Adam Torres and Daniel Callahan Tips for Starting a Career as a Lawyer
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Show Notes:
Daniel Callahan opened his own law office on St. Patrick’s Day in 1984. From there, he distinguished himself as one of the top trial attorneys in California and has repeatedly been recognized by his peers for his accomplishments. Mr. Callahan was the winner of the prestigious OCTLA Trial Lawyer of the Year Award three times, in 2000, 2004, and 2012. Since founding Callahan & Blaine, Mr. Callahan has won many jury trials and obtained scores of seven and eight-figure settlements on behalf of his clients. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Daniel Callahan, Owner of Callahan Consulting Group LLC, explore Daniel’s journey and how he is helping lawyers succeed.
About Daniel Callahan
Daniel Callahan has distinguished himself as one of the top trial attorneys in California, and has repeatedly been recognized by his peers for his incredible accomplishments. Mr. Callahan was the winner of the prestigious OCTLA Trial Lawyer of the Year Award three times in 2000, 2004, and 2012. He has been named one of the Top 10 Attorneys in the United States by the National Law Journal. He was voted California Business Trial Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer Magazine. In addition, Mr. Callahan has been named one of the Top 100 trial lawyers by the American Trial Association, featured in the Best Lawyers in America for nine years straight, 2005 through 2014 and listed by Super Lawyers as one of The Top 10 Lawyers in Southern California for 2013.
The reason for the accolades is simple: preparation and results. Since founding Callahan & Blaine, Mr. Callahan has won many jury trials and obtained scores of seven and eight figure settlements on behalf of his clients.
Notable verdicts include a $934,000,000 jury verdict obtained in 2003, after a three month jury trial in a complex business dispute entitled Beckman Coulter vs. Flextronics. This unanimous verdict was the largest in California in 2003 and remains the largest in Orange County history. Mr. Callahan went on to obtain a $50,000,000 settlement in a road design case against the City of Dana Point. Exclusive of large class actions, this is the largest personal injury settlement in United States history. Most recently, after a two month jury trial, Mr. Callahan obtained a $38 Million settlement on behalf of a class of newspaper delivery drivers against The Orange County Register. This is the highest employment settlement in Orange County’s history.
About Callahan Consulting Group LLC
Callahan & Blaine is California’s Premier Litigation Firm. Founded in 1984, C&B has been achieving record-breaking verdicts and settlements for over 33 years in all areas of complex litigation. For example, C&B has the highest jury verdict in Orange County history, a $934 million jury verdict achieved after a three-month trial in a complex business litigation case. Likewise, C&B obtained a $50 million settlement that has been certified by West Trial Digest as one of the largest personal injury settlements in the history of the United States. C&B also has the highest insurance bad faith judgment ($58 Million) and the largest employment law settlement ($38 Million) in Orange County history. C&B is Orange County’s #1 litigation and trial law firm.
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 missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Daniel Callahan, and he’s owner of the Callahan Consulting Group and also a founding member.
Daniel, welcome to the show. Adam, thank you very much for having me. I was looking forward to speaking with you and to All right. So we, got a lot to talk about today. So we’re definitely going to get into what you’re doing and in terms of helping lawyers and helping them starting their career and what it looks like for them to open up a firm and really build their book of business and their career and their, skills.
But before we get into that and what you’re doing present day, I want to go back in time a little bit here, Daniel how did you get started like as an attorney and like, tell me a little bit more about your journey and what brought you here today? Well, it was an interesting path, to be honest. I graduated fifth in my class in high school from the bottom.
So that although my mother, I wasn’t expecting from the bottom. It was yeah, I was number one, one sixty eight out of one. Seventy three. Oh, man, I guess I just try to do enough to get out of high school and we’re construction. And then a buddy of mine got me a job climbing trees with a McKellar chainsaw chopping down and throwing the wood into a chipper.
And I’m doing this now for a couple of years. It sounds like the perfect training to become a lawyer, Daniel, by the way. I’m just throwing this out there. I recommend everybody try it this way. Everyone should try it this way. So I’m wondering, I’m throwing this wood in the chipper. What the hell am I doing here?
And I look at my buddy who got me the job, and I see he’s standing next to his dad. So I know why he’s here. But I remember my parents told me I’d be a good lawyer. I thought, maybe I should try to go to college with all those smart kids. So I decided I was gonna do it. And I just gave it all I had. And turns out I had straight A’s in college.
What happened is I just went against the other people, like I put them on a pedestal. Like I’m going after Goliath. But turns out, when the fight comes down, they’re just regular people, and I had been really overly, over prepared. So they had the same experience through college. In fact, I wanted to be a lawyer, but they didn’t have a pre law society, so I started one at Western Illinois University.
And I invited judges and people to speak, and it was really a great experience. From there I went to UC Davis for law school and I was one of the editors of Law Review and also graduated in the top 10 percent of my class. So what got me there is the same thing that helps me as a lawyer. I believe in preparation and I believe in no procrastination.
If you put something off till tomorrow, there’s no guarantee that something else is going to come up to take your time. So if you can do it, you do it, and you do it now, and you do everything you can that you can think of. I used to keep a binder of my trial thoughts and trial assignments. My thoughts, as I get a case, I think, oh, well this is a good thought, I should follow this and follow that.
And I give people assignments to go ahead and get me this and get me that. Then as I learned more about the case, I thought some of my trial thoughts were pretty simple, right? But some were very good. And I made sure I double back and did everything I could on each and every one of them. So that was as a lawyer, I should tell you, I first started out as a lawyer in Hawaii.
I got drafted by a the oldest and largest law firm in the state. I spent a couple of years there learning litigation, moved to Newport beach with the large law firm there for a couple of years, then opened up my own office on St. Patrick’s day in 1984. And from there, that’s what I really had. Was there any significance to St.
Patrick’s Day, by the way? Was it just for good luck? Like, you got to throw that out there. What was the significance there? Oh, it was just for good luck. Yeah. So, I didn’t know if it was the green beer or like the built in, like tradition. I don’t know. Well, you know, you have to name Dan Callahan. I am 100 percent Irish.
So I thought, well, let’s do it. So I actually resigned my position March 15th and I was unemployed on March 16th and I started the firm on March 17th. What is that? You’re like, when you decide to go out on your own, especially because as we get to present day, I know you’re going to you’re one of the things you’re passionate about is helping younger attorneys like, you know, get on their feet.
What were people saying when you decide to go out on your own at that point? Like, how that’s a bit of a leap, right? Well, it was and it wasn’t because I pay a lot of attention to the clients and I try to serve their interests the best I can. And I show that I I’m going to do everything I can.
I had a following. So I had already had a following in a Newport Beach firm where I was assigning work to other attorneys in the firm. But now I’m thinking, you know, I’d be better off doing this on my own. So I took the clients that I brought in as my initial base, and then brought in more clients after that.
Just by, you know, what you’ve got to do is show the people that you care about them and actually, if you do care about them, that’s a lot easier. So you show the people you care about them, you do everything you can to help them, and you remain interested in what they’re all about and what their objectives are.
And you get that, and clients will just come to you. And when you’re sometimes at a dinner party, you can tell stories about cases you’re handling. And the person you’re talking to will put themselves into the shoes of the client. And kind of wish they were that client, getting that kind of service.
And as a result, you get a lot of referrals from that. But you’re right, when I started my business, I had to do something. So what I did, I wrote an article. on a weekly basis called It’s the Law with the Orange County Business Journal. So my name was out there, you know, written by Dan Callahan. And I started seminars, I would do a seminar for the Orange County Bar Association initially, and also then for Stanford and USC.
And I would invite the best well known trial lawyers to come and speak. And it should not be a surprise. But every time you ask one of these guys, they uniformly say yes. Because they know the more face time they have with other lawyers, the more referrals they get. So I was able to get the best attorneys from the West Coast and some from the East Coast to come and attend my seminars.
And I would put myself on the panel. So the people, let’s say you had a day and a half seminar. You have a full day, one day, and then a half day the next, you have a Supreme Court Justice talking during lunch. And one of the panels, I put myself on the panel. So people think, well, these guys are very important.
Impressive. So that Callahan must be something too. And so this is what I was just getting started. And so I find that attending seminars, watching videos of other practicing attorneys that are really good. And then just getting yourself out there, you can build your own business, but eventually you’re going to have to be able to have something behind it like victories.
Yeah. And again, you want victories, you get it by preparation. Imagination and creativity and of course you don’t procrastinate and so I have, my career has been riddled with cases where I use imagination and creativity and I produce outstanding results. One was a 2 million breach of contract case that I turned into a 934 million unanimous jury verdict.
So. That was a bit of a jump. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a bit of a jump. What do you think makes this? What what do you think are some of the things that made you so successful? Like and I want to maybe go to the stay in the early days just a little bit longer Especially for for the work that you’re doing now in coaching and I shouldn’t use or coach but in helping young attorneys like what what are some of the things that you feel made You so successful in the beginning that, you know, they can also pull from that to help, you know, use to make them successful as well.
Well, it’s hard to say what you just have to have the drive, the internal drive to succeed. And if you. What, what I would do is whatever I could think of, I’d make a note of it and , then I’d try to follow up on all the notes and my thoughts. Some thoughts turns out to be, you know, okay, well, pass on that one.
But I would follow through on things. I don’t put things off to tomorrow. I never put things off. Procrastination is not something that I did. And I’m working really hard and long hours is what I do. So anybody who’s listening, how do you really succeed? Well, it’s not easy. Nobody really hands it to you.
You have to work hard, but the harder you work, the more your reputation grows. And also, while you’re working hard, you have to be careful. You have to be a gentleman. You have to be professional. You have to be professional at all times to opposing counsel. You can be tough, but you have to be professional and also to the court.
Oh, my God, you gotta be professional. And then also when you’re you have to pay attention. When you’re going to court and you’re in the parking lot very easily, you can be pulling up right next to a juror, a juror who just took your parking spot. So you want to just, you don’t make an issue of that at all.
You know, you just try to be as, Bottom line, try to be as professional as you can at all times, so you never know who’s, who’s out there and who you may offend and how it may come back and bite you. That’s a good way of putting it. You don’t know how it’s going to come back and bite you. So let’s, let’s, let’s take it to present day a little bit here, Daniel.
Talk to me more about the work that you’re doing over at at, at Callahan Consulting Group. So, so what does your day to day look like? Well, it’s actually very interesting. What I do is I do two things. One, I help lawyers, usually a lawyer with less than 10 years experience and usually in a firm of five or seven lawyers.
or less. Usually if , there’s a large firm junior lawyer will go to a senior partner and get the assistance that I otherwise would provide. But what I do is I help them understand litigation, trial strategy, trial tactics, how to present evidence in a way that sells, and also how to look and find evidence that they may not have thought , of locating.
By example here’s, this is not really, well, here’s this example. What I do when I represent a client that has been sued and now I’m represented defendant and the client has insurance coverage, but the complaints against the client does not state any cause of action that would otherwise be covered, I would send out a request for admissions.
And ask the other side to please admit they have suffered no damages for A, B, C, or D, all of which would be covered under my policy, my client’s policy. Lawyers don’t admit anything, so they go deny, deny, deny, and then I send a set of interrogatories later and say, okay, based upon your denial, state all facts upon which that denial is supported, and then they go ahead and answer interrogatories and give me information that they in fact did suffer a covered claim, I tender that to my insurance company, my insurance company then has to defend my client, and it changes the dynamics in the case.
If your client is fully funded by somebody else, then your client has a lot more strength. Obviously, that example is one for a defense attorney. And what I did, I represented both plaintiffs and defendants. In fact, there was kind of an issue in Orange County, I was voted trial over the year three times. I was also sometimes as a plaintiff and sometimes at representative defendant.
So on occasion, I get some weird looks from some of my co plaintiff attorneys when I’m taking down one of their stars, but you know. I found my, what I did, I billed by the hour and I, that takes, takes care of all the bills and I took the contingency cases and that would give me the pops and made me wealthy.
So a lot of firms don’t do both sides, don’t do plaintiff and defense. I’ve got nothing wrong with that. I think I can represent any client on any issue and I recommend people listening do that too. But if you just limit yourself to only representing one set, you’re, , Holding yourself back and it worked well for me just on the economics.
Yeah, this is great. Daniel. , this is really good. I wonder, I’m curious just because it’s so interesting to me, like, especially when you started and some of your early days when you talk about, like, you wrote a newsletter or excuse me, you said you wrote a column, I believe, in the journal and then you also you also had, let’s call it a speaker series.
If that was the, I don’t know, you didn’t use that term. I used it, but a series of speaking engagements where you’d organize events and panels. And so you were, I mean, this would be nowadays terminology. I don’t think we use this, these terms back then, but you were a content creator from the beginning.
Like you were really a content creator as well. So when we think about like personal branding or personal marketing, like the way that we kind of think about in the social media age right now, which didn’t exist, right, social media back then. But you were doing that in the beginning, creating content. Can you talk a little bit on just.
On that concept of like creating content and creating things for an audience, because you’ve been doing it, you’ve been doing it before we were even calling it that, and how important it was to your career you were a pioneer in that, in my opinion, like some of the strategies you’re, I tell that you’re talking about right now, I tell people to do all the time, they don’t listen to me.
I’m like, Oh, so maybe they’ll listen to you, Dan, Daniel, talk, talk a little bit about content. Mhm. If you want to, I’m going to answer the question best I can. So if you want to get business, right? People have to know who you are and what you do. So you’ve got to get your name out there. I did it the old fashioned way before everybody had a podcast or other vehicles.
I did it by running articles in that But I also wrote a lot of other articles in newsletters, I guess you’d call it, for different groups, like construction, construction groups. I would, if I want to have construction clients, I would figure out who their members, what organization they become a member of, and I would find out who runs that organization, and then I would write articles for that organization.
So now my name is in front of the organization. These people. I mean, you can’t hide under a rock. You got to get out there. And by the way, the world will not come to you. If you work really hard and then you go home at night and you come back next day, you work really hard. Well, that’s really good. You’re going to be a good associate for somebody.
But if you really want to be able to grow to the partnership levels, you have to be able to get out there and market yourself by going to cocktail parties events being involved in the local bar association. Have people know who you are. And the more people know who you are, and the more you tell them what you do, then the more likely when they need somebody, they will call you.
So that is basically the way that I did it. , that’s still a great way to do things, although getting your word out on the internet is a perfectly good way to do it as well, but yeah, my way is the old fashioned way. Yeah, I love it. Daniel, man, this has been so much fun and I’m excited for, to continue to watch your journey and to watch how you’re helping lawyers out there succeed.
That being said, if somebody is listening or watching this, and if they want to learn more about Callahan Consulting Group and to connect with you and your team, how do they do that? Well, one way you can call me, I’ll give you my cell phone number. And I’m not afraid to do that because if someone calls and I don’t recognize the number I don’t pick up, but if they leave a message, then I I’ll call them back that way.
I don’t pick up every spam call. Otherwise, it’s Callahan Consulting Group. And you can look me up on the internet, and I’ll be happy, and you’ll go to the webpage, and then you’ll read about what I can do for you. And what I do, and I didn’t stress too heavily, but I do help young lawyers, but I also help clients.
I will find, if there’s a client, like just recently I had one in Detroit that was looking for a bankruptcy lawyer, so I went and looked at the best lawyers I found in Detroit, That especially in bankruptcy that I arranged for an interview with my client and two of these law firms. So my client with my assistance can go ahead and feel comfortable with in hiring one of those firms.
And I did the same thing and I’ve just did it last week in Phoenix, it was a business litigation case. Of course, I do it in California where I’m really well known. But it’s kind of a challenge and I enjoy doing that work. I enjoy helping people learn how to practice law and how to achieve excellent results.
So I know I’ve had phenomenal, phenomenal results in business insurance, bad faith, personal injury, and employment record breaking verdicts and only because I work hard. I don’t procrastinate. I use imagination and creativity. And I respect the people I encounter, whether they be a client or they be a opposing counsel, I’ve had many referrals from opposing clients and opposing attorneys.
So , that’s my recommendation. If anybody’s listening, feel free to give me a call. I’d be happy to chat with you. Fantastic. And we’ll be listening just so you know, we’ll definitely we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes for you. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, we welcome you to hit that subscribe or that follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Daniel, thanks again for so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Adam, it was my pleasure.
Thank you for having me.