Podcast Transcript:
Paul Edelstein:
Hello. Welcome to Pulling Back the legal Curtain. I am your host, Paul Edelstein. I’ll have my partner Glenn Fagenberg with me most of the time. And this podcast is for all of you out there who have ever read about a court case, seen a court case, been involved in a court case, went to court, thought about court, and wondered what the hell is going on in courts. It seems like every day we have these kind of questions that get asked then. So on this podcast, we will pull back the curtain on the mystery that sometimes surrounds the court and what happens there, and hopefully give you some answers. Some interesting, some humorous, some surprising. Stick with us on Pulling Back the Legal Curtain.
All right. We’re back here with Shareiff. So Shareiff, we’re talking a lot about what you got to go through, what people in your community go through and how you’ve been able to educate a lot of people as to how the law works and how to get around all of these inherent systematic biases that are in the system. And we know they exist. Well, people in your community know they exist. I got to convince some in my community. “No, no. There is systematic racism. Hello. This is just what it is.” Damn. It amazes me when I have to have this discussion with people. But when I get in the courtroom, as we already talked about, we just got to start with that assumption. But now I want to switch gears. So get out of your community. I know you listening to Hot 97, right?
Shareiff Council:
Of course.
Paul Edelstein:
Who doesn’t, right? Us too.
Shareiff Council:
Yeah.
Paul Edelstein:
Hot 97, we were the ones that made it pop.
Shareiff Council:
Right, right.
Paul Edelstein:
My age. Not white guys.
Shareiff Council:
No, I know what you mean.
Paul Edelstein:
Someone my age. I’m listening to Hot 97. I don’t get to be in the car because I’m on the subway, so I don’t get to list dude as much anymore. But whenever I pop in or I see it online or whatever, there’s so many lawyer advertisements.
Shareiff Council:
Oh my God, what’s the one? The guy with the ball. What’s the name of the ball?
Paul Edelstein:
The ball. Yeah.
Shareiff Council:
Oh, man. Those things. What were you going to say? What were you going to say?
Paul Edelstein:
Well, here’s the thing. You’ve been here for so long, so you get it. You know what we’re all about, obviously. But you also know what some of these other dudes are about out there because what you’ve been around your whole life, your mom. From day one, you’ve just been around lawyers and everything.
Paul Edelstein:
What I don’t get is why do people in the hip hop community listening to Hot 97, something happens to them and they’re calling these dudes with these ridiculous advertisements instead of doing… You got answers for me. So where I grew up, if I needed a lawyer, somebody in my community needed a lawyer, so upper middle class white people, if something happened to somebody in my community, most likely someone in the family, the parents would either know a lawyer and they’d be like, “Well, got to go here.” Or if they didn’t, they would probably take the time to research and be like, “All right, I’m going to try to figure out who’s best to handle this thing here.” If you needed a heart surgery or a dental surgery or brain surgery, whatever, or accountant. In my community, the way I grew up, people would be like, “Well, you got to get a referral and then, or you got to research it and figure it out.”
But then I’m seeing, it’s not even just the hip hop community. I think it’s everybody that gets hurt in an accident, really. What the hell motivates them to be like, “I’m just going to call the first dude that I see on the commercial”?
Shareiff Council:
You know what I don’t like about those commercials? And again, you have to compare. And I hate to compare myself. I’m not on some pedestal or nothing, but I just know where I came from. You know what I’m saying? I know what I knew and I know what I know now. You know what I’m saying? So when I hear those commercials, I can think about when I used to see them on TV and hear them on the radio before in the past. Again, I’m thinking that, I’m thinking I’m going to call one of those numbers and I’m going to talk to or Mr. Barnes themselves. You know what I’m saying? And again, if that’s how I thought up until I was doing this in this field, that’s how people think. And you know what I’m saying? Who don’t don’t know no better.
Shareiff Council:
It’s so predatory. It’s like they’re sitting there, come on the radio, right? You’re in the car, you’re driving, on the radio. And then they put it, they make it seem like you’re going to recover the… You’re going to get life changing money. You going to recover the most money for the smallest thing, for the smallest type of accident. And we know that’s not how it works. But again, up until I was doing this, I used to think, like I said, you slip and fall, you’re a millionaire. You get hit by a car, you’re a millionaire. Up until I knew. So again, I got to look at it from what I knew and what I know now. You know what I mean?
Paul Edelstein:
Yeah. But it’s so wacky because we see-
Paul Edelstein:
Yeah, but we see so many people that get hooked up with the wrong lawyer.
Shareiff Council:
Yeah. It’s terrible. It’s terrible.
Paul Edelstein:
And they don’t get it till it’s too late. And they come to us. How many cases you seen over the years?
Shareiff Council:
Listen, believe it or not, and again, this goes back to what we was talking about earlier about trusting people. I’ve had family builders go around me and go to one of these other guys and not get done right. You know what I mean? And they come back afterwards and say, “Oh, I should have came to you.” Of course you should have come to us. You know why? Because you’re going to actually deal with a real person. You’re not dealing with a guy who don’t… Your lawyer, you’re going to be hands-on with your lawyer when you come to see us. You get what I’m saying? You’re not going to be dealing with a lawyer who works for Solino or Barnes who never even met Solino or Barnes. You get what I’m saying? I hate to keep throwing their names out, but they just pop in my head the fastest.
Paul Edelstein:
No, one of them’s dead, Shareiff. I don’t know-
Shareiff Council:
Well, you’re definitely not meeting Mr. Solino or Barnes. You get what I’m saying? But you get what, but you know exactly what I’m saying.
Paul Edelstein:
Well, then the question for you is, how do you change that mentality out in… And let’s say in your community, because I know you’re an influencer there. How do you get through to people that, dude, you get in an accident, you may not want to call the first 1-800 dude on the TV. Maybe that is the right guy for you. I’m not saying he’s not. But you need to think about it a little bit. I don’t know how to get that message through.
Shareiff Council:
The way-
Paul Edelstein:
But you see, but the problem is just what you said before earlier, that people then just get the wrong idea. They don’t understand how it works and they get these thoughts like, “I’m going to get this, I’m going to get that.” Don’t even understand the real thing. What a shame.
Shareiff Council:
Right? If you don’t know somebody like me who you have direct access to who you grew up with, you don’t have nobody like me who knows somebody like you, you’re lost. You’re lost.
Paul Edelstein:
But you could find people like me. The internet, dude, these days.
Shareiff Council:
Yeah. But then again, you always on the internet. Of course the internet. You go on the internet, file returns and stuff.
Paul Edelstein:
Anybody do that? Any of your friends that needed a lawyer? Take the time to be like, “Let me just research a little.”
Shareiff Council:
I could assume some, some probably, because I.
Paul Edelstein:
people don’t do that, but I’ll tell you what, I know you’re a little clothes hound. We know you like your swag, right?
Shareiff Council:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.
Paul Edelstein:
So I’m thinking, see, check you out. Check out. You got your Essentials hat, your Essentials sweatshirt on. You’re all geared up. I got it. I’m thinking that before you but I got it. Before you make those purchases for a crazy pair of kicks or whatever, I’m thinking that a guy like you spends a lot of time going through all the websites that sell them so you could figure out, “All right, here it is. Here’s the best price, here’s where it’s going to be.” Right? You take the time to do that, right?
Shareiff Council:
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Edelstein:
But you know what? But with a lawyer that could be representing your family or you in the most serious fricking thing, dudes are calling 1-800-DUMBASS lawyer.
Shareiff Council:
And that’s only because they don’t know. And it’s funny you said that because I remember when I was a kid and I wanted the jacket and I wanted the North Face jacket, right? So my mother. My mother’s like, “What? Jacket is $400? I’m not paying, buying no $400 jacket.”
Paul Edelstein:
I love you, mom.
Shareiff Council:
Anyway, right? Called my aunt. My auntie Maddie. She gets it for me. She sends me the money right away. Wait. Now, the first store I go, my mother takes me to go buy the jacket. Literally the first store we go in, I’m like, “They got the jacket? Let me get it.” My mother’s like, “Hold on. Stop. No, stop. You don’t just go in the store and… You shop around. You find it for a little lower and you try to figure it out.” You know what I mean? And that’s exactly what you’re saying right here is most people just go and the first thing that they see, they don’t even try to research. And it’s all about knowledge. People, they don’t know it’s knowledge. And how do we get that message to them? By doing what we’re doing right now. You know what I mean? By-
Paul Edelstein:
Yeah. So you better make this go viral, man.
Shareiff Council:
I don’t know many other ways to… Yeah, I do know people. Yeah, people do call me, but that’s only the people that I know. There’s people that I don’t know who are experiencing these things. You get what I’m saying?
Paul Edelstein:
We got to get-
Shareiff Council:
We got to get the message out to the people that don’t know these things. And I don’t know.
Paul Edelstein:
You got to get the word out. You know what I used to-
Shareiff Council:
You know how they do have the campaign ads against, when they running for elections and stuff? Everybody do a smear campaign ad against all of the…
Paul Edelstein:
I’m not smearing these guys. You can sear.
Paul Edelstein:
I’d rather have-
Shareiff Council:
You know one of them was dead?
Paul Edelstein:
You didn’t know one of them was dead. The rumor was the other one killed him. Never heard that?
Paul Edelstein:
This wasn’t talk. I don’t know.
Shareiff Council:
Holy smokes.
Paul Edelstein:
Well, they were suing each other.
Shareiff Council:
I do know that. I do know that.
Paul Edelstein:
That’s where somebody, there’s no way that he killed them or anything. But he actually died in a freak, a horrible thing. But they were suing each other and all that. All about the Benjamins, man. It’s always about the Benjamins.
Shareiff Council:
Always.
Paul Edelstein:
You know what? Instead of spreading smear, I would prefer to spread love. And so maybe we got to try that. You got to keep getting the word out. When I was a baby lawyer, I used to say, “Well, I’m going to educate people one juror at a time.” I was getting into courtrooms and I would say, “I’ll teach one juror at a time,” and 12 jurors. Well, I don’t get 12, but 25 in a room, six and two on a case. I’m like, “Well, we’ll educate them like that. We’ll educate people one client at a time.” But now here I am 30 years later, people are picking their lawyers in just as stupid a ways as they were when I started. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what else to do about it, but guess what, we gave it a shot today, right?
Shareiff Council:
Got to start somewhere.
Paul Edelstein:
Peace. Let’s take a break.
Shareiff Council:
Let’s take a break.
Paul Edelstein:
Thanks for joining us on Pulling Back the Legal Curtain with Paul and Glenn. Because we get so many questions over so many years about what goes on behind the legal curtain, in the legal world, we tried to put this together so that it would be entertaining and interesting and hopefully educational. If you liked it, come join us again or visit our website at edelsteinslaw.com. Either way, we’re always going to be here in front of and behind the legal curtain doing the only thing that we know how to do, which is proceed. Take care.
You can find The Edelsteins Faegenburg & Brown Law firm on LinkedIn.