1/22/26 Law, Trust, and Reputation: Lessons from a Leading Kern County Lawyer

Live from the basement inside the historic wars building in downtown Baker's Field. Call and text in at 6-6-1-396-1000. I need a dollar, dollar, dollar is what I need. Hey, hey, well I need a dollar, dollar, dollar is what I need. Hey, hey, till I need a dollar, dollar, dollar is what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me? Securities offered through LPO Financial, member, Fenderer, SIPC, investment advisory services offered through LPO Financial, LPO Financial, and Moneywise Guest Management are independently owned and operated. Now, let's start the Moneywise Show. Welcome to the Moneywise Show, we are live from the basement of the historic wars building in downtown Baker's Field. For the next hour or so, you are on KGEO Money Talk, 1230 AM 101.1 FM and always streaming at MoneywiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show 24 hours a day at 6-6-1-396-1000, 6-6-1-396-1000, where are your hosts, some Sammy Abiyawi with? Debbie Lewis. Welcome, Debbie. Oh, my God, it's sexy down here in the basement. It is. This is our first show together in the basement. Yes, it is. And we have great sound. It sounds amazing, it looks amazing, Stephen. No more echoes. No more echoes. No more AC going up and or going up. No dripping. No dripping too. No, it's amazing. It's amazing. I'm very happy for us as a team to have this venue, but also happy for our guests are going to be coming here and enjoying it with us. And today we have a great guest, come in, Mr. Daniel Rodriguez, local legend. Yes, he is. Local legend and country known, like U.S. known, one of the top attorneys, injury attorneys in the U.S., not just in California, not just here in Kern County. So we're very excited to introduce Mr. Rodriguez, which I think will be his first time on the show. I believe so. So, we can't wait. But before then, we have a listener, a question, Debbie. And I know we're not financial advisors, you and I. But I think we can answer this one and put this person on maybe a potential path to help him out or help her out. Hey guys, I'm a new listener and I've lived and worked here in town most of my life and retirements finally starting to feel real. Yeah, I feel you there. With the cost of living the way it is, how do I know if I'm actually saving enough to retire comfortably? Also, congrats on the new building. Went for lunch a few days ago and the food is so tasty and big portions. That's correct. I can't finish my salad. I typically have a small box. Those salads are large. Yeah, for 3pm kind of snack. Yeah. You know, I had two double bacon cheeseburgers within three days last week. No comment. No. No, I started taking the bread out because I love the burgers. Yeah. But I started taking the bread out. What I do is just no bread and I add chili on top and some jalapenos. I don't know if that is that a better direction? Debbie. Maybe just eat the bread. No, no. I mean, I have a, I'm diabetic so I, I mean, I know what's the bread does or so I tried both and believe me. No, you're right. When I eat the other way, my blood sugar does not spike up. In fact, it goes down. Right. So. I've been doing also a cup of the soup. If I want to eat like a little bird, a cup or a bowl of the soup of the day with the veggie patty on the side, which is made from scratch with the lentils. So I'm still getting protein, but it's not like, that's a great idea. It's delicious. That's a great idea. I don't, I don't think we've had a bad soup yet since we opened. No. Richard has been doing really good and today's soup is split pea soup, which I can't have unfortunately, but I guess it's really good. It looked good. Yeah. Um, Debbie, the, the, the market, wait, we didn't address this guys. I'm sorry. I keep talking about the food my apologies. We love food. So. Yes. Yes. We, we do have an answer for this, though, Debbie and I were not licensed financial advisors. However, we do work for money wise, which is an investment firm and a retirement firm at that. And I think our advice, Debbie, my advice, at least would be to, if you don't have a financial advisor, Seekwin, and I'm not pushing money wise here, financial advisors by their nature, by their industry standards, by the ethics that they have to live up to you, will be able to give them a plan based on what he perceives his future will look like, plus the income. Right. Right. So now they can put, put a financial plan together that's specific to this person. Now he can, he or she can save accordingly. Right. I think sitting down with the financial advisor and not trying to do it on your own, because I'm, work for a financial firm and I'm not a financial advisor and I have a financial advisor that helps me with these things. So my, my advice is to seek a financial advisor, an accredited, an accredited financial advisor or a CFP, which is a certified financial planner. These professionals with those accreditations and those titles have access to tools, specific tools that can calculate your, like, your projections based off of your income, your personal debts, your assets, your target retirement date, your risk tolerance. That will give you a very, very clear picture of where you're at and also with the cost of living. Adjustments, yes. Goes, goes up every year. So it takes everything into account and it pops out a pretty accurate projection of where you're at. No, that's a great advice. I think the items you've mentioned are all good and our financial advisors do that. I'm not saying just ours, but financial advisors will do, will be able to do and put something together like that. So yes, please seek the professional advice of a financial advisor, preferably a certified financial planner that accreditation has a lot of merit and has a lot of credit and a lot of weight in the industry. So yeah, good luck. And you always have money wise. You can call money wise and schedule a meeting with one of our financial advisors and hopefully we can help you out. And keep us posted. If you do have a conversation with a professional, we would love to hear from you after your experience and share with the listeners what that process was like. Yeah, that's a great advice to you. So everybody can benefit. Yeah, stock market finished the session with the solid gains today. I think a lot of it has to do with the White House backing off more aggressive tariffs, especially. Greenland. Yeah, related to Greenland and the tariffs that President Trump had mentioned that he would put in place against I think eight or 10 European countries that were the NATO allies. They were against the idea of annexing Greenland or the sale of Greenland. That's great news for the market personally. That's potentially great news. I don't get involved in politics, but potentially great news for people that are actually involved. Greenlanders and some of the European countries. So yeah, I think the indices just just gained today based on that information or based on that, the backing off of the White House, which I think was good news for the market. And I think it's good news overall to count things down, which I think is the realistic approach versus more aggressive approach. Right. What do you think, Debbie? Oh, I don't know if this is the radio show for that. No, I'm talking about economic economics, not political. Yeah, it's interesting. The world is an interesting place right now. It just feels very turbulent. So anytime I hear anything is calming down a little bit, it's a moment of relief. Yeah. And what's going on again, or what's going on right now, too, is Davos or Davos, how do you pronounce that? I don't know, to be honest. You know, like as a second language, I would say Davos, just because it's more fun to say. Davos. It sounds like a villain and a bond. Yes. It sounds like one of Game of Thrones kind of name, totally. Right? Yeah. Davos, my name is Davos. Yeah. Yeah. And I will kill your mother. And your father. Steven. Steven, stay away. Stay away, brother. So a lot of the talk was global economies, including the US. Are we facing a recession with or what's going on? And a lot of the participants, a lot of the talks I listen to, that most of the countries are achieving some type of a soft landing without looking into a sharp contraction within their respective economies. And I think that's what we're seeing here in the US as well, in my opinion. That's why the Fed is not rushing into reducing the rates, which is creating a little bit of a drama between the Fed and the executive branch or the White House. Yeah. What's going on with Jay Powell these days? Well, Jay Powell's, I think, is going to have to exit. I think his going to finish what, March, April, May, maybe? I assume. Yeah. So eventually he's going to exit is an expedited exit going to help. And I don't think so. I talked to which shared about this on the show two weeks ago. There is an independence element that the Fed enjoys and has. And prides itself on. And the markets, the markets in general, benefit from that independence. Right. I think if we have the government starting to get involved in some of these things, I think it's kind of like sets a bad precedent, in my opinion. Now I also maybe understanding that where the president is coming from as far as reducing rates and how it can ignite the economy. And historically, when you look back, it does. But we do still have the inflation still lingering. It's not gone yet. What the president is saying is, well, we're going to have to live with that. Right. Right. People are still spending money. Correct. We're going to have to live with that. Reduce the rates and let's just ignite the economy. It's like putting fuel on fire, according to the president, when you reduce the rates. Construction is going to boom. Bar one is going to boom. People are going to hire more people. People are going to spend money on capital expenditures. That's what the president is saying. And it's going to ignite, hopefully, manufacturing back in this country. So I kind of like in the middle, but the data is the data. Right. You cannot deny that we still have slightly higher inflation than what the target is for the feds. Also labor market is softening. So it's pool, push, pool, push. I don't think it has anything to do with the federal, the fed chairman decision to reduce or to keep the rates the same. So that's my opinion, Debbie. And if I knew more, I'll probably be a lot richer. Yeah. Same. Maybe. I mean, staying on interest rates, Debbie, I'm a big proponent of a reduction in interest rates to a level that maintains the balance between labor and inflation. Okay. So 25 years ago, when I first started in banking, I remember prime was very, very low. We're talking about 3% in the trees. And then now in the last couple of years, it went up substantially. Where are we now? I think seven. Six, seven. Okay. Six, seven. I don't know. Oh, God. I thought that died in 2025. It did. It did. My kids, my 13 year old, no, if I sage in front of him now, it's embarrasses him. He walks away. He's like that. As you should. Please don't that. Please. That's old. I'm not with now, but I like to embarrass him, especially in front of his friends. I'm one of those dads that drop him off and say, "I love you, Gabe." And then he walks away and he puts his hat on and just shicks his head. His mom does worse. She gets off the car and gives him a hug. I thought you were going to say a kiss. She tries. He pushes her away. He pushes her away. So the question here, Debbie, is are we going to expect some rate cuts in 2026? Or are we going to keep the rates the same? I think with the change in the Federal Reserve Chairman post, I think we will see rate cuts. Because whomever between the two people that are in the running, they are pro interest rate cuts. Okay. What's the impact going to be? I think it's going to be positive at the beginning. The markets are going to be positive, but we're going to have to wait and see how that's going to affect mortgages, how it's going to affect sectors like construction and housing, borrowing, lines of credits and inventory finance and things like that. What is the average mortgage rate at the moment? Six, six, six and a quarter. It is. Okay. In that range. Yeah. It's not bad rate, Debbie. When I bought my first house, it was 6.75, but then I refinanced a three and a quarter when rates went a little bit before. Oh, man. That's when I should have bought a house. Yes. But houses went up substantially too in price and during that period, because we had a lot, especially in this town, a lot of people were coming from L.A. San Francisco, San Diego even, relocating here, because they could afford a much bigger house with the pool, with Cassira, with whatever, the dream house, moving from place in L.A. where they're stuck in traffic for two hours a day or buying up investment properties, which is what I came up against more than once. And I think that's what happened during COVID. I could not compete with that. Well, you can't compete. The average American, this is a very good topic, really, because the average American cannot compete in housing today, not because you and I are buying houses. No, it's because hedge funds are buying houses and hedge funds. Or cash buyers, people that do it professionally. Correct. Yeah. They buy it and then maybe they'll spend a couple of thousand dollars on a carpet and paint and then flip for a much higher price. And because of the demand, they actually get what they want. But I have not, I've seen a little bit of softening in my opinion. I think we need to have the expert, what's the name of the gentleman that we have on the show, Stephen. Marvin? Yeah. He's a mortgage. Alan. Alan. Sorry. Alan's name just escaped me for a second. My apologies, Alan. He's amazing. We should have him on the show to talk about that because it's really, really, he's an amazing person to talk to about these things. Yeah. He's great. Yeah. Well, we'll take our first break. When we come back, we'll introduce our guest. And much more. We'll be right back. Let's not show up music again, Steve. We're back. We're the money-wise show. I'm Sammy. I'll be out here with Debbie Lewis and our guest Mr. Daniel Rodriguez, founder and president of Rodriguez and associates. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Sammy. Thank you, Debbie, for having me here. It's a pleasure. I can't believe this is just now your first time with us on the show. Yes. I didn't even know this basement existed. Well, I'm glad. If you have some time after the show, I would love to give you the tour so you can see which was done with the building. Sounds like a deal. Yeah, I took a little tiny tour of this basement and the venue that you folks are building out is like, wow, when you guys finish it, it's going to be pretty impressive. A fun fact in the evolution of money-wise and the money-wise show years ago when you were still in your old office on I Street and you guys were getting ready to leave. I went and toured that space with David and Sherrod. Oh, wow. And that was a really, really special building right across from Dagnies. Right, right, right. Yeah. In fact, it's the oldest standing brick building in the county. And then I had a great address, right, 2020 I Street. Yes. An ideal location for an optometrist or an optimist. Well, welcome to the show. Mr. Rodriguez, I can't wait to ask my questions and I don't want to start with just this. This is your first time on the show and I know you're an attorney but the path to becoming an attorney is not traditionally like what you took. You went to college for something else, other than law. Well, I grew up differently than most Americans, okay, born seven miles away from the Mexican border in Texas. We started out as migrant farm workers. That meant that we followed crops. That meant that I lived in areas, usually then lived more than two or three months. So we started picking cotton in Texas and Arkansas and Louisiana. When my dad heard that the streets in California were paved with gold, okay, so we decided to come out to California. I didn't pick cotton in California but I picked almost everything you can think of, okay. And we lived in labor camps, we kept moving every two or three months. So that meant that I attended between three and five different schools every year growing up. Labor camps, I lived in labor camps like the one out in wheat patch, you know, the one that's the subject of John Steinbeck's novel, The Grades of Wrath, okay, that Henry Fonda, probably the two of you two young to remember this, but Henry Fonda was a, you know, Academy Award winner. His daughter, Jane Fonda, 80 something now, right? And I didn't speak a word of English until I started school at the age of eight. My dad was illiterate. That means he didn't read or write in Spanish or English because he was an orphan. He never got to go to school. My mom had a third grade education. But because of their lack of formal education, they valued formal education even more so. So what that meant was that the six kids, five of us got college degrees, three of us got graduate degrees, okay. And yeah, you know, it's like, for example, I didn't live in a house with indoor plumbing until I was in the sixth grade. The first time I ever went to a dentist in my life, I was 25 years old. Wow. Okay. Your teeth are amazing, by the way. Thank you. And I was at UCLA Law School. Go Bruins. Yes. And part of the benefits was for $5 we could get dental and medical insurance. I had never had insurance, right? Like dental insurance. Okay. I'll take advantage of it. The hitch, you know, was it we had to go to the dental school for it. So walked over there, you know, filled out the questionnaire to see a dentist and I filled it out and I'm about to walk away and the reception stopped. Hey, hey, hey, come back here. You're trying to be funny. Here's that. You left blank the part that says, "When's the last time you had your teeth clean?" You know, "When's the last time?" I said, "No, I'm not kidding. I've never been to a dentist." I said, "Really?" I said, "Yeah, really?" So, you know, I came back a few days and I'm sitting in the waiting room and they call my name out and I follow the young lady through a maze of hallways back to her door. She grabs the door knob, swings the door open and there's like 25 dental students waiting for me. I know what they were thinking, right? What they were thinking is we don't have to travel to a third-world country to examine somebody's mouth, somebody's teeth, they've never been to a dentist entirely. What state were your teeth actually in? Actually, they were very disappointed. Can you guess how many cavities they found? Zero. Zero. Wow. Why? The professor took a history from me, asked me questions, right? And I said, "I lived here and here and here." And part of the, some of the places I lived in were in the Texas panhandle, little towns like Mulechew, Sudan, level land, last buddy, you know, classic Texas names, right? And flora it occurs naturally in the water supply, and he could tell that because the surface of the enamel was irregular. So when I told him, he goes, "Aha!" and then, genetically, my dad had great teeth. We'd be out working in the fields and, you know, we couldn't afford a lot of things, including a soda pop opener. So at noon, when we'd take 15, 20-minute lunch break, we'd be sitting around and you know, back then we drank sodas and we'd hand the soda over to my dad, my dad would go, "Oh, I see." And he'd hand it back to us. So he had great teeth. So a combination of those two things, you know. So you went to UCLA for your undergrad, I went to Bakersville College. I remember in high school, you had to have an exit interview and a conference and I was at Arbonne High School and I went in to see the counselor and she says, "What do you want to do?" I went to get an engineering degree, she said, "Okay. Where do you want to go?" I said, "Well, I researched it and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is like the number one rated public undergrad university engineering in the entire country and UCLA is not too far back. So that's where I like to go." She goes, "She looks at me and she says, "I'm sorry. You're not going to be able to get into those schools. You have to be more realistic." And why is that? And I said to her, "Well, I've already applied and I've gotten admitted to both schools." She goes, "Oh." "Oh, do you want to publicly name this person?" "You know, where are they now?" "So, you know, I don't really hold it against her, you know. She was just going off, statistically speaking, she looks at my background and so forth and so on." And it's like, "Hey, far more kids don't go to engineering school." And she was right. But I couldn't go to Cal Poly right away because when I told my mom, my mom says, "Me who'll please, you know, I don't want you to go so far away, you know. So for the first two years, I went to Big Show College. And I'm here to tell you, I got a great education at Big Show College. Yes. Because it's fantastic. Yes. I was concerned. I was worried. I was worried that when I would get to Cal Poly and be in with the big boys, that I would be inadequate. Because I was sitting in the classroom at Cal Poly engineering and every student in there, their dad was an engineer, right? They had built radios and stuff, you know, I was an electronic engineering computer major. So oh, and by the way, guess how many girls were in the entire electronic engineering program at Cal Poly when I was there? Zero. One. Yeah. You know, one. Yeah. Now that just as it's exchange, I think they're a little bit over 50 percent, I think, pretty close to it. Okay. So things have changed. Yeah. So. But the education I got at Big Show College prepared me very well, you know, the organic chemistry and the physics and the statics and the dynamics and the metallurgy and the thermodynamics and all that good stuff. The reason I bring that up is that most lawyers, 99 percent of lawyers, maybe 90, that go to law school, you have to get a bachelor's degree before you get into law school, most regular law school, accredited law schools. And most of them are one of three majors, political science, history or English. My undergraduate degree was in engineering, very different. So I wound up going to UCLA law school. Does that, does that, the engineering degree prepped you for the law school and now the injury, the industry or injuries, the stuff that you do? I have a fantastic advantage over most lawyers because science and engineering is so interwoven into everything we do, criminal, do a DUI case. You got to know, you don't have to, but if you understand the science behind, how does a breathalyzer work? So if they're accusing your kind of being under the influence, you know how to cross examine the toxic colleges in a murder case, about trajectory pass, entry wounds, exit wounds, how many grams, how much weight does a bullet have, how fast does it travel in a crash case? You have to know, not that you have to, but it helps if you know metallurgy, how much force did it take to bend the metal frame to this particular car? How fast was the other vehicle had to have traveled? And how much of the forces were absorbed by the frame of the car? How much of the forces traveled into the human body, the occupants of the vehicle? And how many foot pounds for pressure does it take to break the long bone, your thigh bone, your pelvis? How much does it cause to cause a traumatic brain injury? So if you understand science, at least have the elementary understanding of it, you can cross examine anybody. But if you're a political science major, you're going to rely on the experts or you're going to have to hire experts at thinking type, a brain type. So an engineer is very hyper focused, detail oriented, right? They're thinking judging personalities. Not just thinking in theory, it's like let's get down in the minutia. They're critical thinkers, you know, analytical people. But that's not all a good thing. It can be a bad thing because most of the population are not thinking judging people. They're sensing intuitive people. We are not rational beings. We are rationalizing beings. We are not logical beings. We are biological beings, whether we want to admit it or not. Most of our decisions, almost all of them, are done at a subconscious level based on emotions and those emotions come from our previous experiences. And then when it percolates up to the conscious part, we assign objective reasons. Why did you marry your partner? Why did you buy this kind of car? Why did you do this? And we put reasons to, oh, because it's a high performance car or it's the most reasonably priced vehicle. Or I bought this house because a per square footage area built up is the fact of the matter is it was emotional. Yes. And I don't mean emotional, like in a hysterical sense, like a hysterical. And then you combine that, the engineering with trial work, doing trials. Trials, I had great training for trial work because typically in a trial, you have to pick a jury. Yes. There are 12 strangers, right? So the way I grew up, I'd get to a new school every two or three months, right? And I'm the new kid on the block. That bunch of kids that is walking across the school quad by their friend or foe. And I'm a little guy. So I had learned to talk my way into things and learn to talk my way out of things and how to form relationships and how to validate people's feelings, right? And make connections. Otherwise, I wouldn't survive. Yeah. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was great training. I always tell people, if you're going to become a trial lawyer, be a farm worker, migrant farm worker, be a server, a waiter, a waitress, because you're doing with the public, you're walking up to a table of people you've never met and you're going to make a connection, especially if you want a tip. That's right. Right? You got to learn to connect. That's right. You know? Otherwise, so if you're in the courtroom and you're talking like a lawyer, as a motorized vehicle traverse the asphaltic surface, the vehicle came to an abrupt halt and the occupant exit at the vehicle. What the heck does that mean? Well, you got to tell the story, right? The jury would not understand that, right? Because it's about telling stories. You're not connected with people with bullet points on a PowerPoint slide. Can you imagine if Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address with a PowerPoint presentation or Martin Luther Kean delivering, I have a dream with a PowerPoint, right? So people don't remember what you tell them. People don't remember how you made them feel. We have a listener comment/question. My family has used Rodriguez's team in the past and he is such a kind person with a great office. She bolded this in the next comment. Yes, he has the greatest team I've ever seen, a great man and glad to hear he is still in town. How many years did he go to UCLA? Three years. Three years long and you graduate, lawyers have to take the bargaining. When I say that to people, they say, "It's like a drinking contest." The bar refers to back in medieval England, they had a bar that separated the judge who sat up on a higher platform called the bench and the throne. So to pass the bar exams, they call it the bar exam. So all 50 states have a bar exam that you have to pass in order to get a license to practice. And you can take it as many times you want. And I happened to be one of those fortunate few that passed it the first time around. So I took the bar exam and when I was going to UCLA in Cal Poly, I'm so old that we had dinosaurs roaming the campus at that time. Mr. Rodriguez, you went to school for engineering and then you switched to law. No. No? I always had a plan. People ask me, "When did you decide that you were in college?" Do you want it to become an engineer or a lawyer? By the time I was in the sixth grade, had you met a lawyer? No. I lived in labor camps. Had you ever met an engineer? No. So how did you know? I said, "I knew exactly what they did even though I had never met one." So how did you do that? I said, "Look, here's how I did it." I had visited one of the seven rings around Saturn and lived there. I had been at the OK Corral when the shootout took place. I had sat at the round table with Keen Arthur all through the magic of reading. So I used to devour books, I still do, you know, for work, you know, and through the magic of reading, not through my parents, now they had great work ethic and they really pushed us, but they couldn't help us with our homework, right? So it was all about reading. So by the time I was in sixth grade, I had a game plan. I knew I wrote away to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers of America, in New York, and they sent me back a packet and told me exactly what classes I had to take. So I always knew I wanted to get a degree in engineering and then go to law school. That's exactly what I did. So I'm one of those weirdos because in today's world, I don't know, 50% of the time you will ask somebody, what are you going to major in, you know, young person? And most of the time, 50% of the time, they'll say something like, I don't know yet. I'm trying to find out, I'm trying to say, I'm one of those weirdos. I can't relate to that. I already made up my mind, yeah. I'm jealous. I'm still trying to figure it out. Now my next question now that you've clarified the law versus engineering, why injury law versus business law or any any type of law? The only thing I changed in my plan, my career plans, was I thought I wanted to become a patent lawyer. That's why the relationship between engineering and law, right, that makes sense. And then I interviewed at a law firm when I was in law school to work, we call it clerking, you know, be a law clerk. You do all the grunt work, you do all the research and writing a memorandum and blah, blah, blah. And I interviewed and I found out that patent lawyers spend 98% of their time sitting in a cubicle, pouring over blueprints and schematics and that kind of thing, trying to determine whether this, there's a patent infringement, whether this particular design has already been copyrighted or patent it, you know, and they're never going to see the inside of a courtroom and never going to really relate to people. So I thought, mmm, I don't think I want that. So I changed it. And so I went to go work for the dark side. I went to go work as a clerk while I was in law school for an insurance defense firm. That's the law firms that when somebody gets sued and you're insured by whoever, state farm, farmers, Geico, whatever, they hire a lawyer for you. That's why you pay them a premium and they indemnify you, which is a fancy word to pay for any damages assessed against you, up to the limit of your policy, liability policy. So they're insurance defense lawyers. And the first assignment I got was this man had gotten hurt in Texas working for a California employer and he would badly injure in a construction site, like a paraplegic or quadriplegic. My assignment was to figure out under which law would an insurance company have to pay at least amount. Under Texas law, because it happened there, but it was a California employer, so under California law. So I was my first assignment to research it and tell the law partner, given my legal memo with my opinions, right, and that didn't sit well with me. So I made up my mind, okay, I'll sit here for the next two years, learning the, this side of the aisle how it operates. But when I get my law degree, I'm not going to be on this side. I don't like the idea. And look, I'm not passing judgment on them, different strokes for different folks, but that's not my cup of tea. I don't want to be the person that's going to be taking food out of the mouth, the widows and orphans. And would that be the best use of your natural gifts, right, and connecting with other people and being on a stage, which performing is the courtroom, like you knew. Exactly. So that was the eye opener for me, and I said, you know what? And I like this kind of work. And again, I tell people, I'm the world's biggest weirdo, okay? Because most lawyers start out civil or criminal, and civil has a lot of branches and criminal has a couple of branches. So you can be a probate lawyer, a corporate lawyer, a contract lawyer, transactional lawyer, and the list goes on. Or you can be a trial lawyer. And so, but you don't actually cross the boundary, most lawyers don't. I started out trying both criminal and civil cases. I see. So I was in the courtroom a lot, okay? So my first trial, I got sworn in, within 30 days of getting sworn in, I tried my first jury trial. A DUI defense trial. I still remember the case, because a young lady who'd come out of trouts on Northchester in oil, and there was a CHP officer unit park just down the street watching the action. It saw her allegedly stumbled to her car, you know, and get in the car and pulled her over. And I tried that case. That was my first trial, like, right of the gate, you win it? No. There's no way to win that case, she was indeed sworn in. Hey, and I tell people, look, you know, she was entitled to a defense, you know. But, you know, if I'm being open and honest when people ask me, did she deserve to get convicted? The answer is yes. I want to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk about our history, you and I, a little bit, because I have some comments, some learning lessons that I learned from you. When I first met you, this is about 15, 17 years ago. Let's take a quick break, Stephen, and when we come back, we'll continue with Mr. Rudry Guess. [music] [music] [music] [music] It's nice. It's a big part of the show. It is. Especially when Bob Marley's playing. My favorite. Oh, we have another message that just came through. Yes. Go ahead, Debbie. Does Daniel have the same thoughts that it's best to use a local lawyer over L.A. ones? I see the commercial always ragging on out of town, city lawyers. Are we on the air already? Yes. Oh, my God. I was about to say something that was inappropriate for the video. Please, go on. I've loved inappropriate. Stephen would leave it. Okay. Here's the deal. It's unfortunate, but now, well, let me start off by saying this, let me, people are under the impression that there is a ton of lawsuits because you turn on the TV, you turn on the radio, you go down the freeway and there's a hundred billboards. We call them billboard lawyers, right? Mickey Fine. Oh, yeah. Sweet James, Morgan and Morgan, all these law firms, right? And so people are under the impression, God, my God, there must be a ton of lawsuits, especially involving car ricks, right? So here are three statistics, there was a study done by the U.S. Department of Justice that found that there has been a drop in civil litigation by 70%. I'm going to read three statistics. Here's a second one. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal in 2017. The title of it was, "We won't see you in court. The era of lawsuits is waning." The civil litigation tort claims have fallen by 80% since 1992. Third statistic I'm going to read you, out of every 100 car rick cases, 36-7 go to trial. That's less than 0.004? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. So, and people are saying, "My God, how can that be the case?" Because these law firms are not real--well, they have a law license. But they're what we call marketing lawyers, right? They have--this one lawyer I know, I can't rebuild his name, but he has 300 employees, and he's the only lawyer, okay? So they run what's called a settlement mill. That means they sign up, however many cases, that particular lawyer think signs up something like 1,500 cases a month, okay? He advertises all up and down California. Has he ever seen the inside of a courtroom? Has Mickey Fine ever seen the inside of a courtroom in these other lawyers? And the answers no, because they settle cases, every single one of them. And what does that mean to the consumer? Insurance companies keep tabbed on the lawyers who file lawsuits. They know--they get ahold of my I-9 and so forth, and I won't go into detail on that. But they know my net worth. They know how much money I spent on cases. They keep track of my record of lawyers. So if they know that this lawyer never goes to trial and settles all the cases, their platform AI platform tells them to offer them 10 cents on the dollar, and sooner or later that lawyer is going to sell it. If the lawyer they're dealing with, like myself, who has tried over 150 jury trials, and most lawyers don't try more than 5, 10 in their career, you know, if that many. And they tell me, "I'll see you in court." I said, "By all means, sir, by all means, ma'am, I'll see you in court." So, who do you think has more leverage, who has more clout, when they make a claim against one of these multinational insurance companies, lawyers of London, and even the domestic ones, right? Whether it be all state, whether it be farmers, whether it be state farm, you know. So, these lawyers--and if there were somehow one of these billboard lawyers, these marketing lawyers were to go to court, would they know anything about our local customs, our local culture? You know, they've never picked a jury here, they don't know much about it, right? But I'm not worried about that because they're never going to try a case, you know. Right? So, are you better off hiring somebody locally? Yes. And the second piece I got to add is hire a lawyer who tries cases, otherwise they don't have any clout, you know. So, how do you find that out? Well, in today's world, you can do the AI search, ask, "Has so-and-so ever done a civil trial?" I'll give you an example. Before I came over here, I was reviewing a file, a lawyer from Arizona contacted me because the specialty of doing trials is very rare, 36 out of 100,000 cases go to trial. Right. So, I get contacted. I was in Portland, seeing a lawyer who wanted me to help him go try a case in Portland. I got contacted by a lawyer in Arizona. And his case, a case that his client has, is a man, 62 years old, who's in his car driving down I-10 South of Phoenix, I-10 runs from Phoenix to Tucson, and he's going, "He has a stroke." And then he starts driving erratically at high speed and hitting things and so forth. He gets reported, they don't call it the CHP over there, they call it the DPS, Department of Public Safety. The troopers pull him over and they barricade him. And he's in the sand off the side of the road, and he's spinning his wheels, and they're ordering him to get out and they see vomit and still forth on him, but you know, and he's not cooperating, he's not getting out. So they call the local county sheriff to bring the canine, canine comes out, and then they sick the dog on him, get him out, drags him out, "Oh, and I've handled a lot of these cases before in the past, I've never seen this part." The dog was latched onto his arm, I wouldn't let go. They had to use, this is in the police report that I just finished reading. They had to use a jaw breaking tool. I can hardly -- I guess you -- I've never heard of such a thing, you know, right? So then they take him over, they charge him with DUI and all these things at the hospital, they draw blood. And then they realize, the ER people say, "This guy's suffering a stroke," right? And they run him to, they do the toxicological, they send it and then a couple of months later it comes back, zero alcohol, zero drugs. He doesn't have any kind of criminal history, he was having a stroke. But now, because of the delay of not getting him the care, "Oh, and his left arm, the -- his nerve that controls his left hand to grip, to do this, "Oh, he's a pianist at church." plays a piano. He now has what we call a drop-darm. It doesn't have any finger control, you know. In some cases, if it's severe enough, the doctors say, "You might be better off as prosthetic so we can amputate and put something," you know, so you have the -- so that lawyer contacted me because he's never tried a case. So he wants me to do it. See, this is how -- So in a case like that, do you partner with that local attorney and you come in and supplement and bring in, you know, the big resources, or do you just take -- is it a handoff? No, exactly what you just said. First of all, since I'm not licensed to practice in Arizona, I need a sponsor lawyer, right, and he's licensed, so I can work under his license. All he has to do is sit there, and I'm thinking of anything, right? So that's the first thing. And yes, I probably will have to pay him some kind of referral fee. Referral fees are only allowed lawyer to lawyer. You can't pay anybody else, a layperson, somebody who's not a lawyer. We tried a case in Iowa about 2024, a trucking case, and the lawyer from the insurance company for the big trucking company told us that we would never -- no, Iowa, I get this all the time. We're in a very conservative venue. This is Iowa. This is not California. And in this case, no one will ever -- because pay -- pay more than $3 million on the case. My partner and I were thinking of taking that letter and framing it, right? We went to trial, and we got $35 million. The biggest verdict now in Iowa State history, okay? Now -- so when they tell me that conservative, you know, without getting too much into politics, like, "Hey, we're in a red state," you know, and I say, "Yeah, I'm from California, but I live in Kern County," and I think our president won by -- I don't know, 20 percentage points or something like that. So please don't tell me about conservative. I know conservative -- yeah, and conservative people are fine people. We have common -- more common ground -- I hate this extreme left and extreme right BS. Most of us have a lot of common ground, right, where a lot more similar than dissimilar. I agree with you, Mr. Rodriguez. He's -- Steven is telling us we have two more minutes. I can't go on for hours. The show is over? In two minutes, unfortunately. You have to come back. Definitely. We want you to come back, Mr. Rodriguez. I don't want to touch on some of the things I -- Can I interrupt you, Sam? Yes, please. Because I wanted to come back and tell everybody how I taught you to speak French. Yeah, for our listeners, I do speak French and I learned it from Mr. Rodriguez. No, I have a great history with you, personally, for the listeners. I was a banker at one time, and I had to learn the business of law from Mr. Rodriguez so I can become a better banker for him. And Sam, he took care of me and my business. And I appreciate that. And it's been a great relationship, in my opinion, Mr. Rodriguez. I sometimes -- when I am in trouble, car trouble, whatever, the two times I was in trouble. I called him on a Sunday, and he'll always answer. And I'm very grateful for that, Mr. Rodriguez. But you're not at trouts. You were not at trouts with your -- I was not at fault. Both cases? I was actually not at fault. And Mr. Rodriguez still took care of me and my family, and I really appreciate that. We want you back, Mr. Rodriguez. It was my pleasure. Steven. Sammy, let's schedule Mr. Rodriguez as soon as possible. Right after he gets out of trouble, we've already worked on it. Great. We appreciate you coming out with your busy schedule, and join us tomorrow. We'll have Justin, Frank, and the Kern County Asian Chamber coming in tomorrow to get in down to business Friday. Till then, be smart. Be safe. Be mind your eyes. Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member, Fyndra, SIPC, Investment Advisory Services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and Moneywise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.