Groth Gets It! Episode 24: Building a Purposeful Criminal Defense Practice
In this episode of Groth Gets It!, Attorney Caleb Katz—founder of Katz Law LLC—joins Jon to talk about building a criminal defense practice with purpose.
From his entrepreneurial path to how the outdoors inspires his legal mindset, Caleb shares stories and practical insights on traffic, OWI defense, and what criminal and civil lawyers can learn from each other.
👉 Learn more about Caleb’s work: Visit Katz Law LLC
🎧 Click here for the full episode: Explore Groth Gets It! Podcast
Transcript:
Welcome to Episode 24 of the Groth Gets It! Podcast I am here with Attorney Caleb Katz, of KatzlegalDefense.com I think that’s right. Right? KatzLegalDefense.com? 100%. I can’t sell you the one. It’s So, let’s start our podcast like we start our depositions. If you could say your name and spell your last name for the record. It is Caleb Katz, K-A-T-Z. we were talking before off the record. My grandma’s maiden name was Katz, K-A-A-T-Z. So, K-A-T-Z, we may be related. Very well, maybe far, far, far long ago, but somehow Katz end up with one less, one less A, and then the other half of the last has been chopped off, apparently, according to the family rule. it could have been Katzenberg or something that. Katzenberg, Katzenjammer or something.. Something. I have, other Katz relatives were in Illinois and you’re from Illinois. Correct, Central Illinois. Rivian before, the home of State Farm, Bloomington Normal. Yes, sir, and then you, did you move up to, or you lived up in the UP for a while? Correct, I’ve been all over the whole Midwest. I started off in Illinois after high school, ended up going to Minnesota for undergrad, then finished up undergrad in Ohio. Graduated from there and then I came to Wisconsin for law school. Was here for six years and then Michigan for a handful of years and then I came back in 2021 or so.. So which university in Ohio? Ohio Wesleyan. Oh, sure… Delaware, Ohio, Hometown, Rutherford B. Hayes. Yes. Rutherford B. Hayes, who started what tradition?, we had this two weeks ago so this is going to make this podcast timely because we’re in the end of April. I’m guessing it’s the Easter egg hunt. Yes. Rutherford B. Hayes. He was also part of some backroom deal, supposedly, to win the presidency. Oh, really? I’m not sure. The Easter egg hunt was? Rutherford B. Hayes shot up in the elections. It was a very tumultuous election. And I think he got killed maybe in a car accident, a stage coach accident or something. There was some relationship to some accident that that’s how he died. My wife’s family lore is that, her side of the family is related to Rutherford B. Hayes. my oldest son, was a big fan of president Hayes. And we, to this day, even calls him great uncle Rutherford. And when he was younger, we drove all the way to the Rutherford B. Hayes presidential library, which is cool, but not as cool as some presidential libraries, in Ohio. But good stuff. So Ohio, then the UP and now in Milwaukee and you’re downtown Milwaukee. Correct. why criminal defense? Well, I would say I’m probably more traffic defense before criminal defense. If I do do criminal, I try to keep it, pretty traffic adjacent, operating out of license, operating after revocation, OWYs, THC, stuff that. The OWI and THC is criminal, right?, two, three, four, five times drinking, then you’re, it’s a criminal offense… After the second one, you’re looking at criminal, and then obviously after the fourth, it’s a felony, and then obviously THC, a second THC could be a felony here. You seem to be getting a bit more relaxed with it, but still, outside of Milwaukee, it’s pretty hit or miss, but what makes my practice, tick or function well is it’s very high volume.. if you get dug into two significant or series of criminal offenses, motions, trials, sometimes very elongated. It very much slows up the process of going through high volume work. So, I try to stick with very traffic or traffic adjacent work. Well, that’s a good question. How can a lawyer be high value? I’m watching and I’m addicted to Law & Order and that’s obviously a very low volume. It’s one case every week, right? Right, but high volume, I know that I’ve walked past room Worth a 400 or something in the more corridors where it’s small claims, and that’s, you see attorneys who come and they have a literally a box full of files and they’re, maybe, what new land properties or something is evicting, evicting, evicting or collections for a credit card company and they have seventy-five different people that they’re suing. I can see that as high volume, but how can you be high volume? What does that mean? High volume to me is basic traffic, speeding tickets, improper lane changes, operating without a CDL license, operating without a license on a person, stuff that. we mass, big piles of those tickets and then we function our schedule around that we can be as cost effective but also effective with our time we’re able to knock all these out in one swoop, for example, with each different court or Well, do the judges allow you to set your time, say, Hey, I want to be there on Thursday at nine or how does that work in, in the criminal misdemeanor courts?, it very much depends. the traffic depends on, I would say, a court-by-court basis or even county-by-county basis, Milwaukee is very easy going with that. Racine, is even, also easy with that type of stuff. you reach out, you get a feel for, the prosecutor’s office, the clerk’s office, and you see who’s going to work with you the most. And once you get that formula down, you tweak it to fit your schedule, your practice area. And, you figure out how to keep the wheel turning.. who’s in charge of the courtroom? Usually it’s a commissioner for a lot of these bigger, bigger. Who’s really in charge of the courtroom. I, you could say attorney Katz. I’m kidding. But no, usually it’s the clerk., the clerk, the clerk is for sure the boss. She handles, he or she handles the calendars. The person that you had direct contact with and then, if they’re very friendly with you and you’re respectful of their time and their procedures, they’re usually pretty easy going.. they’re the one that controls the calendar. So then you can say, hey, Bob or Jane, can I please get 830 versus nine o’clock or Tuesday versus Friday thing. For sure. And you also, get a feel for their account. If they don’t Mondays to be bogged down or Fridays and try to avoid those days.. Interesting. All right. I jumped ahead to what you’re currently doing. So, you’re doing a lot of traffic tickets. You, probably know what the plea deals are probably by the back of your hand, right?, the back of your hand where, if it’s, if it’s thirty-nine over and I’m making up numbers. thirty-nine over in Milwaukee, they’ll plea it down to X, right? Or points versus fine, things that. We have most of it memorized by this point. We’re doing, I bet you we’ll do at least 3,000 tickets this year. Oh my gosh.. Which is definitely a high number. We’ve continued to grow each year, which is very good, you know when someone calls, hey, I got a ticket in X county, if that county is going to be very easy to work with her, how to set expectations.. because obviously the reason people try to use us is it’s more cost effective and they care about their time. They care about PTO days, that type of stuff. They let us step in and handle that. And also, obviously, one wants to spend much money on a traffic trial. it’s easy to set expectations when you’ve worked in all these counties, multiple, multiple times. And at that point, you can, again, set those expectations with people, I should ask this off record, but have you had a, had a traffic trial? We’ve had a couple.. Cause, a lot of people that come to me are CDL drivers or door dash and They can really live or die by their life. Exactly. Their livelihood is definitely based in their license and their record and especially with CDL and DoorDash because they’re highly, monitored by the companies that they drive for or that they’re, subcontracted to.. I’m fascinated by this. How many, what’s the percentage maybe of Uber or DoorDash or, Lyft drivers contact you versus Joe Schmoll driving down the street. I’d say people in the driving profession is probably 30-35%.. A lot of times there’s a lot of parents calling. Because, once they see that their kid has a ticket and they’re, holy cow, my insurance is already through the roof.. And now I’ve got a fifteen or sixteen or seventeen year old with a twenty-five or thirty over and they’re, hey, can you please help us out this big time? And I’m, we can, we can jump in and do that. And that’s probably the majority is parents,, and young drivers.. How many, for those of those people who don’t know points, they know points are important. Right. How many points do you have in any given year? Is it 12th? You get twelve a year. It’s not based on the calendar year. So, it’s going to go off of when you get tickets.. if you’re a probationary driver, obviously your points are far more important. Your first ticket is a freebie. It’s treated you or I getting a tickets one to one, the points. if the ticket says six, it’s six. But if you get a moving violation conviction and then you get another ticket later on, those points are going to double. obviously your twelve gets eaten up pretty quick.. And then you’re done. Or if you’re on probation. If you’re a probationary and you cross twelve obviously you’re suspended. But the suspensions are longer for you.. You can still get an occupational and other types of licenses that you can drive for work and other reasons, but then you’re getting into high risk insurance and a bunch of other things. The stuff that makes it pretty cost and effective for you to be driving. that’s why parents are really, holy cow, I gotta get on top of this and hire you guys ASAP. Correct. Or a lot of times they’ll find out about it because they’re in terms of, Hey, so, we see this on this record and they call me cause their kid or son or daughter has paid it all right. Hey, I’ll pay it. I’m worried to hide it. I’ll hide it. And one’s going to know this, big deal. And all of a sudden we’re trying to go into a motion to reopen and do all this stuff and work it backwards and it started over. Interesting. Cool. All right. the second most interesting thing that I wanted to learn about is that picture you showed me. You sponsor, is it, is it considered ultimate fighting? It would be considered, mixed martial arts. Mixed martial arts, it’s the Anthony Pettis Fighting Championship. He does… Several shows a year here in Milwaukee. He’s expanded all over the country. He’s got a Phoenix, a New Mexico, a couple other states that he’s doing shows in. And, that’s our big sponsorship we do every year. This year we’re sponsoring four of our shows that are Potawatomi. Next one’s June 15th in case anyone has any free time.. we were on the mat at the last event. We’ll be on it for the rest of the year, it’s definitely a very exciting event, the firm likes going, you meet a lot of people, a lot of cards. That’s always a good time. Is it on TV too or is it at, at Pota? it’s, you can watch it, you can go live obviously at Pota or you can watch it on UFC Fight Pass.. The undercards are usually free but then the main card is on paper… who’s the most, the most, impressive fighter you’ve seen? I would say. Besides Pettis. Besides Pettis, his brother’s also very good, but, as far as for, in his, in his company or, or his fighting championship, I would say it’s probably Mark Choinski, Mark the shark. He’s the rain champ right now. He’s probably teetering on, maybe jumping up to the UFC. There’s also, Nate Jennerman. He’s on Sheboygan.. He was on the Ultimate Fighter with Conor McGregor. Oh, he’s definitely a big name. He won Two weeks ago at the big Waukesha Expo Center fights., I would say those are probably the two biggest guys I’ve seen there far. He always has awesome guests who are the big names in the UFC, the big names, so. How does that work? Do they, does Dana White come down and try to take his guys from him? There’s got to be some inner battle, politicking here going on. I would imagine it’s definitely a good jumping off spot for these guys because I would say Anthony’s, league or fighting championship is probably very high tier. It isn’t going to be very low level guys. These guys are going to be on the cusp or precipice of Possibly making that jump to the UFC so, and plus it’s on pay-per-view everyone can see them and get some good tape and, exposure. The three fighters I know from Milwaukee have Askren, Duke Roufus, and then Pettis, right?, those are the, the three that have made it furthest? For sure. In the MMA or, UFC fighting. Interesting. So, how’d you get involved in sponsoring this?, it’s a really funny story, when I started my firm, this had been two years ago, obviously, as you probably know, starting at your own company, it starts off slow. You got a few dollars trickling in. You’re trying to hold on to it and hold a little, you got money trickling, turning in or going out. Yes, yes, yes. It’s a definite experience. So, with that, we had some money coming in. It started growing a bit, more and more and more. I’m, hey, maybe we should try some advertising sponsorship or something. I saw an ad or post on Facebook or something about the fights that were coming up. I reach out, and I talked to this guy, his name’s Sammy, who now is a very, very, very good friend of mine. He’s probably… The manager, VP type guy for Pettis with all these events and running them. And I’m, hey I probably can’t afford you guys, this seems a really cool event. I got this new business, can you send me the costs are? The cost ended up being something that we’re, within our budget and they worked with us, which is really cool. We had, a post with our name on it and a small spot on the map and then continually growing from there. We’ve gotten a really good relationship. now we, Do a lot of advertising with them.. are you able to go on the mat? Do you, are you raising hands when they win thing or? Yes. How involved are you in this whole thing? I’m not necessarily involved with the company, to speak, but we’re able to sit in your house at Cage Side. We meet all the, the, UFC guys that come in as special guests, we go to the weigh- in, see all the behind-the-scenes stuff, we get in the ring after, and take some good pictures and meet more people. At the last event, we handed out one of the championship belts, which was really cool That’s awesome. So, of course, I had to order the pay-per-view to watch it to see what it was, so.. Awesome. So, then what do you do, how do you use that to, grow your business. What are you doing to, to use that to leverage new clients in getting, in the different sectors of the, of the market? Yes, Anthony has a huge reach both on Instagram and that type of stuff. It was his company. Obviously, he’s posting about how we’re a sponsor. He’s posting videos about us in general, we’re on the mat, we’re getting huge reach with it being on television, pay-per-view.. You have an Instagram, you have an Instagram handle? So. You’re on TikTok and Facebook and all that?, I’m on all those. I would say Instagram’s probably my most used. That’s at @attorneykatz is the coolest, but, we’re, it sounds, we’re posting some stuff.. We had a commercial we ran at the last fights and I would say it’s a, it has a huge following. People love MMA right now. I would say the production quality, everything with Anthony’s shows continually is growing and getting bigger. They started at the Baird Center when we started sponsoring them. And now we’re at Pota and, that place is sold out every time.. we’re getting tons of views. We’re able to track it on Google with all those metrics. And a lot of people reach out, hey, you were that guy from that show or we saw you at the show, we saw your name and one time I was at one of the fights with some calling from Arkansas. He’s, hey, I’m calling for the king. And I’m, this is the guy. I’m, what’s up? How can I help? So, we get some reach. That’s really good. So, He called you the king?, I go by the traffic king.. it’s a alter ego, if you will, it’s, funny, but it’s our thing,? So, do you have a website that that’s the traffic king.com?, I would or I could, but the problem, the problem is when you, when you shove it together as traffic and king. It comes off as human trafficking. It’s still the same. I can’t be traffic king dot com.. So. you can’t be traffic ticket king. Something that, you have to split it up that way. Usually there’s a big space in the middle. Oh, oh, I didn’t want that trafficking.. That would be terrible. That would be the worst, traffic, because there’s an attorney out east, I’m not going to say his name, he’s an acquaintance friend of mine that, I’ll have to look him up after we’re off this and I’ll show you what his logo is and his car revs and all that.. And it’s similar to what you’re doing. Very good. But his is not trafficking. It’s, but it’s very, very close. But it works, I think, for them. Cool. So, you’re using, social media.. You’re, well, and we connected over LinkedIn. Yes. Right. So, social media and then you have, what, I’m assuming you said TV ads or do you have other standard? The TV ad was showed it showed up on the big screen at the point, gotcha, specific to this niche, you’re all in on MMA.. it is because, again, it’s a great time to go to do good cross section of people and traffic tickets for everybody.. it isn’t you’re looking for a specific business or a certain type of niche client.. Well, and it’s, I think it’s hard. I, I don’t know how anybody could justify doing a TV ad, TV ad. Right. For traffic tickets. Right. Right. Because, for car crashes in our world, I think the, the instances of car crashes may be more than traffic tickets or maybe less, but the, it, there’s going to be a lot different, fee for a car cracker than it is for that. And more stress, I think, for us than for you. Luckily for you. Yes, interesting. So, how’d you get into the law? you were, you’re up in the UP managing, a municipality. Yes. Right., and then how did that bring you down here to practice in Milwaukee? So, well, I went to law school here 2013 to 2016 and I worked for a self-segregation insurance defense firm for about three years, which gave me enough time to get reciprocity for my Michigan license that I always wanted to live more rurally. I love the UP. I love the deep snow. I love the cold. I’m, what? I got my three years in. We’ll give this thing a shot. And this small town had an opening. I’m, this is similar to a little bit of a skill set I have. It was a really great time, really cool, really enjoyed it. And I decided to come back here and got back into law. Then, started working for, really, a general practice firm with a, with a mentor and, the general practice was a great experience because you got a little bit of experience in everything. But for me, it was a little bit too much stress and to change gears all the time. And it’s the traffic, OWI, low level criminal stuff.. And I got really, hung in on that and then decided I make a jump. And here I am. you made the job all by yourself.. no partners, staff, just Caleb, I ended up having a summer intern who worked with me and that was really about it. And then as it slowly grew, I brought on a legal assistant who’s still with me today. Her name is Maria. She is Probably the, to get 90% done, 90% of everything done for me. She is a workhorse and I’m I love working with her. She’s saved me a lot of times. Oh. And, that’s. The pork of the court, she’s the wheels and brand of the operation. She keeps us running. So. She’s been really good. Now we’re trying to continue growing. I’m trying to figure out what the best path of that is it partners? Is it a different practice area? Is there another legal secretary? Is it an associate? Is it an intern?.. So, how would you choose, how’d you choose the, the traffic tickets and criminal defense world? Why that versus drafting wills? That’s a great question. Or divorce, or, else would be out there. I, I dipped my toe into the traffic game and I realized one really knows it. I don’t want to say that they don’t know that doesn’t exist, but it’s it gets overlooked. one thinks of calling an attorney for a traffic ticket.. But in reality, it really could affect you long-term money-wise, license-wise, driving career, etcetera. I figured, I can hone and sharpen this system. And we have, and we’ve slowly continued to increase every year, now it’s a matter of, what else do we want to branch off into? So. Well, and I think probably the timing is pretty darn good because you have people who are going more towards in the pandemic. Door dashing, Uber, Lyft, drive for hire, which I think is a Is more prevalent now than it was ten years ago. That’s good for you. It is, and then on top of that, the feds are really cracking down on truck drivers, these guys are under a microscope for anything and everything.. And it’s really tough because these guys are getting tickets for… Equipment violations, anything you can think of and they’re looking for any reason to pull these guys over. And, it’s a very important job for us. I don’t think a lot of people realize how important the CDL drivers are to the economy, to, the country in general because cause they bring everything to us and, and then it’s opened the door to a lot of other issues. Cause now I’m getting a lot of clients that hop in these trucks and they’re hired to do this, but they have licensing, CDO license. Now a lot of the guys that are very good at it are getting pushed out because of all the tickets and all the scrutiny and the, tightening of the screws by the federal government on this topic. And now it’s a free-for-all thing. Interesting. I remember my, when I first graduated law school, I worked for a general practice firm and it was jack of all trades work? And there was a Semi that was driving, east side of Milwaukee. And, I think he was driving overweight for that road or I forget what the ticket was a $6,000 ticket. It was unbelievable that the city has those, those tickets that are that much. And, then there was negotiating.. They called, and my boss was, Jon, go and negotiate it. And I go, and I’m right out of law school. I was, here I go. And he was, six grand. And that’s it. And I’m, oh. Crap. What do I do?. I remember I had to, I think I postponed it. We got a different attorney for the law because this was way out of our league. For sure. that’s something you see that they’re that huge of fines. I had a guy this week or last week, it was $12,500. Oh.. how do they justify a $12,000 fine? Yes. Where does that number come from?, by statute, they have a breakdown of cents per pound. Oh, per pound.. All right. There’s that. But the issue that keeps happening is you have, these CDL guys are coming from New York or California, Oregon, Montana, wherever. And there’s much construction in Milwaukee, even in the small towns, whether it’s, you, Elkhorn, Milwaukee, Glendale, wherever. And these guys, their GPS takes them a different way or there’s, some detour. They end up on the wrong road and next thing, boom, the cops are right there and, come with us. We’re going to lay your truck and And the cop made their quota for tickets in, in that particular. Yes, the cop is going to be very flay. That’s correct. Yes, they could afford some new lights or afford some new tires for their car. Wow. Is that the biggest fine you’ve seen is a $12,000 fine. That I can remember… So, we’re currently working on that., I’m sure we’ll get it chopped down whether it’s twenty-five fifty or 75%, but we’ll definitely get something done… All right. I have totally gone off script. I’m going to get in trouble because I’ve totally gone off script, but this is more interesting than the script., All right. So, do you use, any case management system or how do you keep track of all these different clients that you’re helping on any given day? Great question. It’s an intake system where it rings to both myself and Maria. Whoever gets the call, we go through our usual script, name, phone, email, get us some background, where’s your license from, stuff that. We get an overall picture. Then we go into where’s the ticket from? What type of ticket is it? we can start thinking about what type of reduction or dismissal or we can give to the person. And then we have a case management system called Smokeball, which I really. Australia. It is. It’s very good. They help you set it up. Their client support or service is excellent. I love it. You have the app on your phone you can take notes or build time, you need to do, we work with that. We also use obviously the Google suite that we can track the number of cases we get. And we also obviously put tags on it that we know if a case is ready to be closed or have a closing letter sent or.. that’s how we manufacture all that. But, Smokeball’s been a game changer. I start off with Google Drive, something simple, low budget.. And I’m, this is too much to put all this in and they start running out of space. Luckily, Smokeball has stepped in and it’s been really good. And also the template drafting. It saves you a ton of time. Well, the doc gen, the doc generation is a huge deal. Well, cause a lot of this stuff is they’re, they’re letters that you’re going to make once and use a thousand times. Right. Exactly. So. Is it an hourly practice or are you a flat fee? How do you? I’m flat fee, unless we go to trial, then it’s a separate flat fee, but, to obviously dive into that because people get freaked out when they hear, a large number for a trial. And I’m, hey, we’ll go the cost of extra route to see what we can do here and see if you’re satisfied with that. And then if not, we can always do a trial. There, when somebody calls you, it’s not there’s a surprise it’s, hey, I’m going to charge you X amount. And it’s between now, this activity now, sending your file and the first or second court appearance. And that’s what you’re going to pay me. Correct. So, we’ll take care of everything start to finish except for trial. And then if we get to the point where we have an offer to reduce or dismiss it, you want to accept it. Great. If not, then we talk about it.. Well, and the problem with a trial then is it’s maybe a day or days of your life getting ready for it and then hearing or going before the hearing. Probably in criminal courts, I’m guessing they could have a more important thing happening. Correct. And then you’re postponed until the next week or the next month. For sure. And we also got to worry about, is the cop schedule going to work for it? Because it is this is a significant felony case where, hey, we cannot move this trial.. It’s hard and fast. there’s that. Obviously the time of someone having to show up or they’re, hey, the reason I’m hiring you is I don’t have to show up and waste a PTO day or waste a day of my time.. That Makes sense.. Makes sense. All right. We talked about, the deep snow. I don’t understand. Yes, sir. Are you, is it snow machines, snowmobiles, UTVs, ATVs, snowshoeing? Are you a snowshoer? What do you about it? I would say it’s all of the above. The thing I love about the UP much is once winter starts, Winter is here. You got to have your boots on. You got to have your winter jacket and your hat.. Here in Wisconsin, it might be December one you’re still in shorts. You never know. And then it’s going to snow. Then it might rain. Then you get a blizzard. Then it melts. So, well, it depends on, if you’re north of Stevens Point probably, but it feels more the UP weather we’re, well, two years ago, we didn’t have any snow for UTV, but this year the weather was better. I think we had more snow. So, you the consistency of seeing white versus seeing the gross mud on the ground all right.. Exactly. Cause when it was cold, there isn’t a whole lot to do. Up there, snowshoeing is a great time, cross country skiing, I side by siding. I put tracks on the side by side. you go through anything. I snowmobiling, but the problem is I don’t have any friends with snowmobiles anymore, they’re either married, kids, and I’m not trying to get stuck up in the middle of the woods and walk back ten miles or please to death,? I put that on the back burner.. All right. So, so, are you a downhill skier? Do you do downhill skiing or?, I, maybe if I was twenty or twenty-five again, but I have to be able to be a workout Monday. I definitely can’t risk breaking a peak or over here’s a leak. I don’t know how many courthouses have operating lifts there, I don’t know where I was in court a couple weeks ago where. I would have gone into the elevator, but it didn’t look it was safe. I was up and down the stairs. All right. Cool. So, you’re closer and I’ll age myself. You’re closer to your, Lifting off into solo practice than I am. So, what advice would you give to a new attorney or somebody who’s thinking about going solo or something? I think about starting on a firm, something that you wish you would have known and something that you did that you’re, oh, this was the right thing to do. Two different questions there. Put you on the spot.. Those, those are definitely tough ones. I think the first thing is, you got to make your mind if you want to do it because I think a lot of people have this idea of owning your own business. Hey, I can work on it. Feel it. I can work hours I want. I want to work hard this year and take next year off. It’s a very consistency is key. I would say with it, because. People get used to being able to reach you at certain times or they refer friends to you, but if you’re not very consistent, then people don’t really want to work with you as much and people have gotten used to be able to reach me after hours or on weekends. So, it is what it is. Some people don’t doing that, but it’s very much about being consistent. You really got to jump in and know that you want to do it because it really isn’t that easy. It seems easy, when we talk about it, it’s this cool entrepreneurial thing, you make a bunch of money, but one sees, the behind the scenes, the grind, the midnight filings and all that stuff, you’re doing all your I would say make sure you really want to do it and I would say dip your toe in different areas before you really jump into doing that unless you’re very dead set on doing a certain area, and I would say don’t take on something that you aren’t really that familiar with or can’t really understand or get a grasp on before handling it.. why is that? I would say there’s a, obviously there’s a bunch of risk. There’s going to be a lot of headaches, obviously getting up to speed. You’re happy with the bill on that type of stuff. You really got to do a lot of legwork on it. And then even then, if you’re going to get someone that’s done it for Five or ten or twenty years, it’s, you never know what might come at you, so.. I’d say be careful.. The fear of the unknown. Yes. And in the law, we’re in personal injury law, the change from Michigan to Wisconsin law to Minnesota law is drastic, with no fault and things that. Right. They’re little items that I would never want to practice in Minnesota because, I don’t understand how the no fault law works. I have a buddy of mine who does practice in Minnesota. He’s, oh, it’s fine. I understand X, Y, and Z. It’s those little things that you think it’s the same, but it’s certainly not. Right, that’s something you see even in traffic where some states or even counties are very big into not allowing masks. Masking is changing tickets for CDL drivers. Some places aren’t, some people, don’t want to go against those rules. So, you never know what you’re going to do. Interesting. Interesting. All right, let’s see what, what else do we have? All right. we’re civil and we have personal injury. It’s civil law. So, I was saying before almost every single night I watch law and order. Right, because my kids watching on order and it’s what we do, sometimes we will watch. Suits or what’s the other one? Lincoln lawyer is on Netflix. Awesome show. I love that show, but there’s not really a personal injury law firm TV show. You guys get all the sexy stuff. We don’t really don’t. with our world, it’s a lot of paper, getting pushed back and forth and I do depositions and I’m taking testimony. There’s, examinations under oath and things that. And then interrogatories request for production of documents, request for admissions, all those things. Do you have that stuff in criminal, in traffic tickets? How do what the cops are going to say? How do what the, what the DA is going to, or the city attorney is going to bring us evidence against you? Great question. if it’s a non-criminal case, let’s say, this is a basic municipal ticket or speeding ticket, that with an open records request. Unless the city prosecutor or that municipality himself wants to send it to you, to be nice. Realistically we do open records requests. We’re able to get the body cam dash cam if it exists. And obviously any narratives, reports, etcetera. Normally on a basic traffic ticket, you’re going to get the video if there is any. And then obviously the ticket itself with the Cox narrative. It’s usually two, three, four sentences. So, let me stop you there. is that something you would recommend as a free giveaway today to anybody who is involved in a traffic stock right away? Do you do a FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request? Correct, if they want to get always do that. Always, because that way you can see if what you’re remembering matches up with the officer’s writing in his narrative or if his dash cam body cam, is matching up to his narrative or what you saw happen to him… Interesting. Then, you’re licensed in Wisconsin and Michigan and are you handling cases in Michigan currently? We are.. how do you do that? Is it remote? Can you, do you have Zoom hearings or do you physically drive to the different courthouses? it’s on a court by court basis, We try not to do any in-person stuff unless it’s the UP. I can, again, make it effective by doing several at one time. A lot of times it’s either over the phone with the prosecutors or it’s on Zoom. Each kind is a little bit different. They do what they call formal hearings. It’s a mini trial, if you will. But then some places do a basic pretrial conference we do here where it’s two people talking, going over the case background, that type of stuff. So formal hearings are, are that if that’s a Michigan unique legalese.. I would compare it to a motion hearing or a bench trial, if you will.. Calling the cop. Our client will be there. I’ll be there. The prosecutors and the judge is there.. it’s a mini trial, but they called a formal hearing. Right.. Gotcha. All right., what’s the most interesting case that you’ve handled in your, in your current practice or most interesting experience with a client? Mine was getting, attacked by a client in a good way after we won a jury trial and grabbing me and he was trying to have a six foot eight and grabbing me and jumping up and down and he hadn’t shaved that day. It’s rug burn because his, he was squeezing me because he was happy. It was painful, but it was a good, that’s awesome. What, what’s a interesting story you could tell us. I would say probably. One of the best would be we had a municipal OWI. This tipster called in someone allegedly swerving and weaving. The guy gets home, parks in his garage. And he’s hanging out and all of a sudden the cop decides out of their own good or heart they’re gonna walk in the garage and talk to the guy and arrest him without a warrant or anything. We ended up challenging it and it got, tossed out and made into a reckless driving instead of an OWI, which was a great result. It was that, I’d say that’s probably the best one. We have a lot of good cases. We encounter a lot of. Are they, do you think there’s a lot of instances where the video doesn’t really jive with what the cop writes down? Is that pretty common? I would say it’s pretty common. Alluding to that or your little smile there maybe. I would say a little bit of that and then a lot of stuff happens before the camera starts rolling.. the dash cam, we’ve had Can the police turn off and on? it’s usually attached to when they hit their lights and then it’ll back record thirty seconds or a minute or they’ve said. Interesting.. So, let’s say you almost hit a curb or something, the cop thinks you’re swerving, but they follow you for eight more minutes, then they hit their lights. Well, that, you almost hit the curb, isn’t going to show up on dash cam.. But they’re going to put it in their report. it’s, then it’s really me trying to cross-examine an officer and then having them compare that to what the judge wants to think is more reliable.. Not having it on video or what the officer is saying in court. It’s not, I didn’t realize that. I assumed that. A cop puts their uniform on, the recorder on, and it’s odd. Well, a lot of places don’t even have Body cam still.. So, I’ll have some state police cases or some other municipalities that don’t have it yet. Some places don’t even have dash cams. in the Milwaukee area, which municipalities have dash cameras or cameras?, so, so. Milwaukee, I assume?, Milwaukee does, Racine usually does, the smaller, smaller departments, Waukesha.. Depending on if it’s the sheriff or town or city.. some do or don’t have it… interesting. So,, oh, Let’s see, what was my other question? The your, your world in Subro What, what was the average day in sub row world as an attorney and compare that to your average day owning your own firm as an attorney? Great question. It was definitely. And sorry, sub-RO stands for subrogation. Correct. I do that every day because we have health insurance that’s trying to get money from our clients. Correct. It’s a subrogation… I would say it was, it was. Very similar, but also super different. It’s very similar in that, the firm is, a small firm, if you will, but they’re national. they’re doing stuff in every single state. They got tons of work coming in. It was very much the traffic world where it was high volume. I was doing a lot of the lower, health insurance type stuff for truckers and independent contractors. It was a lot of low value cases, but there was a ton of them. Low value meaning you’re collecting a thousand bucks, two thousand bucks. Right… And, obviously the contingencies are smaller, ten twenty or, fifteen percent, stuff that.. We were constantly cranking those out, but it was a lot easier than, you have an office manager, you have paralegal, you got a legal assistant who’s answering the phone. Hey, I need a new desk chair and you don’t have to do all this stuff that. That was my own hand. Exactly. I need legal pads. 100%.. Or I’m having a computer issue. Can the IT guy come by and fix this for me? Whereas, obviously being a solo, I gotta pause what I’m doing as actual legal work to call the IT guy or I gotta go to Best Buy or I gotta go to Office Depot or and get this stuff that I need. I would say, it was still a little bit different, but, every once in a while we’d have some really cool subro case more high dollar. It was always exciting.. the big difference is back then you could probably walk out of the office and be done for the day.. And now you’re never done. Never.. 24-7. True story. Last Sunday, I had some kid call me at three a.m. He’s, hey, I got this ticket at eight a.m. tomorrow. Can you help me out? I’m, sure thing, brother. eight a.m.? he calls you with five hours notice? Hey, someone has to do it. Someone has to be the guy that does it. And that’s me. And, I tell everyone I’m working constantly, which is good and bad, but, call me 2-3 AM. And I’m, let’s get you signed up and we’ll, we’ll hop on this. We’ll file the stuff. And hopefully you didn’t have to drive anywhere. Was it local at least?, it was local, good. All right. It’s, it’s a two hour drive. Well, I was able to file my appearance and not guilty. Oh, And set her for a new court date.. then they’re going to push her up.. It wasn’t you had to get up there. Right. Five and then get in the car and drive somewhere. Correct.. we were still up at eight, showing up in a different court, but.. Wow… Well, better you than.. I think everybody else. Wow. Interesting.. So, that’s, really the big difference is going from working for somebody to being your own boss. Right. And then, ordering the toilet paper or ordering the paper, the legal pads, the computer, else it is. And the other tough part too, when you’re a small business too, and your legal assistant or someone is sick or they take a vacation, now you’re doing all the legal assistant work, plus the lawyer stuff, you’re even busier..then how do you create systems then you can go on vacation? And then everything works while you’re gone. Correct. I’m finally taking a vacation. It starts tomorrow.. Still taking the laptop and the phones. If you need to call Attorney Katz, you can call him anytime. But, Maria’s gonna pick up the slack for me. But, we’re trying to do that. I’ll take a vacation. Are you going somewhere warm? Puerto Rico. Oh my gosh. Awesome. With my good buddy, Sammy from, Anthony’s, company. He’s from Puerto Rico. He’s going to show me the whole, the real, the real, shrimp and all the, all the cool secrets. Awesome. So, do you speak Spanish? I speak a little bit. I’m passable. Maria luckily is from El Salvador, she’s very good at it. I don’t have to practice or sharpen it. you can help clients who are Spanish speaking or English speaking.. I would say that that’s probably at least. forty to 60% of our business probably in Spanish speakers. Oh, Awesome. Awesome, All right. What else? Is there anything else that you want to Talk about, we talk about your website. How do we get a hold of you? We have your website, katzlegaldefense.com. Yes, sir. Or add attorney Katz on the typical social media pages. 414-678-1238. I couldn’t get a cool, jingly number all the cool personal injury attorneys have. Can we text you that number? You can definitely text that number, most mornings I wake up, someone’s texting me, hey, I got a ticket. Give me a call. I’m, sure. The other free piece of advice I would give is get a dash cam.. it’s always recording what’s going on. Do you have one? Luckily, my car comes equipped with it. I have a Tesla. It has, the front, Cameras and all that good stuff. But something that’s going to show your speeds at the cops, hey, you’re 148 I was recording this as 142 or,? It definitely helps and also helps me out.. that’s my other fruit piece of advice I would say and one has anything to do. June 15th is the next set of fights at Potawatomi. It’s pretty awesome. And you’re going to sponsor? I’m going to be sponsoring again. You’ll be there ringside. I’ll be there ringside hoping that, some blood or something is splattered on the logo I can frame it perfect. There’s that got some more big UFC names that are coming, people are looking to get autographs, it’ll be a really cool event.. Awesome. But I got a question for you. Yes, What is it when you’re driving around town and your face is everywhere? What’s it? and what’s it? It was cool initially.. And now I, I don’t pay attention to it, the first week… Well, the first day I got a call from our billboard people saying it’s going to be that there’s a billboard up on Maybe 76th in Good Hope or something that. So, my oldest son’s in college, I wasn’t able to do this and embarrass him, but I am, I embarrassed my Middle and youngest son and said, hey, guys, let’s go to Cabela’s. we have some, do something, that, that would take us north. But they’re young boys and they don’t know directions. They don’t, they get in the car and they don’t know where they are because they’re, they’re, young boys. I’m, I was a young boy. I was I said, we’re going to Cabela’s.. we drive up and then I was, oh I said, I forgot something or. And now I got to go here and I’m telling them what I’m doing. And again, they’re coolest. They don’t care. then I pull over and not saying anything. But there’s my, my, my picture on a billboard and it’s this one right there. And, they’re not looking up. They’re on their phones. Are you choking me? I was I’m going to get out, guys. I have to look at the tire or something. And I drive around, stop, and get out. And I’m, boys, Look up, and then they looked up, oh, my gosh. And it was awesome for me as a dad to embarrass my sons.. And that was probably the most exciting that the exciting time. Ever since then, it’s been downhill because it’s, now they’re rolling their eyes saying, are we driving this way because you are lost or are we driving this way because you want to find another one of your billboards? It’s, it’s fine. It’s, I think one of the more fun things now is we have some cars that are driving around.. That have our, have our logo in my face on it That’s fun because those you never know where they are. So, there was somebody who took a picture up in, up in Manaqua. One of the guys that must have gone on vacation up there and drove his Uber car up there. But they’ll be all around, all around town. So, it’s, it’s, interesting. I never thought that we would get to this point and it’s right now, the thing that I, I’m, most, happy about is our RDS on the radio. Mm-hmm. Cause I was getting sick and tired of seeing all my competition for every single radio station.. I don’t know if you even have celestial or terrestrial radio in a Tesla, but if you listen to 102.1, you’re listening to 93.3, or Froggy 100.3, we sponsor those radio stations, we sponsor the RDS, you’ll see the album cover, the album art, it’ll say the song’s name and then the album name and then it’ll rotate and say, Injured? Groth Gets It! Gotcha, for our, for other radio stations, it says all the competition. Gotcha. Now at least finally I have three stations that I can listen to that I won’t get annoyed at because I won’t see other people’s names.. You feel there’s a billboard everywhere now. I think everyone’s jumping into the billboard game right now. It’s nuts. And it seems, I don’t want to take credit for it, but it seems ever since we were in the billboard game, now everybody seems to be in, Pemben went crazy and Nicolet’s been there for a while, obviously and, and Gruber, I think, I shouldn’t say I think, I know Gruber’s upped since Nicolet didn’t come here because Nicolet came and took a bunch of Gruber lawyers. There’s, there’s some bad blood between those two firms.. I’m even seeing, seeing a lot of divorce ones too. Oh, the areas where you don’t normally would think of seeing a billboard. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t understand the divorce lawyer billboard play. It just because I have never, really before last year, I never saw a billboard for a divorce firm. Or even really for a criminal defense firm.. Right. It’s only ever been personal injury attorneys. 100%. Right, it seems odd. And now it’s, the, what, Wisconsin’s largest Divorce. Divorce and family law.. Divorce and family. It’s divorces and then be temporary restraining orders.. Maybe custody? I’m not sure. Pretty bad. I, I agree. It seems, it’s, everyone’s doing it. It’s nuts. We got a report last, last week, I think it was of the buys, the different buys, the media buys for all the law firms and the money that is being spent is insane. I don’t understand it. There could be a lot of. People who are, well-fed, or who have a home were the amount of money that is spent on, on, on billboards or media in general. That’s true. There isn’t a lot of other media sources anymore. People aren’t really doing local TV much anymore. Y’all got, y’all, satellite or cable and Hulu, that type of stuff, so. And that’s why we’re doing this thing where you’re doing, podcasts and social media. Right. you can have some, reach out there that doesn’t cost literally millions upon millions of dollars. So, we’ll see if it works far good, but, we shall see. All right. Well, thank you for coming. I, I appreciate it. What color car do you think is the most pulled over car? I would have to say red. I have a lot of clients say, hey, I think you need to stop me because I’m in a red car. And I’m, it’s very possible. I’m not sure enough. Do you think it’s red versus red?white? Is that what the- I would say red, or if your card sounds somewhat sportier or loud. You’re gonna, specifically laser it on you.. be careful for your muffler. Make sure it’s working and that you’re not super loud. And then or Buy a Tesla and we won’t make any sound. Be careful. Be careful with the window tint as well. Why? The cops love to stop people for window tint. What’s the, is there a certain a tin scale? There is. I haven’t memorized. I want to say it’s 50% on the back. And thirty-five in the front, but don’t quote me on that. I’ll double check. have you handled tint cases? We have, some places are very laid back. They’re, hey, this isn’t worth our time to prosecute. We’ll dismiss or make this into a parking ticket, let’s say. Other places are, hey, fix it and it’ll go away. But a lot of people who have paid a couple hundred bucks or a thousand bucks for all their tints on, it’s, way, I’ll pay this ticket. And I’m, all right, that’s cool. But the problem is ten tickets carry two points. So, obviously. Are they non-moving? Non-moving two points… Obviously, if you keep getting it, fix it, and these cops keep wanting to get you in a small town, for example.. The two points ends up. And if you’re a young kid and he has tint and it’s your second violation. Well, the non-movers, the non-movers wouldn’t double though. Oh, it would… All right. Interesting. That’s very important. if you get a speed ticket, it’s probationary. You got to get into a non-mover. You want a non-moving for a kid. Gotcha.. Interesting. Red cars, be careful. Tint.. And loud noises.. And have your dash cam. And dash cam. And I think there’s a buddy of mine got in South Carolina. For a time, he was giving away dash cams. I think they weren’t that expensive.. It was ten bucks or less. That’s not bad. Not really high quality, but he was putting a sticker on there.. It was brought to you by so-and- from and then he had some that were better quality. They had an arm and they could put it on motorcycles. But, and those were, I think less than twenty bucks. That’s good. interesting. But dash cams.. Good advice. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We will, we’ll put this everywhere and please follow. Katzlegaldefense.com. Awesome. And that’s Groth Gets It! for today. Like, Subscribe, and follow. Like, Subscribe, and follow. And we’ll catch you next time. Thanks.