Timestamps
Mike Alder built one of the most respected plaintiff trial practices in California.
Mike was winning in the courtroom and leaving a lot on the table everywhere else. It took reading a book during COVID to start asking the hard question… what would it look like to build a firm the right way?
That led him to Fireproof. And in a short time, the work on culture, hiring, case-building systems, and business development has started compounding in ways he didn’t expect.
Here’s what we talked about in this episode:
→ How understanding insurance policy layers changes everything about how you make a demand
→ The handwritten note strategy that followed Mike into courtrooms he’d never walked into before
→ What discipline in small things has to do with trying month-long cases
→ What 95% of referred cases have in common once a real trial lawyer steps in
The lawyers who win the biggest aren’t always the ones who outwork everyone in the courtroom, but are the ones who build systems and stay disciplined on the days it doesn’t feel like it matters.
Mike, thank you for joining me on the episode!
Chapters
0:00 – Welcome & Introduction
1:08 – Mike’s Firm: 14 Lawyers, 400 Cases, and 10 Trials Last Year
3:49 – How Fireproof Changed the Way Mike Thinks About His Practice
5:19 – Fitness, Sobriety, and Why Personal Discipline Matters in the Courtroom
6:51 – The Case-Building Strategy Most Firms Get Wrong
8:32 – How the Defense Controls Your Case (And How to Stop It)
10:35 – Insurance Policy Layers and How to Use Them to Force a Settlement
12:34 – The Ego Problem Costing Lawyers Referrals and Verdicts
15:02 – Mike’s Favorite Case: The Homeless Woman, the Bluff, and 12 Years of Christmas Cards
16:51 – The Handwritten Note That Followed Mike Into Courtrooms He’d Never Seen
18:51 – 4am Sardines, Cold Showers, and a Daily Routine Built Around Hard Things
21:09 – The Filevine Controversy: When a Late-Night Rant Got Hundreds of Thousands of Views
25:40 – Using Social Media to Help, Not Promote
26:37 – What the Fireproof Community Has Meant for Mike’s Firm
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