Sol Weiss, Anapol Weiss – Trial Litigation, Employee Development, and Reputation
Sol Weiss is a shareholder of Anapol Weiss, a national leader in personal injury, product liability, and pharmaceutical litigation. He has successfully litigated thousands of cases in State and Federal Courts.
Sol has played crucial roles in high-profile, national lawsuits, including the National Football League Players’ concussion injury litigation, the Fen-Phen dietary supplement case, and many more.
Sol was named 2014’s Lawyer of the Year in Mass Tort and Class Action Litigation by Philadelphia’s Best Lawyers, and he has been named in the Best Lawyers of America since 2006. Sol Weiss is also an active member of the Board of Consultors of the Villanova University School of Law, where he earned his law degree.
What’s in This Episode:
- Who is Sol Weiss
- Sol talks about his early days at Anapol Weiss
- How Sol got involved with the National Football League Players’ concussion case
- Sol’s background in the pharmaceutical litigation space
- How to try personal injury cases for maximum value
- The lessons Sol has learned from decades of trying cases
- Why caring about people is the best way to make an impact as an attorney
- How Sol is positioning Anapol Weiss for growth today
- Sol’s advice for lawyers looking to grow a large and thriving practice
This transcript was created using an automated transcription service and may contain errors.
Episode 21:
Prologue
Welcome to The Rankings Podcast, where we feature top founders, entrepreneurs and elite personal injury attorneys and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.w.
Chris Dreyer
Chris Dreyer here, President and Founder of Ranking.io where we help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings. You’re listening to The Rankings Podcast where I feature innovative business owners and of course, elite personal injury attorneys. I’m excited to have Sol Weiss on the show today. Sol Weiss is a shareholder of Anapol Weiss, a national leader in personal injury, product liability and pharmaceutical litigation. He has successfully litigated thousands of cases in state and federal courts. Sol’s played crucial roles in high profile national lawsuits including the National Football League Players’ concussion injury litigation, the Fen-Phen dietary supplement case and many more. He was named 2014, Lawyer of the Year in Mass Tort and Class Action Litigation by Philadelphia’s Best Lawyers, and has been named to the Best Lawyers since 2006. He is an active member of the Board of Consultors of Villanova University School of Law. Sol welcome to the show.
Sol Weiss
Good to be here.
Chris Dreyer
And I’m really excited to have you. So let’s let’s kick things off. Let’s take me back to the beginning of Anapol Weiss, how did you get started? Where did your journey start there?
Sol Weiss
My journey started in 1972 when I graduated from Villanova Law School. My first job was at a law firm and about 24 lawyers at that time. And I was hired to do plaintiffs in a trust work. And four years into that job. The person I worked with Paul Anapol started his own firm And it’s been some iteration of Anapol Weiss, or, Anapol Schwartz, whatever you want to call it for 19 since 1977.
Chris Dreyer
gotcha. So take me back to the early days when you joined Paul, what was it like you know, getting your feet on the ground, you know, hustling to get those cases. I know you’ve been practicing law. So maybe you already had a book of business when you started. So it wasn’t.
Sol Weiss
No, I was right out of law school and I was assigned to handle one big case, a price fixing case. And I was up against a very prominent, went to a Philadelphia law firm. And I spent the first year and a half of my legal career, working day and night six days a week until we got that case resolved. Paul was a personal injury. Lawyer as well. He was president of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. tried a lot of really catastrophic injured people cases. And after that stint doing an interest work. I also started doing product liability work with Paul.
Chris Dreyer
Actually, so some of those was one of the big turning points in the firm settling some of those big cases. Did that kind of give you the cash power to kind of take the marketing up to the next level? Would you say that’s fair?
Sol Weiss
That’s pretty fair. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve worked on large cases all my life. I’ve had my share of some smaller cases. But in the main I have done work involving severely compromised people. And I’ve also had done some business litigation for small businesses. On the plaintiff side
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, and one really high profile case we got to talk about is the concussion case with the NFL. So tell me a little bit about that. How did you get into that unique type of litigation?
Sol Weiss
My partner in Arizona, Larry Coben, who I went to high school with, called me up and said, I’d like to work with you guys. We worked out a deal. And within about six months of being in our firm, I’ll be in Scottsdale. He looked at a bunch of football players who would exhibited some neurological problems severe problems. Larry has tried a number of cases against helmet manufacturers football Horse racing, hockey and bicycle accidents. And at the time, one of my partners Ned Ehrlich was representing injured football players for workers comp claims in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York. So it was a natural fit. We hired some really tough flight experts and away we went. We filed the first class action in federal court. We were instrumental in getting it multi district litigation. Jay PML. And it was assigned to Judge Brody but our case and I was wanting to kill the camp counsel from the planar side.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, and then That really got a ton of media exposure. And I’m sure that you know that really that natural kind of PR that you get, it helps the marketing issues, that helps with the social proof. And
Sol Weiss
It does all that Chris, we hired a PR firm. That is the leads in the concussion case, including the steering committee, and we follow their recommendation. And early on, we decided it was best to have it all be about the players not about the lawyers. That about 10 or 12 players whose life stories are constantly in the media and a mushroom from there.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, and Absolutely. And going from there, then you’ve been involved in many other major cases. Let’s see. Talk about Fen-Phen. How did you get into the pharmaceutical litigation space
Sol Weiss
Ehn I’m going to say the early 90s. We had a client who lost his hearing. He was given a drug that caused it at the VA administration, so we filed a tort claim action. And after about three years of successful we’ve got a lot of money for the client. Fen-Phen started in 1998. I’m thinking 1997. By 1999. The whole country was awash with Fen-Phen litigation. In my initial role, I was very active in medical monitoring cases in the state of Pennsylvania. New Jersey. At some point in time, we joined forces with the MDL plaintiffs. And I became one of seven class counsel. And I spent the next for more than four or five years. We had a nice settlement, $3.4 billion against American Home products. And then there was a whole bunch of OPT outs and I was very active for many years in that litigation.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, so it’s it’s definitely not you hear that? It? Oh, he was an overnight success. No, it was many years that you were involved in this. It was many prior cases that gave you the skills to try this case and get the settlement that you acquired. Could you give a you know, our listeners are mostly personal injury attorneys looking to grow their practice? What are what are some general steps or or tips that you would give those attorneys on trying cases to get maximum value.
Sol Weiss
The first thing that I would tell young lawyers you need to work up the damages. A lot of time lawyers get focused only on liability. But it’s the unique cod life sort of your unique situation of your client. writes really compelling. And that maximizes the recovery you can make for a client in front of a jury. It’s pretty important upfront. Second thing is you have to work like a dog. And most of these cases take two or three years before they get resolved. We can spend anywhere between 75 and $200,000 in costs, in a big case, lining up the right experts flying all over the country or sometimes to Europe, wherever to take the necessary depositions of the corporate employees. And that’s what we do.
Chris Dreyer
Thank you for that. Yeah. And that’s you know, when you tell that story and you get that emotional reaction from the jury, I’m sure that has a huge impact. I’m not an attorney myself, but I see that and I understand that that component of it too, in terms of let’s let’s take it on the other side. You’ve now even now tried a lot of cases. What about some of the mistakes that you’ve learned from? What are some that stand out that you could pass on and those mistakes? What are some of those mistakes that you’ve learned from trying many cases?
Sol Weiss
The most important thing I learned is you have to have a simple story. Yeah, rid of all the irrelevant stuff. I’m trained with some really good trial masters. Some of them are psychologists. Some of them are trial lawyers. It’s all about the story storytelling. And you’ve got to be very highly focused on what’s the most important aspect in your case. And the only thing you have to do you have to talk in plain English.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, I run into that mistake myself being a search engine optimization guy, a big SEO nerd and I think you know what, I need to bring this back and not get in the weeds a little bit so that we’re talking the same language. You know, talking about those mentors and those peers. You know, I think of other you know, I’ve heard Mark Lanier speak, I talked to John Gomez and some of these top litigators, you know, who are some of those mentors, that that helps you develop your expertise?
Sol Weiss
Well, I I spent a fair amount of time over the years of working with Rodney Joo in California. It’s a week long course for each case, you spend the first couple days constructing the defense, which seems an odd thing to do, but it’s really not, it’s the appropriate thing to do. And then you spend a day trying to rebut that defense and then you spend the last two days refining your case in chief. And when you do that, you get rid of a lot of things that are really irrelevant, confuse the jury because through eight or 12 people know very little about what you’re about to tell them. And they’re not going to remember a whole bunch of stuff. So you got to be very careful.
Chris Dreyer
Absolutely. And by looking at the defense side, you can it helps you look at how you’re going to play offense and attack what they might be setting up as their defense.
Sol Weiss
Now, the most important thing for a lawyer is credibility. You need to establish credibility with the jury, from the time you start picking a jury until the time you close and that’s why you have to be very tight in the facts you present. And you can stretch
Chris Dreyer
Absolutely, I think that’s, that’s very important. And that’s I think we could talk about that in a lot of detail in regards to how to make those stories more simplified and what you could discard and what needs to stay and that’s a unique skill set of its own there. Today you know, what are your hot high value activities? How are you bringing the most impact or value to the firm today?
Sol Weiss
I like to break down the case when it first comes in. Develop a theme. I figure out what I need to do to effectively persuade the jury or Fact Finder or a corporate representative, who’s a decision maker to get them to understand how profoundly injured my clients are, for example. Before I started with the NFL concussion case, I was also involved in the kids for cash case in Luzerne County. They were to corrupt completely Court judges who were taking kickbacks and bribes from the developer and owners of a private prison. And the judges would send these kids to the prison. Normally before they even were sentenced or whatever the duty is a juvenile and they were getting paid per kid that went into the jail. took a long time to unravel all those facts. We were deterred for quite some time because the FBI had a criminal investigation. But eventually we are able to get a settlement against a developer who actually made substantial kickbacks to to judges, the private prison company and a lawyer who’s also an owner of The private prison. So I must have used seven, eight years of my time and we’re able to get a civil rights recovery for I try remember, maybe 2000 kids.
Chris Dreyer
That’s incredible. And when you’re telling me this, the story Sol, I am automatically, I’m a big fan of the TV show Suits. And I feel like they took your exact case and made it into a season. Have you seen that? Have you seen that episode of suits?
Sol Weiss
Never. There was a movie made for cash for kids. Okay. We had the juvenile law center, who’s a marshal leveque was a director, still the director and she’s an amazing advocate for juvenile right. She’s argued a number of cases in front of the Supreme Court, the United States. And we worked with her and another law firm to get justice for these kids.
Chris Dreyer
Absolutely
Sol Weiss
do it’s very satisfying. And that’s what we do.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, that’s where I was gonna. That was my next question. Obviously, spending that much time on a case, obviously, obviously, it’s work but to some degree, you have to have a passion, really care to put that much time and energy into this, this effort. So you know that
Sol Weiss
My mantra is I like to change people’s lives. I like to give them a fair shot. I want them to spend the rest of their life not worrying about where the next dollar is coming from, or how they’re going to get medical treatment.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, that’s that’s incredible. And that’s what I think any consumer that’s looking to hire an attorney, hire an expert. That’s what they’re looking for someone that really cares and they that they can trust is going to put their, you know, best energies and efforts into the case. And also just having your prior successes, you know that that speaks volume because you know, people can talk about how good they are, but when other people talk about how good you are, and you have these results, like these actual you’ve made these impacts, it really is a differentiator.
Sol Weiss
See when we set out to do the concussion cases, public opinion was very much against the the players because the public thought that they were rich kids had a privileged life, and that they knew what they signed up for. It wasn’t until we were able through Public Relations by telling the stories of some of these players and their families, that the public perception changed. And I guess about a year and a half into the litigation, ESPN did some surveys and they found that 70% of people thought that the players were entitled to get compensated because they had no idea about the dangers of concussions and some concussions hits. And it wasn’t just football. girls soccer girls shouldn’t head of a soccer ball. The forces that hit their head and neck are too great. Their bodies aren’t mature. Field Hockey for girls ice hockey for four In every context sport, had risks that the players didn’t appreciate didn’t understand. It was the media outlets that explained to parents and participants about the dangers of neurological deficits from concussions. That was the main benefit of the NFL litigation. All the way down to peewee football and peewee baseball.
Chris Dreyer
So many things have changed. I’ve seen you know, softball players playing third base with a helmet on I’ve seen you know, the pitchers wear helmets, the the you saw Antonio Brown complaining about his helmet last year. And it’s just had a profound impact. And it’s really set this precedent. And I would imagine if it’s being polled the audience that The very beginning it wouldn’t have been 70%.
Sol Weiss
It was not I can tell you we had those pulse. The other thing about what I do for young lawyers, I love what I do. I like that I can change the world. And that’s what litigation does. If there’s some bad practices, and you force a trial or you fall, you force a defendant to rethink what they do you make the world a safer place.
Chris Dreyer
Absolutely, there’s not many careers that that can do that and have that big of an impact and that that Domino type effect.
Sol Weiss
Correct. You also get to meet a lot of great people over the years, some very interesting people on both sides of the aisle.
Chris Dreyer
So let’s talk about today. Let’s talk about the firm So how are you positioning the firm for growth today? You know, you’ve had these amazing cases you utilize the PR company very successfully to kind of change perception and to make make these changes in the landscape and to really impact positive good and, and lives. So how are you positioning the firm for growth today?
Sol Weiss
I like to train young lawyers and we’d like to grow with from within. And we give our lawyers a lot of experience. And the culture of the firm is such that lawyers want to do a good job. We’re very vigilant in making sure that we keep our clients well aware of what’s going on every stage of their case. We’re all over the country on a lot of different cases.
Chris Dreyer
And that that transparency is really important and I like that nurturing component as opposed to you know, I hear a lot of attorneys there they have these different hiring you know, processes, but when you’re building within you get to develop these individuals for you know, and train them yourselves and how you want to practice law and how you you know, with your own history and experiences.
Sol Weiss
So, the latest thing that we’ve done I’ve started a fellowship at Villanova Law School for a graduating senior to work at the firm for 10 months. It’s on different track than being associate and they’re going to get to go see all the National Congress stuff we do. leadership meetings, learn how to put a case together and They’ll do some writing a lot of writing at the end of that time will probably offer the job.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. And then you get to see, you know, if they have the chops so to speak, and if they can put in the effort and make it to the next level.
Sol Weiss
Correct. So that’s the latest thing we’re doing.
Chris Dreyer
I like that. So it makes me think, and I, I had this story I told on a different conversation, it’s, you know, going back to the NFL, let’s just use NFL. So you got your offense and defense, but then you have your special teams, those individuals are practicing going to work and, you know, eventually there a slot will open up for offense or defense and you can you can pull someone from special teams and it’s not just, you know, kind of rolling the dice no matter how good your processes are, how good your personality assessments are in the hiring phase. It’s if you already know these individuals, you know their capabilities.
Sol Weiss
That’s correct. The other thing we’re constantly working on is our IT department. We spend a lot of time and money on case management, software customizing, on trial preparation products. And by keeping ahead of the curve, we have our lawyers spend more time being lawyers than doing the mundane things that some paralegals in our firm can do.
Chris Dreyer
And that case management software, you know, I’ve had Litify on I’ve talked to the guys from Filevine, and you know that having a good case management software, it lends itself to again, what you mentioned earlier, transparency, transparency, where the case is that it has all the information in it lends itself to good processes. So it’s just it’s incredibly important that
Sol Weiss
we are moving into Litify
Chris Dreyer
got it Got it. Yeah, I just talked to those guys earlier. Yeah, so so you know, one one final question here. Do you have any advice for your fellow lawyers trying to grow a large successful practice? Kind of a loaded question there?
Sol Weiss
Oh, it’s not a loaded question. actually a very good question Chris. Most important thing for a lawyer is his or her reputation. If you earn your stripes the clients will follow I guarantee you
Chris Dreyer
And so you you would i would agree that those referrals would come into in your in your stride so that’d be fair.
Sol Weiss
That’s very fair. That’s a good point.
Chris Dreyer
Guys, we’ve been talking to Sol Weiss shareholder of Anapol Weiss, a national leader in personal injury, product liability and pharmaceutical medication. Sol where can people go to learn more
Sol Weiss
they can go to www.anapolweiss.com. Okay, they can look in some social media. There’s a whole bunch of clips about what we do the special areas we practice in.
Chris Dreyer
Awesome. And guys, we’ll link up we’ll link up Anapol Weiss will link up the social media sites and we’ll put that all over social media make it really easy for you guys and, and Sol. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Sol Weiss
Thank you for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts and I hope some lawyers get a benefit from what we just discussed. Have a good day.
Chris Dreyer
Absolutely.
Conclusion
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