Episode 4
Mitch Jackson - The Streaming Lawyer
Mitch Jackson is one of the most well-known active trial lawyers on social media. He’s been profiled in best-selling marketing books and dozens of publications and platforms including INC., Mashable, and The Wall Street Journal. Not only that, he’s blazing a trail for other content creators on the hot new app Clubhouse and shares his 7 top strategies to CRUSH IT on Clubhouse! The court is now in session!
This Full video episode available for free at: https://rebrand.ly/MitchDeal
All of the products discussed in this podcast can be found here: https://rebrand.ly/MitchList
All video episodes available for free at: https://dealcasters.live
Follow Dealcasters:
Full Episode Transcript:
Social Media Expert Mitch Jackson: The Streaming Lawyer
Are you still trying to figure out how to use Social Media to drive more business? On this episode of Dealcasters we talk to theSocial Media. Mitch is one of the most well-known active trial lawyers on social media. He’s been profiled in best-selling marketing books and dozens of publications and platforms including INC., Mashable, and The Wall Street Journal. Not only that, he’s blazing a trail for other content creators on the hot new app Clubhouse and shares his strategies with you! The court is now in session!
So let's bring Mitch on Mitch Jackson, the streaming you guys are awesome. Jim and Chris, thanks for having me on. It's good to be on the show guys. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. And Mitch what got you into social media to begin with? You've got to spend a lot of hours prepping for your clients, spending time in court.
As my wife being a court reporter, she knows what you guys go through as lawyers. How do you do it? I do it to keep my sanity. I do it because I became a lawyer, Jim, to help people. I met my wife in law school and Lisa and I practice together. We have for the last 33, 34 years. Okay.
Although she was with a big defense firm for about the first four years of her practice. Then we got married. And when we came back from our honeymoon, she came in with me and the rest is history. That was back in 1988. And I always wanted to help people. I wanted to take on the wrongdoers one to take on the bullies in the world.
That's why I decided to become a lawyer. First-generation lawyer didn't know what I was getting myself into, but what I quickly realized is it's about helping people and the reason I've embraced social and digital and the internet is back in the day. Jim and Chris, we used to meet one-on-one. The clients used to have to get in their car and drive down to the office, come in, meet with us, and we'd be able to answer their legal questions.
And what I realized quickly, especially in 1996, when we put up our first website was I was able to communicate, not just one to one, but one to a hundred, one to 1,001 to 10,000. And so it allowed me to help more consumers and provide more information. Social media has 10 X that right. What you guys are doing right now, what we're not just talking to each other in an office building.
We're talking to people right now, across all the different time zones around the world. And this is where the power is. It's in not just information, but in knowing how to use the information. And so one of the things I'm excited about today is sharing. At least what's working for us. And some of the tools and devices that we're using to embrace the power of the internet to use and enjoy and benefit from live video shows like this and create the community and the audience that the three of us.
You guys. Okay. Thank you very much for the kind words, but you guys are also killing it online video, and I've been watching what you're doing and we're all building communities, not just across the street, but from the other side of the world. So that's the short answer. Believe it or not. You ask a lawyer question.
I could take hours answering it. That's the short answer. And so it's good to be here and I'm excited to talk about some of the things we're going to be talking about today. I love how you have completely, not only leaned in, but have gone all in, on social media. And so what what I noticed, and of course we touched on it.
We touched on clubhouse earlier, but Mitch Jackson just doesn't lean in. You've taken advantage of this, first in a co let's call it a social media thing for now, we know it's a number of things, but you leaned in big time, but I noticed how effectively you're utilizing it.
Yeah. For clubhouse for you as a lawyer what are you noticing is the most effective way to utilize it? To make new contacts to build new relationships, to touch base with leaders of industry, whether they're CEOs of major companies, entertainment, icons, venture, capitalist some of the top marketing and branding experts in the world are on clubhouse right now.
Silicon Valley business owners. Investors are on clubhouse right now. So what I'm doing is instead of spending time in the lawyer rooms, instead of spending time in the traditional marketing rooms, which I enjoy because times, it's a limited asset for all of us. It's probably one of our most important assets when I'm doing with purpose.
And with intent is I'm actually finding rooms. Being managed and run by people who I want to get to know better. And I'm joining the rooms. I'm raising my hand for those of you that haven't been on clubhouse, you tap a button, you raise your digital hand and you're invited up onto the stage. And you can have conversations with people that you may have not ever had a chance to meet before.
Chris, one of my, one of the things is I love meeting new people and from those new relationships become new business opportunities. Come new business to the law firm, but let me just take us back real quick to when I started just 60 seconds or less. And I started practicing in 1986, didn't know anybody in orange County.
First year lawyer started my practice out of the back of my car realized that. It was going to be tough to compete against some of the more well-established law firms here in orange County, California. Some of the best lawyers in the country are here in orange County, California. A lot of the cases you guys hear about on TV it's orange County firms.
And so I'm starting to build my practice out. I only had a couple of files. I kept them in the back of my car and playing basketball down at main beach every single day. But I was networking and I was starting to meet people that needed legal help, right? Criminal defense clients small business owners trying to start up a new tennis shoe line, whatever it might be.
And so I started in built my business the old way and the hard way, one person at a time spending money on advertising, we were spending thousands and thousands of dollars a month on traditional marketing advertising, keeping our law library, up to date. And when the internet rolled around when social media rolled around, the reason I'm so motivated Chris is because I realized I can do everything I used to do times 10 more effectively and communicate with more people almost for free.
And so I've never been accused of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. But when that happened, I'm like, okay, I need to just dive in head first and just, embrace this technology. Maybe push the comfort envelope a little bit because lawyers weren't using live video. They weren't using social media.
And then I jumped on a platform and we're going to talk about some of these platforms, but I jumped on a platform. It was started by a gentleman named Jeff Flor. He's the co-founder of StubHub before he sold it. And then Jeff started a company called spree cast. It was one of the, it was the first live video platform before Blab, before a lot of other platforms.
And they actually reached out to me and they wanted a lawyer on the platform. And I said, that sounds exciting. And within a month I found myself on shows with Anderson Cooper, Katie Kirk, Peter Diamandis Gabby stern in the wall street journal. People I would not have ever met had I not given myself permission to dip my toe into this live streaming sandbox.
And like I said, once that happened, I'm like, okay, there's power to what's happening right now in the world. Which has led me full circle to new friends like you and Jim. And so that's the motivation. That's the why behind why I'm all in on social. When a new platform like clubhouse comes out.
I don't know if it's going to be hot. Six months from now or 12 months from now. But right now it's the hot platform. And so I'm all in, and I'm making an intentional effort to maximize my time, to maximize my effectiveness on that platform to make new connections, to continue building my personal brand.
And I got to tell you guys something and you already know this. It's a powerful platform. It's been working out very well. What I loved about what you said initially, and then you talked about why you got into. The business that you're in is that you want it to help people. And I think a lot of people, whether they're in sales or whether they're in law or whether, whatever business and they have customers, clients, they don't think.
About their customers or their client's problems and how they can solve them. But I loved how you your mindset is about how can I help people. I really like to do this. I, I'm passionate about helping people. What are some, maybe some experiences that you have you've had over the years, whether it's streaming or not streaming that you as a lawyer where you were able to help someone that they had a problem and you in your profession, you were able to help them through that.
Sure. It's I think in today's business world, if you don't have this mindset, I don't care what you do for a living, whatever your product or services. If you're not working very hard right now to create an exemplary client experience. A unique, entertaining, memorable, easy tap, swipe, click type of experience that hopefully they can, they can enjoy on their phone.
I think your positioning yourself, to eventually go out of business. So part of my motivation is to try to stay ahead of the curve to try to be unique and make it as easy and simple for my clients. The major part of my motivation and leases is to help people. And I would say out of the thousands of cases that we've handled over the last 34 years, many of them going to trial.
Every single one, Chris not to, avoid answering the question directly, every single one in its own unique way, whether it's a small case or a big case has been a rewarding experience. It's why I'm still excited today to get up in the morning and practice law. I think we're doing it the right way.
If you most lawyers after 10, 15 years, they're ready. They're ready to do something else. Think about this, every case we have, someone's got a major life changing challenge that they're dealing with and we have to step in and help them. There's a lot of stress in the room. There's a lot of stress down at the courthouse.
And so unless you've got the right mindset to, to deal with these challenges and approach these cases in a certain way, it can be overwhelming and it can take it out of you. I've got a lot of friends of mine that, after about 10 years, they were done. They couldn't do it anymore. It's like being a heavyweight fighter.
You've got to have the right mentality and you're not getting punched physically, but you gotta have the right mentality. So what we're doing is we focus on combining what we're doing in the courtroom with serving our community through our rotary clubs and other organizations. For me, getting outside and back in the day, 38, 39 years of riding motocross.
A lot of times while I was practicing law with other lawyers, a couple of local judges balancing that with paddle boarding and running and doing some other things is like this Buller. Throughout the course of the day, that keeps me from going cross-eyed or drooling over my pleadings answering discovery responses.
You pepper that with the right trials and the right juries and it gets exciting. I think one of, one of the the two most memorable cases just that come to mind right now, just because there's something attached to each one, just super quick was I had a case for about five years where. It was a wrongful death case.
I'm not going to go into the details, but Johnny Cochran's office because of a conflict of interest, wasn't able to help the family. They were referred to my firm. We took the case, litigated it for five years. We had a settlement offer of $1 and a wrongful death case that went up to I think, 10 or $15,000 before trial.
We tried the case and the jury came back with a 5.5. Or six, $5.5 million verdict which resulted in my firm being acknowledged in me being named a 2009 orange County trial lawyer of the year, that was a really big deal because nobody thought we could win that case. 2013. We had another case where we helped create some new law in the state of California.
I had a chance to. Receive an award by the chief justice of the California Supreme court. Along with a couple of other lawyers, I was one of California's 2013 litigation lawyers of the year. So for a guy growing up on a ranch in Tucson who didn't know anybody, when he moved to California to look back on my career and have those two little feathers in my cap, it feels pretty good.
And now the best part is our daughter. Is in her second year of practicing law at Sheppard Mullin up in century city, which is in Los Angeles. And when we asked AGA why do you want to be a lawyer? Because it wasn't something we were pushing. She said I've watched you and mom help a lot of people over the years.
And I want to help people too. Okay. When you combine all of that, as a dad, everything I've done, I don't care about that. Just I'm like, okay. So cool. So that's another long answer to a short question. Sorry, Chris, but that's one. No. Don't apologize for that, man. We're all dads here, man.
That's a, that's amazing. It's all about family, right? Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. So Mitch what drove you to create a book about social media? You would have maybe thought the first book would have been like social media for lawyers, somebody already written social media for dummies, right?
Yeah. I believe me. I've got that one. I tried Jim, I, you know what, I, wasn't smart enough to write the book on my own. Let me show you if there are a couple of different versions. This is one version. Okay. I think the most recent one has me in a suit on the cover, but Jim, as you well know, my secret to this book was I reached out to 44 top experts from around the country.
Who contributed chapters to the book, which was the best thing I ever did. I tried to write the book on my own and my cases and my trials just gotten away. And then once I reached out to some friends of mine who were all very kind and contributed chapters the book started to come together.
And the reason I did it to him was because I had a lot of friends of mine asking, how do you do this? How do you live stream? What platforms are you live streaming on? How do you use Instagram? What's Twitter. How do you tweet? And so I was answering the same questions over and over.
So I decided, you know what I'm going to do. We'll just sit down for about six months, put this together, and now I've got something that I can literally just hand someone or I can steer them to where. Amazon right. It's available. It has a book, audible and Kindle versions, and they can literally get as of today.
This book's two years old, but it's more relevant today than it was two years ago. Why? Because people are understanding now because of COVID-19 because of social distancing, because of working from home because of the importance of housing, having a brand. And having a cloud-based business, this stuff right here is more important than it's ever been.
And so that, that's why I put it together. It's and if you notice, the title to the book, it's the ultimate guide to social media, for business owners, professionals, and entrepreneurs. I didn't even mention lawyers. And I did that on purpose because what I wanted to do is empower other business owners.
Other professionals, whether you're an accountant, a doctor, a lawyer a CPA. I wanted them to understand that it's okay to build out a brand on social it's okay. To help more than one person at a time by sharing your secret sauce. And by having that Bob Burg co-author of the Go-Giver having that Bob Burg mentality of just being a giver, give, and then give some more.
Before you ever asked for anything. And one of the contributing authors to my book was Mark Schaefer. Mark Schaefer shared a chapter about being known. He wrote a book called known, which was outstanding. I read it on my way back from Amsterdam on a family trip. And Mark shared a chapter just for the book.
Really consolidating many of the things in the book known just for social media and for this book, but Mark's got a new book out. And I think before we went live, we're going to talk about that yet. This new book is called cumulative advantage. How to build momentum for your ideas business.
And life against all odds. And I know he's super excited about this book. I think he thinks it's probably one of his best. I can't wait to get it, but for example, what's fun is when somebody reaches out to me to purchase my book on Amazon, I'm going to direct them. Over to Mark's books, over to Bob Burg's books, over to David Mirman Scott's books over to Jay Baer's books, because I know lawyers and other professionals that tap into this information that has nothing to do with our industries, nothing to do with what we do, but it has everything to do with connecting with people.
It has everything to do with closing that deal. Winning that case. I know it's going to enrich their lives. And so I love sharing this stuff with everyone else. And I think the unintended benefit of this is that it's also allowed me to meet some really cool people from all over the world and form new relationships.
There's a wonderful. So I don't know if she's a barrister....
