Josh and Aaron discuss Josh’s upcoming induction as the newest president of the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association (CATLA).
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0:00:00.4 Aaron: Hey, Josh.
0:00:01.7 Josh: Hey, Aaron.
0:00:03.1 Aaron: Have you ever eaten a catla fish?
0:00:05.6 Josh: Yeah. They’re really, really good when fried appropriately.
0:00:10.5 Aaron: There is a fish called catla that I have seen on the Internet probably 500 times. I’ve seen a picture of it.
0:00:17.9 Josh: Yeah.
0:00:18.3 Aaron: Do you know how, why I see that picture?
0:00:20.0 Josh: Well, I mean, I’ve caught ’em but we’re they pictures of the catla fish that I caught?
0:00:23.8 Aaron: No. Although I assume your pictures are famous. I didn’t see that.
0:00:27.2 Josh: I mean, you know, I’ve been doing it a while.
0:00:30.5 Aaron: There’s a fish called catla that I didn’t know was a fish until I googled catla.
0:00:36.0 Josh: Okay.
0:00:36.5 Aaron: Repeatedly over the course of my practice. Because CATLA also stands for something else as an acronym. Do you want to tell us what that is?
0:00:44.7 Josh: It is the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association.
0:00:48.9 Aaron: Yes. Very influential organization here in Austin, Texas. The lawyers who are members, you could say, are on our side of the V. In other words, they’re representing individuals, not corporations. They’re mostly personal injury plaintiffs lawyers, but generally just plaintiff lawyers. And all of them are trial lawyers, meaning that they’re going to trial for their clients, getting in front of juries and asking juries what is the right answer for a given problem.
0:01:22.4 Josh: That’s right.
0:01:24.6 Aaron: When I first started practicing, I remember you and I had a meeting with the president of CATLA. Do you remember that meeting?
0:01:34.7 Josh: No, I don’t.
0:01:35.7 Aaron: Okay, I’ll set the scene further. It was downtown. We were going to lunch with a guy named Stephen Nagel.
0:01:43.9 Josh: Yes, I do.
0:01:44.5 Aaron: Ah, now you remember.
0:01:46.0 Josh: Corazon.
0:01:47.8 Aaron: Hopefully Stephen doesn’t listen to this podcast ’cause he’ll be like, “I can’t believe he didn’t remember that.”
0:01:52.7 Josh: Why don’t you ask me the question again?
0:01:54.2 Aaron: Okay. Do you remember having a meeting with the president of CATLA right when we first started?
0:01:58.1 Josh: Yes, I do.
0:01:58.9 Aaron: Okay.
0:02:00.0 Aaron: Mr. Stephen Nagel.
0:02:01.4 Aaron: That’s right. The reason it’s burned into my mind is that I remember thinking, I was kind of new to being a lawyer. And I remember thinking, “Man, this is awesome. I’m getting to dine with the president of the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association.” And that’s a big deal, because he’s the president. I’m building up to the fact that our very own Josh Fogelman has, Is the president elect currently of the organization known as CATLA.
0:02:30.8 Josh: That’s true.
0:02:31.5 Aaron: Also the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association.
0:02:34.1 Josh: That’s true.
0:02:34.5 Aaron: Congratulations.
0:02:35.3 Josh: Thank you.
0:02:36.0 Aaron: And I think you’ve been guilty of sort of shrugging it off. Like, ah, I’ve been on the executive committee. I’m Just taking my turn. But I wanted to tell you, this really matters a lot to me. It really does. And I, it matters to me for a lot of reasons. Partly ’cause I can use you. I could probably.
0:03:00.0 Josh: Even more.
0:03:00.6 Aaron: Yes. Can leverage this relationship with CATLA. But also because when we first started, I didn’t know if it was going to work out. You didn’t know if it was going to work out? We didn’t really know. We were two lawyers with half a paralegal. We shared our paralegal with another law firm. We paid for 20 hours of her time.
0:03:19.0 Josh: Yeah.
0:03:19.6 Aaron: And we didn’t know if we would ever get a seat at the table. And by that, I mean we had this idea, this mission, that we could change the perception of personal injury law. Like, literally change people’s minds about what personal injury law is in Central Texas, in Austin.
0:03:39.0 Josh: A great mission.
0:03:40.2 Aaron: It was exciting.
0:03:41.3 Josh: This, yeah.
0:03:41.8 Aaron: And I needed that mission personally, ’cause I was like, I don’t want. I’m not just going to sell out, right? There’s money to be made in personal injury law. But that’s, I’m not. I didn’t go to law. I didn’t fight my way through that process just to go get a paycheck. I knew it had to be something that was going to get me jumping out of bed in the morning.
0:04:03.6 Josh: Well you need fulfillment and purpose and.
0:04:05.9 Aaron: Yes.
0:04:06.2 Josh: I mean, ultimately, a great mission in life.
0:04:11.5 Aaron: Yes. And I have since found it’s been incredibly gratifying, incredibly fulfilling. And I’m just, I tell everyone I’m, like I’m, I love what we do, but at that time, we didn’t know if we would have the seat at the table at all. And now here we are, ten plus years later, and not only are we at the table, but you were the president of the organization.
0:04:42.9 Josh: So you can refer to me as Mr. President from now on.
0:04:45.5 Aaron: All hail.
0:04:46.3 Josh: I would hope for the remain. Not hope, actually I would demand that for the remainder of this interview, you refer to me only as Mr. President. Also acceptable, President Fogelman.
0:04:58.8 Aaron: Right. And I am going to. But I would like, as we do in depositions, I would like the court to recognize a running title.
0:05:07.8 Josh: As the President.
0:05:08.6 Aaron: When I say Josh.
0:05:09.7 Josh: As the President, I’m going to refuse that request.
0:05:12.3 Aaron: When I say Josh, the record shall reflect that I actually am saying Mr. President. Madam President Josh. Producer Dave, I would also insist that you play Hail to the Chief during this segment of the podcast when it airs.
0:05:28.2 Dave: Oh yeah, we’ll make sure that happens.
0:05:30.9 Josh: It’s playing right now. Don’t you hear it?
0:05:32.4 Aaron: Yes.
0:05:32.8 Dave: This is what they’ll hear when it gets played online as it’s removed.
0:05:37.3 Aaron: Yeah. And this is the part where you do the presidential dance.
0:05:41.1 Dave: Oh, yeah.
0:05:42.5 Aaron: That’s exciting for everybody.
0:05:43.3 Josh: You mean. You mean this one?
0:05:46.6 Aaron: Yeah. Bite the lip more.
0:05:52.8 Josh: No. Is that the one?
0:05:54.9 Dave: Where you’re half out of frame, and so it’s just kind of your section.
0:05:57.0 Aaron: It’s just your crotch.
0:05:58.0 Dave: Crotch. Are you going to do that at your, the lunch where you officially get to take over? Is this your prep for that?
0:06:04.6 Josh: Seems fitting.
0:06:05.2 Dave: All right. Well we’ll be ready for that.
0:06:05.5 Aaron: Yeah, we can just hit play. We can just hit play on this video for that.
0:06:09.8 Josh: That was a shout out to my Ice Bats days.
0:06:12.3 Dave: Oh, I remember that episode.
0:06:13.2 Josh: Just making sure that.
0:06:14.7 Dave: Where you did that.
0:06:15.7 Josh: Those two things come together.
0:06:17.9 Aaron: So what’s on the agenda, man? What’s going to happen in your first hundred days?
0:06:23.4 Josh: Man that’s a great question. So to kind of give a little backstory Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association, or CATLA, is our local organization that is associated in some way with the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. So it’s the Austin branch. It’s a group of trial lawyers who historically represent plaintiffs, and it’s a community service organization whose responsibility it is to kind of maintain the integrity of the plaintiff’s bar. That’s getting involved in local elections and providing a forum for the trial lawyers in and around the Austin area to come together and share ideas, share information. It’s a highly, highly collaborative organization, and I’m really, really proud to have been a part of it now for quite some time. I started out as a member and was asked to be on the executive committee, I don’t know, like, six or seven years ago.
0:07:26.1 Josh: And I’ve been on the executive committee since then. And to answer your question, COVID really did a number on the organization. Before COVID we were, there was a lot of togetherness, a lot of happy hour events, tailgating events, other social events where the members of the organization, we’re able to get to come together and get to know each other better, support young lawyers, things of that nature. And over the past five or six years since COVID it seems like some of that kind of togetherness has eroded. And if I’m able to use my term effectively, what I would really hope is I can use this time to try to re-instill and re-invigorate the social aspect of the organization, because there’s nothing that replaces being together. I mean, we’ve dealt with this internally in our own organization and we understand that nothing can replace social engagement.
0:08:37.2 Aaron: Right. Other than robots.
0:08:38.0 Josh: Other than robots which are coming, if you ask Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk. So that’s kind of my vision for the next year is to work on helping to re-establish that sense of community that makes CATLA such a great organization and hope that we can really bring in the next generation of young lawyers in our community to kind of keep that going.
0:09:07.6 Aaron: Yeah, yeah, I’m excited for that and to be a part of that. One thing I’ve already seen you do is kind of host a service day. We went to the Capital Area Food Bank and, Central Texas Food Bank, excuse me. And we all sweated it out. That was a tough day at work, by the way.
0:09:26.6 Josh: Sure was.
0:09:28.2 Aaron: But you know, showing up is probably the hardest part about being, the head of an organization like that. Because people are really going to take your cue, right? If you’re showing up, then they’re going to show up. And I think you did a good job of sort of, I don’t want to say guilting them, but like saying hey, it’s not just a one way organization and we’ve all been guilty, I think in our practice of having CATLA, Central or Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association provide us a lot of benefit, resources, information, cases that we’re looking for, forms and it’s take, take, take, take, take. But there’s a core group of lawyers who have been the pillars of it. They’re the ones out there providing those resources. And the problem is that, you can lean on that core group for a while, but there’s always got to be that next person up, that next lawyer who says, “I’m going to be a pillar of this legal community. I’m going to be one of the sources of information not just someone who receives information and help.” And so it all starts with, as you pointed out, like having a bond like you have to care about an organization before you can contribute to it. And so, I think starting with that as a focus is a great way to start.
0:10:51.9 Josh: Yeah, I mean when we were up and coming, when we first started the organization. When we first started FVF law, being part of CATLA seemed to be almost a mandatory part of practicing personal injury law in this community. And some things have changed since then. We’ve had larger firms come in from out of town that employ lots and lots of personal injury lawyers and yet don’t seem to be engaged in the organization for political reasons, it seems, or for fear of having their employees plucked, for lack of a better word, or taken from them by a local organization. So, trying to navigate through that and create more engagement I think is going to be critical to the organization’s continued thriving. And now in particular, we are just coming out of what seems to have been the largest tort reform attack by the insurance lobby that we’ve seen in almost, in over 20 years, I would say.
0:12:12.1 Aaron: Yeah, over 20 years, yeah.
0:12:14.3 Josh: And it seems like we’ve fortunately come out the other side of that. Our state saw kind of through those efforts in a way that is beneficial for Texans as a whole, fortunately. But we should expect that to continue that sort of attack from the insurance company and insurance lobbies to continue. Yeah, so having a cohesive united front and people who are willing to stand up for those people that we represent, who we serve in the courtroom, to be able to, serve those people outside the courtroom as well is a really important part of, kind of where we are politically in this time. So we’d really like to see that continue too.
0:13:00.7 Aaron: Yeah, probably a lot of listeners have heard of the book Linchpin. I remember reading Linchpin and it was pretty cool to learn that large political movements, large corporate, large amounts of corporate maneuvering and corporate success and political success often turn on just a very small handful of individuals and their decisions and their words and choices. I remember in watching the recent bill go through the legislature and wondering if the insurance companies were going to succeed in kind of lowering the standards here and reducing Texans rights. I remember watching one of the lawyers, I kind of tuned in in the middle of a session in the House Judiciary Committee and one of the lawyers from TTLA came up and TTLA is of course the main organization, CATLA’s a subdivision of it. Guy named Will Moye, and I was just floored at what a great advocate he was.
0:14:09.3 Aaron: He’s a former defense lawyer, so he had a lot of credibility insofar as he had spent a lot of time working for the insurance companies defending cases. He’s seen both sides of the coin. He spoke completely from the hip. I mean, the guy was just, he just launched into this attack on Texan rights and this attack on jurors. And in a way that was so convincing, so persuasive. I just remember sitting there being grateful to him personally. Like this one individual came in and I don’t know what else resonated with that committee that day, but they did amend that bill in that committee. It left completely gutted after that committee, and then it ultimately failed. But the fact that, and I don’t know which person had which impact with that committee, but I can tell you that, me personally, I remember listening to it saying, that guy right there just fixed it. And it’s amazing how that can happen. And again, that is maybe tip of the spear stuff because it’s part of CATLA, it’s part of TTLA. You’ve got a guy sitting there in the committee speaking the truth.
0:15:20.0 Josh: Yeah.
0:15:21.0 Aaron: So anyway, I think it’s, you’ve now been presented with the platform. And what’s cool about platforms is that they’re, we think of it like, okay, incoming president, outgoing president, incoming president, outgoing president, continuity in the organization. We’ve come to expect a certain thing from this organization. And yet each person’s platform is unique to them and their focus and their goals and their energy. And I think what’s cool about that is that it’s. We go back to what we said before on this podcast, which is that what we do and how we do it is often go to extremes. We just like the, you get a jury to do what the juries do by taking them seriously, putting everything else in your life aside, getting ready for that trial, getting ready for that closing argument, staying up till 2:00 in the morning, whatever you have to do. And I think you as president, have this opportunity, this platform to make it whatever you want to make it by sort of committing to it and putting your energy into it. And I’m excited to see where it goes.
0:16:33.5 Josh: Yeah, well, I feel really fortunate too, to have so much support from the firm. And we’re in a really great place as an organization at FVF Law to be able to observe the opportunity that we have, with me being the mouthpiece ultimately, but with so much support going on from behind the scenes with you and Dave and Caitlin and really, Margaret, the whole team, to try our best to utilize this opportunity to effectuate change, to try to make a deep and profound impact not just on CATLA as an organization, but on the clients and the Texans that benefit from organizations like CATLA who ultimately really, really put a lot of effort and energy and time into protecting the Seventh Amendment.
0:17:27.3 Josh: That’s one of the things that CATLA as an organization really celebrates is the Seventh Amendment and honoring the trial warriors, those people who actually go to trial and stand up for the rights of their clients, personal injury victims and injured Texans, and, show the world the importance of that jury system that we are so unique and fortunate to have in this country and that we continue to fight to protect. So, I think that we all understand the value of this organization and the value of this opportunity. I’m really looking forward to it. I hope that I can do something positive and leave the organization better than I found it. Not that there’s anything wrong with the organization now, but we should always be striving to do better, always be looking around and observing what opportunities we have for change, what opportunities we have for improvement. And this is such a worthy cause to put our energy behind and our resources behind. I feel fortunate and grateful to have the opportunity to do it, and I’m going to do the best I can.
0:18:38.2 Aaron: I can’t wait to see it.
0:18:39.0 Dave: Well, I’m Mr. President. I am curious. I’m curious.
0:18:42.7 Aaron: Sorry, we’re you talking to me?
0:18:44.6 Dave: President.
0:18:45.0 Aaron: Oh, Mr. President.
0:18:45.9 Dave: Mr. President. Yeah, yeah.
0:18:47.3 Aaron: Got it.
0:18:48.2 Dave: I am curious about that. Can you talk a little bit about what the position, what the scope of the position is? Like, some people may see more these things as, oh, they’re just titles, but things always just stay the same and just people come in and out. What is the availability for change? What is, what could be, what could happen if someone takes it seriously, commits to it fully? What’s the availability of that?
0:19:17.1 Josh: Yeah, no, the availability is quite broad. The president has the opportunity to engage and elect or appoint new members to the executive committee. There is a seat on the CATLA Political Action Committee board and also the opportunity to bring new members onto the Political Action Committee board, which is engaged in political fundraising, et cetera, et cetera. The president also has the opportunity to create and appoint new positions for the service committees, mentorship programs, community service, things of that nature. So there is a lot of opportunity to create engagement and create change and generate resources that will benefit the mission of the organization.
0:20:11.8 Aaron: Yeah. What Josh is good at, I’ll just say, is put tying people together. I mean, he’s really good at reaching out to various folks in our legal community and pulling them together. That’s whether it’s the new guy who just has a lot of energy and is ready to help with briefing on something, or it’s the person who, like Judy Kostura, who has, been such a guru for so long for our community on in certain areas, like subrogation and putting together sort of teams and alliances and just making friends, getting us interested in this because again, it comes back to if people aren’t interested and invested in the organization, then as a vehicle, it can’t go anywhere.
0:21:05.0 Josh: That’s right.
0:21:06.1 Dave: At the end of your presidency, what do you hope to be able to look back and say, that’s the mark I left that I’m really proud of? What do you hope to be able to say at the end of it?
0:21:17.5 Josh: Yeah, so, I mean, I think one of the primary. I mean, membership is always reflective of success. So I would hope that membership will be increased, and that includes recruiting additional young attorneys and renewing interest from the existing members. A big part of what we do is money raising, so fundraising for the organization. We’ve had some success doing that while I’ve been on the executive committee recently with like the introduction of the golf tournament and other types of social events that generate sponsor money. So I would like to leave the organization in a better financial position than I found it.
0:22:04.7 Josh: And there’s really just something intangible about just the togetherness. And when I say it’s intangible is, there is a lot of engagement amongst the members on the listserv. There’s a lot of engagement, but it’s what happens outside the confines of that listserv that I think is a great opportunity for improvement right now. And we are starting to see. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen some more engagement with things like the golf tournament. I’d like to see more of that. So my, I have an idea for another annual event event that would bring people together and hopefully appeal to a broader audience of the membership rather than just golf. In as silly as golf sounds, I mean, it is an opportunity for people to come together and it’s a great event for people to celebrate one another and celebrate what we do. So I’d like to leave the organization better than I found it, both from a togetherness standpoint, from an engagement standpoint, from a financial standpoint, and from a membership standpoint.
0:23:12.2 Dave: Yeah, that seems to be a common theme we talk about a lot, of people being together. I know why it matters for FVF from an internal perspective. Why would it really matter that lawyers hang out? Why is there a high value on there being a sense of community amidst an industry like that if the nature of their work is with the law? How is that valuable for there to be a community of relationships amongst the lawyers of Austin?
0:23:44.6 Josh: Well, I think accountability is a really, really important aspect of a community service organization. If you’re going to be a member of a community focused organization, then you should be held accountable to serving your community. And I think being together and developing that synergy has a magnetic effect. Like you get momentum from that. And when people like in COVID, you got used to isolation and then all of a sudden there was this fear and anxiety of, “Oh, I don’t really want to make the effort to go and be social with people because it’s easier for me not to.” But that’s problematic when that sort of attitude spills over into the core functioning of an organization and you’re not really together in fact. When you’re together only online and only in principle, and it’s easy for to shirk your obligations and the commitment that you’ve made to the organization when it comes time to things like giving back to the community by showing up to the service events and cleaning up our city and helping those who are less fortunate than us. I think physical presence with one another should, I hope, motivate people to want to show up, to want to be together more. And I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for that.
0:25:16.9 Aaron: I think isolation is also bad for trial.
0:25:18.9 Josh: Yeah.
0:25:19.0 Aaron: Here we are trying to be trial lawyers and we’re normalizing the disconnect.
0:25:25.5 Josh: Sure.
0:25:25.9 Aaron: We’ve got to kind of flip that and get back to where we feel connected to our community and connected to other lawyers and connected to their trials. Because all the time these lawyers are going to trial and they’re doing it in isolation. And I remember in the kind of early days of my practice being on the listserv of CATLA and watching in real time as someone was in pre trial and in a 30 minute break was trying to gather resources. Can, does anybody have this case that stands for this proposition or, and, or can someone literally come down here to the courthouse and print this out or do that? And people were moving around those requests and it was awesome. And it also helped us understand that trial’s a lot easier when we do it as a team, when we learn from our own, each other’s mistakes. That’s another thing, it’s like if there’s one of us going to trial, we all should be learning whatever lessons are there to learn, whether it’s the idiosyncrasies with that particular judge who has requirement for evidence, or it’s the new tactics that the defense lawyers are sort of deploying to shed light on some weaknesses in our cases. Or something like that. I think that’s one of the indirect ways that that connection can help us.
0:27:01.3 Josh: Yeah.
0:27:01.6 Aaron: Just getting connected to each other’s work, not just the community.
0:27:04.8 Josh: Yeah, absolutely right.
0:27:07.3 Aaron: So, what else you got, Producer Dave?
0:27:09.9 Dave: Well, I just, I keep, we keep talking about how internally, the value of, of our connection, right. We have these attorney meetings regularly where, our attorneys are talking with each other and sharing information, sharing what they’ve learned and as someone who’s responsible to help communicate to the community why the way your lawyer practices should matter to you, even when they’re not specifically working with you directly, why that’s important, I think that’s an often like a missed thing. So just from as I’m thinking about when people are caring about or thinking about hiring attorneys for whatever they need, having even the thought of, well, what type of life do they live? That matters more than you think it does. And so a lot of times people just have the, well, I need them to be good at this skill for me in my situation. And yet in other parts of life, we generally want people to be well rounded, comprehensively involved people in the community and just understanding how things like that change the way they’re able to do their job in a much better way. And so I just like being able to really connect that explicitly.
0:28:26.5 Aaron: Agreed.
0:28:26.8 Dave: Like, when your attorney is someone who cares about more than just you, then the fact that actually probably matters in the way that they serve you too. And it’s kind of like when you go on a date with someone, it’s like, I don’t want you to just be nice to me. I want to see how you treat our server. I want to see how you are with your family, how you operate in the world. I think people should also hold that type of evaluation for all of the relationships in their life that matter. And so to hear, to be able for us to get to talk about and share, hey, it’s so important that as professionals we’re involved in the community with each other. There’s an indirect impact that I think is really valuable and I love that we get to talk about it.
0:29:11.7 Aaron: Yeah. I think you’re talking about operating systems, right? I mean, we all have operating systems and CATLA’s one of the organizations that has an impact on that.
0:29:19.2 Josh: Absolutely right. Yeah. Well, I’m excited. I think it’s going to be an interesting year. I’m grateful to have the opportunity and I’m grateful to have the resources in this in our organization in FVF law to really help me be the best version of myself and the best leader that I can be for this organization, so.
0:29:40.2 Aaron: Can’t wait.
0:29:40.9 Josh: Should be a fun year.
0:29:41.6 Aaron: Yeah, can’t wait to have you report back on the podcast about what happened last year.
0:29:47.5 Dave: Awesome.
0:29:48.5 Josh: Thanks, guys.