Adam Torres and Eric Fong discuss hiring experienced trial lawyers.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify / Stitcher / RSS
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
When a case is going to trial it’s important to have an experienced trial lawyer on your side. In this episode, Adam Torres and Eric Fong, Attorney/Owner at Fong Law, PLLC, explore going to court and why having the right trial lawyer is important.
Watch Full Interview:
About Eric Fong
Decades of experience, over 100 cases tried to a jury with monumental failures and success, Eric uniquely tries civil and criminal cases with equal passion and sophistication. Landmark cases include the creation of the constitutional right to Intimate Association (Eric protected the rights of low-income housing residents against oppressive “crime control” measures) and his historic $91,000,000 verdict is the largest compensatory damages verdict for one person in Washington State. As George Clinton’s lawyer, the iconic funk musician/artist, Eric’s unique view into the entertainment industry crafted a result that allowed him to maintain his collection of music, and is the lead attorney on the definitive copyright case in American jurisprudence.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, so did I have Eric Fung on the line? He’s an attorney over at F Law P L L C.
Eric, welcome to the show. Ah, thank you, Adam. Good morning. All right, Eric. So excited to learn more about what you’re doing over at Fong Law as a trial lawyer and really just get into what drew you to law and then, and then how you’ve managed to, you know, grow your practice and really your, your journey as an entrepreneur.
But before we get into all that, I’d like to start this episode the way that we start them all with what we call our mission matters minute. So Eric, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Eric, what mission matters to you? I think that you, in life, you take on a mission, whatever that definition may be.
And in the context of me as a, as a professional, as a lawyer, I think that it would be to do good. Hmm. You know, to hold yourself out as, as someone who has integrity. I. That is gonna do the job and do it right and is honest. And so my, my mission would be to, to be the best available me today so that I can be the best me for whoever trusts me with their life.
Hmm. That’s great. Love, love bringing mission-based individuals on the line to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they do it, and really what we can all learn from that so we can all grow together. So, great having you on. And Eric, I guess just to get us kicked off here, like tell us a little bit more about your background.
Like, did you always know you wanted to be a lawyer or how’d that come about? No, I, I’m not sure how many people like grow up with huge aspirations to be a lawyer. Yeah. You were talking about, I mean, I have one other, Eric, I have one on the show. I’m not gonna lie to you. I have one on the show. He said I always wanted to be, I even dressed up.
For during Halloween, I called bss. He was like, no, I swear my mom will send you the pictures. I just had to tell you. Go ahead. Wow. How’s he, how’s he or she doing now?
Geez. You, you know, you were saying, you know, Wanting to your introduction, you’re saying, Hey, we’re gonna talk about your law firm and the law, and we’re looking forward to hearing that. And I just, you know, I really wonder how many people really want to know what it’s like to be a lawyer and, and what does that mean?
Because in the legal profession that’s like saying, What kind of insect are you interested in? Because there’s, there’s an infinite number of lawyers and specialties and trades and mm-hmm. You know, people grinding it out, trying to make some money, other people passionately throwing themselves into a cause and at the same time going broke and loving it.
Other lawyers that are representing corporations, And can’t stand what they do, but they’re bringing back a huge paycheck. And prosecutors that are throwing people in jail, some, you know, it’s their mission to make society better. Others feeling, I’m not sure if this is really good for our community.
Mm-hmm. So me as a lawyer and what I do is pretty unique. I’m a trial lawyer. I get up in front of a group of people and tell a story. Mm-hmm. And I deal with. A group, a dynamic that is very bizarre because you’ve got a defense lawyer that’s taking the same facts or a prosecutor or, or the opposing party, whatever case it might be, that’s taking the same facts, but having a different kind of interpretation or spend or inter Yeah.
You know? Mm-hmm. And you’re dealing with the judge that, that is kind of the official of overseeing everything. So I. I basically help my, the way I like to think of what I do is I help people. Mm-hmm. I help people go through traumatic events and primarily right now I’m fighting the insurance industry.
Mm-hmm. Most of my cases are, are kind of that battle where I’m dealing with Allstate or Zurich or State Farm, or you name it. Did you always have a an interest in story and, and like telling a story? Because I hear you mention that word and there’s a lot, a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs and executives that that watch this show and like, stories just, it’s just this, this comes up over and over again.
Like, like, does that one of your things? No. Have No, no, but I ha I’ve ha No, not at all. And, and, and the reason why I think for most people is that we. We, ironically, we, we are programmed and we live our lives through stories. We are genetically evolutionary. However you wanna, you know, view why we’re here today.
Mm-hmm. We know that story and emotion and plot move people to action both individually for motivation and emotion. You watch a movie and you just, well up or you hear a song and all of a sudden you’re ready to jump through the roof with this energy. Mm-hmm. And, and so people who are in the line of motivation and moving, we just, we, we know and we study to be successful that a huge way to, to tap into the heart is story.
And so I’ve been lucky enough to just study it with some of the great, you know, like really professional like Hollywood screenwriters and actors. And, and I, I have friends in interesting places that. Because I seek it, right? There’s no end to knowledge. So I’ve sought out knowledge in unconventional ways and, and, and I’ve just been blessed with people who share this knowledge and these gifts with me.
So, no, it was not natural at all. Hmm. That’s interesting to me like that you mentioned you know, Hollywood and some of the, the best storytellers because you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t, or I wouldn’t, I shouldn’t say you wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t expect for a lawyer, a trial lawyer to, to mention that.
That’s kind of where some of their coaching and narrative comes from. But it makes total sense after you said it. So I’m in LA and I, now that you say that, I’m like, it. Story’s root of everything. Like it’s just, it’s another, it’s another format. It’s another stage. It’s another like another lens, right?
Well, who, who’s mastered it more than Hollywood? Yeah. They’re the king of story. And I’ll tell you this, right, if you have a, if, if, if you have a message, if you can’t say it within a minute or two, you don’t know your message, and there isn’t a story in this world that can’t be told in 21 minutes and 33 seconds.
Every, every, every major C B S N B C, they have 30 minute slots. X number of time to advertisement. Think of the compelling TV series we watch and the story that gets told in that limited amount of time. And I’ll be in court and I’ll watch really sophisticated, super successful lawyers given an opening statement that takes 2, 3, 4 hours.
I’m watching people struggling to stay awake and these are like the greatest, you know, presumably some of the greatest storytellers around, right? Who, who, who? Anyways, so try trial law. Like you mentioned this as we started talking about this as we opened up the interview. Like what drew you to that?
Like, versus there was a lot of different paths to go, you know, what drew you there? Yeah, it found, I fell into it. It found me. It was like, you know, you jump. You, you, you jump out of a window for safety. I jumped into a window and it was trial law and I just, I stumbled into it. I went to law school, not to be a lawyer, but to keep going to school.
I grew up in a really, it’s true, a really academically stressed wow. Family that I, I wasn’t the first kid to go to college. Right. I’m the exact opposite and I’m very blessed. They’re the first person ever in their family to go to college. It gives me like these tingles, but I came from a different place and I rebelled against that.
I didn’t like it. I actually was a troublemaker. But, but I did enough to get by and so I went to law school just to keep the parents happy and I thought I’d be like an insurance adjuster or something. Hmm. I got a D in the, the area of law. I practice now in law school. Right. Hmm. And I took the first job I could get ’cause no, I, the, the top quote unquote jobs, like you said, we’re in here about the lawyer.
Me coming outta law school, I would’ve been fired from the top jobs because I just wouldn’t have cut it. ’cause I wouldn’t have fit the mold. So I took the first job I could get. It was a public defender in a, in a really, you know, kind of rundown, gritty. Dangerous town making $24,000 a year and an opportunity that was 27 years ago.
Wow. Yeah. Public defenders don’t make very much and mm-hmm. I fell in love with it. I just, there was something about this process that, like I said, it found me, you know, I just stumbled along and in life and was lucky enough not to, you know, get seriously mangled or killed, and I kept hanging in there and being open to knowledge and somehow it just, Happened.
Wow, that’s interesting. All right. And what was your, what was the first so then you at some point go from being a public defender, and then I, I don’t know if there was something in between or did you just Yeah. Go to starting your own firm or like, well, interesting. I, I, at, at this time, In my county, the public defenders were, the private law firms would contract with the governments to provide public defense and they’d get paid some, you know, silly amount to go do this.
Really like God’s work. It’s so important. Like public defenders. I mean I’ve, so it’s some of the work I’m most proud of to this day. But, so I was in a private firm David Ang, it was Ang and Associates. He hired me fresh outta law school, and he was a private lawyer. He did a lot of divorces. And as an intern, I had worked for a personal injury lawyer.
And so I knew, I knew personal injury law and I convinced Ang to take out an ad. So when I said, you know, 24 and an opportunity, this is what I was talking about, the opportunity was that he gave me the free, the liberty, the freedom to kind of grow. And I talked, he, he was willing to take out, you know, advertisement Back then it was Yellow Pages, okay?
Mm-hmm. Like, like, the world today is so different than what I grew up in as a lawyer. But we took out yellow page ads and I quickly built a private practice that you know, I was juggling at the same time I was doing these public defense cases. And then I The only way you learn how to, to get in front to be a trial lawyer, which is a constitutional right, by the way.
Right. You got the executive branch, the judicial branch, the legislative branch. The most powerful group of people in this country right now is a group of 12 that decide justice. And, and so you look at these trials that are going on with, I mean, high stakes trials, right? The, the president, governor, senators cannot undo a verdict on matters that are critically important.
To our growth and to, frankly, coming out of this tailspin that we’re in, it’s juries that took down the tobacco company. Mm-hmm. It’s juries, right? That expose some of the biggest corruption we’ve ever seen. And the only way you learn as a lawyer how to get in front of a group of people and tell a story, right?
Sequence witnesses to develop the plot, create themes that, that, that, that resonate is either a public defender, Or a prosecutor. Hmm. Those guys are always in court. That’s my dog keeping me safe. All good. Just like juries are keeping us safe. Wow. Did you ever like on that, on that journey of really starting your own firm or kind of going that way?
Did you ever have a thought like, am, am I kind of, am I going in the right direction? Should I be doing this? Like, like how was that for you? I’ve always loved what I’ve done. There have been times, there’ve been times where I’ve questioned what I did because the weight is so heavy. Like being a lawyer in a lot of ways sucks because you, you are responsible for so many things, and the with with with responsibility comes great weight.
As with knowledge comes a lot of weight. When you know things and you need to kind of convey that and pass it along, it’s, it’s heavy. So there have been times where I’ve wondered, and I’ve asked myself, why are you doing this to yourself? Because it’s hard, you know, sleepless nights money. I’ve been bankrupt so many times, like my backup not I’ve.
The number of times my back has been up against the wall. Mm. And I’m laying it on the line for a cause and I don’t know, like, how am I gonna buy my kids Christmas presents? Like I’ve been there. Okay. You, you really do kind of question like, why is this worth it? You know? Sometimes it’d be better just to get on a machine, turn the diesel on, and start moving dirt.
Yeah. So talking to some of these other entrepreneurs out there, like mm-hmm. There be, they’re, you know, we’re, you know, post pandemic we’re kind of in this next cycle and, you know, some people were displaced, some people are, you know, some people won, some people you know, aren’t doing so well. What kind of things would you tell maybe some of those new entrepreneurs that are maybe kind of just getting started?
They’re out there right now. Oh wow. One, don’t be impatient. The, the, the, the ups and downs of a day. Like one minute you’re feeling ecstatic. The next minute you’re feeling like this, what is happening? And I can’t, I’m never gonna get through this. The, the, you gotta have perseverance and you have to just good and bad.
You have to have the the long game in mind. And you have to, you have to, when you start, you have to know that you’re gonna fail. Like miserably, painfully. And when that happens, it’s just, you have to find the purpose and meaning in that failure and use it as a motivation to grow and become better and, and to become wiser and, and to, to never let that failure happen to you again.
And right now I think that, you know, we’re also dealing with, I, I think our psyche and our confidence. Is really rattled because of just so many things around us that we can’t explain. So there’s a lot of fear, and I think you have, we have to let go of that. We have, we have, there’s an element of powerlessness that we have around us, and you have to go inward and, and this is where I, what I said before, my mission, right, to be the best available you right now, so you can be of service.
To others. If you are, if you are doing what you do for as far as I’m concerned, any other reason than to be of service to others and to do good and to help, I think you need to do some soul searching of, and you don’t have to change your job, you don’t have to change your career or your plan, but you have to think, how can I align my business plans so that it helps others because that.
Will be when it starts to turn around, when you, when, when everything you do is of service to a greater good, and that’s not the way the world goes round. Mm-hmm. Those people get stepped on and abused because there’s this, there’s this greed and there’s power that’s permeating everywhere around us. Right.
And it just seems like those people always win, but they don’t, they don’t. There’s a universal spiritual truth that’s much more powerful than greed and power. Awesome. Eric, I gotta bring up one other thing. ’cause I was, of course, I researched my guest in advance and I saw on I saw on your LinkedIn George Clinton’s lawyer and a lot of background entertainment.
Like, how’d all these things come about? I don’t George Clinton. I was like, it was so pin I couldn’t help it. I had to bring it up. I was like, what? That’s awesome. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I’ve got some stories. IIA mean’s right hand man. Uganda IIA mean is a brutal dictator. And there’s a lot of corruption that, that is act, you know, like some of these governments that are trying to figure out from colonialism, how do we.
Work. I’ve been dissed by Ed Amin’s lawyer, you know, we were collaborating in Uganda so I could go, I’ve got like such an extraordinary path of, of just bizarre, bizarre kind of events. But George Clinton he was, yeah, he had some Seattle matters come up in one way or another, you know, he needed help in a.
When you’re good at what you do, stories get retold. Right? Story, story, story. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Your name would come, will come up. And when you make a strong impression on someone, you never know how that will ripple around. And so I don’t market, you know, that I don’t spend a penny on marketing. Mm. And I have more cases than I want.
I could feed, you know, Law firms cases that they would love to have. Mm-hmm. Because of, you know, the reputation that I’ve developed by being good, it’s something I believe in. Hmm. And I, I think when you believe in what you do, things like George Clinton happened. Yeah. Because he is, for those who don’t know, George Clinton is the black Elvis.
He’s the, he’s, he’s credited with creating rap and inspiring like this whole new art form through his creativity and originality. Originality, right. Is is something we could talk about. If as an entrepreneur, what are you doing that’s different? Mm-hmm. Right? What are you doing that distinguishes what, what, what it is that that you got going on from other people?
And that can only come from within you because when you look at your thumbprint and you look at them little lines and circles and squiggly things, there’s not another one like it in the world. Mm-hmm. So who are you and what’s your thumbprint? Yeah. Well, Eric I think that’s a, that’s a great ending to this, man.
What is, what is your thumbprint? That being said, if somebody is listening to this and they wanna learn more about your firm or, or follow you or connect, I mean, what’s the best way for people to reach out? You know, there’s not a lot of Chinese trial lawyers that, you know, Fong. So Fong Law is pretty simple.
You can call me on my cell phone, three six zero. 6 2 1 9 5 5 7. This day and age, I think you can track anyone down. Fantastic. And well appreciate that. And we’ll definitely put like your LinkedIn profile, that kind of stuff in the show notes so that our audience can just click on the link and head right on over and connect with you.
And speaking of the audience, If this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs and executives, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission. You know, why do they do what they do, like what gets them up in the morning and, you know, fired up to go out there into the world and make a difference.
If that’s type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you Hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line, and we don’t want you to miss a thing, Eric. Really, it has been a pleasure. Thanks so much again for for coming on the show and sharing.
Hi man. Likewise. And you are so welcome.
