TS: I can't imagine what like an assortment? 

0:22:18.5 Aaron: Yeah, it was an assortment and I've saved up the ones that I liked the best.

0:22:22.3 TS: Give yourself something to look forward to.

0:22:24.2 Aaron: Yeah. So I like...

0:22:25.3 TS: Well, that's the real topic.

0:22:26.7 Aaron: I knocked down the hard ones, the ones that I wasn't as into.

0:22:29.2 TS: What are the best? 

0:22:30.4 Aaron: The best is the M&M ones.

0:22:32.5 TS: Okay. That's respectable. Okay. That's respectable. Not even Snickerdoodles...

0:22:38.3 Aaron: Sorry. Do you have a different opinion? 

0:22:40.3 TS: Yeah. Snickerdoodles is like, yeah, Tiff's Treats Snicker.

0:22:43.5 Josh: So are we challenging Trevor to eat...

0:22:46.3 Aaron: The man's on TV? 

0:22:46.4 TS: This is not on my, not on my gut journey. My gut health journey currently or something.

0:22:50.4 Josh: We're not doing it.

0:22:52.9 TS: I don't think that would be counterproductive.

0:22:55.2 Aaron: Guess it's right.

0:22:55.7 TS: For everybody involved. Yeah. My wardrobe too. Yeah.

0:23:00.0 Aaron: Well this has devolved nicely.

0:23:01.0 TS: Yes. Yeah, it has.

0:23:02.2 Aaron: I appreciate you.

0:23:03.1 TS: Fascinating though. I had questions, you had answers. I see an attorney's life of this legal world through the lens of a television viewer and a television consumer. And it's nice to know that there touches of truth in there, but what you guys are really doing day in and out is so important. And also still cool.

0:23:21.4 Josh: Yeah. Well, we appreciate your curiosity and we appreciate you being here.

0:23:24.5 TS: My pleasure guys. Thanks for having me.

0:23:25.2 Aaron: Thanks Trevor.

0:23:25.2 TS: Thank you.