Welcome to Latte With a Lawyer, a podcast dedicated to bringing you the stories of some of America’s most successful lawyers, figuring out what makes them tick, how they creatively solve problems, and how others aspiring to be them can follow in their footsteps. 2s Okay. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Last Year with a Lawyer. I’m your host, Jonathan Brickman. And this morning, we have Rochelle Freeman walk. I see you just have Rochelle walk on your thing. Do you go by Freeman Walk? I usually use just walk. It gets too complicated. All right. I can read, so not too complicated. Anyway, from the law firm, is it Aegis or Aegis Law? We say aegis. Aegis Law. Okay. So I butchered two things your name and the law firm. I’m getting off to a good start. Anyway, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. Absolutely. So, keeping the theme of the show, a lot to have with the lawyer, what’s your morning beverage of choice to get started? There you go. A cappuccino. All right. I have this nifty cappuccino machine at my house, and it is one of my personal splurges, but I like decaffeinated coffee, believe it or not. All right. Cappuccino. No caffeine for you. I kind of wake up the way I am, so I don’t need caffeine. All right, good for you. I do have caffeine and usually three cups of public. We’re both in the state of Florida, so you know publix. But whatever my wife brings home, drink it. I’m happy to. Well, I’m a clear decaffeinated coffee snob. I got really high end beans. I do love puplits, but I go to Sprouts, and I get, like, a high end French roast. Yeah, we’re starting to see more of those here, too. Sprouts. I’ve never shopped at one. Are they good stores? I love them. I like fresh vegetables, and they always have a good selection than Trader Joe’s. Do you have Trader Joe’s? We have Trader Joe’s, too. 2s I go to both. And we have fresh market. We have GreenWise. We have a lot. Yeah, I shop at all. Okay. 1s I will say Tampa is 1s growing so fast right now. We’re seeing growth at like, two and a half to 3% faster than the rest of the United States. Literally have everything. It’s a fantastic place to run a business and live. 1s Interesting. Yeah, no, I don’t know much about Tampa. I mean, I’ve been there. We actually looked at university of Tampa. My daughter we went just because it was close, and we drove there just to get the experience of seeing what a college looked like. 1s I don’t think I’ve been in Tampa very many times in my life, maybe twice. Yeah, I know nothing about Tampa. You know, it’s interesting. We moved here 15 years ago from Cleveland, Ohio, out, and so big change. There are a lot of buckeye fans here in Tampa where it seems like a drive down 75 south, and you go right through Tampa. 3s That’s the way Florida lines up. Pretty much 75 goes to the west coast, 95 goes to the east coast. Exactly. A lot of midwesterners. It’s really a terrific growth city. In the time I’ve lived here, I have watched Tampa just in 15 years. I’m sort of sleepy to a lot of tech companies. 1s Lots of growth. The downtown skyline looks completely different. I live right downtown, and it used to be sort of a flat skyline with a few spikes of tall buildings, and now I look at my window, and there are high rise apartment buildings, condo buildings, high end office buildings, green space. There’s been a lot of investment from Jeff Benneck and the Gates foundation, so it’s really a phenomenon. Owns yeah. Now he kind of owns the city. I know him because he was a magellan portfolio manager. Exactly. He kind of owns Tampa now, doesn’t he? Well, I don’t think he owns Tampa. We have a lot of really well to do families here. Well, he was the one that got it started. He really has kick started a lot of very good stuff. And he’s charitable. 1s He’s a good guy. He lives as part of the community, so it’s not just buildings and then walking away. Similarly, the Glazer family has been equally 2s they own the buccaneers, and they live here. They are active in our community. So it’s really been a call. Okay. Where are they from? Where’s that family from? So, originally, upstate New York, like syrup peace area. And then they lived in South Florida. I think the Glazer parents lived somewhere in south Florida. And when they bought the buccaneers, a number of the kids there’s a lot of them, but another, the kids live here in Tampa. And also just we’ve been very fortunate with the support we get from our sports teams and our community, and frankly, our business community, the business community overall has just been tremendous. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so let’s pivot a little bit here, because you said business. You’re a business attorney, aren’t you? I am. So tell me about your practice. 1s So it’s an interesting practice. And, you know, I spent most of my career as a General Counsel, chief Administrative Officer for a really large public company. Okay. And when I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore, about twelve years ago, I decided to start my own little law practice with the idea that I would just sort of tinker I wasn’t really looking to grow something big. I was just going to use my skills. Use my I might know how particularly heavy in consumer products. 2s Just kind of use that area 1s and see what happens. 1s As a lawyer. I’m a mergers and acquisitions and finance lawyer. That’s what I have been for almost 38 years. And so 1s just happened to hit it. Right? Because I wound up meeting some people who were getting involved in ecommerce, Amazon sellers and people who were really looking to move their retail businesses to online businesses. 2s With that. I got myself kind of educated. I don’t know how else to describe it. I just started digging in, do what lawyers do. We go a mile deep when we need to. And I started learning how Amazon works, how Ebay works, how Etsy works, all the different online systems work. I started to learn about what could we do if you really want to sell your online business, how do you sell, essentially, air 2s here? Imagine a cup of coffee that’s empty and say, Here you go. This is filled with intellectual property, and I’m going to now sell it to you. Jonathan, how do I know you were the buyer? How do you know you got it? How are you going to pay me for that? And so I started to really work on what that would look like. So over time, we’ve built a practice around it. I wound up with about five attorneys here in Tampa and then realized that if I ever want to retire, I needed to do something for succession. So in 2018, I merged the firm with Aegis Law and and it’s been a really great merger because they had a firm that was of about equal size, maybe a little bigger, in St. Louis. And and MyFrame had always been built on a very virtual platform because, frankly, it could be because I started when I started in 2010, so there was no issue in starting on a very virtual platform. And then what happened from there is they were built on a very virtual platform. 1s So 1s together we wound up being, you know, maybe eleven or twelve attorneys and 1s systematically started picking up more attorneys. We’re now at about 35. Okay. Attorneys are all over the country. Conveniently, they can work from wherever. So we use co working spaces. Some people work from home, some people go into offices. 1s It just depends on which city you’re in. So I have attorneys with licenses all over the country. And their firm, when we merged with them, had a heavy venture practice and tech practice. Mine was heavy tech and ecommerce heavy m and A. They had a couple litigators. So together we really were able to form a business that was very complementary to each other. We’re a business boutique. We have a couple of guys that do succession planning, estate planning, maybe a handful of business litigators. 2s One tax person that we we picked up from in Denver. So we have four or five attorneys in Denver. Okay. So it’s really tremendous. I mean, we’re we’re pretty much able to leave our practice from where we are. My client bases all over the world, so generally, they don’t care where I sit. And 1s because it’s online. Because it’s online. Right. See, a lot of businesses are online, a lot of e commerce businesses. Frankly, the businesses I do have quite a following here in Tampa as well, because this is a tech and ecommerce city. Yeah. So it’s actually a good fit for where I am. Oh, good. 1s But it is really a good fit for 2s any business. I have clients in Bali and Tel Aviv and London and Germany, in Australia 1s because of the deals. We live in a global economy, and this is where my background in the Fortune 100 world is so valuable, because I was a customer living in a global economy. 2s Got it. So what are the types of things you work on? Like what are typical 2s transactions or cases that you work on? So typically we’re either going to be sort of an outsourced general counsel for a company where they need their everyday worked on contracts and partnership agreements and things like that. A lot of my clients, agents are going through transactions. They’re selling their businesses. They’re buying a business we could be doing at any one time. Like, I have one that’s a $50,000 transaction right now, but 1s it’s really a multi million dollar transaction. So it’s $50,000 purchase price. But the company is very underwater and my client who’s buying it is has the capacity to turn it around and make a difference. I also, you know, at the same time have transactions that are hundreds of millions of dollars going on in the firm. So the work that is really unique about what we do is understanding how to move technology, ecommerce, 1s consumer branded companies from the hands of one company to another, from an individual to another. It’s a pretty robust practice. A lot of the work is we work with venture capitals capitalists and a lot of aggregators of brands, people who do roll ups, people who are private equity, bank backed. 2s So it’s very dynamic. I mean, you’re you’re involved. Yeah, it is. Like, for instance, I had someone come in yesterday was he was on the other side of a deal five years ago, and he’s now getting ready to enter into a transaction with a different company. 1s And he said to me, I remember, even though I was on the other side, I remember working with you guys, and I’d like you to be our counsel on this next deal. Perfect. 1s That’s sort of how our world runs. It’s great. Do you get involved with litigation in any of these deals? So I try my best not to. Okay. My goal is to hand that over to one of our litigators. Okay. We do have a good litigation team. As you know, litigation can be very 1s geography based. You may need to be admitted in a certain set of courts. A lot of times, we’re dealing with Delaware, so I have a network of attorneys that I use really all over the country. I just find people who can work with us. I may be behind the scenes on the substantive claims, but somebody else will do the litigation. My world of litigation, the only thing I do is I serve as a neutral, as an arbitrator, or as a mediator. Yeah, I saw that, actually. Yeah. How did you get involved with that as a neutral? I thought it was really interesting. What I find is that most neutrals are litigators, but in my corporate litigators right. Former litigators are still litigators, but that’s their background. Okay. And in my corporate life, what I realized is I would sit in these mediations and arbitrations and realize that the person making decision didn’t have substantive business experience. They didn’t have a lot of know how about what motivates somebody to take certain action? So when you’re negotiating for a result, what I was finding is 1s they were always trying to raise it in terms of how much it was going to cost to litigate, as opposed to how much it would cost for the distraction, the reputation to the company, and the inability to move forward. And so I found that I had a different set of skills, so I started doing these mediations and arbitrations. I pretty much only work on business matters, usually very complex, usually financial matters. 2s But it it works for me, and it seems to work for the attorneys that choose to use me as their mediator. Interesting. Very interesting. So how much of your time is spent doing that versus 2s other kind of legal work? It varies. Like in 2021, I spent a lot of time on mergers and acquisitions because it was a very hot market. In 2022, I’ve spent more time with mediations and arbitrations. And I would expect 2023 to look that way too. Especially because 2s as the economy has gotten a little wonky, 1s I expect to see a lot of litigation over earnouts, rollover stock, 1s certain types of 1s compensation on transactions or unemployment. And as those kinds of cases go to court, very often, they will wind up in mediation, arbitration, and I feel like I’m pretty uniquely qualified for that. So as M and A might be a little bit more of a simmer instead of a hard oil in 2023, I will probably spend more of my time in arbitration. I also think we’re going to see a lot of M and A activity too, as valuations start to drop. Yeah, I do think that’s right. I totally agree with you. Yes. As valuations drop. Yes. But if you’re dependent on loans, then you have to make sure that you can meet those loan covenants. Right. Because if you have a 10% or 11% interest rate and you’re missing your covenants, you’re going to have a big problem with your lender. So I think that it’s going to be good in terms of bringing valuations down on deals. But I think also you’re going to need to have a plan for a strong equity 1s investment or infusion, in order to get those loans and then in order to maintain them within fixed charge covenants and debt and other leverage. It’s called restructuring. Right. I used to be a lender at one time my life. 1s Oh, yeah. I’ve been on both sides of those conversations. I mean, listen, the lender never wants to own the asset. They want to work it out and get off the books, right? Exactly. And it’s funny you say that, because part of what I was doing in those early years when I first came out of my corporate general counsel world was a lot of my work was working with bankruptcy attorneys, helping them with their stocking horse agreements, with their debtor in possession loans and their workouts because they need business attorneys to help sort of fill those those legal niches. Sure. And so I imagine there will be some of that this year, too. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s going to be a rocky road here, isn’t it? For another twelve months or so. 1s Yes and no. I think it’ll be rocky, but I think in a productive way, because I think that for a lot of businesses, if they can right size themselves, if they can fix their balance sheets, they’ll be very healthy businesses and it will help the economy and their businesses will grow. I agree with you that I think, sort of, by third quarter, there will be a pretty heavy M and a market. Yeah. Yes, exactly. I mean, you can already see it happening. All these funds are starting to form. They’re looking for distressed real estate. It happens every time. Right, yes. And in my work, I do have partners that do a lot in the real estate area. I don’t do as much in real estate, but you’re right. First you’re going to see it in real estate. It’ll take a little bit before you see it in businesses. What’s interesting is, on business valuations, we haven’t seen the rapid drop everyone was anticipating, but the valuations are slowly coming down. Oh, yeah, they’re definitely happening. I see it in in the private equity deals, the devaluations are halved or less than what they were a year ago, where they were crazy multiples. Right, well and the upfront cash is smaller and more emphasis on the IFCOM, if you will. The earn outs the seller note, and potentially we’re seeing a little bit more money, even in rollover securities. Rollover equity. Yeah, absolutely. 2s When valuations come down, people tend to invest more because there’s more upside as the market stabilizes and starts to grow again. Well, keep in mind, there’s still a lot of cash. A lot of cash is still full of cash, especially the high end investor world. So buying businesses for cash is still a very viable potential. Right. Anyway, it’s interesting. Macroeconomics is fascinating the way that things just sort of continue to the cycle of business. Right, yeah, absolutely. 1s Interesting. So tell us how you got started. Like, how did you become a lawyer? What was that path like? 3s It’s actually a really typical path. I went to Colgate University as an undergrad, and when I was graduating, I was thinking about getting an MBA, and I was thinking about some different things. And my father looked at me and said, you should just go to law school because you can do anything you want with a law degree. And 2s I really struggled with that decision because I didn’t envision myself as a lawyer. But right out of Colgate, I went to Case for law school 1s in Cleveland, which is where I was from. Is that why you chose that? Because it was in Cleveland. It was just one I applied to a lot of different schools, actually. They gave me a lot of scholarship money. Okay. Very helpful. And my parents really wanted me to come home. Unfortunately, about three weeks into law school, my father dropped dead. So it was a very stressful time in our family. Okay. 2s And it was fortunate that I really was there as part of my family, but I had other options. It was just that this made the most sense for me and where I was with a family situation at that time. Sure. And it’s a great law school. It was top 30 law school when I went there, so you can’t knock it. It’s highly rated. I think it’s still in the top, I don’t know, 40 or 50. It’s dropped a little bit. But it’s a great law school. And wound up going to a good sized law firm in Cleveland. Cleveland has always been a big law city. Worked in the business department, a firm called Omer Burn in Cleveland. And about five years into it, wound up taking an offer from Sherwin Williams to become in the house counsel, working in their corporate group. And I did that for a couple of years, and then there was an opportunity for me to go into one of the divisions, and I wound up going in as head of marketing, communications. 2s For the Consumer Brands division and then wound up being head of Licensed Brands, which was Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart 1s and a couple of other licensed brands that we worked with at that time and did ran a division. So I actually had the opportunity to run a PNL and run and help grow a business 2s at one point. So you you were not functioning as a lawyer at that point then, right? That’s right. I was actually for about five years. Okay. I really was not functioning as a lawyer. I was I was clearly running businesses and running a PNL and and it was it, you know, it was great. It was really educational. I learned a lot about business and how business operates, and it made me, frankly, a lot smarter as a business lawyer because I had much better understanding of not just how transactions work, but how the business itself runs, how to read a PNL as a business leader. So I did that for a number of years. I wound up leaving there in 1998. I think 1s this is the I’m an old lawyer 1s and I went to a company called Ogilvy Norton. I went in there 1s as a business person and corporate secretary, and about a year, a little less than a year later was made their general counsel as well. Really didn’t go in as a lawyer, but again, wound up being a lawyer for them and in their C suite. That’s a company that had a difficult balance sheet. 150 year old company, mining and minerals, asbestos and silica liabilities, 2s and it just was over levered. And so we wound up having to restructure it. We tried to do it outside of bankruptcy, ultimately had a file of bankruptcy. So I worked heavily in the restructuring of that company and sort of watched as different chairmans of the board and different CEOs came through the company. Ultimately, I wound up leaving in 2007 and came to Tampa 1s as the general counsel to another company that had been in three bankruptcies in ten years. And. 2s It is a company called Anchor Glass Container Corporation. 1s There were someone on our board at Ogle Bay who was the chair of our audit committee, then was becoming chair of Anchor. Again, you mentioned distressed debt funds. So these were all hedge funds and distressed the debt funds that owned Ogle Bay and then owned Anchor. And so they were they were businesses and people that I understood how you know, I I knew some of them, and I understood how to work with them. And I was told it would be an 18 month job. Just my job was get in there, get it cleaned up, get it restructured and move on. So I was there for about three and a half years. My husband and I decided we really like Tampa, and that’s when I started my own firm. Oh, nice. 2010. 1s So it’s interesting. So, I mean, I know you said in the beginning that you thought about getting an MBA where you kind of were able to blend law and business together, weren’t you? I was, and I had I was in a JD MBA program. I wound up not finishing the MBA because of I mentioned certain things happening within my family. But I think I got the practical MBA from actually doing the work. Absolutely. That’s really interesting. I mean, that’s a different path than many of the people I’ve talked to, 2s especially because I was someone who didn’t start off thinking I’d be a lawyer. Right, so the world was pulling you in that direction. Exactly. 1s That’s really interesting. Yeah. 2s When I was at Anchor, I was the chief administrative officer and general counsel. So I have always balanced, really since 1s probably my Sherwin Williams days. I’ve always had a mix of business responsibilities and legal. And I think what it did for me when I decided to start my own practice, it enabled me to launch that practice faster. And it also enabled me to really focus on what I wanted to do, which was be a good business person who happens to also be a good lawyer instead of being a lawyer who knows a little bit about business. And it’s worked really well for me. I think that my clients appreciate the fact that I can talk to them about business. 2s Absolutely. I mean, listen, I remember having a big white shoe law firm as my lawyer in Boston, Goodwin Proctor. And the senior attorney said to me, 1s again, I was much right. And the senior attorney said, 1s in law, because I used to say, we’re doing these same deals over and over, you think you’d come up with one that would work from the beginning. He said, People want to negotiate contracts. And he said, if you want to be a good lawyer, a good business lawyer, you have to be able to measure risk and know when to sort of invest your time in something or let it go. He had a very business minded approach. He said, Those are the best lawyers. So I agree with you 100%. What’s also interesting about that comment, and I think Goodwill Crafter is a great firm from the point of view of they do work with a lot of entrepreneurs, even though they’re a white shoe law firm, as you said, but they work with entrepreneurs, which not a lot of white shoe law firms really successfully do. That what’s really interesting is sometimes you say no one to fish and cut bait when you’re the general counsel or the chief administrative officer. It was actually my decision as to when to cut bait. But as an outside lawyer, my job is to advise the client and to help the client make those decisions. But ultimately, it’s the client’s decision, right? So what’s really important is that I give them comprehensive information. 1s But what’s interesting about that is not all clients understand legal terms. Some do. 1s Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your client just because you’re a lawyer. People make that mistake. My clients are smart. That doesn’t mean they know legal terms. But I do have to spend the time to explain to them the ins, the outs, the benefits, the risks, and then let them decide, because they will always make the decision that’s best for them. And if they make a bad decision and they own it, and if they’ve made a good decision, they own it, it’s not us outside lawyers that get to make those decisions. 1s Yeah, it’s interesting, even with investors, people that do venture capital and private equity, it’s the same conflict, right, between not having, like, operator experience. You’re making investment decisions, but you don’t have any experience like being an operator. It’s the same thing with being a lawyer. Right. If you have business experience, you’re a better lawyer. If you have operational experience, you’re a better investor, right? For sure. There’s no question about it. And we used to joke around in my corporate days about bow tie MBAs that were 26 years old, and they just thought they knew it all because they had studied the case. There was a case like that in their economics class, so they studied this case. They know the answer, but what they don’t know is the variability of people. Yeah. I remember one of the senior executives that I worked for, the bank of Nova Scotia, used to say he was a really interesting guy. He was a real sort of contrarian kind of guy, and funny, no filter. And he said he used to make fun of the MBAs, right. I was one of those guys back in the day. He said, If I can’t do it on the back of an envelope, it’s too complicated. 1s There’s some truth to that. 1s For me, I had a mathematical economic background, so for me, the math was never the problem. It’s the variability of the personalities. And I tell clients this all the time when they say, how much is it going to cost for me to do for legal fees for this transaction? 2s I can tell you within 2000 or $3,000 what your legal bill will be if you tell me who the lawyer is on the other side. And I know them, right? Or at least know their personality. Because a lot of times what drives the legal bills and what drives any deal, any negotiation, is the personality of what’s on the other side. Oh, sure. Absolutely. 4s It’s true for everything we do. So modeling how successful a deal will be, 2s give me an idea of what kinds of personalities are going to be coming up with the ideas, where’s your CFO, who’s going to create the business model, and how it’s and how risk adverse is your CFO compared to how risk adverse is your marketing or product planning person. Right. Yeah, that’s what makes business interesting. I mean, there’s so many variables and it’s all based on your assumptions. 3s It’s fluid, right? It’s very fluid, absolutely. But it’s also a lot of fun. It’s fun, yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I find it really interesting. I was an engineering student, so everything was sort of black and white. And business is much more interesting because it’s dynamic and changes all the time and you’ve got to sort of continue to evolve and pivot. Right, it’s true. And it’s interesting. Almost every CEO I’ve ever worked for in my corporate life and engineering degree. Oh, is that right? And so I actually think engineering degrees make great business people because you could be the engineer who only wants to put the widgets together, or you could be the engineer who wants to think of that new idea. Right, yeah. I mean, it takes all types. I mean, I’ve seen so many different types. But engineering is definitely a good discipline, as is law, as 1s many things to give you sort of structured critical thinking. But for sure, there’s so many different types. But let me ask you a question, so just to sort of round this discussion is very different than 1s typical conversations that go into work for a law firm. What would be your advice if someone is thinking about law, like to go the business general counsel road or work for a litigation firm or a big Am Law 100? What would you tell somebody starting out? I think it’s back to personality. What do you want and what are your expectations? I did work for a big law firm, and then I went in house and worked in a big legal department where we were doing huge transactions, and then I ran a business. I think zigzag in your career, getting flavor of a variety of things is actually helpful. The one background I never had was litigation. And what’s interesting about that is there was a point when I was a general counsel where I wish I knew a little bit more about litigation, and I had to get myself educated. I had to sit through a lot of both bankruptcy court hearings as well as cases relating to the silica and asbestos claims and things like that to really understand what was going on in litigation. So a well rounded lawyer early on is helpful, but what drives you is what is going to be best for you? I love business. I love the puzzle of business. 2s I would not be a very driven litigator because I don’t really love the argument and it just doesn’t turn me on. But for some people, I have partners who are phenomenal litigators. And if debate is your thing and if you like to look for the technicality and the opportunities to find to look in the rearview review mirror and find out what went wrong, litigation is a great place for you if you’re someone more creative. When you do the work I do, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re putting something together. We’re creating something that will take place in the future. When you’re doing mergers and acquisitions, when you’re building a brand, when you’re building a business, 1s 2020, hindsight is really the history that says, oh, well, wait a minute. In the past, these things didn’t work well, litigators are always rear view mirror what happened in the past, what facts already occurred? What can we learn? Maybe they don’t have all the facts they need to find them. 1s They’re always in that world where they get to look at the case law, maybe get the opportunity to make new case law if they think something went wrong in the case law. But it’s is a different approach to creating a new legal outcome. 3s So litigation is backwards looking. And the type of law, that business law, you’re looking forward your 1s future. I never know when I’m drafting language. I really don’t know how a court will see it in the future, how they’ll need it in the future, 2s and a litigator is going, look at that language. If I took a contract that I write and give it to a litigator, they’re going to look at it and say, well, let me go do research on all the cases and all of the law from before on how they would interpret these provisions. What they don’t know is which provision is going to be tripped. They don’t know where the fight is going to be. You know, 99% of what I do never gets into a courtroom. 3s I can’t even think of a time where my language was challenged because most everything gets settled and resolved, even if there is a dispute. And 1s most of my deals never go to litigation. Right. Well, most things never go to litigation, period. Or I should say a jury trial. Most things never go to trial, or I think it’s settled, right? I think that’s right, yeah. So it is a different discipline, but both are important, 2s and I think a lot of it’s your personality is what do you see yourself doing? Do you see yourself dressed up in a courtroom and arguing the case, or arguing with another lawyer over how something should be treated? Or do you see yourself negotiating again, maybe arguing with another lawyer, but negotiating for language in a document to get a deal done, it really just depends. In some ways, they’re similar, but it just depends on what your particular passion might be. 2s Yeah. The question is, how do you figure that out? Right. 2s I think you go do as well as you possibly can. In law school, the top 10% of the class always gets jobs, whether it big firms or small firms. Go to a law firm. That gives you the opportunity to see a lot of different things. Work hard. There’s isn’t a nine to five job. Work hard. Be prepared to work all night. Be prepared to work on weekends. Learn as much as you can. And then if you think you want to be an in house lawyer, you would be at least attractive to a corporation. Very few companies hire people right out of law school. They look for people with a little bit of experience. If you decide you really want to be a litigator or you really want to be a business attorney, that’s something that you can determine in the first couple of years if big firm life isn’t for you or for the small firm you’re at, 1s it’s a very fluid society. People change jobs all the time. Yeah. At a firm like ours, we look for people who are hungry, who want to work hard. We will hire people right out of law school. We hire a lot of people who have left big firms and come with either a book of business or no book of business, but a lot of talent. And we pay differently. 1s We are an eat what you kill firm. So we don’t give people a salary. Instead, they get a percentage of the hours that they have billed and collected. They get a percentage for whatever new business they bring in. Even if they’re not the attorney to do the work overall, they’ll make more money. With a firm like ours, if they want to work hard and if they want to originate business and if they want to roll up their sleeves and dig into the world of law. 1s But they have to be little kind of many entrepreneurs of their own. Yeah. If you’re looking for a nine to five job. 3s I don’t know if there’s such a thing for lawyers. Yeah, that’s true. Well, I was going to ask you, what do you want to leave with the audience about your firm? And I think you just did. Okay. Any other final thoughts? And the best way to connect with you is to learn more. 2s In terms of final thoughts. Thank you, Jonathan, for doing this. I really appreciate it, and I hope that people will have the kind of takeaway that being a lawyer might not be easy, but it can be a lot of fun. And it is a good career if you have the heart for it, if it’s something that you imagine yourself doing. 1s And then in terms of how to reach me, it’s pretty easy. It’s Aegis Law, and our website is aegislaw.com, and you can reach me at 813-99-0199. That’s our main number. I’m extension 104. 1s Also, my paralegal is her name is Layla, and she’s an extension one one one. Always good to reach out to her. She pretty much runs my day and been with me a long time, so always good if you want to reach out to me through her. Excellent. Good. Well, listen, I appreciate it. Again, it was nice hearing more of a business attorney talk about the life of being a general counsel and running your own business, which, again, that’s a first on the show. So that was interesting. Well, I hope that we get to talk again. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. I’d be happy to help, and I know it’s year end, so wishing you a happy holiday and happy New Year. Same to you. I appreciate it. So again for everybody. Rochelle walk at Aegis Law. And this is sponsored by Emotion Track, which is a legal tech platform, and we help Litigators prepare for cases of mediation with our Insights platform. So thanks again, Rochelle. Really enjoyed the conversation. 1s Thank you. Okay.