S3 E05 | Mike Morse

Luke W Russell:

Hey everyone. We are giving away 10 sets of signed books from our Lawful Good guests. The books range from memoirs to business advice, to thrillers, to personal development. Enter to win at lawfulgoodpodcast.com.

Mike Morse:

I thought I was the best trial attorney in town. I thought nobody could negotiate with an insurance adjuster better than me. Nobody could talk to a client better than me. Nobody could do fill in the blank better than me. And then I realized I was wrong and it takes humility. But once you get past it, the real freedom comes. If you can’t delegate, you’re going to have a three, four, five-person practice max and you are going to be a slave to it, and I don’t think you’ll be able to find true happiness.

Luke W Russell:

Welcome to Lawful Good, a show about lawyers and the trials they face inside and outside the courtroom. I’m your host, Luke W. Russell. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an attorney. I’m trained as a coach. I love human connection, and that’s what you are about to hear. My guest today is Michael Morse, founder of one of the nation’s leading personal injury law firms.

Luke W Russell:

Michael grew up in a Detroit suburb where his offices still reside today. Though his early life was disrupted by the divorce of his parents and bullying in school, Michael discovered a childhood knack for marketing and entrepreneurship before he was even a teenager. The money he earned helped build a sense of independence and security in a world that felt uncertain. The death of his father, who had inspired him to be a lawyer, changed everything. In Michael’s quest to rise above the death of his father and the subsequent loss of multiple jobs, he developed an attitude and a system to learn and improve himself. Today, that’s what he calls becoming Fireproof. Michael now teaches the Fireproof method to lawyers all over the nation. In this interview, we discuss the principles of Fireproof, but perhaps more importantly, the immense power of gratefulness, exercise and delegation and overcoming life’s personal and professional challenges.

Luke W Russell:

Michael, what’s your earliest childhood memory?

Mike Morse:

I have lots of memories with my dad. He would take me to breakfast before elementary school, kindergarten, first grade. We would go to a local delicatessen and I’d get a bowl of cereal, he’d get eggs, we would talk a bit and he would drop me off at school. My dad was my best friend, my idol. We spent a lot of time together. I’d go to his office with him on Saturday mornings. He’d get home probably six o’clock every night from his law practice, take a nap on the couch, we’d have family dinner together, and he was just someone I loved spending time with. That’s why I became a lawyer.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. What kind of kid were you in elementary school?

Mike Morse:

I think I had a lot of energy. My mom always said I had a lot of energy. I liked being with friends. I didn’t like being alone a lot. She said I would always make phone calls, try to find things to do on weekends and nights. I enjoyed riding bikes and playing outside and being with neighborhood kids and friends. So when I was young, I just remember having a lot of energy. As I moved into middle school and high school, I was kind of the class clown, the teachers didn’t, I don’t think, like me very much because I was the one making jokes and drawing attention to myself and also probably not the best student.

Luke W Russell:

When I was in elementary school, I had a little card I had to get signed every day and as I remember it, the teacher would do one of three things, they’d give me a smiley face, a neutral face or a sad face, and it was descriptive of how much I was talking when the teachers thought I shouldn’t be. A sad face was assigned for too much talking and a happy face meant that the teacher didn’t have to tell me to shut up too much. Your mom told us that growing up, as you said, you had a lot of energy and that the teacher would call her every fall because you were talking.

Mike Morse:

Yeah. So she used to get a lot of teacher calls, but you know what, I think I also had the same card you did. There was periods of time in my elementary and in middle school career where I had the same card you did. I had to get it signed by my teachers at the end of the day, how I did, if I stayed in my seat, if I talk out of turn, if I did my homework, that was pretty humiliating, and I think it worked. I didn’t always have great smiley faces, but looking back all these years it’s probably not a bad tool because it made me pay attention a little bit more and made me calm down.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. How big was the town you grew up in?

Mike Morse:

Well, I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. So for the first five years, I was in a little city called Oak Park and then moved to Southfield. Actually, my law firm is in Southfield right now. I’m practicing law a couple miles from where I grew up, which is kind of cool, kind of fun, and so I never left the old neighborhood.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Yeah. Now, if I understand right, you were a Jewish family, how were you active within your religion?

Mike Morse:

My parents joined a temple when I was probably eight or nine years old. We weren’t very religious. We did not go to services every week. I did have a bar mitzvah when I was 13. We were reformed Jews. We went to temple maybe a couple times a year, but neither of my parents were very religious. I wasn’t religious. I’m not religious now. I have some more conservative friends and I see them and we’re good friends and it’s a completely different thing, they have their Shabbats dinners on Friday nights and some of them keep kosher, but we were nowhere near that.

Luke W Russell:

Your mother, she went through a divorce when you were pretty young, what was young Mike soaking in in that experience?

Mike Morse:

Young Mike didn’t like that experience. I was 12. It basically was like a death in our family. It disrupted everything. I feel like I was having a pretty darn good life, pretty good childhood until that point and that was an earthquake. My dad moved out I think the day after they told us and it pretty much ended any normalcy I had as far as family goes for a very long time.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. How did that affect your relationship with your father at all at that time?

Mike Morse:

We had about 10 years left before he died after they got divorced, and in those 10 years he went through two more marriages and I really didn’t understand the effects of those 10 years until much later in life. During that time, had you stopped me and interviewed me during those 10 years I thought everything was fine. Him and I were still good friends. We’d see each other not as much because he didn’t live with us, but he’d come over often. We’d go to meals often. I’d sleep at his house a couple nights a week. We talked all the time and he encouraged me to get good grades and he encouraged me to study and he’d visit me out at the University of Arizona and helped me with my law school applications and he helped me throughout my first year of law school. So during that time we were still pretty close, but as I’ve learned later in life it wasn’t all that rosy.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Can you take me back? I was told that at one point when you were pretty young you rearranged a drug store. Do I have that story right?

Mike Morse:

My uncle owned a very large independent drug store, back then they were all independent, and I used to like to go with him to his store on Saturday mornings. He’d wake up at five, six in the morning, his kids didn’t want to go with him, I wanted to go, so he would allow me to go and work a cash register. I was probably 11, 10.

Mike Morse:

He tells stories, I remember this somewhat, that I had a knack for marketing and knowing what would sell and where he should push and put displays and how to systematize some things, how to rearrange the flow of a line or a kiosk or whatever he had going on in the store. He tells the story that it was pretty uncanny because some of the ideas were really good and I was able to work to register fast and the customers liked me and I had some early rapport, even though I had never had a job obviously. I really enjoyed those days when I was able to go to West Grain Drugs in Trenton, Michigan with my uncle, who was my dad’s stepbrother.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Take me forward a little bit as we move into food carts.

Mike Morse:

When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I, my uncle’s son, who owned the drug store, wanted to work one summer and we got a job. I think I might have gotten a job without him selling something called a Chipwich. Chipwichs were, it was unique back then, it was two chocolate chip cookies with ice cream in the middle and chocolate chips around the ice cream, and they were being sold for $1.25. Back in 1983 or ’82, that was expensive. A Good Humor ice cream bar was 50, 60, 70 cents at the time and a Chipwich was $1.25, which was a big deal. Now, it was a big sandwich, and you’d kill for it these days for $1.25, and so I would keep a quarter out of the $1.25. I would get the quarter. So I had to basically buy a box of 50 of them for 50 bucks and I got to keep a quarter and I thought it was a pretty good deal, until I did it.

Mike Morse:

So they were hard to sell because even back then they were expensive. I would sell 20, 30 of them a day and make whatever I’d make. And then about two weeks into the job, somehow I had the wherewithal to call Good Humor, which had a warehouse in Detroit, and I went over to the warehouse and I convinced them to give me and my cousin each a push cart. They still have these kind of push carts, you see them at much fairs or whatever, and I said, “I want a push cart for free, but I’ll buy my ice cream from you every single morning.” So somehow they agreed, they delivered them to me-

Luke W Russell:

Right, because you’re 15, right?

Mike Morse:

I’m 15. I couldn’t drive. I was getting a ride every morning for the summer of my 15th year. Actually I have a picture of my office of me in front of this cart.

Mike Morse:

I would, every morning, wake up really early, six in the morning on my summer break, go down to the Good Humor factory, buy whatever inventory I needed because I would have some that would last the night before that I didn’t sell, we had probably 10 different varieties and I’d buy them pretty cheap, buy them 20, 30 cents a bar, sell them 70, 80 cents a bar, keep the profit. Then I decided I was going to sell pop and water for the same type of really nice margins, and we did this all summer. There were some days I would make a hundred dollars. Back in 1983, at 15 years old, it was a big deal. The Detroit Free Press came out and interviewed us.

Mike Morse:

I parked my cart right in front of my dad’s office building, the First National Building in Detroit, and back in the early ’80s Detroit wasn’t the safest place. Now it’s pretty darn great. Back then, not so much, but my dad kept an eye on me. He came down two, three times a day for an ice cream bar and a pop. His friends came over. I think I probably got some tips and it was a pretty good summer.

Luke W Russell:

That’s so cool. What’d you use the money for?

Mike Morse:

I have no memory of that. I used to like money back then and I used to think… I had a fallacy that money was going to keep me safe. I had a lot of disruption in my life with the divorces and I was getting bullied as a kid and I thought that the money was going to keep me safe and from an early age I figured out how to make it and I liked buying my own things. I remember buying a bike. I remember buying a water bed. I remember buying my own stuff because I think I didn’t want to depend on anybody. I wanted to become independent and I thought earning money was going to do that. I liked earning my own money. It made me feel good about myself and it came very easy for me.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Were you fairly insecure through your middle, high school years?

Mike Morse:

I wouldn’t say insecure. I mean, I remember being bullied, and that was not a good feeling. Back then, I didn’t have anybody to really go to. My parents were so distracted with their marriages and divorces. And I actually remember having some confidence except in that because I was working several jobs throughout high school. There were times in high school I’d have three jobs. I’d go to three different restaurant jobs from… Some days I’d work all three. Some days I’d work two. I had different colored pants in my trunk of my car to change into to the next one. My senior year of high school I’d leave at 11:20, I got out and I drove a half hour to a job, a restaurant called Mitch’s on the Lake, which was 30 minutes away. I’d worked the lunch shift, then I’d take an hour or two break, worked the dinner shift. All while in high school, didn’t study much, was not doing well on my exams, but I’d already gotten into college so it really didn’t matter. I was making a lot of money. I was distracted.

Mike Morse:

And I think being a waiter teaches you confidence. I mean, think about being a waiter, you can’t be shy. I always had a big personality waiting tables. I always got the most tips out of any waiter or waitress in the restaurant. I was always making the most sales, making the most money. That gave me confidence.

Luke W Russell:

When did the bullying start?

Mike Morse:

I think high school for the most part. My mom’s second husband wanted to move from my childhood home 20 minutes away where I had no friends. They perceived me as, I guess, a rich kid. Coming out, we weren’t rich, but they perceived me as a rich kid. I was Jewish. I lived in a bigger home with a pool and my stepdad drove a fancy car and so they perceived me different. I was called Jew boy and some other not nice names.

Mike Morse:

I remember going to a girl’s house to pick her up and her brother opened the door, who was younger than her, I was probably 16 or 17, and he says, “Are you really a Jew?” Listen, that was the first time I’d ever heard anything like that because the city I grew up in was primarily Jewish.

Mike Morse:

And then I had some probably jealous kids in school pushing me around, threatening me after school, “I’m going to come beat you up,” and yeah, I was scared about that. Never got hit. Never got beaten up. I never got into a fight my whole life. But the threats were there and those aren’t fun. Bullying isn’t good. It affected me. I’m still affected by bullies. When somebody tries to bully me, I don’t do well. I recognize it right away and I stick up to it. When my kids have gotten some… You know how kids these days are cyber bullying or kids can be mean and say things online, I take it very seriously because I know that it can affect you more than just what’s happening in the moment. I don’t like bullying.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. What do you study for undergrad?

Mike Morse:

I was a business major, general business. My first real understanding of finance and accounting and marketing and those kind of things. It was a good jump off into law school.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Was it always your plan to have your own firm?

Mike Morse:

No. My plan was never to have my own law firm. My plan was to partner with my dad and have it be Morse and Morse and live happily ever after as his partner on a small little boutique firm, helping people.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. So if I understand it correctly, you were in your first semester of law school studying for your finals when you learned that your father had died when he was in Mexico speaking to other lawyers. What did that change for you?

Mike Morse:

Oh boy, a lot. It was a second semester actually, Luke. It was the last few days of law school the first year, May and… I mean, it changed everything. It changed every single thing in my life. There was a few days there where I thought about not finishing my exams and saying screw it to law school. The reason I became a lawyer or was becoming a lawyer is because of the man who just died at 49 years old.

Mike Morse:

One of my best qualities is I don’t allow bad things to keep me down for very long, so that was probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and it probably held me down the longest, which was probably two or three days.

Mike Morse:

One of my law school professors was such a jerk he made me take a final within 48 hours after his passing, and I did, and I said, “You know what, my dad would’ve wanted me to go on, not waste this. I don’t have anything else to do.” I got a new job a week later. I started a clerkship my first year in law school and I went on and I graduated with honors and moved on, but it changed everything. I could go on and on and on about what it changed, but it changed the rest of my life, including today.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. For some people, that kind of loss the grief comes in waves. When was it that you maybe realized and acknowledged that that was part of your experience, that it wasn’t just a one-time thing to grieve the loss of your father?

Mike Morse:

I think I covered it up emotionally for a while. I don’t remember breaking down and crying a lot in the weeks it happened. I remember getting distracted with exams and then work and then my dad’s third wife, who he’d been married to for only a few months, ended up hiring a lawyer to sue us for half the money. He didn’t have a great estate plan, which was bad on him, and rather than go through a long protracted litigation, my sister and I got 50% and this new wife got 50%. And when you’re 22 years old and have no money, that’s a big deal. But we were cheated out of a lot of money. Anyway, all of this took me away from truly grieving and it was such a massive loss that I basically shut down my emotions. I thought, “If I start crying I’m not going to stop.” That’s what I think I thought.

Mike Morse:

I’m 22, I didn’t know anything about grief or grieving. It was the first time a loved one in my life had died. So I probably didn’t grieve my dad for 10 or 15 years. Luckily I found my way to a good therapist, and things weren’t going great in my life, emotionally, and she helped me realize that I had some grieving to do. I remember I grieved, I cried, I sobbed, I had emotions, I learned things about my dad that I didn’t see and I started to feel better, but it was a long time.

Mike Morse:

I’m still grieving. I miss him every day. I miss that he didn’t see me get married, he’s never met my daughters, hasn’t seen the law practice that I built. From everything from health, how I run my business, how I think about money now, how I think about success, the things that I choose to do, the things that I choose to take on, I mean, it literally has changed my entire life.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Do you have any objects around maybe in your office or at home to maybe trigger specific memories of your father, specific things you want to remember by him?

Mike Morse:

Absolutely. If we were in my office right now you’d see lots of pictures of him, I have his college ring. His friends over the years have sent me pictures that I have framed and sitting in my office. I have a conference room in my office called the Joel S. Morse conference room with pictures of him in the military. One of the walls is wallpapered with his last license plate because he had license plates with his name on it. It’s like a shrine to him. So lots of things that I have that trigger memories.

Mike Morse:

I talk to my kids about him all the time. One of my daughters is named after him. They do that in the Jewish religion, your first born child you take the closest deceased family member, their first name and the letter of that first name. So my dad’s first name was Joel, take that J and you name your first kid after that, so I named her Jillian. So she knows that and we talk about him, they see pictures of him, I tell stories about him, which helps keep his memory alive.

Mike Morse:

My dad’s dad weirdly died when my dad was 16 at a young age, around 50, and he did not tell me many stories about his dad, and we spent a lot of time together. And now that he’s gone, that’s a sad thing for me. I would’ve liked to have known more about his dad. At 22 or 21 or 20, I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask questions. I didn’t know life was short. I didn’t know we weren’t going to have the next 50 years to talk about these things and so I didn’t ask questions. And he didn’t tell my mom a lot of things about his dad. The bits and pieces I have is that he was really close with his dad, his dad died young and it crushed him and he was too probably too sad to talk about it. That’s what I guess at this point. So I make it a point to tell my kids stories, I encourage my kids to ask my mom stories about her childhood, and I think it’s really important because you just don’t know how long they have to ask those questions.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Did you have any professors or people who stepped up at that point when you were in those early 20s and you’d lost your dad, people who stepped in and mentored you?

Mike Morse:

Absolutely. Right after he died, his law clerk, which was also his cousin, a man named Jerry, came to me and said, “I was your dad’s clerk. He was my best friend. Why don’t you come clerk for me?” and I did. Two years after he died, I clerked for him and then when I graduated law school, he hired me, taught me some things for a few years, taught me how to be a good lawyer, taught me how to work a case, try a case, take a good deposition, built up my confidence. And then September 21st, 1995, two of his partners fired me out of the blue, for no reason, and that was the day I started my law practice.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. You graduate, you’re working there, you start your law practice and at the beginning you were taking overflow, is that the word?

Mike Morse:

Overflow cases, referrals.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. It was going really well for you and then down the road, this person comes to you and says, “Hey, he’s no longer going to send you any more cases”. Here, again, you have somebody come in and just say, “Nope, I’m done.” Did that trigger maybe a sense of failure of every time you feel like you got a good thing going it just got slapped down?

Mike Morse:

That’s why my book was called Fireproof. So that was May of 2011, I was fired again and it was as devastating as getting fired from a job. It wasn’t as devastating as a death but it was another bad thing that happened. In 2007, we had a fire in our office building. So my life, unfortunately had a lot of these bad things keep happening to me. And every time I get kicked to the ground and I’m fired or the worst thing that you could think happened to you happens, I’ve learned how to deal with it. I’ve learned how to cope with it in a way that we call the Fireproof way, and my life keeps going up every time a bad thing happens to me. I keep succeeding and getting better and learning from these massive obstacles that are put in my way. That’s one of the major themes of my life.

Luke W Russell:

What do you think is inside Mike that drives that capacity?

Mike Morse:

I’ve given that a lot of thought. I don’t have great answers, I don’t have exact answers, but I described my childhood a little bit to you and I mean, you could listen… I don’t know if any of it’s DNA and I can’t even talk about that, what are you born with? Maybe I’m born with some of this stuff, but I can’t even talk about that. But what I could talk about is from a young age I had to fend for myself, whether it be the divorce, bullying, my dad dying, getting fired, building a practice, having things happen then having a fire. I mean, it’s cumulative. And I think that a lot of these responses are learned. I think my mom had bad things happen to her, and I saw them and I saw how she reacted, and she didn’t give up and she didn’t stop fighting. I was a fighter and I was going to win. I was going to not let these people keep me down. It wasn’t about ego and it wasn’t about pride, it was about survival.

Mike Morse:

I think I thought that if I didn’t get up I was going to die. Like I said earlier that I thought if I started crying, I wasn’t going to stop. I think if I didn’t literally hop up… You know how you trip and you fall and you hop up because you’re a little embarrassed and you just hop back up? I feel like I hop up very quickly and I learn from what happened, whether it be a mistake of my own or something out of my control. I learn quickly, I adapt, I look at it as a lesson and I get better. And I think every time I am getting better.

Mike Morse:

When you run your own business, mistakes happen daily. I don’t ignore the mistakes. I say, “Okay, how do we avoid this mistake ever again? How do we get better? How do we move on from here?” I try to stay positive. I’m not a yeller. I don’t get down on myself. I don’t get down on my employees. I try to be constructive. And this is just, again, just a pattern of my life.

Mike Morse:

It’s all of these lessons rolled up that I literally had to build a system because I knew, based upon my life, that bad stuff was going to happen. How do I put my business, my life in a way, the best way possible that when this stuff happens that I’m still okay and lessen the blow every time? Because stuff happens all the time and not just to me, to everybody. Bad stuff happens. I want to move forward, I want to get better, I want to continue to be happy and I’m very aware of how short life is.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. So you talk about systems, do I have it right that you implemented the EOS Entrepreneur Operating System?

Mike Morse:

So 2007, I hired a business coach by the name of Gino Wickman. Gino Wickman wrote the EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System. It’s a very smart system that teaches you the basics on how to run a business, any business. It’s a five-day a year system. It teaches you independence. You meet with an EOS coach actually four times a year, one of the sessions is two days and that’s it. They won’t meet with you extra days. There’s not a weekly program, a monthly program. It’s four meetings a year every quarter. And they have systems and processes and tools that they teach you on how to run a business. I’m still using it. Gino is still my coach. It took me very far, taught me lots and lots of things.

Mike Morse:

But over the years, my COO, John Nachazel, and I tweaked it and made it more for law firms, made it more for us, and we saw so many differences between our methods and EOS we wrote a book a couple years ago called Fireproof. We outlined how we turned EOS a little bit on its head, definitely it’s our foundation, but we did lots of different things that EOS doesn’t do to make us what we consider being Fireproof, Five-Step Model. We wrote the book, we thought it was done at that point and then now we started having law firms around the country who we didn’t know, call and say, “Please help us with our firms and coach us.” So that’s kind of how it got me here today.

Luke W Russell:

What is it you think EOS offered you that you didn’t have before?

Mike Morse:

EOS offered me knowledge. I didn’t know the first thing about my numbers, I didn’t know how to have a good meeting, I didn’t know a law firm could have a COO, I didn’t know what a visionary was, I didn’t know what core values were and on and on. So it gave me a system, a pretty easy system to follow, and everything in my body liked that system. It was organized and thoughtful.

Mike Morse:

And I met with him every quarter, so he was holding us accountable by saying, “Okay, in the next 90 days I’m not going to see you, but I want you to do this.” And we show up and we had it done. I didn’t know what a leadership team was and I now have one. I mean I could go on and on really truly. So that’s what I liked about it.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. I hear people a lot of times say, because you’ve built a very financially successful practice that keeps growing and you’re big, and some people will say you’re either growing or you’re dying. Some people I think hear that and think, “Man, what if I don’t want to grow and I want to have a nice practice?” Should everybody want to be like you and keep growing or is there space for something else?

Mike Morse:

So I didn’t want to grow. Just to answer your question because I can sometimes forget to get to the bottom line. Absolutely, shouldn’t. That should not be people’s goal to grow unless they want to grow. I was a reluctant grower. John Nachazel will tell you he was employee 27, and I told him during the interview process, “I never want to have more than 30 employees.”

Luke W Russell:

How many do you have today total?

Mike Morse:

170 something. And then I said, “Okay, we’re at 35. I never want to have more than 50.” And then I said, “I’m going to fire you if we get to a hundred.” And then next thing I knew we had 150, 160. So mine came with a lot of reluctant success. We were doing a good job. I’m not going to be shy or bashful about that and say I didn’t want to do a good job, we were doing a good job. Lawyers around the state and the country were referring us business. Clients were so happy with the results and the customer service they got, they started referring cases. I had the one lawyer that we referred to in the book as Sid sending me hundreds of cases a year, and we were wildly successful.

Mike Morse:

As a personal injury lawyer, and maybe any lawyer, it’s hard to turn down work. When somebody comes to you with a big case, it’s hard to say, “Nah, thanks. I’m good.” It just is. You could ask any lawyer you interview that question, it’s not an easy thing.

Mike Morse:

The good thing is it wasn’t adding too much stress to my life because we had all these systems and processes in place. We knew how to scale because of everything we learned through EOS and everything that we implemented and learned ourselves. Without that, it would’ve been a disaster. I couldn’t have gotten to where I’m at without having a business coach. I was stuck at 27. That’s why I hired John. I could not grow anymore. I got to 27 by myself, sweat, blood, tears, the whole thing, but I couldn’t go anymore. I physically couldn’t do another thing.

Mike Morse:

John came in, took ton off my plate, basically running the law firm at that point to allow me to practice law, allowed me to try cases, allowed me to go out there and get more cases, allowed me to be the business, the marketer, the advertiser in our firm and do what I wanted to do, do things that I was great at and things I loved to do and so we grew. I was happy at it. I didn’t mind it. Obviously making more money, but the money brought more freedom for me because I was able to hire a full-time marketer, a full-time HR person, a full-time CFO, full-time everything, and that just takes more and more off my plate.

Mike Morse:

So when you ask me, should everybody want to grow? Absolutely not, but I was having fun. I like growing things. I used to like Lincoln Logs and Legos as a kid. I always like building things. I always like growing things. To this day, I do. I like helping other firms get better. That’s why I decided to write the book. It wasn’t to sell books and make a lot of money. You don’t make money selling books. That’s not why I did it.

Mike Morse:

So the growth, that’s a good question, and I get asked that by lawyers, how big should I be and should I be afraid of growing and all these things, and it’s different for everybody. They got to know, “But mine was not like I want to have a hundred people. I want to have 150 million in revenue. I want to,” blah, blah. No, that was not it. I did not have a goal for any of those things. I didn’t try to get bigger. I didn’t try to get more cases. They came, I took them, I grew and it worked.

Luke W Russell:

With your coaching program, do you participate in some of those coaching conversations with other law firms where your Fireproof team is helping other people implement the systems?

Mike Morse:

Of course, yes. I’m involved, not every step of the way. I am called in like a special ops time when they need help with certain things. I come in, I give my expertise, I help them in their problems and we have six or seven other coaches who are better at the day to day than I am. They hold their hands daily, weekly, whatever’s needed to get them better, to get them Fireproofed and to help them scale and grow and make more money and be happier.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. What do you love about those coaching relationship?

Mike Morse:

Well, I like people. I like making new friends. I like teaching and helping and watching the aha moments. I like hearing problems. And 98 out of 100 times, in my brain, say, “Oh, we went through that and I know that I have an answer.” And if I don’t, I find it. For the most part though, we’ve gone through everything in 30 years. So I like solving puzzles. I was a puzzler as a kid, we still do puzzles and play lots of games as a family, and law firm problems are puzzles. I was asked three of them today and I am able to help and give advice, and watching their eyes like, “Oh, that’s a really good idea.” I love that. What’s better than helping people? And then them taking it back and growing, it’s gratifying.

Mike Morse:

I never saw the coaching model. It was literally never talked about. John and I never talked about it. It wasn’t say, “Hey, let’s write this book and coach.” Nope. We never had a discussion about it. I gave a speech about the book and people started coming up to us and I’m like, “Oh, that’s weird.” And then a lawyer in San Diego called me and said, “You need to coach us,” and I said, “Well, we’re not coaches. We’re lawyers. I’m running a pretty darn big firm here.” And he says, “Nope, I’ll pay you whatever you want. You got to come here and you got to help me. I don’t want to do EOS. I want more attention than four times a year. I want weekly help, not quarterly help.” “All right, we’ll try it,” and it worked. John and I loved it, we hired more coaches, we’re over 20 law firms right now, so it’s been a wild ride the last year and a half, two years.

Luke W Russell:

When we come back Michael will tell us about his genuine belief that he would die before the age of 50 and how he has recently become involved with the Innocence Project. Stay with us. I’m Luke W. Russell and you are listening to Lawful Good.

Speaker 3:

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Luke W Russell:

When we left off, Michael was explaining how the challenges he faced led him to co-create the Fireproof method and how he accidentally got involved in the world of coaching and mentoring. As we continue the conversation, Michael explains why delegation is so important for growth, why so many of his employees stick around and how his own podcast led him to mount a defense for a man convicted of killing his own baby.

Luke W Russell:

Michael, the coaching you’ve described is clearly helping the law firms that you’re working with. It also helps the lawyers personally, their families, their employees, and so on. Do you ever have time to soak in or meditate on the ripple effects that you’re having on the world around you?

Mike Morse:

So a fatal flaw that all visionaries share is that we don’t stop and smell the roses. We don’t look at our success much. We don’t pat ourselves on the back. So I don’t really stop and look at the ripple effects that you’re mentioning. I can see it, “Yay,” and then I move on. I’m not wired that way. It’s not a good thing. I called it a fatal flaw because I’m not proud of it. I mean, we settle a case for 5, 6, 7, $8 million, I don’t even high-five anybody. I mean, I’ll say way to go to a lawyer or something, but I don’t stop. I mean, we could settle a billion dollars for the cases and I’m, “Okay, what’s the next case?” Because I just like helping people and I like doing what I’m doing.

Mike Morse:

It’s not for the money anymore. We’re not coaching for the money. The money that I earn coaching goes to charity. It goes to our foundation. We buy more and more backpacks every year. We just did a massive 30 plus thousand dollars backpack giveaway this year. We did our first ever adoption event, we had 128 animals adopted out in an hour, so that brings me joy. I pat myself on the back, like, “That was great.” We did our first event September 12th and I had a meeting last week, I think it was yesterday actually, I had a meeting yesterday with the head of the Michigan Humane saying, “How can we do over a thousand animals? I want to help all the animals. I don’t want any animals euthanized. I want all animals adopted out. How can we bring them in from other states?” I had a three-hour meeting on it. Now that excites me. I’m getting amped up here. To me, that’s right.

Mike Morse:

So that’s helping the community. I had so many grateful people come in during COVID, I guess there was a shortage of adoptions, they couldn’t find animals, so we had this adoption event. We had 400 people in line before the event started. They’d never seen anything like it. So to me that’s fun. That’s what it’s about. That’s what I want to put energy into, helping the kids of Detroit and the surrounding communities, helping the animals and families in the surrounding communities. And of course we’re helping thousands of clients get the compensation from the dirty, nasty insurance companies every single year. All those things, I mean, that’s why I get out of bed in the morning.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. John, your COO, said that when he first met you were “Very direct, intense, smart, no nonsense and interesting.” Would you agree that you are interesting?

Mike Morse:

Am I interesting? I don’t know how interesting I am. I guess I’m interesting. Yeah, I would say I’m interesting. I’ve never been asked that. Yeah, I’m a unique guy. I’ve had a lot of things happen to me in my life and been to a lot of places and had some good adventures so I guess I’ll say I’m interesting.

Luke W Russell:

Okay, great. Great. We’ll give you five out of five-

Mike Morse:

I don’t think I’m the most interesting man in the world but I think I’m interesting.

Luke W Russell:

Love it. According to the American Psychological Association, lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than non-lawyers, we see higher suicide rates. Have you witnessed this?

Mike Morse:

I personally have not, thankfully. I don’t suffer from those things. We have 45 lawyers who work for us now and I’ve had hundreds go through my firm and I haven’t really seen much of that. I’ve never thought about it. But we practice different. I mean, we’re not working 80 hours a week. We’re casually dressed. We have fun. We work hard. We play hard. I have great teammates and we have fun. I want to have fun. My life’s about fun and meaning and connection, doing good in the world, and those things don’t lead to depression.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. When did you start your gratefulness practice?

Mike Morse:

Well, I remember reading Brené Brown’s book, one of her first books called Daring Greatly, which affected me greatly. I’ve read it at least twice. I’ve given it out two dozen times. In her book, it’s about gratefulness and the importance of it and how it really is the anecdote to unhappiness, depression, whatever it is. So that started me thinking about gratefulness. I had a lot to be grateful for but it wasn’t something I’d stop and think about.

Mike Morse:

I’ve had a practice of writing down three things that I’m grateful for every night before I go to bed, three things that I’m appreciative of myself for before I go to bed. I meditate in the morning. I have a transcendental meditation practice that I do every morning and some other things, journaling and reading, and all of these things keep me mindful. I’m a big believer in gratefulness. It just works. I like telling people that I’m grateful for them, and I do that often, but even building the muscle of writing it down is important and impactful and becomes more muscle memory. The more you do it, the more it becomes DNA.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. You mentioned a little bit ago you’ve had hundreds of lawyers go through your firm and some people have a mentality of once you come here, “Look at all these things that help grow you and you should never leave me,” I don’t get the impression that you’re the kind of person that thinks people should just be grateful to have a job from you and never leave, but that you maybe take a little delight when you get to send people off to their next stage of journey.

Mike Morse:

That’s a really interesting question. So absolutely, I don’t want people working for me forever if they’re not happy, but there are times when people need to move on. I’m grateful for them to be there for as long as they are, giving me good hard work, and then when it’s time for them to go, it’s time for them to go. I don’t hold grudges like that.

Mike Morse:

Because of our culture, I had a lawyer from Atlanta come up and visit our offices last week, she met five or six of my lawyers, and every lawyer she met had been with me for over 10 years, one for 18, 15, 13, and she was blown away because she’s having lots of turnover. She would ask them questions like why. Why are you staying? Right in front of me. Why are you still here 15 years later? And the answers were pretty much the same, that I’m not micromanaging them, I’m allowing them to be a lawyer, they love what they do, they like helping people, we give them the tools to succeed, I’m a pretty good boss, I’m a pretty good friend. They appreciate the business aspects that I bring to it. Most law firms are run poorly. Most lawyers are running around just looking for the next case, not focusing on what’s important, not delegating, not understanding what delegation is.

Mike Morse:

We want lawyers working in their sweet spot, not doing things that a junior person can be doing, and a lot of law firms don’t recognize or realize that. So I think that’s why we have so many people at my firm who’ve been with me over 10 years. This year alone, we buy a Shinola watch at their 10 year anniversary I think this year alone we’re buying 14 of them, which is a lot. I think it’s our biggest year we’ve had it, and that makes me proud.

Mike Morse:

We talked earlier about stopping and smelling the roses. I did this year, look at those names and said, “Wow, we are doing something right because that is unusual.” And then seeing this other lawyer tell me how unusual it is and interview my lawyers, that was special. That makes me happy. Way more happy than the settlements or the money.

Mike Morse:

When I got fired from that job in 1995, I told myself I’m going to build a law firm, if I have five people or two people, never envisioned 170, that I wanted to work at, that I’d be proud to work at, that wasn’t what I had. I wanted a trusting and open environment. I wanted to respect people and be respected, and I think I created that. It’s been 26 years and that’s something to be proud of. I can pat myself on the back on that one.

Luke W Russell:

All right.

Mike Morse:

I just did.

Luke W Russell:

Okay, now we’re going to move into our high velocity round. I’m going to ask you a series of yes, no questions and the only rule is you can’t just say yes or no. You can say yes or no, but I’m going to wait for an extended answer beyond that. Okay, are you ready?

Mike Morse:

Yep.

Luke W Russell:

Can you leave your phone in another room without feeling antsy?

Mike Morse:

Yes, I do it often. We go on vacation, I was just in Puerto Rico a couple weeks ago with my girlfriend and every single meal I was the only one who left my phone in the room. Didn’t feel antsy. Loved it. Free. Felt freedom. That’s my favorite thing.

Luke W Russell:

Do you like going to court?

Mike Morse:

Yes, but that’s a good lawyer answer. I don’t go much anymore because I have 45 very skilled lawyers who go and love it and it’s their turn to shine.

Luke W Russell:

Do you play Euchre?

Mike Morse:

I do.

Luke W Russell:

Are you that kind of Euchre partner who will order up the right bower for your partner, regardless of how terrible your hand is?

Mike Morse:

No, I do not do that. I want to win and I don’t think you’re going to win by doing that, but I’m a good Euchre player. I win probably more than 50% of the time but I’m not reckless.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Is Apple better than Android?

Mike Morse:

Yes. That’s all I’ve ever had. Never had an Android. I have a Mac computer and Apple TV, yeah, I’m an Apple dude.

Luke W Russell:

Do you find excuses to travel on your private jet?

Mike Morse:

I’ve never actually admitted to having a private jet. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I like to travel. Yes, I like to travel and I will look for excuses to travel.

Luke W Russell:

Great. Are you an intense person?

Mike Morse:

Yes. Although I want to say no but I think I probably am intense.

Luke W Russell:

Can you tell me a funny joke or story?

Mike Morse:

I could tell you 20 funny jokes. I got lots of jokes. One of my best friends and the guy who does my TV commercials is a joke teller and he tells me jokes all the time.

Luke W Russell:

You got a lawyer joke?

Mike Morse:

I don’t know how this joke will come off. These two Jewish lawyers are walking down the street and they pass a sign that says, “Convert to Christianity, $20.” They’re these Orthodox Jewish guys and they have the accent and they’re walking in New York city and Schlomo looks at Menachem and he says, “I’m going to go do this,” and Menachem’s like, “What are you crazy? You’re not going to go turn to Christianity.” “I’m going to go do it.” So Schlomo goes in, spends three hours, he comes out, he’s got a cross on his jacket and he says, “I did it. I’m a Christian.” And Menachem, his Jewish friend, looks at him and says, “Well, did you get the 20 bucks?” And he looks at him and says, “Is that all you people think about?” I’m allowed to tell that joke because I’m Jewish, but that’s what I got for you.

Luke W Russell:

All right. Thank you. Can you bench press your own weight?

Mike Morse:

Probably I haven’t bench pressed in a long time and so I don’t know but I probably could put up a couple of reps.

Luke W Russell:

All right, so let’s talk about exercise. What drives you to do it?

Mike Morse:

I don’t want to die early. My dad died of a heart attack at 49, and I really like my life and I really love my kids and I work out often because I have read everything and I’ve been seeing a cardiologist since I was 22 years old. I actually have two cardiologists right now. It’s about healthy eating and healthy exercise, and I feel like I understand it. I know what I have to do. I know what weight I have to maintain to stay healthy. I do it. I exercise. I’m skinny. It’s not about muscle mass for me, it’s not about big muscles, but it’s about staying an appropriate weight and getting my heart rate up several times a week.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. I saw something online the other day that was just talking about there’s so many different forms of exercise and that if you don’t like a certain activity you don’t need to do that. Just go find something that’s fun for you rather than just be like, “Oh, I need to exercise and I hate running, but I’m going to do it just because I feel like I’m supposed to do that activity.”

Mike Morse:

Absolutely. I’m reading articles all the time about different exercises, so I agree with you. If you don’t like to run, you can bike. If you don’t want to bike, you could do cardio on the floor. If you don’t want to do cardio on the floor, you can get in the pool. I mean, there’s a million things to get your heart rate up. Everybody should be able to find something that they like to do to get moving to get your heart rate up.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. When did you discover a love of fitness?

Mike Morse:

So my mom had been working out when I was in the crib, she was doing those Jack LaLanne’s and Jane Fonda workouts back in the ’60s and ’70s, so I remember seeing it from birth basically. I worked out a little bit in high school. I remember going to the gym with a buddy somewhat in college. I think I’d been doing it a long, long time but after my dad died, I mean pretty much in earnest I knew that it was important. I thought I was going to die before age 50 my entire life until I hit 50 so I was in decent shape at 50, I’m in better shape now, but it’s something I’m going to do forever.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. I know you mentioned running a moment ago and also a variety of other things, what kinds of activity do you love?

Mike Morse:

I’ve changed a hundred times over the last 30 years. My favorite thing to get moving is hiking. No matter what city I’m in, if they have a mountain or a big hill, I’m on it. Currently, I love my Peloton app. I don’t have a Peloton bike but I have an app that I put on my Apple TV and I do a treadmill bootcamp. I love that. It goes by for me in two minutes. I’ve tried boxing in the past classes, which actually are really hard and really good. I’ll try anything.

Luke W Russell:

So you mentioned you thought you were going to die before you were 50, was that something just loosely in the back of your mind or was that something that you felt give you a bit of a burden or pressure? Or what was that giving you for those first 49 years?

Mike Morse:

Burden, pressure, anxiety, fear. I was fearful and it didn’t control my life other than making me stay healthy, stay skinny, work out and live my life like it was my last day, every day. So on the one hand, it’s a scary burden, something. On the other hand, it probably enhanced my 20s, 30s and 40s because I was staying healthy. I was appreciating life every day. I was not one of those people. I never missed a soccer game, a baseball game. I drove my kids to school every single day. I made lunches every single day. I never was a workaholic because of that. I was home for dinner every single night. It was more fear than anything, but I turned the fear into good things.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. I was told you had a pretty big 50th birthday celebration. Was there a bit of a sigh relief at some point in that for you?

Mike Morse:

For sure. Absolutely. I actually don’t have the fear anymore. So I turned 50 and the fear went away. I still live every day like it’s my last because I truly believe that. That’s been in me for 30 years now and so it’s ingrained. My kids know that. I have said to my kids out loud several times, “If I die tomorrow, guys, know that I’ve had a really happy life, that I love you, that I’ve never wasted any time. I do everything I want to do. I don’t do things I don’t want to do.” It’s a mantra I live by. I won’t have a meal with somebody I don’t want to. I won’t do an interview with somebody I don’t want to. I won’t go on a trip with a group of people just for a economic benefit if I don’t want to. And that is freeing.

Mike Morse:

I wish that on everybody listening to this interview and everybody in my life, I wish it on family, friends. It’s so freeing. I am grateful for every minute of every day. And when I get an invitation, and in the stage of my life with the book and my podcast and business I get lots of invitations, I say no to most. I want to be around people I like, that I can connect with, that I can learn from, that I can teach or share with. I’m not looking to have boring meetings or be with people who suck my energy. It’s just something that I do and I’m proud of it. I love it and I recommend it.

Mike Morse:

And a lot of people look at me side eyes when I say those kind of things. When I’m coaching a lawyer and say, “You should only be doing things that you’re great at and you love to do,” they have a hundred things they do every day that they’re not great at and they don’t love. I just try to say, “Yeah, it’s going to take some time to get rid of those things, but you should start thinking about delegating some of those because you’ll be happier.”

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. What does it take to admit to other people that somebody else might be able to do certain jobs better than yourself?

Mike Morse:

Humility. You got to know yourself. You got to put your ego aside. When my coach taught me the concept of delegation, because it’s a learned skill, it’s not something you’re born with, my ego didn’t like it. I thought I was the best trial attorney in town. I thought nobody could negotiate with an insurance adjuster better than me. Nobody could talk to a client better than me. Nobody could do fill in the blank better than me. And then I realized I was wrong. It takes humility. But once you get past it, the real freedom comes. If you can’t delegate, you’re going to have a three, four, five-person practice max and you are going to be a slave to it and I don’t think you’ll be able to find true happiness.

Mike Morse:

I remember the first meaningful delegation exercise I had and it was wonderful. It was not painful. It was not scary. And after the first time it got easier and easier and now I’ve delegated 98% of my world and I’m really doing things that I love to do and I’m great at every single day. If it doesn’t fall into that category, I find someone whose category it falls into and I let them do it.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Are you currently mentoring anyone outside of your practice?

Mike Morse:

Several people. I have several law firms that I mentor. And the coaching is a form of mentoring and so they call me all the time for visionary type advice, advertising, marketing. Those are my specialty areas. I was just mentoring a big time lawyer in Nevada who called me, who couldn’t let go of his stuff, and I spent an hour on the phone with him talking about the importance of having a really good executive assistant and all the things that an executive assistant can do.

Mike Morse:

Now, that’s one that the lawyers listening to this is something really hard, including for me. So that was a hard one. And I just thought of this and you asked me earlier, I didn’t think I was worthy of a good executive assistant. I didn’t want to pay for it. I didn’t think I needed it. I didn’t think my world was that complicated, and I was dead wrong. A good executive assistant is everything. I had already delegated legal stuff and I had a COO and I had HR and CMO and CFO, but I wouldn’t allow myself to get an executive assistant. I told myself lots of stories why I didn’t need one, didn’t deserve one. But when I got a good one, who looked at every single email that came in, who handled my scheduling, who handled my travel, who handled my world, it freed me up more than I was already freed up. It’s a game changer. I will always have one. I hope the one I have now never leaves me. She threatens because she’s in her ’60s and she’s got to retire sometime, but I think it’s one of the most important positions that a lawyer has.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. You’ve taken, or recent years, taken on some Innocence Projects. Is that correct?

Mike Morse:

Yes.

Luke W Russell:

Can you tell me what first drew you into that?

Mike Morse:

So I have a podcast called Open Mic, we have 110 plus episodes, and the last 50 or so have been focused around wrongful convictions and wrongful bail and things in the criminal justice system, which is pretty new to me because I’m not a criminal defense attorney. I met 12 or 13 people who’ve been wrongfully convicted because of bad lawyers and bad prosecutors and bad judges and there’s some really, really heartbreaking, sad stories, some bizarre stories. And throughout this process, I was blown away how amazing these people are and how I can’t think of one that had anger, a lot of outward anger, despite being locked up for 30 years for something it was impossible for them to commit. So I met people throughout my process.

Mike Morse:

One of the best Innocence Clinics in this country is the University of Michigan run by David Moran, and we had lunch and we hit it off. He’s an amazing lawyer, professor, and they asked me to get involved with the case because they didn’t have… For whatever reasons they said, “Would you be willing to take on a case?” And I said, “I’ve never done this before,” and they said, “Well, we’ll help you. We’ll give you assistance and briefs and walk you through the process,” and it’s a big deal because I’m this person’s only shot.

Mike Morse:

So I talked to my team and we decided we were going to try to help this person, this particular case. It’s a man who was convicted of killing his infant six, seven-month-old baby and he’s maintained his innocence ever since. His girlfriend, the baby’s mother, didn’t think he did it. We read the trial transcripts and they were disgusting. I think it was a three-day jury trial. The cross examinations were weak. There were no expert witnesses brought. The state had seven or eight expert witnesses. The bottom line is it was not a fair trial. What he did to this baby, I don’t know, but I do know this man did not get a fair trial so we have filed a 6.500 motion in the last couple of months to get him a new trial.

Mike Morse:

He’s been in prison for 10 years. He’s serving a life sentence and he did not, absolutely by all accounts, get a fair trial. It’s been a lot of work. It’s a little exhausting. It’s not rewarding yet. I hope that we’re successful. It’s a big step for my firm who’s never handled a criminal case in our life, let alone something as important as this, but I think this man deserved it because if we didn’t do it I don’t know if anybody else would have. It’s a big one.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. I was just talking with a friend earlier today about how one of the things that just makes our country really special is the idea that people should have a fair trial, that people should, even if we… It’s easy sometimes as an onlooker to go, “Oh, this person was wrong. This person was bad. We should just lock them up.” But that we have processes and that everyone deserves a fair defense.

Mike Morse:

It’s the cornerstone of our system. And the problem is I’ve seen all of these cases now on my podcast and talk to these people where they didn’t get a fair trial, they had a terrible defense attorney, whether it be court appointed or otherwise. I mean, I could go on and on about it. All the things that shouldn’t have happened that happened, it’s really maddening to be a lawyer and see it. So by doing these podcasts I learned a ton and I agreed to help.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Do people misjudge you when they look at you and see your business success?

Mike Morse:

I feel judged. Is it misjudged? Are they wrongfully judging me? I mean, I don’t think you should judge anybody. They should be happy for my success. I think lawyers definitely are jealous. Maybe some of that jealousy is envy. I get it because I’m jealous of people and I’m envious of people and so I get those emotions. They’re not great emotions. We are probably five times bigger than the next biggest firm. I mean there’s not many even close in my market in my state. So I feel it, they don’t say it to my face, but I feel it. I have competitors who say not nice things about me in their commercials. I did have a competitor who actually put my name on his thing. “Who are these people? He puts all his competitors on here.” So I think in my market and I think in most markets there’s a lot of jealousy and envy towards successful people but I don’t know if it’s just law firms. But I try not to let it get to me and know that it’s understandable and that I’ve had those feelings about other people too so I don’t think about it much.

Luke W Russell:

One of the things I wanted to ask you about is, so for the people listening, what people might not realize is we ask our guests to point us to folks from your lives, and we’re pointed to everyone from business colleagues, lifelong friends, professors, children, parents, spouses, and curiously, you directed us to your ex-wife. Can you talk to me about your marriage and how you two have navigated your relationship after divorce?

Mike Morse:

Sure. It would’ve been our 25 year anniversary yesterday. We talked. We celebrated it. We are still, dare I say, as close to being best friends and we care deeply about each other. Her and her boyfriend are at my house often for dinner as I’m at their house and we travel together. She’s a great person. She’s a great mom. It was important for us to maintain this relationship for our kids’ sake, for them to see it. It’s not fake, but it definitely takes work because we had our differences of course but we never disliked each other. It was just the marriage ran its course for whatever reasons and we decided to do it differently than most.

Mike Morse:

When we got divorced, in Michigan you have to go to the courthouse on the final day of the divorce to put it on the record, and we drove together. It was kind of beautiful. We’ve been divorced I don’t even know how many years now, six, seven, eight, and my kids are amazing and they see what a healthy divorce looks like and that we’re still friends and I think they love that and it’s enhanced their lives and hopefully they see us as role models in healthy relationships. And just because they don’t work doesn’t mean you can’t have healthy relationships.

Mike Morse:

We’ve never really talked about being proud of it, but I’m proud of it. I think she’s probably proud of how we consciously uncoupled. It’s sad to see divorce people not talk and only talk via text message. I have lots of friends like that and their kids, I believe, suffer. They suffer. I’m really thankful that we chose to do it different.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. And you have three daughters, how old are they?

Mike Morse:

21, 19 and 13.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. What’s better than spending time with your kids?

Mike Morse:

Nothing comes to mind.

Luke W Russell:

On the whole stopping and taking a moment to pat yourself on the back from time to time, do you ever look at your three daughters and think, “Wow, I did it. I showed up for them and I helped raise three beautiful human beings”?

Mike Morse:

Harriet and I talked about this yesterday, and we do stop and smell the roses about how amazing they are. They’ve had their issues and they’ve had some problems, but they are amazing women. I’m proud of them. I’m proud of the choices they make. I know that parents have a lot to do with it. So yes, that is probably my proudest accomplishment. The best thing that I do every single day. One of my daughters called me as we were starting this interview, all three of us talk every single day and there… I mean, there is nothing better than raising kids and being friends with them and wanting to spend time with them. It’s just amazing.

Luke W Russell:

Are you capable of retirement?

Mike Morse:

Probably not fully because I get bored too easily. I need to be busy. I like being busy. I’m good busy. So I can’t imagine ever just turning that all off.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. When you survey your life and you think about the practice you’ve built, the family you’ve designed, the own relationship with yourself that you’ve cultivated, what do you think your dad would be proud of if he could see you now?

Mike Morse:

He would definitely be proud of my daughters and the dad that I become. He’d be proud of the law firm I created. He’d be proud of the community activities and a city that he loved so much, Detroit, all of the things that we do in our community. He’d be sad that he’s not part of him. He’d be sad that he’s not part of the firm and not able to hug and kiss his granddaughters because he was a big affectionate, hugger and kisser. And he loved people. My mom and I get to interact with our community every single day no matter where we’re at. People feel so comfortable with us, they come up to us and want to talk and take pictures and hug and shake hands, and it’s really gratifying and I think he would really like that a lot.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Okay Mike, it’s your 80th birthday celebration and people from all throughout your life are present, a gentle clinking on glass can be heard and a hush washes over the room. People raise their glasses to toast to you. What are three things you would hope they would say about you?

Mike Morse:

That I was a generous soul with my time, with my money, with my energy. That I was a good father and raised three amazing daughters that turned out to be pillars in their community. And that I was a good friend and that I had lots of friends in the room who appreciated spending time with me and just had mutual affection, mutual love as a friend.

Luke W Russell:

To learn more about Michael Morse, visit 855mikewins.com. You can also purchase his book on Amazon titled Fireproof: A Five‑Step Model to Take Your Law Firm from Unpredictable to Wildly Profitable.

Luke W Russell:

A few notes before we wrap up, please check out our season three sponsors. Be sure to check out Jason Hennessey’s book titled Law Firm SEO if you want the best knowledge available in the industry.

Luke W Russell:

To any plaintiff’s attorneys who have clients in need of simple interest loans, check out the milestonefoundation.org.

Luke W Russell:

If you’d like to join a growing group of attorneys that are actively working to improve their trial skills, head over to trialschool.org.

Luke W Russell:

For personal injury lawyers looking to acquire big cases through social media, visit 7figurecases.com.

Luke W Russell:

And if you want to experience rich human connection, join our LinkedIn group by going to joinbettertogether.com.

Luke W Russell:

By the way, are you looking for more great podcasts? I am also the host of two other shows coming out this year and you can go ahead and subscribe to them today so that as soon as we start releasing episodes you’ll be the first to know. Check out The Trusted Legal Partners podcast, a place where you can find good people doing good work in the industry. I am also the host of The Society of Women Trial Lawyers podcast. There, you’ll find inspiring stories from women attorneys across the nation. You can find links to these in the show description and they’re also available on the same places you hear Lawful Good.

Luke W Russell:

Thanks so much for listening this week. This podcast is produced by Kirsten Stock, edited by Kendall Perkinson and mastered by Guido Bertolini. I’m your host, Luke W Russell, and you’ve been listening to Lawful Good.