Law Firm Owner's Journey to Law

Speaker 1 0:30

Jim Magner. I own the law firm. Well, I'm one of several owners of the law firm Magner Law, based here in downtown Leesburg. We perform legal services, generally pretty broad legal services. There's a few things we don't do, but there's more things we do than we don't. We service most of Northern Virginia, dc and Southern Maryland. We have six attorneys.

Speaker 2 0:55

Is that Northern Maryland?

Speaker 1 0:57

Not so much. No, nobody wants to pay our hourly rate to drive up there. But we go as far south as Stafford and Fredericksburg, not often, but occasionally as far west as Winchester and a little bit into Maryland. I think we had one of our clients took a case in Baltimore and I think we did one case in, actually in Ocean City. But those are unusual.

Speaker 2 1:21

Generally it's right around the Northern Virginia market. Okay, nice. Well, give me a little bit of a back story on how did you come to be a lawyer? How did you come to law?

Speaker 1 1:35

Sure, I didn't start out to be a lawyer. I was actually working in government affairs. As a young guy I was up on Capitol Hill and trying to be very important Trying to be very important.

Speaker 2 1:47

Trying to be, I thought I was important.

Speaker 1 1:49

Other people did not think I was important as I thought I was and I would get irritated because I would go to a meeting with a bunch of other government affairs people and nothing I said got taken seriously because I was young, number one and number two because other people in the room had law degrees and everybody deferred to the people with the law degrees.

Speaker 1 2:07

So I finally got frustrated and thought you know, fine, I'll go get that piece of paper and stick it on the wall. Then they'll have to pay me more money and listen to me. So I went to law school at night, enrolled at George Mason at night and worked full-time going to school at night and had no intention whatsoever of being a lawyer. I didn't have any inclination to do it, didn't want to be a lawyer, until I got into it and discovered that I really enjoyed it. And in fact it was a judge who's no longer at Fairfax, but he was a professor at George Mason while he was a judge who's no longer at Fairfax, but he was a professor at George Mason while he was a judge who convinced me to do it. He got me into a law clerk program at Fairfax Circuit Court and I discovered that I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 2:44

So you were like I'm going to go do it, but I don't even want to do this.

Speaker 1 2:49

Right, yeah, I went just to get the piece of paper. Washington is filled with people who have law degrees hanging on their walls that don't practice law, and I was going to be one of them, but, as it turns out, I actually really enjoyed being in the courtroom.

Speaker 2 3:03

So tell us a little bit of that enjoyment. What drew you in? What did you like about being a lawyer?

Speaker 1 3:10

I think the big difference for me was working in government affairs. I was never allowed to express an opinion. I always had to be very careful with everything I said and all the opinions I had. Young people have very strong opinions and I had really really strong opinions, but you had to smile and nod and agree with everybody around you all the time.

Speaker 1 3:29

When I got into the courtroom as a law clerk and law student, I got to argue and I got to give my side of the story and I got to get up and talk.

Speaker 2 3:38

So you're like the arguing aspect.

Speaker 1 3:41

I really enjoyed it. I enjoy being right even when I'm wrong, and so that really appealed to me the ability to stop sort of smiling and agreeing with everybody and actually take a stand, take a position and go with it and argue it and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but it was very refreshing to me and I just really enjoyed the atmosphere.

Speaker 2 4:02

Nice, I like that. That's very interesting. Yeah, tell us a little bit of you said you guys do all kinds of different things at the firm. Could you give us a couple examples of what kind of cases you take on?

Speaker 1 4:20

Sure. So I do a lot of civil litigation. I work with a lot of small businesses, everything from setting up the companies to helping people who are retiring sell their businesses or transfer them to somebody else whether they're transferring them to a child who's going to take over or sell it outright. I do a lot of work with companies who get themselves into trouble and need somebody to go to court on their behalf, or they've got people that aren't paying them and I help them go collect the money. A lot of that work I do. I do a lot of estate planning. Sometimes estate cases end up with probate and end up with people in court fighting over Uncle Harry's money and inheritance. Unfortunately, sometimes we end up in court in those cases. That's kind of my bailiwick. Where I'm at, I have attorneys with the firm that specialize in family law, that specialize in criminal defense, civil litigation in terms of personal injury.

Speaker 2 5:09

So there's all different lawyers specialized in different aspects.

Speaker 1 5:14

Well, we don't actually have specialists like doctors do so. Like you know, podiatrist is a doctor who specializes in feet.

Speaker 1 5:19

So we don't have specialists in the professional designation way, but we have people who concentrate in that area. My partner, jeff, for example, has been doing divorce and family law for more than 20 years, and there's there's few people in the Commonwealth that know more about that process than he does, and there's few people in the Commonwealth that know more about that process than he does, and so we often joke that it would be malpractice for me to take a divorce case to court, especially when he's there. So we've got these people who have these areas of knowledge and all of our attorneys. I think our youngest attorney, our newest attorney, has 10 years of experience, so there's nobody in our firm who isn't really a master at their craft.

Challenges of Hiring in Growing County

Speaker 2 5:57

Okay, that's very interesting. Tell me a little bit of what do you find challenging about being a lawyer nowadays, or being in the whole law aspect nowadays with just stuff that's going on in the world.

Speaker 1 6:18

I will tell you this the one thing about being a lawyer is that when times are good, people need their lawyer. When times are bad, they really need their lawyer.

Speaker 1 6:26

So we don't see the fluctuations in our business that other people might. If you sell luxury cars when times are bad, nobody's buying Cadillacs. We don't see those fluctuations.

Speaker 1 6:38

Our big challenge right now is hiring people, because we're living in a county that is exploding in growth. We're living in an area where the expectations and the demands for legal services are growing faster than we can keep up with them. At the same time, law school enrollment over the last 20 years has been in decline, and so there's fewer and fewer lawyers out there, and so our challenge is actually finding new lawyers that will fit our model and practice the way that we like to practice, to add them in, because we're getting to the point now where I'm worried that within a couple of years, we're not going to be be able to service everybody that wants our services, and we're going to have to be turning people down, which I've never had to do before in my career. I've never faced that problem of having too much business, but that's really the challenge I think we're facing, and I hear from other lawyers too that finding good new lawyers is just harder and harder because there's just fewer of them out there.

Speaker 2 7:33

So what are you guys looking for in these new lawyers coming out?

Speaker 1 7:44

We are specifically our firm. We like to have to bring on people who have some experience, that they've been out and they've been to the courthouse. They know which window to go to to file the right form. They have some experience that we can stick them and stand them up at court and they can argue something without having adult supervision with them. We unfortunately, because we're so busy, we don't have the time to take somebody right out of law school and train them. Our perfect ideal person is somebody who maybe went out on their own and started their own practice and decided they really like the law part but don't like the management part, don't like dealing with landlords and banks and trust accounts and all of the things that go into running a firm, and they'd rather just practice law. And so that's, I think, the ideal person for us.

Speaker 2 8:26

Okay, and now could you give us some advice, maybe for a law student right now, somebody who's, or maybe not even they're not even in law school yet, but they're thinking about. Is this something that I want to do? Is this something?

Speaker 1 8:46

that I don't want to do?

Speaker 2 8:47

Is it the career for me? Give us a little advice or a little background on how things were for you, even when you were a student.

Speaker 1 8:56

Absolutely so. I don't remember being a student because I was working full-time and going at night, so it's a blur to me. My advice to anybody who's thinking about it is number one you really have to want it and be passionate about it, because it's such a huge investment. It's a financial investment, it's a time investment, it's a time investment, and so if you're going to go down that road, you need to really do the soul searching and say this is really what I want to do. My advice is to maybe go intern at a law firm or work as a paralegal or something, maybe during summers, during your college years or right afterwards.

Speaker 1 9:30

Before taking that plunge, I in fact recommend that somebody do another job first, because one of the things they don't teach you in law school and nobody prepares you for and a lot of lawyers go through their whole career never understanding is that law is a business.

Speaker 1 9:45

Law is a service that you're providing to people, and if you can't connect with people, if you can't understand their business and what is going on with them, if all you have is law knowledge, you're not much used to them. And no matter how good you are at lawyering, you have to understand the client and be able to provide a service that the client actually needs. And many lawyers simply just don't get that. And I think because I came to law later in life I was already out working, I already had kids, I already had a house, I already had the mortgage to pay all of those things I had some experience to take with me to law school that I think the kid who goes straight from college to law school and then straight out into a law program never gets those experiences and I think it really helps somebody as a lawyer to have other experience besides lawyering.

Speaker 2 10:31

Very interesting. Different backgrounds lead to different things, huh.

Speaker 1 10:39

Absolutely. Somebody who was working as a kindergarten teacher probably makes, initially anyway, a better lawyer than somebody who went straight through and got perfect grades and went all the way through law school with perfect grades but never did anything else. I would be inclined to hire the person that did something else first.

Speaker 2 10:56

Interesting perspectives. Thanks, I like that. Well, tell us you were saying that you were working while going to law school. What were you doing then? I was still doing the government affairs work.

Speaker 1 11:12

I was still working in the trucking industry, representing trucking companies in front of various government agencies and Capitol Hill and whatnot. Gotcha and I was still thinking I was very important. But I had to be at my office at 7.30 in the morning and then I would leave at 5 to go over to law school, over to the classes. I would have class until 10 o'clock at night and I did that five nights a week for four years.

Speaker 2 11:39

Five nights a week for four years.

Speaker 1 11:40

Yeah, the toughest part was that fourth year, because law school is a three-year program but if you go at night it's considered part-time, so it takes an extra year. So all the people that are half the people I started with were already going off and getting their law jobs and I still had another year to go. That was the soul-crushing part of it.

Speaker 2 11:59

Oh, I get that. Yes, Tell us a little bit about Now. What do you do now? You're a family man, Family's a little grown.

Speaker 1 12:12

now they're on their own.

Speaker 2 12:13

Yeah, tell us a little bit about how it was when you were working Capitol Hill and all of these things was family still, did you have a family then?

Speaker 1 12:26

Yeah, I had young children at home.

Speaker 2 12:28

Did you have kids? Oh my God.

Speaker 1 12:29

Wife kids mortgage.

Speaker 2 12:30

Okay, so that makes it even a little bit harder.

Speaker 1 12:33

It was a challenge. It was a challenge, but I'm glad I did it because I think the alternative is the first couple years out of law school is brutal, Particularly if you did like I did and you go into a fairly large firm. They demand a lot of hours, a lot of billable hours and a lot of time in the office, and so if you go from what's basically a college schedule going to class a few hours a week, maybe working a part-time job to suddenly having to work 70, 80, 90 hours a week, it can be a huge shock to your system, Whereas for me, working 70 hours a week was like a reduction in my workload. So it was painful, it was soul-crushing, but it was good training.

Speaker 2 13:12

Yeah, Tell us a little bit about. I don't know if you can touch on this subject or what, but what is one of the biggest cases you guys have coming up Are you able to talk about?

Speaker 1 13:26

stuff like that. I can't really talk about cases coming up because obviously there's litigation.

Speaker 2 13:32

We've handled a variety of very large or what are the most I should say maybe most common cases that you've been seeing lately.

Speaker 1 13:44

Well, it's funny because it does track what goes on in the economy.

Speaker 1 13:46

For example, in the initial period after COVID, a lot of the clients I represent are in the construction trades, and so there were a lot of issues, problems and even litigation over the fact that the cost of construction materials had jumped right in the middle of times where my clients were doing projects and so they would bid a job at X dollars and then find out that the cost of materials had gone up by double and then stuck in a contract where they were losing money.

Speaker 1 14:13

We've dealt with the fact that we're having trouble hiring, but so are our clients, whether it's a restaurant or a dental office or a construction company. The scarcity of labor has been an issue that we've had to deal with. This year, it seems like we've seen a spike in family cases, and I think that also tracks with the economy. As I've seen over the 25 years I've been practicing, when inflation goes up, when costs go up, when things get to be expensive, it puts pressure on families, it puts pressure on married couples, it puts pressure on those situations and it can result in more family law disputes, and we're seeing that.

Speaker 2 14:56

It's very interesting. It does all tie together where if one thing is kind of affected financially, or even vice versa, even if it's not, you know, if you're financially well but family isn't well, it kind of still is an effect.

Speaker 1 15:14

And you know this. I think you know my parents' generation had it easier. I don't want to say easy, because my parents didn't have it easy, but I think there was more of a cultural support for families and the family structure. I don't think that's there. And the family structure I don't think that's there. And the pressures on parents, and not just financial pressures both parents having to work, but also pressures coming from school. You're constantly told that if your kid gets a B, that's it, his college dreams are over. So the pressure to have your kid has to be getting straight A's all the time and you're always being judged by other parents.

Speaker 1 15:49

You're always being judged and being compared, and then you've got the financial pressures on top of that and this is a tough place to live. Northern Virginia is great if you make it, but it's hard when you're trying to make it, and I've lived through it. And so when financial issues come up, when the economy does have troubles, it really affects people and looking from the outside you think, oh, people are selfish. Issues come up when the economy does have troubles, it really affects people and I don't, you know, looking from the outside you think, oh, people are selfish. You know, old people might say people are so quick to get a divorce today, but I think the cultural support isn't there for the family structure like it was in the 70s or 60s.

Aviation, Writing, and Creativity

Speaker 2 16:24

Speaking about families, tell us a little bit about yours. You said your kids are a little bit more grown, but any of them lawyers.

Speaker 1 16:33

No, Just packed the last one off to college. One of them I just had my first grandchild, in fact.

Speaker 2 16:39

Okay, congratulations.

Speaker 1 16:41

He worked for a government contractor. My son, my oldest son, and then I have a daughter who is in computer programming down in Norfolk and my other son works for a Navy contractor down in Norfolk and I think that's just a fact of living in Virginia. Is that those government contracting jobs are-.

Speaker 2 17:00

They're very popular, they're very popular, they're lucrative.

Speaker 1 17:03

They got great benefits. I can't argue with my kids' decisions. I wish one of them of the four. I had four, so I wish one of them would have chosen law. Yeah, but I understand it's a huge. It's much different. I mean my law school, my entire law school education cost $65,000. That's not even a semester at law school now.

Speaker 2 17:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1 17:22

It's. You know, I can't fault a young person for saying the investment just doesn't make sense anymore.

Speaker 2 17:28

Yeah, it really does take a huge effect on it. Yeah, but let's talk a little bit about I read somewhere that you're a pilot. I am or something like that.

Speaker 1 17:44

I do. I have a commercial pilot's license. Okay, it is a hobby of mine. Even though it's a commercial license, it's a hobby of mine.

Speaker 2 17:50

So you're able to fly for an airline if you would choose to no so.

Speaker 1 17:57

Explain that a little bit.

Speaker 2 17:59

Commercial license makes me think that you can drive, or like not drive, fly.

Speaker 1 18:06

So the levels of licensure in pilots is private pilot you get a private pilot.

Speaker 1 18:10

You get a private pilot, you can go fly around, you can fly your friends around and you can go take trips if you want. The next level up is instrument rated, which isn't really a different license, but it's a rating. That means I can fly in the clouds, I can fly when the weather's not good. So when I was a private pilot, if there were clouds I was grounded. So with an instrument rating you can do a lot more and go a lot more. The next level up from that is commercial, where you can be paid to fly. Now commercial pilots do things like aerial photography or flying banners or, you know, flying charters. The next level up from that is what's called air transport, and for that you need a lot more time and money invested into it, but air transport allows you to fly the big jets for the airlines, but.

Speaker 1 18:57

I came to flying a little late in life.

Speaker 2 19:02

I'm not going to start out at the bottom rung of the airline.

Speaker 1 19:04

Welcome to Cincinnati.

Speaker 2 19:06

That's probably not the first thing. I feel like that would still be a lot of fun, though.

Speaker 1 19:09

I know a lot of guys who've done it. I've been very involved with and helped them get set up over at. Aeroelite in Leesburg here flight school here.

Speaker 2 19:17

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 19:17

And they train a lot of pilots who go on to the airlines and a lot of young people, men and women.

Speaker 2 19:22

I actually have a friend who has an airplane in Leesburg. Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, he's a pilot.

Speaker 1 19:27

It's fantastic, and you can just see the excitement and the joy in their eyes as they get those licenses and move up toward their air transport and then off to their careers in the airline. It's fantastic. That was not in the cards for me. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but I needed glasses early on and contact lenses, and so at the time I would not have qualified for the Air Force. And since I couldn't go to the Air Force and be a fighter pilot and then an astronaut, then I didn't want to do it. I came to flying later in life, so I just fly for fun. But if you wanted to pay me, you're welcome to pay me to do it.

Speaker 2 20:03

I mean, why not Do a little taxi take people on little trips? No, I actually can't do that taxi. Take people on little trips?

Speaker 1 20:08

No, I actually can't do that. Believe it or not, that's another restriction that we have, just as a commercial pilot. If you had a plane, you could say hey, jim, I want to pay you to fly it and I come over and fly it, but I can't provide taxi service.

Speaker 2 20:20

So it's not like you can do airplane Ubers no.

Speaker 1 20:24

No, that's a whole separate regulation. Believe it or not, aviation has rules and regulations and lots of laws, the FAA laws and all of that, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 20:34

Tell us a little bit more about I love the whole pilot stuff. Who are you outside of law then? I have a lot of hobbies.

Speaker 1 20:46

I've done some fun things in my life, mostly when I was younger. Right after college, I moved to Los Angeles and lived there for a year. I did some stand-up comedy in a club there, which probably helps me more in law than anything I learned in law school, just the ability to get up in front of people and worry that they're going to throw things at you which they sometimes did. I did that.

Speaker 2 21:10

I taught sailing for about 20 years and love sailing, so you can drive a boat, fly a plane, jack of all trades, yeah.

Speaker 1 21:23

Well, there have unfortunately never really been trades for me.

Speaker 2 21:26

There's still always hobbies.

Speaker 1 21:29

I do a lot of writing. I've published a couple of articles, a number of articles. I've published articles on wine. My wife and I had a wine importing business for a few years, so we've done a lot in that area. I've published articles in flying magazines and I'm currently working on a novel. It's a mystery novel set here in Loudoun County and I'm publishing it serially, so about every week and a half or two weeks a new chapter comes out. In fact I'm going to work on one tonight and it's all about Loudoun County and it's kind of fun, it's humorous and it's an amalgamation of all of the crazy things I've seen in court cases and heard through my legal career all sort of balled into one murder mystery.

Speaker 2 22:16

So it's been a lot of fun to write. That's very fun. That's interesting. Where can we find it?

Speaker 1 22:21

Substack. You can find it on my Substack and it's coming along. So hopefully you know, one of the reasons I write is because all day long I have to write really boring things you know, employee handbooks and, you know, construction contracts, and so that allows me to go have some fun with writing.

Speaker 2 22:41

I love that. That's very interesting. It lets you have that free little scapegoat to imagine and have your own creativity, aside from always being strictly serious and professional it does?

Speaker 1 22:58

It allows the creativity, but it also allows an outlet, because you asked me about cases and I said, well, I can't talk about them. And one of the things about being a lawyer is that you have all these great stories but you can't relay them because of attorney client privilege.

Speaker 1 23:11

So I have found a way that I can pull the essence of these stories obviously not the same exact details and nothing that's attorney client privilege but I can pull all of those kinds of crazy things that you've encountered over your career and put them into story form and allows an outlet of that, so I don't have to keep these stories bottled up all the time.

Speaker 2 23:32

I like that. I like that. Are you ever going to publish it as an actual, like full-on hardcover? I would love to.

Speaker 1 23:40

I don't you know, I'm really not a novelist. I don't have an agent or anything.

Speaker 2 23:48

If there's an agent out there who wants to represent me, please message me. He's open to it.

Speaker 1 23:50

If it's any good, it probably isn't that great. I'm not a professional writer in that sense. I mean I've published things.

Speaker 2 23:57

Who knows, it could be your big break. It could be.

Speaker 1 23:59

It could be my retirement job there you go. It's a lot of fun, I'm enjoying it, and if somebody wanted me to do that, I'd look into it.

Speaker 2 24:06

I like that. That's very fun.

Speaker 1 24:08

I think all four of my readers really enjoy it.

Speaker 2 24:11

Well, it'll be fine, I'll go on there and take a look. I want to read too. I love murder stuff. Well, no, that sounded really bad. I didn't mean murder stuff. I like the whole murder mystery. I've never been to a murder mystery dinner or anything like that, but I would love to do it.

Speaker 1 24:29

It's a lot of fun and I love the genre and I love everything from old Agatha Christie stuff all the way through modern stuff that's on TV, like only murders in the building, kind of thing.

Speaker 2 24:42

Oh, I love that, isn't?

Speaker 1 24:43

it great. My preference, though, is that, as you're watching, the mystery whether it's a serial cop drama on TV or a book is the reader should have a fair chance to figure it out. It shouldn't be so easy that by page three you're like oh the butler did it. But it shouldn't be that at the very last chapter, they throw in some new character you've never heard of and you never had a chance to guess it should be like a game that you're playing with the author. I put the clues together. I got it.

Speaker 2 25:12

And then it's like, oh, you thought it was this guy. And then all of a sudden you're like what?

Speaker 1 25:17

You're like how did that?

Speaker 2 25:19

side swipe me.

Speaker 1 25:21

It should be a fair chance of figuring it out, so hopefully I've done that in my book.

Speaker 2 25:24

Yeah, I love that For my couple last questions. Is there anything that we didn't touch on during our conversation that you would love the audience to know about you, or know about your business, your firm?

Client-Centered Mission and Mantra

Speaker 1 25:42

Sure, I think the one thing that I would want people to know is that we are committed to being part of the community. We're not just here taking fees and charging by the hour. We try to be a part of the local community. We get involved in charity, we get involved in local works, we get involved in local groups. I encourage my attorneys to go out and do those things as well, because when the community flourishes, we flourish, and also I like this community, I like being part of it, and so I want the things that we're involved with to flourish as well.

Speaker 1 26:16

I think that for lawyers especially and I want my lawyers to understand this and live this as well is that if you're going to go out and serve the community, you have to know the community, you have to be part of the community, and so we really, really emphasize that and try and take that to heart.

Speaker 2 26:32

Awesome, yes, and then for my last question do you have some sort of mantra or just last parting words that you live by?

Speaker 1 26:50

Absolutely Well, at least for the firm. Our mantra is that the client should be better off for having hired us. We can't win every case I wish we could. We win a lot of them. We can't get everything that everybody wants but the client should always be better off for having hired us, and not just because they got to see us in court. It should be something that we have done to move their ball forward, to improve their life some way, and if we accomplish that, then we're successful. If we don't accomplish that, then we failed.

Speaker 2 27:23

Well, thank you very much, Jim, for coming in today. Well, thank you very much, jim, for coming in today giving us a little bit of insight into the background lawyer world, little insight into where we can read a little bit about the things that happen in the lawyer world that we can't speak of. But thank you for being here today. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 27:44

It's a lot of fun, a lot of fun. I appreciate it.