Come to Groth Gets It! Podcast. We’re going to spotlight our clerks. That’s what’s happening today. We have Morgan, one of our two clerks here. We start the podcast, like, we start our depositions. So please say your name and spell your last name for the record. Well, I mean, Morgan Brown b r o w n just like the color brown could be with the e. Could be, could be. Oh, that’d be like Ryan Braun b r a u n. That’s not spelled or pronounced the same way, but, you just never know. So that’s why we have you spell it. Okay. All right. You’re wrapping up your summer clerkship here? Yes. You are Marquette law student to L. Almost halfway through your law school career. Very exciting. Yes. All right, I know you’ve done a lot of. We’ve. Well, we’ve pulled you in many directions here at the firm. I know that you’re right outside my office, so I probably pulled you in many directions. And I apologize for all the different ways that I pulled you, all the different projects that are kind of random. Okay. But we’re going to start by you asking me questions that I guess either you’ve written or somebody has written for you. So you can go ahead and we’ll try to keep this in in line. I have a tendency to talk too much, so we’ll have somebody just yell at me or throw things at me. If you see that outside of the camera, something getting thrown at me, you know that I’m talking too much, and then we can stop and go on our way. But, what questions do you have for me? I think my first question for you is just what inspired you to be a personal injury attorney. What inspired me. I wrote an article about this once. gosh, it’s probably like, twenty years ago now. I should reread the article and see if that’s what I think is the truth. You know, it really goes back to, I think, my experience in law school and what I wanted to do. I wanted to do litigation, and I had the opportunity to clerk for a, a personal injury firm in law school. And I thought it was fascinating. And there was lots of fun. There was a lot of variety. And because of that, that kind of set me on the road to where I am now. And then after law school, I worked for a small general practice law firm here in Wisconsin, doing all kinds of stuff from collections work to eviction to drafting contracts and, sitting in public meetings for real estate investors and, different things like that. It was interesting. And then, I was able to handle a few personal injury cases and do depositions, and that was trial and try cases. And that was fun. So challenging, but fun. So then I said, that’s what I’m going to do. So. And I’ve done that since two thousand and two exclusively. Okay. Just kind of crazy a lifetime ago. Yeah. Twenty two, twenty three, twenty three years. Yeah, I know I don’t want to make it sound like it’s literally someone’s lifetime ago, but a lifetime ago. Cool. Yeah, yeah. Good question. Thank you. I would say my next one is. How do you think? I mean, for me, I’m kind of more interested in, like, the business law area. So how do you think gaining experience in a practice area like personal injury, can support someone who’s planning to go more into business law. What kind of business law? Like formation of businesses? I’m not one hundred percent sure yet. I think especially now, since first year is over, we take more of those required general courses. Now I’m taking some more business related courses in the fall, so I think that will help me figure out exactly kind of where in business law I want to go, but I’m not one hundred percent sure as of right now. Well, I think in general, personal injury gives you a lot of variety and it helps you deal with people when you’re a personal injury lawyer because you’re dealing with people who are literally, having the worst day of their life, right? Where, well, I’m talking to somebody later on today who, had a family member pass away in a crash. I mean, that’s that’s horrible. But having the empathy and the ability to guide them through the, the horrible process that now is going to happen. That’s that’s a good skill to have. litigation in general if you want to do business litigation, personal injury, has some, some similarity to that because there is a lot of cases that are, that are litigated. And I know you’ve been doing discovery responses and, you know, some briefing and that kind of stuff. Discovery is discovery. It’s the same or similar, interrogatories, requests for production of docents, subpoenas and such. They’re the same in Wisconsin. If you’re suing an insurance company for a car crash, or if you’re suing Harley-Davidson because they didn’t deliver a widget or whatever, I don’t know what they do. But those kind of things. So that’s, I think something you can glean from working at any, any law firm and, you can look at really the business of law and how a law firm is run to some extent. It’s a different perspective as a law clerk. But you can get some idea and then help that well, or have that help you understand how other businesses are run. And you know, when you’re a lawyer, I encourage every law student to take some kind of business class, just like how to run a business or a business management kind of class, because you never know where you’re going to be one year, two years, ten years from now. I mean, I didn’t think that I would own a law firm and have to manage, you know, what we’re doing now. I mean, this is the marketing aspect. I’m meeting with our HR director a little bit later, and then, our HR and operating officer and I are meeting after that. And then, office manager I already met with this morning. I mean, those are all things that really I could be running a Starbucks and do what? Those same roles. Right? I mean, It is not unique to law firms. It’s. It’s something that is a lifelong skill that you’ll need no matter where you are. And it’s certainly not going to hurt to get that skill. So if you can take a business management class in addition to the business or the, you know, the business of law or the whatever business law classes, you would take, contracts or, you know, things like that, those would be helpful. Yeah. I’m taking, I think, in the fall like a business associations class. And I think that’ll probably help with that too. Yeah. Like business associations, like LLCs and LPs and SKS and corporations and inks and all that, right? Yeah. Okay, interesting. I know enough to be dangerous. That’s about the extent of what I know about business associations, if even that’s accurate. Okay, cool. I think kind of going off of that, then what made you decide to start and own your own law firm? It’s a long story. Long story. really, the at some point, you know, you you look at where you are in life and, you know, I always say you run the numbers and figure out whether the there’s a risk and reward out there and whether the reward is more than the risk. And the reward can be money. It could be time, it could be flexibility. And we analyze that, you know, my wife and I analyze that, when we’re thinking about making the leap. And it was there was just a greater sign, you know, it was greater to go off on her own, although there was a huge amount of risk. And, yeah. So that’s why. Yeah. There’s also more minutia into that story that I could tell you someday, but in the in the grand scheme of things, it’s just doing, you know, running the numbers, doing your due diligence, talking to. We talked to a bunch of attorneys , advisors, I’ll say, you know, accountants and business owners and things like that and try to figure out, is it something that’s even possible? Yeah. And luckily it was. And then I made the leap. So my advice would be keep doors open. You never know what’s going to happen. So keep doors open. And be ready for anything. It’s terrible, terrible advice because you never know what that means. But , just. Yeah. Have options. Yeah. Cool. I think that’s good advice. So, I think kind of as, I mean, I’m going to be a tool just in in your time in law school, were there any like classes, professors or internships that kind of pushed you towards personal injury law at all. My. Let’s think here. So, Gosh, when did I go to Japan? Was that after my tour? Maybe it was after my two L year. I went to Japan and studied, for a while, and then came back in the middle of summer ish. And then I think that’s when I worked for the personal injury firm, I think. And that’s what really, you know, pushed me. But then classes wise, my last year, I really took as many litigation classes as I could, you know, from, pretrial to, yeah, like moot court. We had the moot court competition. I had trial advocacy and, like, trial advocacy, too. What else did I take? Well, torts obviously advanced towards all those classes, but, I really had a fun last year of law school because it was all things that I really enjoyed. And they were easier for me, in part because I enjoyed them. And, it was more performance as opposed to performance. Meaning you’re you’re performing like a trial as opposed to sitting down and filling out multiple choice exam. Yeah. So it was fun that way. So I, I think those were the things that helped me to understand what I wanted to do, and then gave me that additional skill that gave me the confidence to go and do what I initially did at the first firm that I worked for. I mean, I think my diploma is downstairs, but I think I graduated May twenty second. You know, you graduate and then you’re admitted to the bar and I think it was the Eastern District swearing in was Monday. Okay. Something like that. And then on Tuesday, I was taking a deposition. Oh, wow. So, starting right away, I had that that that luck that I was able to clerk for a firm that trusted me to really sit down, on day one and do real legal work. Just kind of crazy. Yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s a great experience, though. It was fun to start. Yeah. I think another question, like, what would you say to a law student who isn’t one hundred percent sure about their future practice area? Like, how can they still make the most out of their clerkship? Well, it it goes back to being a, a lifelong learner. Just, just get as much knowledge as you can from as many different people as you can. So, yeah, sit down, take lawyers out to not take them out to lunch, but, , ask them to go to lunch and hopefully they’ll they’ll buy. Or coffee or just, you know, stop by and see if you can, get some knowledge or to each person, because everybody has a different background and other law clerks or other lawyers have other experience with other law clerks and their own personal experience as to where they came from and how they ended up in that practice. So doing that and reach out to your professors and make contacts with other lawyers in the area and see what they say. I know the Wisconsin bar is like a mentor program to you can talk to other lawyers that are, well, certainly willing and I think I said this in a different podcast that lawyers will always be willing to talk about themselves. So that’s a pretty easy question to ask. Hey, do you want to go and have me ask you questions about you? Well, yes, I’d love to talk about myself for however long. So those things I think are important to go and ask people and don’t be afraid to ask for help because there’s more kindness in the world than there is not. And, the Milwaukee community, certainly the legal community is very small. So if you get into the into that community, you’re going to make connections and make, well, find a way to figure out your path, I think pretty, pretty quickly, which is good. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Next. I think my last kind of question that I have is, I know you’ve also mentioned, like, advice about keeping doors open and having opportunities, but if there’s like what is, I guess another piece of advice that you would give to law students or future law students just about going into law school and the practice of law? Well, I already said take a business class. That’s important. Okay. experience. I think experience is greater than grades, and grades are certainly important if you want to do certain things in life. but being number one in your class or not being number one in your class doesn’t mean that you’re going to be a failure as a lawyer. there’s, you know it, it’s interesting now to look back and see where all my classmates have gone, where they are. Some have passed, some are in prison. Oh. But it’s like wow. Yeah. Some are, big name, , lawyers at huge firms. Some are literally making history, which is fascinating. Yeah. , but, don’t give up. There. There’s always the potential out there. And don’t give up on yourself because you can pivot pretty, pretty quickly. And that’s the that’s really the benefit of a law degree, is you can pivot from being a personal injury lawyer to go and do something else pretty darn quick. I mean, I know, somebody who didn’t work here, but who was a defense attorney who I worked with a lot, for a number of years, went from being a personal injury defense attorney to being in-house, an in-house attorney at a major corporation, and now general counsel of that corporation. Wow. It’s like, you know, how did that pivot happen? You know, how how do you go from defending, let’s say progressive insurance for a rear end whiplash case to now advising a major corporation being their go to attorney? Well, that that’s awesome. But yeah, you got the law degree and you’re willing to to learn obviously and advance to that, to that level. So, I think, going back to lifelong learning, I think is really important. Read lots of books. Okay. That’s good. Podcasts. Listen to books. Okay. There we go. Okay, cool. Those are pretty much all of my questions. I have questions for you. Okay. Now we’re going to turn the tables. All right. well, no, I’m not going to ask you those questions, because now I’m going to get in trouble because we’re already past our time. Okay. So you’re you’re thinking about the legal world from, what business minded perspective kind of thing. And, I guess I didn’t ask you what was your. Or remind everybody. What was your undergraduate degree in? So I have three. Okay. I am a I have a bachelor’s in political science, criminology and Spanish. Okay. How do you say. Oh, gosh. You’re you’re, . You’re due in court in Spanish. I don’t even I haven’t spoken it in. I’m putting you on the spot a little. What do you say? You have court tomorrow in Spanish. I don’t know the if I knew what. How do you say you have an appointment tomorrow in Spanish? Like. Oh, goodness, this is. This is not the most exciting. How do you say tomorrow in Spanish? -mañana- There we go. Okay. Yes. That’s a win to remember. All right. What surprised you the most about working here at Groth Law Firm? Other than the surprisingly terrible questions that I asked of you at any given moment, putting you on the spot. What surprised you the most of working here at Groth Law? I think what surprised me the most, I think I came in not knowing much about what happens. I didn’t know much about personal injury either, and I think what surprised me the most was just how much there is to it and all of the different processes that we go through. And I think learning more about, I have been doing a lot of answering discovery and request for production, and I think just going through that process and I mean subpoenas and all of those things and just seeing how it all works, I didn’t realize how much there was to it. So I think that kind of just surprised me. The law is complicated. Yes. It’s probably overly complicated. Very complicated. Make things complicated. Yes. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, I would say that’s probably what surprised me is just the vast amount of work that really goes in to all of it. You cannot appreciate, the difference in. In what? Well, you appreciate the the reality and the difference in what you see on TV and what kind of what you’re taught in theory to the nuts and bolts? Yes. I think that’s a big difference. Okay. discovery is a big part of what you did here. What were some of the skills or habits that helped you stay organized while you’re working on those projects, on the discovery and , those litigation projects? I think a big thing for me was like just never being afraid to ask for help, because I think the first time I started answering, I had no idea how to answer it first, but I was given the tools and resources that would be supplemental and help me. And if I had any questions, I could literally just pop over and ask them. And I think just being very welcomed was super helpful. Trying to think if there’s anything else, I think I’m just a pretty organized person. I make my to do lists, like every day with the tasks and assignments I need to complete. So I think that just, you know, keeping those deadlines in mind as well and just making sure things would get done. And I would also ask Olivia because she sits right next to me and see if she had answered that question before or anything of that sort, since we’ve both been working on them, but have had to answer different questions. So if she answered, she would tell me, oh, this is how you answer it, or vice versa. So I think that was really helpful too. Cool. And going on that. So time management is important. Yes, yes. Obviously with all these projects that you were given and we kind of threw lots at you. So how did , that time management organization help you through the smer and what tools did you use here at Groth Law to, to help you with that time management organization? I think for me I, I love having a planner. I love being organized. So I pride myself kind of on being a more organized individual. And I think that definitely helped coming into this summer, I would make a to do list and I would put when things were due. I kind of I learned in law school too, that you might think an assignment will take two hours, but it could take three or four. You never know. And so I kind of would make sure that I looked at the assignment, thought of kind of how much time it would take, but then kind of gave myself like a thirty minute to an hour kind of cushion just in case it took longer than needed. And I think that was extremely helpful. Just kind of looking at my day, looking at what meetings I had or anything of that sort and kind of planning out okay by lunch. I would like these assignments done. I can get them done by that time, or if something would take longer, I would do that more in the afternoon to the end of the day and give myself a longer time. So I think just looking at the assignments and tasks that I had and kind of mapping out my day right when I come in has been extremely helpful. Good. So you’re looking planning ahead and then, , figuring out what you can do in the time allotted. Yes. Executing. Awesome. Yes. Awesome. Okay. . . All right. So let’s do an analysis here. So you’re reviewing a case file, and something looks not quite right. Something might be missing, or timeline doesn’t quite match. What’s your first step? I think my first step for me, I would look through the file and see what we have and what could possibly be missing. I think then I would either talk to, like, the attorney or paralegal that’s working on that case, too, and just say, hey, I was kind of looking through this doesn’t look, I don’t there might be something missing kind of go off of and see what they have, because that could have just been placed in a different folder or different tab. So maybe they’ll be like, oh no, it was actually here. But I think just talking to the attorney or paralegal and saying asking questions and kind of going from there because then they might say, oh, then we need to obtain this docent or look at the timeline and go over it. So I think just starting by talking to the attorney or paralegal, and I’ll give you a hint as the answer to our case management system, you can search and use AI to help analyze and ask those questions in there, which I think is fascinating. So that was my next question. Okay. How do you feel about Llms and AI? , because this has really come around, really, since you started law school to now has been the the rise of the machines. So what do you think about that as it relates to helping with, being a lawyer? Well, it being a law student, but going forward, you know, being a lawyer, I think I think right now, I think since to a lot of it has been more up and coming, I think there are some kinks that have to get worked out. But I think especially to using our filevine like that’s been extremely helpful to just ask, oh, where is this docent? And it can pull it right up for you and just make things more time efficient? I think sometimes with research, there’s still a couple kinks I know that we’ve had in our legal writing class. We would ask ChatGPT like and give them our writing prompt and see what cases they would pull up. And sometimes they were cases that didn’t exist, which is which was crazy. But yeah, so I think with some research parts, there still needs to be like the physical han being doing it. But I think that it has become very helpful and I think it can be a time saver in cases. Yeah. Cool. All right. I don’t understand this question. What’s your favorite color coded school hack that actually worked? What is that? , is that a question for Morgan, or is that just a general question that, I mean, I think if any color coded school hacked, I would have certain colors when I would be briefing cases, highlighting like facts, the reasoning, the holding, their analysis, things like that, that definitely you do have like different color coded like, yes, blue highlighter versus yellow or orange or whatever. Okay. Yes. So I think that just helped to make sure that then when I would put it into my brief template that I found had found everything and realized what it was. And I think too, if you get cold called on it, you have your brief, but you also have the book. I would have the case pulled up in the book, and if they’d be like, what are the facts? I’d be like, okay, yellow, they’re right there. So it was definitely helpful. What are the colors mean to you? What yellow facts. What’s blue? Blue I would do reasoning. Okay. Green would be holding. Okay I think I’m trying to think what else I put like a rule. Rule would be more pink because I think a lot of times professors would ask what the rule is. So I would put that in a very distinct color. Okay, I’m trying to think what else I would put. We didn’t do as much with the procedural history, but I would I would throw that in there and use kind of like a purpley color for that, just in case they asked about it. But yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have a hard time remembering which colors are which. I guess once you do it once in a while. Yes. After doing it for a couple of weeks, it definitely came more easy to do. So you’re not going to be standing up answering a question and not know what the answer is because you did your work. Good job. You weren’t like some people who were caught off guard because they didn’t do their work. , rightfully so. When we’re embarrassed for a long time, I wouldn’t know who those people are, but. Yeah. Okay. If you launched a law firm tomorrow, what would your. Who would your first hire be if you had to have the money for it. Yeah. My first hire was no one because it was me. But if you had, I would probably, probably some kind of office manager or some, some individual in that capacity just to help kind of start running things. And since if they have like a background doing management, things like that, that that might be extremely beneficial and probably someone in accounting as well, just to be looking at the financial aspect of it. But I think those would probably be my first two. Manage your trust account. Yes. That’s like gold and yeah, the Golden book. You have to make sure that it is right, because if it’s wrong, you are in big trouble. Okay. What’s something Non-law related that’s helped you in law school? I think for me, I was a competitive figure skater for most of my life. Yes. Took a where are you from? Barrington, Illinois. So, the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Competitive figure skater. So my wife’s best friend is a has always been a figure skater and is a figure skating coach. Okay. And goes all over the nation. Her daughter goes to school, and that school has a figure skating team. Oh, nice. Wow. How many people do you meet? There’s an attorney in town who? I’m not going to say his name, but, this is years ago. We were at the harp, after work on the river, and he came over and we were with my wife and her best friend were talking, and he came over and he started talking about how he was a figure skater. Oh, cool. And I would never I just remember that distinctly because I would never have guessed that he was a figure skater. And he’s like a big time Lawyer now. Okay. well, even then, he was a big time lawyer. But, Yeah, you just never know who is a figure skater. So cool. Well, yeah. All right, so that’s off the record here. But with that, I think in college, in my undergrad experience, I kind of stepped back from it because I didn’t have a lot of time. But I think it’s I’ve started picking it back up since going into law school, and I think just taking an hour and clearing my mind of everything, law school and just going out on the ice and skating just has helped me decompress. And I think it’s just a nice mental break, because law school can be a lot and it can be very overwhelming. So I think having just that break and I would go once every so often, it wasn’t every week, every day, but just when I was like, you know, I feel like I could go skate for a little bit and kind of just take my mind off of school. And that definitely, I think helped de-stress a little bit. Cool. Would you go to Pettit or would you? Pettit. Pettit? Awesome, awesome awesome cool. All right. , those are all the questions I have. Do you have any remaining questions for me? Anything you want to talk about? Hacky sacks or whatever else? I guess the inside joke here is hacky sacks today. I don’t think I’ve ever used a hacky sack. No. Played with hacky sack? No, I’ve definitely, like, held one, but I don’t think I’ve played with the one. So I don’t know how that works, but I’ll. I think the inside joke here is that the clerks. I don’t think some of you even knew what a hacky sack was. I think I knew what it was, I’ve seen it like my parents have had one before and showed it to me, but I don’t know how. If everyone else knew. I can’t speak for the other clerks. Anyway. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for everything that you’ve done this past summer. Curiosity, organization, attention to detail. So thank you for all that. I know that our litigation team certainly thanks you for all your help with, with answering interrogatories, because that can be a pain. Often than not. All right. Thank you very much. Let’s see what comes of your career. We’re very excited to see that. And , I think what we’re going to hopefully have are a bunch of law clerk podcasts that will be out there forever. So we’ll be able to come back twenty years from now and say, oh my gosh, you know, Morgan is the vice president of the United States or the at that point will be like the chancellor of the world could be whatever. You never know and she started at Groth Law. So great job. with that Groth Gets It! , Groth Gets You. And we appreciate you listening. Thanks. Thank you.
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