Gabriel Levin is the founder of The Levin Firm, a personal injury and car accident law firm in Philadelphia. While some attorneys view trial as a last resort, Gabriel prides himself on preparing every case with the assumption that it will be decided by the jury. Due to this preparation, he has obtained millions of dollars in compensation for his clients and won several awards for his work.

What’s in This Episode:

• Who is Gabriel Levin
• The terrible event at the 2008 World Series that inspired Gabriel to become a personal injury attorney
• How Gabriel changed the fortunes of his law firm through SEO marketing
• The type of content that stands out on Google and drives traffic to your website
• Gabriel discusses the importance of on-site and local SEO
• What to look out for when building high-quality links
• How Gabriel came up with his tagline, “Win With Levin”
• Gabriel’s top business book recommendation

This transcript was created using an automated transcription service and may contain errors.

Episode 26:

Prologue

Welcome to The Rankings Podcast where we feature top founders, entrepreneurs, and elite personal injury attorneys and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.

Chris Dreyer

Chris Dreyer here, CEO and founder of Rankings.io, where we help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings. You’re listening to The Rankings Podcast, where I feature top business owners, entrepreneurs and elite personal injury attorneys. Speaking of elite personal injury attorneys, I have Gabriel Levin on the show today. Gabriel is the founder of The Levin Firm, a Philadelphia personal injury law firm. Gabriel prides himself on preparing every case for trial. While some attorneys view trial as a last resort, he prepares with the assumption that his clients case will be decided by the jury. Due to this preparation. He has obtained millions of dollars in compensation for his clients. Gabe Welcome to the show.

Gabriel Levin

Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. Appreciate awesome.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, happy to have you here. And let’s just dive right in. So how did you get started? Where did the idea come from to create The Levin Firm?

Gabriel Levin

Sure. So, um, when I graduated law school, I started as a public defender in Philadelphia. And I did that for three years when I was in law school, the aspect of the law that interests me the most were trials, and I loved being in the courtroom. And it occurred to me through the interviewing process, out of law school that I was never going to see who I’m sorry.

Chris Dreyer

It’s okay.

Gabriel Levin

I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that. So it occurred to me I was never going to see the courtroom and I unless I became a public defender or a district attorney because they started in the courtrooms and I spent a lot of time studying trial accuracy. I was very successful at it in law school. So I went on to become a public defender and loved it. And I day one was in the courtroom. And so I spent the first three years of my practice doing that. And then I started my firm and I was really a criminal defense attorney. At first, I did almost exclusively criminal defense I, in fact, I tell people, when I started my firm, I couldn’t see my way out of a paper bag. I didn’t know I had never done it. And I didn’t know anything about civil litigation. So in doing private criminal defense, I tell everybody that the Phillies are the reason that I practice law the way I practice it now. I go, how’s that possible? He said, Well, in 2008, the Phillies won the World Series. And if you’d know anything about Philadelphia, we had gone a very long time without any success in the city. And so when the Phillies won the World Series and we were world champions, the city lost its mind and millions of People came out. And there’s a major street that runs through the center of Philadelphia called Broad Street. And Broad Street was filled with like a million people and they were cheering and it went all night and it was a lot of drinking. And at one point, the police decided they were going to clear the street. And I represented a guy who was on South broad, and his friends were on the other side of the street. And so he tried to cross the street and unbeknownst to him, he was it was no more crossing the street according to the police, and as he crossed the street, he was surrounded by about five or six police officers who beat him with metal clasps and rendered him unconscious. In fact, his back I had a picture of his back looked like a zebra with his 12 inch long black and blue marks that were just crisscrossing all up and down. 4050 of them up and down is back and they had hit him in the head. A grapefruit-sized hematoma had formed on the back of his head and it was split open and held together by staples in the emergency room it was guy was in really bad shape. And they charged him with aggravated assault against them. Okay, which is kind of the modus operandi of police officers who utilize brutality is that they cover up the brutality by arresting the person they brutalize and charging them. And so this guy comes to me and needs representation and I agree to represent them and I end up taking him to trial and we, he’s acquitted of all the charges. And he’s hugging me, and we’re leaving the courtroom. And I said to him, you know, what those officers did to you was screwed up. We should really do something about it. I think we should sue them. And my client said to me, Well, how much does that cost? And I said, Well, I think I just take a percentage of whatever I recover. I don’t even know Charge. I’ve never done it before. But I think that’s how it works. And he goes, Well, if you’re not charging me I’m in, I’m ready to go. And so and so kind of panicked that I had suggested we do this, I go back to my office, I’m I again, I never sued anyone at this point in my career. I didn’t know anything about civil litigation. And I, I went on one on Google and just searched like a civil rights complaint just to see what one look like. And I basically copied its structure and put my client’s name into it, and filed it. And I didn’t know I mean, I didn’t even know to serve the other side within rogatory or request for documents. The only thing I knew is that I get to talk to the officers because that’s what I did in court all the time as a criminal defense attorney. And so I sent a notice to depose the police officers, and I sent the pictures of my client’s injuries to the city, and the solicitor shows up in my office and he says to me I got to talk to you in your office. And I go, okay, I’ve never done a deposition before. So I presumed that there was like a conversation you had in your office before a deposition started. So I was like playing it off, like, oh, the, you know, the conversation you have before a deposition starts, great. Let’s go do that in my office. So the guy came into my office, he sits down, he goes, I have a ticket or leave it offer. And if we do these depositions, the offers off the table. And so I said, he goes, I’m going to offer you $175,000 to settle this case right now. And I said, Okay, well, let me talk to my client. And my client comes to the office to go use offers 175,000 and he jumps into my arms, and we start dancing in my office, we are that excited about the result. And on that case, I made more money than I made in almost two years of being a public defender. So at the time, it was an extraordinary amount of money for me and I got a great result for a client. And I enjoyed representing the individual and get and seeking justice for them. And so at the end of that case, I went to my partner. And I said you can have all of the criminal cases that I have. And any new clients that call for me, I’m going to give them to you for criminal matters. And I’m going to start the civil side of our firm, I’m going to start representing injured people. And that’s how it started from there. I went on to, you know, the difference between a police brutality case in a car accident is not much these cases are about proving harm, and causation of that harm. And so I went to car accidents and went to premises liability products liability, medical malpractice, we did all of that. And I just slowly kind of taught myself civil litigation. And now it’s, it’s, you know, 100% of what we do.

Chris Dreyer

Well, that’s an incredible story. That’s and I think the individual your first is that Brian Zeiger ?

Gabriel Levin

Yep, that’s Brian Zeiger. So he still does criminal defense and he does civil rights litigation. But the kind of the PII side outside of civil rights is my half of the firm.

Chris Dreyer

That’s, that’s incredible. So, you know, you make this decision, you’re like, I’m going in, I’m going to be a personal injury attorney. I’m going to do these cases. You know, now you got to get the cases. Yeah. So what what what was the turning point? Where did you start to? Was it just kind of networking building your sphere of influence? was it How did you hustled to, to kind of turn the firm to where you can get these consistent cases?

Gabriel Levin

Right. So so it actually happened before I made the decision to go into PI. And it was more of a philosophy change on marketing. When I started my firm. I knew nothing about business. And I knew nothing about marketing, and I erroneously thought that based on my reputation. People would just call me because I had a lot of success in the public defender’s office. And I want a lot of trials. And I was delusional in believing that that reputation somehow permeated outside of that building into the general public of Philadelphia, which it did not. And so when I started my firm, I spent a lot of time on the internet reading ESPN, because no one was calling me. In fact, from time to time, I would pick up my phone to make sure the dial tone was there, because I figured this there has to be a mistake, right? Why are people not calling me? And so I’m, at some point, I had gotten on the appointment list. So I had a little bit of work, but really, I was barely scraping by. And I decided I have to market because if people don’t start calling me I’m going to go out of business and I didn’t want to go out of business. So this was back in 2005. And at the time, the Yellow Pages was something people used. Believe it or not, it seems crazy today, but the Yellow Pages was actually A form of advertising, it’s certainly the only form of advertising I could think of at the time. That’s how uncreative I was at the time. So I, I bought a big ad in the Yellow Pages. And I kind of went all in that ad didn’t work, I think I would have went bankrupt, quite frankly. I mean, it wasn’t a ton of money, maybe like $2,000 a month, or like 20 $500 a month, which was my entire marketing budget night, poured it into this one yellow pages ad, and it did make my phone ring I got, I got calls, and I would have people into my office and we would do a consultation. And at the end of the consultation, I would quote, the person a number. And almost universally, the person would fall out of their chair when I quoted them the number and they didn’t have the money. And I would spend time doing consultation, they would leave and I was not getting hired. And this happened semi frequently. And during one and then this was kind of the moment that changed everything. In terms of how I marketed during the consultation, while I was sitting there talking to this person, and they were telling me they were not going to hire me because they couldn’t afford me, a light bulb went off in my head. And that light bulb was that if, if the people calling me had money, they would be using their computer with internet access to search for me, not the Yellow Pages, because the yellow pages is just a pain in the ass, you got to get a book you have to look through, you’re doing this, you know, searching is done a lot simpler on your phone, your smartphone or your computer. And in that moment, it was like a realization I had. I said, I gotta get on to the internet. And I started reading books about websites. And I started going to SEO conferences all over the country to learn about what was the you know, the current strategies and all of that. We started Believe it or not building our own websites. And at the time a lot of lawyers did not have websites. It was not highly competitive on the internet. And within I would say five or six months, I had built an optimized our own website. That was number one on for search results for Philadelphia criminal defense attorneys. And all of a sudden, I started getting calls from mothers in California, whose child goes to the University of Pennsylvania and got a DUI and needs criminal representation. And before I got off the phone with that mother who’s never met me, whose child I’ve never met, they had paid me in full for the representation with a credit card over the phone. And that started happening. So all of a sudden, you know, the Yellow Pages cast the net that that covered the The city of Philadelphia, but the internet testing that that covers the world. And so the, the scope of my marketing just became a lot greater. And all of a sudden I started getting a lot more calls. And it’s not just that I got more calls, I got more calls from people that had money, because unlike what I do now, in criminal representation, you have to be paid upfront before you do the work, right? It’s a much harder sell than in personal injury where you go, all you have to do is sign this piece of paper, I’m going to take care of everything. You don’t have to pay me and if we lose, you don’t owe me anything. That’s a much easier sell than pay me up front, this huge lump sum, and then we’re going to go go to court and see what we can do for you in your in your criminal case. And so despite that harder sell with the internet, we were able I was I was getting clients that could pay up front and then we you know, because I’m always hungry. I started building more websites. And so I had three or four that ranked in the top five for criminal defense. And each of them might have been subspecialties or something like this, but people would submit inquiries to each of them. I guess not reading the websites not recognizing they were all mine. And then I was the only person that called them back. And so they thought I was very responsive and hired me. So I got a lot of clients that way too. And that doesn’t really work anymore. But it back in 2005. It was the Wild West, we could do a lot more.

Chris Dreyer

Oh, yeah. A lot less saturated. You could occupy the whole first page for some terms,

Gabriel Levin

I for sure. For sure. We had a lot of it. We had a lot of it was fun.

Chris Dreyer

So so let’s stay there. Let’s stay on the marketing side. Okay. You are incredibly knowledgeable about SEO. Yeah. to the to the degree of current events, what’s happening, what’s changing on the cusp of Everything. So, first, and I didn’t even prepare you for this, but I’m going to kind of I’m going to throw a curveball here for how did you start consuming and understanding SEO? Like where did it Where did this basis of knowledge come from to understand the competitive landscape of SEO?

Gabriel Levin

So, you know, desperation will cause people to do a lot of things, right. And so I was desperate is the answer. I was gonna I was gonna go out of business if people didn’t start calling me and I didn’t have a lot of money. So I couldn’t do I couldn’t compete with the big firms in terms of television or billboards or any kind of close to the money. I couldn’t have enough money for one billboard, let alone an advertising campaign. And so if you’re not going to give up and you want to make it work, you figure it out. And so I started reading books. I mean, I think I literally bought SEO for Dummies. I mean, that might have been the first book, I cracked on it. And then from there, you start doing Google searches, right? If I want to appear highly ranked in Google, I need to understand how Google works. So I spent a lot of time just doing searches and seeing what kind of things popped up in Google when you did those searches so that I could kind of understand what Google was looking for. And then I did searches about SEO. And I started reading, like just consumed everything any article I could find on any aspect of SEO, whether it be off site or on-site or anything. I mean, I was consuming it. I wanted to know about it. And I wanted to know about it, not just because I thought it would help my website, but I wanted to have it you know, there’s a lot of people that sell SEO, right. There’s a lot of people that Want to help you with this? And if you don’t understand the language of SEO, and you don’t understand the relevance of what’s important and what’s not, then it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between competent and incompetent marketers who are trying to sell you SEO product. And Chris, quite frankly, that is why I hired you, my friend, because when I talked to you, it was clear to me that you were competent, and an overwhelming majority of the people that I had spoken to, were not competent, and they were selling cookie cutter inside the box kind of thinking, SEO products that were I knew could not be successful because if what you’re making for me is the same thing you’re making for every other lawyer in the city. Why it Why is my site going to stick out what’s going to make mine different and so so much, in my opinion, about being successful on the internet is about doing something thing that’s different, and impressing upon Google, that they should look at your site a little bit harder, because there’s something, you know, if you, you read 1000 books, and 999 of them are identical, but there’s one that has totally different content, just by nature, you’re going to spend more time looking at it, and so that those results are going to be more important, probably for their consumer. And so I think that’s what pushes my site up in the rankings, right, is that we try to do things differently. We try to think about things differently. And although you’re handling the back end, I very much keep this in the forefront of my mind always. And, you know, that’s what I love about you, Chris, is that we get to collaborate on these things and come up with great ideas.

Chris Dreyer

Well, first, thank you for that. And yeah, it’s it’s one of the things you just kept consuming and it for years and years. You’re constantly on it and constantly looking for things I’ve heard I found myself saying this multiple times recently, but just because your content passes a copyscape unique copy, you know, evaluation doesn’t mean it’s unique. It may pass you may get by and it’s not plagiarism, but it’s not truly providing value. So you got to do things different. So, you know, Gabe, let’s let’s really, let’s just, you know, some quick hitters here, let’s break SEO down into four components. Yeah, break it down into content, on-site SEO, which you know, optimizing your site, local SEO, and link building. So let’s start with content. You know, what’s, uh, the main thing and I think we might already covered this in regards to content that you look for.

Gabriel Levin

So, again, I think you you you start with, when you’re thinking about content, you have to start with what is the consumer looking for, right? It What? A lawyers generally have a difficult time with ego. Okay, and what I mean by that is they think they’re really smart, right? And so they know the answer to everything. And if you take that philosophy to your content, you’re going to be disappointed. Because unless you get lucky, right, I guess it’s possible to get lucky. But overwhelmingly, I think what you do is you start by saying, what is the consumer looking for? And, and, and proceed under the assumption that you don’t know the answer to that. So you need to do some searching first and look out there and see what searches are actually being conducted. And then build your content to be the the the queries, right, you’re you’re gonna drive traffic to your website. If you feel the the, if you answer the question that the consumer is asking and so start with where what does the consumer want to know? No. Right? And then build that content for them. And then in terms of, you know, what, what I need, it’s got to be lengthy and word, right? I mean, we want probably a couple thousand words, we want a nice piece of content, it’s got to be well researched, it’s got to have the links to outside credible sources to give the content credibility, right. And then that traffic will inadvertently get you clients, because a person who’s inquiring about some aspect of a car accident might not even recognize that they need a lawyer. But if you answer that question about that aspect of the car accident, and they and then you trigger in their mind, Hey, you know what, I should probably speak to this lawyer about it. Well, guess what, you just converted the client and that person might not have even been considering talking to a lawyer prior to that. So that you know to me You start with the consumer, and you work backwards. That’s, that’s if I was going to talk about content, that’s the way we do it.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, you start with that awareness component, you answer their intent, you answer their need, and then it can get it can drive to that consideration, factor, that hiring factor. So I 100% agree with all of that, you know, it’s got to be lengthy, robust, to stand out, you have to be different, you got to cite these credible, you know, resources to know it’s trustworthy. So what about on-site SEO, optimizing your website?

Gabriel Levin

Right? So to me, on-site SEO is fundamental. So if you’re not, I mean, you’re not even getting out of the gate. If you’re on-site is not optimized, right? And when I say optimize, I’m talking about your title tags, your meta descriptions, all of the back end stuff that the consumer on the page might not actually see But that you’re feeding to Google to help them consume your content and understand what it is and where it should rank. Right. And so that that, to me is the beginning point. And if you don’t understand on-site SEO, you need to read about it, and you need to figure it out. Because that is, you know, that’s, that’s like, you’re not your car isn’t going to start if you don’t have the key, right, but how well it runs after that is, who knows, but you’re not getting out of the garage without the key and the on-site SEO is something that you just have to audit. And you have to you have to know how to audit it. You have to know how to look at the code and see if it’s in there or if it’s not in there. And and make sure you cross all your T’s and dot all your I’s it has to be done for you’re not going to be successful.

Chris Dreyer

Yep, it’s all about that foundation. It’s giving your site the opportunity to rank the structure the user, expect The page experience reviews schema title tags, meta descriptions all that goes on on-site SEO. So let’s go to local SEO. Now. Here’s one where guys, those of you listening game has ranked in the map pack. It’s in the number one position for years. You see, he’s traveled back and forth in those top three, but it’s been a domination for a long period of time. So in terms of ranking in the maps and local SEO, what are the some of the things that you hold the most value to?

Gabriel Levin

Again, so, um, I think a lot of attorneys think perspective, you know, if you if you work for someone else, right, you don’t have to think about marketing. You don’t have to think about it all the time. But if you want to own your own firm, and you want it to be successful, you need to think about marketing and how you’re going to generate leads as more important than the legal work that you do. Because I tell everybody that you don’t get the privilege of practicing law unless someone hires you. And there are lots of idiots in the world that make a killing in the law game, right? People I would not let represent my dog, let alone a human being make millions of dollars. And there are Harvard trained, brilliant lawyers, brilliant lawyers that could argue in front of the Supreme Court competently, who attempt to run their own firm and go broke and then have to go work for somebody else. And so why do I say this? I say this because I spend time every day, every day hours a day, thinking about my marketing, thinking about how I’m going to generate leads, and I’m because I stay read focused. My firm can be successful. I have lawyers that just do law stuff. But guess what if they don’t have work, everything else fails, it starts. It’s the gasoline that runs the engine. And so I say that with when we’re looking at local SEO, and we’re looking at that map, I digest everything about it. I look at when I log in, and I look at the back ends of my map listing, and I try to figure out ways to optimize every conceivable aspect. There’s not a single thing that I won’t consider. And again, the reason is, this goes back kind of what we were talking about with content is that you have to make your map listing. That unique, it has to stand out from the rest, right? There’s 1000 other lawyers that want to be in that map pack, what’s going to make my listing stand apart from those and so if you spend your time thinking about it, and digesting everything Google is telling you about how to make it successful and then spend time every day working on it. Your you’ll have a successful

Chris Dreyer

Absolutely, absolutely. And let’s cap this off here with link building. So we know you know those votes that kind of moves your content up the up the ladder. What about what’s, uh, what do you look for in a high quality link?

Gabriel Levin

So, um, you’re gonna want a website with a high domain authority, right? And I like contextual links, if I can get them I think they they have more value than you know, just a random link sitting on a page somewhere almost like an advertisement. You want to make sure that you don’t have too many links from the same source or from the same page. I run into that problem. Many years back when If

Chris Dreyer

I didn’t bite it had put your black hat on a little bit

Gabriel Levin

a little bit a little bit. And I thought I had I had probably like 30 million links at one point and it did not wait, the color channel didn’t work out well. So that you know, the I think you raise a good point, right? You want to do it ethically, you want to do it the right way. You want to make sure you build links that aren’t going to hurt you. Because that’s certainly a possibility. Right? You can you can you can hurt your site as much as you can help it with a link. So you want high domain authority, high, high important websites pointing at you. And if you can get that link within the context of the content of the page, I think you’re going to do well. And if you can, again, that’s something I spend time with. I wouldn’t say every day but certainly on a weekly basis, I’m doing backlink analysis I’m trying to find new places where we can get links point to us. Something you got it every aspect of this, if you want to be at the top of the mountain, it’s something that you have to become semi obsessed with. Right? Yeah, you have to it has to consume, the way you think about business and the way you think about marketing and it certainly has, for me, I spend a lot of time doing it, you know, I do because I bother you all the time with my ideas. And so, so if you want to be successful and but that’s, that’s true with every dress, you know, no matter what you want to be a painter, you want to be whatever you want to be, if you’re obsessed with it, you’re gonna be the people that are the most successful are the ones that dedicate themselves to it and put all their energy into it. And and so that’s I try to do that.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, and it’s been a consistent it’s over a long period of time. You know, I want to guys you just have to check out Gabe site. It’s ranking incredibly if you want to just look at and, and model a site that set up the right way. Just look at game site at Levininjuryfirm.com. Gabe, I want to I want to just jump to a short other story here because I think it’s really intriguing just from a memorability a branding aspect. So I love the tagline ‘Win with Levin”, so how how did that tagline come about? And how are you utilizing it?

Gabriel Levin

Sure. So the way that when I when I first went into private practice, my wife bought me a gift, and it was a box of pens. And I think to this day, quite frankly, these pens are still in the criminal justice center. We’re all to try because I gave them out to everybody. But on it, she came up with a tagline. And the tagline was accused of a sin call event. Right? And it was it was because I was doing criminal defense at the time. And and I loved it and everybody loved it, quite frankly, that that got a pen and I see clerks today still using those pens. It’s hilarious. So anyway, when I changed my practice, Just out of criminal into personal injury. I was trying to think of a tagline. And not a lot rhymes with Levin. It just doesn’t work, right. And so I was sitting at my desk one day and it struck me when Levin that kind of rhymes. And I came up with the tagline, a one shot to win, call Levin. And so I was going to go with that that was going to be the tagline. And I spoke to a guy who’s a friend of mine who’s in marketing and does a lot of radio stuff, actually. And he said, Gabe, that’s too long. We got to shorten that up. Just go with Win With Levin. And I was like, You know what, that’s brilliant. I’m gonna take it and that’s it. That’s how I came up with Win with Levin now we you know, you’ll see it all over everything.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, it’s really memorable. And I think your wife’s accused of a sin called Levin. Hilarious, right, memorable. Um, yeah. So hey, let’s let’s shift to personal development. Just a couple of few final questions here. So are any are Any business books that you recommend?

Gabriel Levin

Yeah, so, um, one I think I told you about this book A long time ago, one that that I implemented in, in our file management, certainly and in our litigation strategies generally, is The Checklist Manifesto is a great book and it and what it talks about, I mean, it’s a it’s a book about a doctor and how he utilized checklists to save lives, essentially, in hospitals and and dramatically reduce the rate of infection post surgery by making sure errors didn’t occur during the surgery. And so it kind of talks about how to make a checklist and what a good checklist is and doing all those things, but but I utilize that in my practice, from the moment we sign up a case. So there’s a checklist that we made for file openings, okay, and all the things the letters that need to go out the door Getting the police report all of these things. And then when when, when that goes from a pre litigation file to a litigation file, right, there’s a new checklist. And so we make sure that every single thing in that checklist is completed. And our software kind of tickles us and reminds us if we forget to do one of those things on the checklist, and so either somebody on my staff, or myself, make sure we complete everything and so we never find ourselves at a late point in a case having not done something early on, because we can’t get to the next checklist until the first checklist is completed. The system won’t let you so we I it force it requires us to get everything done. And if you you know, maybe not everything on that checklist is necessary in every case, but everything on that checklist needs to be thought about in every case and if you do any task repetitive You are going to create shortcuts in the way that you go about it. And shortcuts lead to mistakes and they lead to missing things. And what that checklist does is kind of slow you down and make you think about everything in every case. And even if it’s just five seconds of consideration, you go and you check it off and you go, we don’t need that in this case, at least you thought about it. And that way in the future, you know, when you’re at the end of the case, that consideration wasn’t missed. And you’re always prepared at the end.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah, I love it. It’s it’s you know, the the airplane pilots they added to their run ups they go through the checklist and trust me if you’re on that, that plane you want the individual doing going through that checklist. So a great book I I highly recommend it as well. I read it after you recommended it to me so it’s just an excellent book. So what about your mentors or influences any any come to mind that helped you develop

Gabriel Levin

I mean, I don’t know that any of the names would necessarily ring the bell. But, you know, some of the great trial lawyers, I’m captivated with trial advocacy and the kind of the art form that goes into presenting a position and how you make that that case compelling and emotional and connect to the jury. And so, you know, when I was in law school, I was a big fan of Johnnie Cochran. I, you know, I found you know, everybody jokes that you know, Johnnie Cochran he’s kind of kind of almost a comical figure. But if you listen to his presentations, if you listen to his closing arguments, he is captivating captivating, I had a quick story. I had a law school professor, brilliant woman. went to Yale for law school was a US attorney and she ended She taught me criminal law. She was actually one of the professors, I would say, who was responsible for me started my career as a criminal lawyer. But so she was telling the story one day in class that she was in the courthouse, and she had heard that Johnnie Cochran was giving a closing argument. And she wanted to see it. I mean, everybody wants to see it. So she got to the courtroom. And he had already started, he was about maybe 10 or 15 minutes into what turned out to be about an hour and a half long closing argument. And she said that at the end, now, she didn’t know any of the evidence. She hadn’t heard from any of the witnesses. She didn’t know anything about the case. She said at the end of his closing argument, she was convinced that his client was innocent. And this is coming from a US Attorney. So So someone who really has very little Reasonable Doubt right and thinks everybody’s guilty and their job is to prosecute people all day long. She listened to Johnnie Cochran not knowing any of the facts and was convinced he was innocent, and so on. That tells you how powerful right? He was as a speaker and then it’s and you know, that’s that’s what you try to shoot for when you’re when you’re communicating with the jury is to be that compelling.

Chris Dreyer

That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Yeah, he’s a great storyteller and, and he’s

Gabriel Levin

even more than the story. It’s his. It’s the cadence, the way he delivers it. But the understanding that sometimes not saying anything at all, is more powerful than speaking like he, he was incredible at dramatic pauses. I mean, he could just sit silent for 10 seconds, and it was emotional, but he’s not saying anything. It was. He was just a phenomenal order, a phenomenal speaker. And as a result, obviously very successful were very compelling. persuasive attorney.

Chris Dreyer

Absolutely. Gabe, one final question here. Is there anything that you want to talk about that we haven’t discussed?

Gabriel Levin

So Chris, um, I’ve been with you a long time. I think I was one of your first clients. So they’ll be with you. And I appreciate everything you do for me. I’m happy to participate in this interview and help you any way I can.

Conclusion

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