 I've always believed that deep inside each and every one of us we have a passion, a yearning, a destiny that we belong on. Today on Create a Life You Love is my good friend and attorney, Randy Reinhardt, who's going to discuss how he created a life he loves using law. Hi, Randy. It's an honor to have you here today. Thanks for having me, Tony. It's a pleasure to be here. Oh, the pleasure's on mine. So Randy, the first question I want to ask is, how old were you when you knew you wanted to make law in some way your career? I was a little kid, six, seven, eight years old, maybe. Didn't know a lawyer. I'm from a working class family. My father was a carpenter. My mother was a housewife with five kids. I must have seen something on television or the media somewhere where I saw someone arguing on someone's behalf. And I kind of liked that. I tended to like to argue. You could ask my parents. They would confirm that. But as soon as you tell your working class parents that you're interested in being a lawyer, they're all in. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college. So my parents were all in when I said I want to be a lawyer. So you get that kind of support from the time you first voiced that interest until you finished law school. They're to support you because they think it's a worthy thing to do, even though they knew less about it than I did probably. Right. Excellent. So then you knew from six on. And that's amazing because a lot of people learn later on in life, but you were able to know that early and carry that passion and knowing throughout. Well, it's funny because a lot of people who think they want to be lawyers go to law school and discover they don't really want to be lawyers. And I didn't know that I would end up doing exactly what I like to do in the law because I'm a trial lawyer. Only 5% of the lawyers out there actually go to court and try cases. And of course, as a kid, I thought that's what lawyers did. I knew nothing about contracts and corporations and real estate and financial stuff. I just thought, oh yeah, all lawyers go to court. So I was fortunate in that I had a vision of what I would like to do. And it turns out to have been what I like doing and still like doing all this time later. Amazing. That's wonderful. Now, I have a series of questions here that some of them have been emailed in by people. I said, Randy Reinhardt is going to be my guest. And please send me questions, things you would like to know about law. And so these are the questions that we came up with. So I'm just going to ask a couple of them of you today. I know some things about law, so I'll be ready. Excellent. So the first thing, where did you go to school? Went to undergrad at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Then I got drafted, went to the Army, went to Vietnam, came back, actually applied for law school from Vietnam and had to come back and retake the law school admissions test because it was old at that point. And the director of admissions at UW, Madison, met with me and said, well, your score was phenomenal, but it might be a fluke. Did you take it again? I said, sure. I took it again and did better. And before they ever got a transcript, I got a letter from him saying, you're in, come on. Get in here. So I went to University of Wisconsin for law school. Great school. Excellent. Excellent. And then did you end up working at a firm or with a group of other lawyers in the beginning? I did. I spent the first two years of law school doing something more sensible. I was tending bar at places in and around Madison. And then a friend of mine was a new lawyer in a firm in Milwaukee, the Warshawski firm, and said, you should hire Randy as a clerk. So I went in and met with the senior partner. He hired me on the spot for no discernible reason. I wish I still had the outfit that I wore for the interview. There's no reason he should have hired me. But he did hire me. So I clerked there for the last year of law school, driving back and forth from Madison. And as a clerk, what you're supposed to be doing is research and helping any of the partners who need help. And it turns out that the day after I was hired, the senior partner took in what was then the largest criminal case in Wisconsin history. And I worked on that for then on. The then county board chairman got indicted on eight felony counts. And so rather than work on the book that he was writing on evidence, which I was really hired to do, he said, you're going to work on this. And so I spent the next couple of years working on that case. Now that's not the area of law that you work in. Not remotely. When you got into law, when you decided you wanted to do law, at what point did you say, this is the type of law I want to do? Was there something or some case that led you that way? There was actually, I took the course in law school called torts. Torts are civil wrongs. That's what I do as I work in the area of torts. That ice cream just torts, civil wrongs. And that looked to me to be fun and interesting. And I found it particularly interesting because I came of age in the 60s and 70s. And when you do what I do, you get to take on the big companies, the big corporations, the big insurance companies. You get to help the little guy. And that was a big deal for me. And I thought this was an opportunity to work in that area. And then when I got hired by a firm that did all of that in addition to that one large criminal case, because my firm was very political. So we took it on. But when I got into this firm at the time, that's all that they did. And so it was an opportunity to help people. It's also intellectually challenging. And it's fun because it can be very rewarding in terms of making a difference in people's lives. And I enjoyed that. And I've been doing that ever since. Now, some of the cases that you take on, it's almost like you also have a medical degree. Well, I did a lot for 20 years. I tried medical malpractice cases all over the state. And if you're going to cross-examine doctors, you better learn the medicine. So I would read extensively, talk to physicians, and acquaint myself with the medicine. There have been times, it's always paid off. But there was a time when we had an expert witness, one of the cases I'll talk about later, a six-year-old girl who was blinded at birth because they gave her too much oxygen. We said, the defense, it doesn't happen that way. I went out to meet with probably the country's foremost pediatric ophthalmologist. And I had taken apart an article, a medical article in Pediatrics, which would say we had no case. And I took it apart. I sat down with him, went over, there were 163 references. I still remember this in that article, and tore the thing apart as being the fraud that it was. It was designed to insulate doctors from liability. When I got done with it, he said, I'll testify for you. I believe you have the facts right, the medicine is right, I'll testify. At his deposition, when we conclude his deposition, he'd never had a deposition taken. Deposition is testimony under oath. The other lawyers get to ask him questions. So three of the lawyers are there. I'm there with him. When they conclude the deposition, he tells them, you better settle this case. He knows more about this medicine than my residents do. And he's right on the medicine, and we've come to Wisconsin to testify to it. So he was instrumental in that, but it was gratifying to hear that. But I knew that it was a necessary part of putting together a case as learning the medicine. I did a lot of delay in diagnosis of cancer cases, so I had to learn all of the medicine of cancer. And I'm not a doctor, but I can cross-examine them in the right case because I get to focus on a very narrow area of medicine and become conversant with it. And so it is useful, and a lot of people ask after a deposition, did you go to medical school? No, but I read a lot when I have to. And I think if somebody's looking for an attorney, it's really important to know that your attorney knows as much, if not more, than who they're going against. I think that's essential, and I think that many of the clients that I had came to me because other lawyers would tell them he knows this area of medicine, he knows this area of law. This is who you want to be as your lawyer, and so I had the good fortune of developing a reputation over time for trying these cases effectively and being knowledgeable on the medical side of it. My friends, it's kind of funny, my friends still call me when they're going to see a physician and say, do you know this person? Because if I do, it might be bad. They'll also call me to get referrals. Do you have somebody who you really trust? When they have a medical issue, before calling the doctor, they'll call me and say, what do you think of this? And I say, no doctor, here's what I think, here's who you should call. So it is an education that keeps paying dividends for me and for my friends. Absolutely, absolutely. Now I know it's your motto, I've known you for a bit of time now, and your goal is always to make the person that you're representing as whole again as possible. That is true, and that should be the goal of every person on your lawyer. It's not, if you watch television, you will see that the goal seems to be making as much money for the firm as possible. The goal really ought to be doing the right job for the person and getting them back to nearly as whole as they can be. Obviously money is a poor substitute for their health and I have a regular conversation with my clients the first time they come in, for instance auto cases. I explain to them that we'll probably get their case settled. But what I would like is for them to get healed quickly because this is only about money. The more quickly they heal, the less their case will be worth, but that's not so important to me. This is what I mean, I tell them, this is your life, this is what you do. Get better, I'll take care of the legal side of it, and that's what I do. Right, exactly, and that is, that's so important that people know that. I know there are cases out there where attorneys would rather have you string it out for a very long time just so it seems like it'll be a bigger payday in the end, but it actually just ends up being a bigger payday for the doctors and the attorney. There are a lot of abuses, I think the largest one is people settling cases too cheaply because they need to generate the funds for their firm, for their advertising, and instead of properly evaluating it and taking the case as far as they should, and the clients never know, the clients get taken advantage of. This is supposed to be a client-based business, not a law firm opportunity, and unfortunately I see cases settled every day for half or 60% of their value, and I have conversations with the gestures who will tell me that, they'll call me and make me an offer, and I can say, what are you, where do you come up with this number? So we settle those every day, and then I name the law firms that I know settle them at that rate, and they say, oh yeah, with those guys all the time. It is not the way you should be doing it, I mean I have a young associate who is four years out of school, he's already figured out that the client is going to come first, that what matters to us is the clients, that's where it starts and that's where it ends. So when you're working with a client and a client comes in and says, this is what's going on, I know personally how you advise them, I know what you say to people, but for those who maybe haven't been involved with an accident or haven't been involved with a magician, or... One of my favorite cases, by the way. Or haven't been involved with something, tell us, you know, tell us, what is that welcoming, if you will, opening speech that you give someone or that talk that you have with them when they come in? Well I tell them what I do, I tell them how I evaluate cases, I tell them what elements of damage, what things they can recover for, I start with that, and tell them I can't evaluate your case today unless you're done with your doctor, because I don't know if you're going to have future medical expenses. I will get you more money than anybody else, there are lawyers with my credentials throughout the state, but not many, nobody gets more money than I do, there are some that I would trust with my cases to get the same amount of money, but I tell them that, then I tell them that they can call me anytime, my cell phone is on from 7 in the morning until 10 at night, and clients can call me anytime because they'll forget some of the advice, I tell them about the process, what it will take, what my job is, and I explain that at the end of the day we get to where they're down to, they no longer have doctor appointments, they've healed, or they're not going to heal, I tell them that I'm going to make recommendations when we start talking about money, they're going to make decisions, and I'll give them the basis for my recommendations, the settlement offer comes in, and I suggest the client reject it, I'll give them the reasons for that, I'll tell them what I think is likely to happen at trial, because that's ultimately where you go if things don't settle, and I tell them they get to make the decisions, I figure out net dollars for them, because that's all my clients care about, and then they get to make the decisions, I make the recommendations, if I think they should take it, I recommend they take it, and they get to make that decision, and sometimes, but rarely, clients disagree with me, and I don't ask them the basis for their disagreement, and usually it's some sort of personality problem that they have, and I've only had to let two clients go over 44 years, because we had a difference of opinion on the value of their cases, this poor woman would not understand, I went over jury instructions with her, I explained what I thought could happen, and when we reached the varying conclusions about what her case was worth, I said, look, I get you a verdict that I think is terrific, you're going to be bitterly disappointed, I don't like disappointed clients, so find yourself another lawyer, find someone who agrees with you, someone who will voice your concerns in court, and ask for the money you think is appropriate, because obviously you don't think I'm doing the right thing, so she did, and she got zero, she had another lawyer, and it was a small case, and I told, we had offers that she should have accepted, but she ended up having the case tried, and even though she was a passenger, she ended up getting zero, but it's unusual, clients don't take my recommendations, and sometimes they don't take them, sometimes they make me settle a case, because they need the money, and that's okay, it's their case, I'm just their lawyer, and when they ask me what they should do about things along the way, should I stay off work, should I do this, I explain that, I will tell them, I won't tell them what to do, I will tell them the legal consequences of what they do, they can make the decision, I won't make medical judgments for them, that's their doctor's job, they'll call me about their doctor's ideas, and I'll discuss that, so I spent a long time, first time with clients, laying out what's going to happen, what's important, and of course they stay in touch, there are times when they won't hear from me for months, because they haven't completed treatment, and they'll call and say, how is my case going, it's going just fine, how are you doing, are you done treating, no not yet, I said well until I see the medical records, I can't evaluate your case, but don't worry, the file didn't fall behind my credenza, I'm still on top of it, we'll take care of you, call me when you're done, and we proceed from there, and one of the things I tell my clients is I'll always tell them the truth, I'll tell them the truth about their cases, about my evaluation, about the problems, about the likelihood of getting more in settlement, about what's likely to happen at trial, and I think that's completely fair for any attorney working with someone to be completely honest and to safeguard expectations, now you mentioned going to trial, so when does a case go to trial, in your opinion, what makes a case like, you have a case in front of you, are there cases that you look at and you're like right away, this needs to go to trial, are there ones that you say this probably will never hit a courtroom? Well, since most case, now the vast majority of cases settle, and part of that is case selection, when I was trying a number of cases, I've tried almost a hundred cases all over Wisconsin, the cases that most commonly went to trial where there was a dispute about who's at fault, for instance medical malpractice cases, the insurance company hires five doctors to my one, and since they win nine out of ten cases, I can generally see a case is going to get tried, if my case is good enough it may get settled, but cases go to trial when they don't offer any money, or when there, and there are reasons for that offering, when they expect to win, when they think my client's more at fault in an auto accident, sometimes you just have a difference of values of what the case is worth, and when you've, when this negotiations break down, then you go to trial, and in the process, once you file, you don't automatically go to trial, it can settle anywhere along the way, and often does, in fact most often does. So what's one of your most interesting trial cases? It's a case that I just really, really like, and I'll go, it'll take, we only have a couple of hours, so I'll do it as quickly as I can. It's the case that I told you about the pediatric ophthalmologist, because my partners had tried it to a panel, and lost it and said it could not be one, and they brought it to me, and said, do you want to give this a shot? Sure, if you'll fund it, and we had a firm that would fund it, I'll do it. It was a, then when I got the case, the little girl was about four, totally blind, little blonde-haired girl played the violin, and was getting mainstream, that is put into normal school with kids who didn't have any kind of disabilities, and it was a hard issue because, as I said, the editor of pediatrics had written this article that said, no, this isn't how it happens. So I took on the case, started hiring people, I hired a neonatologist. The neonatal period is 28 days after birth, and that's when this little girl, we say, was harmed. If they don't control your oxygen, kids don't have development of their lungs, or when they're premium, she was a pound and a half, so they have to give oxygen. If they give them too much, we said it can lead to blindness, which we said it did in our case. Of course, the editor of the journal Pediatrics said no, I cross-examined him, and their witnesses all said no. My neonatologist out of LA, who was actually LA's woman of the year, the previous year, superb person, and a superb witness, said no, you're right. You win, I'll testify. The doctor I told you about before, the pediatrics, I said, yeah, I'll testify for you. So we get to trial, and I've still haven't met the little girl. Now she's five or six, and the parents are there, of course, and we're trying the case, and my case is going in well, and of course no one understands that they have a case too, and they'll put it in after I do, but it's going well. They start making offers, which they never made previously, because they had won the trial before that my partners tried. So they start making offers, and we meet with the clients, I go with the clients, the judge says, can I see the clients? Sure, go into the judge's chambers. He said, nobody's had a verdict like this in Rhinelander ever. You understand? Your lawyer's gambling your little girl's money. We do. We're to take his advice. So he turned on a couple of offers. Finally, the last day I have my star witness, the LA Woman of the Year on the stand, and they have made a significant offer the night before, and I told my clients, they're not going to take it off the table. I come to the court and my clients are doing this. Don't talk to you. No, no, don't have time. Put my witness on the stand. She testifies beautifully. Now the defense comes up to me and says, all right, we're going to make one final offer. They raised their offer significantly. And so I said, well, I'll take it to my clients. I don't think I'll recommend it. I go back and my clients say, we want to take that offer from last night. It's too late. They've increased the offer. I guess you want me to take it. So we take the money and it's a structured settlement, which is money invested over time at that point, rates for 18%. Giving this little girl, it will grow until she's 18. At that point it was going to probably quadruple by the time she was 18, and then pay her monthly for the rest of her life. That's not the good part of the story. Yes, we got paid, we got costs back, the clients were happy. The little girl sent me a letter in Braille. So sweet. Thanking me, telling me that she, now she'll have money and she wants to teach blind kids. So that's very rewarding. It's in my office still. And of course there's a couple of sequels to the story. My investigator sees that letter 15 years later. So what happened to her? I said, I have no idea. So he looks her up, he says, she just finished college. I said, what's great? He says, she's teaching. I said, oh good. Another sequel. Ten years later, I get a letter from the parents with a picture of her from the newspaper about how successful she is and they thank me for being a part of it. If you ever have questions about the value of what you're doing, read the letter. It'll, it more than made my day. It's still in my office and I can't tell the story without thinking about it. That is, here's a case where somebody else to get to court in this park, this girl would have ended up with nothing. Zero. Who knows where she would have ended up in life and because you took it over. She's teaching blind children. Your purpose served somebody else's purpose and helped them create a life they loved you. Well and it was really nice because the parents were thoughtful enough. No, understand, no contact for me for 20 years probably since we settled the case. To send me a picture of her and to thank me for making all this possible because I supplied the funds for her to go to school and to live while she was doing this. So there's nothing more gratifying as a lawyer than something like that. And I was, and you get those cases. I have, I've had the good fortune of a couple of other tragic cases that changed the law. To a lawyer have an opportunity to affect the law in his state is a big deal for me. I thought it was a big deal. Absolutely. We had a case, there's, Wisconsin is one of the few cases with caps on wrongful death. So when someone is killed, there's a limit on how much you can get. The cap used to be 50,000 when I got, when I took in this case. The mayor of Greenfield, a suburb of Milwaukee, told these people that he knew had their five-year-old son killed by a drunk driver that I was the lawyer they had to see. They came in and I explained to them that the most we could get be 50,000 dollars. And they said that's insane. You're, you must not be that good a lawyer. I pulled out the statute book. I showed him the statutes that here is why. They said that's wrong. I said yes it is. I'll write a letter, they'll pass 50. It won't be any fees. What can we do? You can lobby the legislature. So they did. About a year and a half later the bill raising the cap then from 50 to 150, it's now 350, bought their son's name, was the John Port bill. So they, my clients, I did nothing. I wrote a letter and told them what to do, but they made a difference and got that cap raised on their own. And now if you're familiar with school buses and they now have a sweep arm, they didn't used to have one. Right. It was my case that led to that as a school bus driver substituting their rules about how you do this with kids. Joey, six years old, ran in front of the bus, was run over and killed instantly. Parents lived almost at his house. They came running out and saw him on the street. The most tragic circumstances and photographs you can never imagine. I mean, there's nothing worse. So they come to me, I take their case and ultimately we have a significant recovery because they were there and saw the consequences. Overcame what was then a $500,000 cap to get them real money because of what they saw. But more importantly, I mean, that was good, but it's only money. What happened then was they went to the legislature. They said, well, why don't all buses have this? They lobbied the legislature and now the legislation that required a sweep arm in front of the school buses of the driver doesn't hit anybody, bears their son's name. So you get a chance to do that and be a part of that. It's very rewarding because we don't like to make a difference in whatever way we're doing it. And I have had the good fortune to have some clients who went out of their way to go to the legislature and talk to these people again and again and lobby for a change in the law that I think benefits everybody. So those are some of the things that I had an opportunity to do and I think that's very fortunate for that. So we're about to wrap up here. Believe it or not, it's already been almost 30 minutes. So before we go, I want to ask a lawyer a question. I love it though because this is so helpful for for me and I'm sure anybody who's who's uh watching this right now where is your office located? It's at 788 North Jefferson Street in Milwaukee. It's on the corner of Jefferson and Wells. But you don't limit your cases to Milwaukee? I don't. I take cases all over the state. I have tried them all over the state. The case that I told you about with the little girl that was in Rhinelander. I tried cases in Eau Claire, two different breast cancer cases, all over the state. I will take cases if they're significant enough to merit my involvement. I will try cases all over the state and I have. Excellent. And we have about a minute left so is there anything you can say in about a minute that I haven't asked you about? No, but advice to people thinking about a career in law? Yeah. Only do it if you really want to practice. Don't think about the money and it's and it's like the old adage if you love what you do you'll never work again in your life. Absolutely. I agree with that. When you're in purpose you're on purpose and you're working for a purpose and that's always so absolutely important in not only your quality of life but the quality of life that that you're going to touch in everybody that you work with. I agree totally. Absolutely. Randy, thank you so much for being on this episode of create a life you love. I want to thank you for watching this episode of create a life you love. You can connect with Randy at his website which is listed right below and you can connect with me at my website which is listed right below. You can also connect with either of us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. There must be a hundred ways. At least a hundred ways. I also have a radio show every Wednesday night on ask one radio and that is every Wednesday night at 9 30 p.m. central standard time. Thank you so much for watching this episode and I look forward to seeing you next time on create a life you love.