Navigating Criminal Law with Passion: Insights from Christopher Doran

Viktoria Altman (00:00)
Hi Christopher, welcome to Law Firm Accelerator. So glad to have you here.

Christopher Doran (00:03)
Hi Viktoria, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Viktoria Altman (00:06)
Awesome. So Christopher, let’s get started. Please tell me a little bit about yourself, your law firm, what kind of law you practice and why you decided to get into it.

Christopher Doran (00:15)
Yeah, my name is Christopher Doran. the owner and lead attorney at Doran Justice. I started the law firm with my wife back in December of 2019. So we’re coming up on our fifth anniversary with the firm. You know, the timing just kind of worked out where we, my wife had a different job. She used to be a recruiter for big accounting firms and she was looking for a change, I was a partner at an old law firm and I knew that eventually, I wanted to do my own thing to have the autonomy to take the cases I want, help the people I wanted, to set the prices that I wanted. So the timing just kind of worked out and we found office space and we pulled the trigger and we went and we got our startup, the law firm. We didn’t know that a few months later, the whole world was gonna shut down from COVID. So that was a big surprise to us back in December of 2019 all worked out.

Viktoria Altman (01:12)
Surprise! Yeah, that was an interesting time. So you started not even five years ago and it sounds like you’ve grown pretty well. Now, where do you attribute that growth??

Christopher Doran (01:23)
I’m not, part, of work and investment in clients. I’ve known that I wanted to be a lawyer since eighth grade and I didn’t specifically know what type, but then when I went into my undergraduate degree at ASU, that’s kind of when I knew that I wanted to do criminal law. So I’ve had a passion for doing criminal defense work for a very long time and just making sure that I carry that passion every day with me when I’m speaking in court, when I’m writing motions when I’m talking with clients.

I feel like that what that’s been what’s helped me to have so much success when people talk about the number one thing with me. There’s a lot of things that they mention in terms of trial skills and public speaking and you know my kindness and stuff but I think more than anything people talk about my passion for this type of work.

Viktoria Altman (02:08)
So you, speaking of passion, you are very passionate about this topic and you do a ridiculous number of pro bono hours. Can you tell me a little bit more about the kind of pro bono work you do, why you do it, and who you’re working with?

Christopher Doran (02:20)
Yeah, I’ve wanted to help people. I guess it’s just been a part of my nature since I was little. Whether it was, you know, just caring about people and being taught that from growing up, but also doing stuff with my church when I was younger, doing extracurricular stuff or involvement with schools. Being introduced that way is more than just something that we did. It was something that I enjoyed doing. So in college, I started a nonprofit organization as a branch of an umbrella organization called New Global Citizens. We opened up the first chapter, and one of my classmates, we started the first collegiate chapter because normally they branched out to high schools. So we started the first collegiate chapter at Arizona State University. We would partner with third-world countries, figure out what kind of goals or needs they needed, whether it was women’s rights or poverty, or hunger, and we would educate our communities about the problems that they were having. We would fundraise to raise money for them and then we would just advocate and try and help them to meet whatever millennium development goal it was at the time.

So that carried through a lot in college. And then once I went off to law school at Arizona State University, I continued to be involved. I’ve always had a particular interest in helping the homeless. So I became a project manager with the Homeless Legal Assistance Project, a shelter director there. We would go once a month and provide free legal advice to unhoused individuals and meet with attorneys and do that too. And so that’s where I truly felt like this is what being a lawyer is kind of about, helping those people that need a voice when they need it the most. So I got to meet all sorts of people at the shelters and then I became the pro bono board president at ASU Law. Most of my volunteer hours, came from undergraduate mock trials. I started coaching ASU’s undergraduate mock trial team as soon as I became a law student. I’ve been the head coach over ASU’s Sun Devil Mock trial for 13 years now. But throughout law school I would coach and coach undergraduate students on how to give closing arguments, teach them the rules of evidence, opening statements, how to argue in a courtroom, trial advocacy in a courtroom, and trial procedure. We competed against different colleges from around the nation. But the practice was extensive. It’s very like Wednesday night, every Saturday during the daytime, we traveled to out-of-state terms tournaments, multiple weekends throughout the year. So was a big time commitment, but that’s where a lot of my pro bono hours came from. And then to this day, I just continue to try and do that. I always told myself a goal that I made was I was going to make sure that I had at least one pro bono client. Always, always make sure that I had one pro bono client, one active case where it was pro bono. And I’ve held to that for the last eight and a half, almost nine years now, where it’s usually more than one at least one at a time and try and do that because I think that’s what it’s about. We’re all given talents and skills that other people don’t necessarily have. So if we can provide those talents and skills and that expertise to people, it can just make our world better.

Viktoria Altman (05:31)
So I wasn’t even going to ask this, but can you tell me a little bit about your favorite pro bono client? Maybe the person for whom I know there’s probably a lot of people for whose lives you’ve changed and you can’t use any names, but I’m just really curious. Do you have one that’s like really touched your

Christopher Doran (05:44)
I met this individual at a homeless shelter when I was an attorney giving free legal advice one of the months that I was giving there. And he was such a normal person who had just run into barrier after barrier and fallen on bad luck and bad times. But he was so like put together in the sense of he was articulate.

He knew what he was doing. He had a good heart and he was sitting there just telling me about some of his legal issues that he had. And I was like, this is so minute. Like this is so easy. It’s something that would take me not a whole lot of effort that I can help this guy with. He has so much going on and it was just mounting on top of him, creating all of this stress and piling on. it’s the type of thing where regular people who aren’t lawyers may not know how to fix the problem and it can just keep making it worse and worse and worse. And it was something that I just saw that I could fix very easily. So I remember that moment after hearing a story and understanding what it was because a lot of the people that you meet with, in the homeless shelters, may just be behind on child support or they want to sue the government because of the way that the police treated them or something like that. a lot of those issues, there are things that are beyond our control and things that we can’t help too much with once you start to get into the facts. But this was something that I could help with. So after I looked up what he was saying and everything was checking out, I remember just sitting there and I was like, I’m gonna take your case and I’m gonna do it for free. I’m gonna do it pro bono. And I remember he just started crying. He was overwhelmed with gratitude instantly.

We took on his case, we fixed all of that issue for him. He became kind of like a lifelong friend where he just continued to show up at the law firm to show us how he was doing. And he got clean and sober. He got good jobs. He got out of the homeless shelter and got an apartment. He was reunited with some of his family members. He beat his addiction. He would just come, he was so grateful he would come to the law firm.

And just be like, hey, know, let me like to to take out that trash for you and stuff. we’re like, stop, stop. You don’t need to do that. But he just wanted to do anything he could to give back. over the years, we just, you know, it was so amazing to see where his life went from that day in the shelter to where it ultimately got to. And it just always sticks with me because one, he was so grateful. And two, it could have been such a different story the way that he was able to be successful as we just fixed such a simple problem for him.

Viktoria Altman (08:20)
I have goosebumps. You know, it’s funny because as a professional, you have the resources that other people don’t have. And sometimes all you have to do is just a small thing here or there, and you can fix an entire situation. I don’t have stories like yours, but I have helped people when I’m like, you know, I can just do a couple of small things and they can fix it. And, know, it does stick with you. This certainly is taking it an extra level. That’s, that’s a really great story. And I appreciate you sharing that.

Christopher Doran (08:21)
Yeah.

Viktoria Altman (08:47)
Very heartwarming. Okay. So let’s get back to the podcast. Okay. so you, you do a lot of, you do a lot of pro bono work. You’re a very good person and you’re also running a successful firm. And one of the things that everybody I meet has trouble with is balancing their work life. And it’s for you, it’s balancing your work, and life. How do you do it? What are your tips? How do you take care of everything without losing yourself.

Christopher Doran (09:18)
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that time is the hardest thing to come by when you’re a lawyer. I think that if you ask my staff or any of my students or even my wife this question, they’d probably say, don’t know how he does it. Because there is a lot that goes into it. I think that my personality plays a big role in it. I am a very driven, competitive person who always has to be doing something. I’m the type that can’t sit still for seconds of free time and I will be occupying myself with free time. So that translates to the work environment in terms of like, I could always be reaching out to somebody to see if they’ll do a review for me, or I could always be responding to an email or I can, you know, be listening to body camera footage or working on a case while I’m driving in a car or something like that. So I think that a lot of it has to do with personality, but also something that kind of learned at the beginning of law school and maybe I knew it before then but I think it resonated a lot in law school was that you have to start law school with doing the things, doing all the things that you want to do. So I started by coaching a mock trials from the beginning. I started by getting involved in extracurriculars, and joining different organizations and that’s kind of law school and people tell you like don’t over commit like you don’t want to do that you need to just focus on your first core classes, it’s a new environment, you’re taking a lot of topics that are gonna be on the bar exam, you need to just focus on that. And a lot of the people that I saw that would do that and kind of built their schedule were, hey, just my first year, I’m just gonna focus on my classes and my schoolwork. Well, what I commonly saw from them in their second and third year is they felt like that was all the time that they had like they didn’t have extra free time, but I did the opposite where I packed my schedule with law school classes and coaching for mock trial and having a personal life outside of it, I built it all in and then I knew that I had that time. I knew that I was able to do that and it allowed me to just make sure that you ensure that you have that time kind of going forward. So just I do the same thing with the law practice of everything is important. It’s really important to make sure that your team is happy, and that your employees are happy. It’s important to make sure that your clients are being taken care of. I must spend time with my wife and my son. It’s important that I, you know, do the volunteer work. So all of it’s important and we find time for the things that are important in our lives.

Viktoria Altman (11:51)
find time for the things that I’m pouring into life. It’s true. It’s very true. And I do think that the more you do, the more time you have, which is, you know, and then you also probably have great staff that are, you know, helpful. I certainly have a lot of jobs and I, every time people ask me, how do you do it all? I’m like, well, I don’t, have terrific staff who take care of me. I couldn’t do it without my wife and my staff.

Viktoria Altman (12:15)
Yeah, like, you know, did you eat today? Like, you know, somebody has to ask you that,

Christopher Doran (12:21)
Every day my paralegal asks me that or my wife asks me that.

Viktoria Altman (12:24)
That’s funny.

What kind of, this is a podcast about marketing and, you know, what I’d love to know is what kind of marketing experiences have you had? And we have a lot of people who are listening. a lot of people I know haven’t had the best of experiences. So I always ask, what is the best marketing experience tip you can have, the tip marketing experience you have, and the tip you can give? And also what is the worst? So let’s start with the best. Let’s be positive. tell me about your best marketing experience and your tips for how people could use

Christopher Doran (12:55)
Yeah, so where we’re successful in marketing comes from a few different things. Number one, my wife, the director of operations at our firm, and our social media intern, they’re in charge of Instagram and Facebook and all the social media. I think that a lot of people do great work out there, but if people don’t know what you’re doing and don’t know about the great work, then it goes unnoticed and it’s hard for people to recognize you. I think that’s hard for a lot of people. They don’t want to brag about themselves and talk about themselves so it’s important to have someone who can help to share results to not even just results but stories just to share what’s going on some of our most successful posts have to do with what our staff and interns did over the summer we’ll post pictures of them and ones in Italy and ones you know doing something cool or whatever and those are the ones that get the most engagement not because they’re about law or because we got some great dismissal result or some big settlement just because people like to see the human aspect of corporations and the human aspect of businesses. So I think that’s number one. Number two, I use a hashtag anytime I post about my cases or the justice system called Christopher Cases. I don’t know why I started that or why I did. It’s just the alliteration, I guess, between my name and the cases that were there. But I started that and I found that many people throughout all walks of life where I’ve met people from when I worked at Fry’s, from when I went to elementary school, from when I was at ASU, wherever I met people that they enjoy, lawyers and non -lawyers, hearing about our justice system. I think it’s such an unfamiliar place for a lot of people and they get to see it sensationalized on shows, all the shows that we watch all the time and the dramas that we love. But to know what goes on in our judicial system, I think a lot of people don’t know.

And so it started with just me kind of educating people like, hey, this is what a settlement conference is. This is what happens at trial. Here are certain charges that are not eligible for a jury trial. And people were just kind of wowed and amazed by learning about it. And so I think that my posts about Christopher’s’s cases have helped to educate people a lot to where when they think, okay lawyer, then they refer me people and they think to me and they can see how much passion and the knowledge that I have about it.

And then the last thing is just, you know when you’re passionate about your cases and you try hard, I, I get good results. I mean,, I win cases, I get dismissals, I get favorable plea offers, and then people talk about that. That’s been the most successful form of advertising I could ever have my clients leave me great reviews on Google and the platforms. and then they talk about me, whether they’re in custody or out of custody, I get referrals from. clients, from colleagues, from friends, from everyone. And word of mouth is the biggest marketing thing that I can do. And all that has to do with is just working hard, never stopping, and treating people the right way because then people will talk about you.

Viktoria Altman (15:57)
So a few interesting things here. What social media platform do you post mostly on? Is it Instagram or Facebook?

Christopher Doran (16:04)
Those would be the top two. Yeah, we are on other platforms. I haven’t made the jump over to TikTok yet and can find myself doing videos. But yeah, but no, we yeah, so I haven’t done that. It’s just Facebook and Instagram are the main ones.

Viktoria Altman (16:12)
Do a little dance.

So in that way,, you are very unique and I’ll tell you why. Most people when they look for a criminal lawyer are looking for urgent help. So most people either ask for a referral which a lot of people are also embarrassed to ask other friends or most people, criminal lawyers, will go on Google and type in criminal lawyer near me.

It is very unusual for somebody to be so prominent on Instagram or Facebook that their brand is so well recognized that people will come to them. So you are doing something very unique and you’re doing something very right there. But I would say for most criminal lawyers, unless you’re willing to dedicate a lot of time to it, there are better ways to get those faster conversions than social media. However, if you’re passionate about it and you love to educate people, which you do, that is a good thing, but you have to genuinely enjoy it. So I do have some time, some of my criminal lawyers, they get up plenty of people from Google and they’re like, well, can we expand to Facebook? And usually, my response is no. And because unless you’re posting very unique, very original, great content, you’re not going to take off on those. And even if you do, getting to be in the right place at the right time when somebody is looking for a lawyer is hard. You have to have amazing brand recognition. So you’re doing something very, very good there. But I think that might be unique to you and maybe some other folks who are very socially media savvy.

Christopher Doran (17:33)
Totally. No, yeah, I appreciate that.

Viktoria Altman (17:47)
So that is amazing. I’m so glad it’s working for you. and the other great tip that you gave as well is the fact that you have somebody from your office doing it. Social media is hard to do very well because it’s so personal. So a person has to understand you and your essence, so to speak, to do it well. Now some companies do it out there, but it’s very hard to do understand the essence of somebody if you don’t work with them side by side, right? So having somebody in the office is a great solution if you can manage it and if you enjoy it. So that’s just a little tip for the listeners. But tell me about not-so-happy marketing ideas that you’ve had, maybe some things that didn’t work out as you planned,, and why not?

Christopher Doran (18:29)
Yeah, so like many lawyers, right? I’ve tried strategies that you’re taught and things that are supposed to work and maybe it’s just a way of how I’ve always been. I feel like whenever I take the path that is traveled by everyone, it doesn’t work out. So I find my crisp path. And when I do that, then it works out for me in ways that it doesn’t for others. But I’ve tried the normal stuff where people are like, this is what you got to do. You got to, you know, build the SEO. You need to get someone who can do these paid leads, you can use this stuff that will attract more people that way, you can pay Google, you can pay for advertisements, things like that. And it works for a lot of firms. It works and the quantity and the attraction that it comes into, it does. We’ve paid for leads before where you give them X amount of money and they promise to send you X many leads a month have honestly been like the ones that have worked out the worst for me. Thankfully, I feel like I’ve always broken even or about broken even on those types of arrangements when I’ve done them. But it’s a lot of it’s a lot of work. And the leads typically from what I found are not as great as as what they’re portrayed to be. So for example, if we’re paying for criminal leads somewhere and they send it to us, it will send you the form like a text or an email where you get a brief description of the case, the person’s phone number, and their email address. You call them, but a lot of the time they don’t answer. They don’t call you back. The follow-up is horrible. Or you do talk to them and you get a consultation set. they weren’t even really looking for a lawyer. So how some place found them to connect them with me, I don’t know. But they weren’t looking. They don’t have the money to afford one. The third category is the most common is that call them and their case is already resolved. Maybe it resolved 10 years ago and they’re looking to see if the conviction can be overturned or they want to sue the government for something that happened to them or they’re just not criminal defense type leads but there’s something about the way that they phrased it where it gets confused in the algorithm to think that it is. So we’ve had some cases that have been signed from leads don’t get me wrong. As I said, a lot of them they’ve broken even or just about, but I think that it’s just, it’s so much, I found my staff wasting so much time with like calling these people and following up and we were good about it too. We would even, text at 8 PM on a Thursday or something and instantly call them or instantly email them and you just get a lack of response or lack of follow-up follow-sure they’re great lead providers out there, the ones that I’ve experienced haven’t worked out for us in a way that is better than what we already have going.

Viktoria Altman (21:21)
So I don’t know all the lead providers out there, so I’ll put that out there, but in my experience, in general, those leads tend to not be great. And there are a couple of reasons why. A lot of times, one lead will go out to multiple people. A lot of times, maybe 20 people could get one lead.

They are getting paid per lead, so it’s not necessarily in their best interest to pre-screen the lead as much as possible.

The other issue and this is a big one, is that people who click on paid advertisements, and that’s usually where leads come from, are generally not as good of clients as people who click on an organic search. The reason why is because people who click on an organic search tend to be better educated, they tend to do a little more research rather than clicking on the first thing they see on the page. So they scroll down a little bit, they read through a little bit, they might even visit your website, and then they call.

And that gives you a very different kind of client, somebody who is not as impulsive. I also found them to be generally better-paying clients, in terms of they can afford more. So that’s something to keep in mind for when I work with lawyers, my first go-to is always to do SEO because those are going to be the best bang for the buck. Those are going to be the leads that are going to host you the least in the long run and then be the best clients. And then after that, after we max out with that, if you come to me, you’re like, I wanna do more now, I can’t rank you more than number one in the city. Like, you I can’t do that. Then we go to ads. Have you had any experience with doing SEO and what has your experience been like?

Christopher Doran (22:58)
Yeah, I think that that has been one of the more successful things to do. It’s something that you have a lot of control over, whether you have someone do it for you or whether you do it yourself. But blogging, right? So, if we have blogs on our website I will write about topics similar to how I would post about topics, educating people. But this is an area where I can write more, have it be more detailed cite statutes and have links on there that all like pop up. And that’s been successful I had a and I think that’s one of the most successful ways for people to do it is to blog because then you’re Having the word count you’re having those targeted words. You’re creating unique topics and unique substance for people to look for. One of our most popular blogs was written by an intern of mine. She’s a lawyer now, but she had created this blog and she wrote it on the difference between prison and jail. A lot of times you’re watching a TV show and they will mess up the terminology. It’s almost like if you’re watching a medical show and you’re like, that’s not the right word for that operation or something. Same thing with a lawyer where people will always say jail on shows and it’s like they’ve been of murder, they’re going to prison, they’re not going to the county jail right now. So she just did a very simple article on like the difference between prison and jail and also some of like the realistic differences about the type of food you get in one place or the other, the type of like outside exposure or the other. And that’s been our biggest one. People click on that article all of the time, it always pops up on Google. So I think that if people can write blogs and they have the time to do that, it all comes back to time, right? Where you either have to have someone who’s not part of your firm do it, or you have someone you do it, and you have to have the time to be able to do that. But if you can do that, I agree with you. I think that’s one of the best ways that people can market.

Viktoria Altman (24:46)
Excellent point. So, yeah, there are types of people. There are three types of pages on the website. There are blogs, which are informative and they are designed to drive traffic to your website. Maybe not necessarily for people who are ready to convert right this very second, but just to inform people so that your name is in front of them. Then there are money pages, or what we call money pages. And that’s like, you know, murder lawyer or DUI lawyer or burglary lawyer, and those are things when somebody goes online they put that in and that’s the page decide to pop up and then there’s like support pages about us,, etc. If you can write your stuff online that’s huge, that’s huge for anybody and the reason why is that you were able to provide unique content, right? So for instance, in my agency, we create a ton of content for our lawyers. We’re not lawyers. We’re going to create proper content. We’re going to create correct content, but we’re not going to create unique original content. We’re not going to be citing case laws.

However, if you have a lawyer who can write, and if you’re able to do a few more things to that blog, so for instance, if you make a post on Twitter about it, if you make a post on Facebook about it, if you make a post on Instagram about it, if you can get a press release for it, that’s already, it’s a little more advanced that stuff that we do. And then you create all these backlinks. A backlink is like a vote of confidence and you promote it. That’s going to raise your website in the eyes of Google. And when it does that, it’s going drive traffic to all of your pages, including your murder and your hum, you know, on your burglary and your felony charges pages. So I do, have a client in Chicago who came to me and he was already very, very successful loves to write, and writes all of his stuff, nonstop. He posts all the time, Russell D. Knight in Chicago. He’s the number one divorce lawyer right now in Chicago and he’s grown his firm immensely. And what he does was he’s like, don’t mess with my texts. I’m like, I will not touch your texts. But what we do is we take his blog posts and we create all that kind of backlinks to them and put them on social media and we create all kinds of, and he’s just blown up. Like he’s gone from, I think one or two lawyers to five to eight at this point. And like every month he emails me, he’s like, we have a new person. So it is such a huge resource if you’re able to write. Not a lot of people like it, but if you like it, God bless you. And it makes it so much easier for us to have unique and original content. So great tip, yeah, if you have that kind of time. Okay, I think we got a lot, I got a lot finished here. Let me ask you this, where are you looking to go with your law firm? What is next for you guys?

Christopher Doran (27:11)
So right now we have we have one of my interns who’s been working with us for a couple of years and she’s taking the second day of the bar exam right now, so good luck to Maddie. And then she’s supposed to start with us. Yeah, she’s gonna start with us in October after she gets her bar results. So be another lawyer at the firm. I just want to continue doing what we’re doing. I think that we change a lot of people’s lives we help a lot of people and continuing to do that on a larger scale is something that I look forward to. Someday when I’m gonna be ready to be done practicing criminal law and what happens after that, whether I go and do something else with my career, I don’t know. But right now, I love being in the courtroom. I love helping people that need to be helped.

I’ve always indicated that true success can only be accomplished by succeeding at something that you’re passionate about. And I’m passionate about this and that’s how I’ve been able to be successful with it.

Viktoria Altman (28:09)
Yeah, in the end, you have to love what you do otherwise it’s just a job, and who wants that?

Christopher Doran (28:14)
That’s right.

Viktoria Altman (28:15)
Christopher, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a wonderful interview. appreciate it. Stick around.

Christopher Doran (28:20)
Thank you so much.