Inside Jones Trial Attorneys: A Long-Game Approach to Criminal Cases, Reputation, and Referrals

Viktoria Altman: the first time I’ve heard a criminal lawyer say this.

You said you are looking for a win-win win situation in your cases. you try to work with the DA and the judge find the best solution. where did that come from? How does that work in real life?

Sean M. Jones: I think by reframing the situation, putting everybody on the same team, judge da, defense victim, What’s gonna solve these problems? What’s gonna put everybody in the best position possible going forward?

as a criminal defense attorney, we’re in a special position. Working with our client, the defendant. if we try just to win this case or get them the best deal that doesn’t necessarily solve their problem.

doesn’t land. with the DA or the judge and being able to make deals. the way I try to distinguish myself is to get everybody on the same team. We’re all trying to do what’s best for society,my client, for the victim, for my client’s family, for the community.

what’s gonna be [00:01:00] best? Is it putting them in jail?

Viktoria Altman: there’s so little value,in putting somebody in prison and Taking them outta the workforce, taking ’em away from their family. I think that creates more victims.

What if the best criminal defense attorney isn’t the one who fights the hardest, but the one who gets everyone on the same team? Today, on the show, I’m Sitting down with Sean Jones, founder of Jones Trial Attorneys in San Diego. Sean’s been running his own criminal defense practice for 10 years, and his approach to the law is unlike anything you’ve heard before.

While most people picture defense lawyers looking for loopholes and picking fights with prosecutors, Sean’s out here building win-win, win solutions for his clients, for the DA, and for the community.

Sean Jones. I’m an attorney. I own my practice Jones Trial attorneys. I’ve been doing that for 10 years here in San Diego with satellite office in Las Vegas.

Sean. So you are a criminal attorney and San Diego is a very competitive market. what inspired you to become a [00:02:00] criminal lawyer?

Sean M. Jones: that’s what my dad does. he’s a criminal defense attorney. He’s been a trial attorney his whole life. if I was sick and couldn’t go to school, I’d get sent to work with him watch him in action. I thought it was the coolest job ever. my mom loved the show, Matlock.

growing up. I watched a lot of Matlock and thought it was amazing that’s exactly what my dad did. I’d watch this on tv, like this super cool defense attorney, and then I’d go watch my dad in action. And it was that was what he did. it was the only thing I ever wanted to do.

Viktoria Altman: I did a project in first grade about when I grow up and I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney, That is awesome. So have you taken. any lessons that your father learned into your practice?

Sean M. Jones: my dad is the most compassionate person He has infinite empathy even with people who have done horrible things. He is got a special way of seeing the human underneath and trying to help reveal the humanity of the individual, [00:03:00] Practice in such a way that kind of guides that person back into, who they can be, what their potential is. a ton of compassion and empathy. I think that really has guided how he practices law. I try to emulate that as much as possible.

Viktoria Altman: I love it. why did you decide to run your own firm? How come you’re not working with your dad?

Sean M. Jones: my dad is in Fresno and has no desire to leave when I was six I declared I was gonna be a criminal defense attorney. move to San Diego. before I’d been to San Diego or knew anything about San Diego,for some reason I just decided that’s where I was gonna be.

when it came time to apply to law schools. I was just like, no, I’m gonna San Diego. I still talk to him all the time. I send him cases up there. He sends me cases down here. occasionally we’re able to collaborate together on cases, but,I’m not moving to Fresno to work for my dad.

Viktoria Altman: why did you decide to run your own practice? Why not work for someone else?

Sean M. Jones: good question. I think I’ve got an entrepreneurial gene. a lot of entrepreneurs in my family. My dad was a public defender and now works at a firm. my [00:04:00] grandpa on my mom’s side,worked for himself as an electrician his whole life.

in high school, my best friend and I started a company our first taste of entrepreneurship. I loved the idea of running things my way succeeding or failing based on my own efforts not being tied to somebody else’s,motivation and ability.

it’s funny ’cause people ask how I chose to become an entrepreneur and I usually say,I don’t know how to do anything else ’cause I’m really bad at not being the boss.

yeah.

Viktoria Altman: Did you make any money at this first company you started with your friends?

Sean M. Jones: we could have made so much more money. my dad was at the public defender’s office in Fresno and in the courtrooms, they would record everything on micro cassette if an attorney wanted a copy. they had to get it on micro cassette, which nobody can play

there was only one company in their billing database that would convert micro cassette to CD or MP and they charged, I can’t remember what it was, like a hundred dollars an [00:05:00] hour. I told my dad, I could do that for. Minimum wage. we called it Prometheus Digital.

we set up a company and were able to talk to the people at the public Defender’s office and get us in the system. there was Maximus. And Prometheus Digital, we were way cheaper, rather than just undercutting Maximus by a dollar, we decided to go straight to the floor.

we got a lot of work valuable experience, but left a lot of money on the table.

Viktoria Altman: kids usually start businesses that are glamorous. You did something needed. that’s the entrepreneurial

Sean M. Jones: them psychologically, long term, being branded as a criminal, and makes it difficult to get jobs in the future.

I don’t think that benefits anybody. by reframing the situation, putting everybody on the same team, judge da, defense victim, What’s gonna solve these problems? What’s gonna put everybody in the best position possible going forward?

it’s not feeling like I won on a technicality that got my person off scot free and they got away with murder or [00:06:00] whatever.

I think that’s how everybody should be practicing law. that’s the best use of my role as an attorney. And that’s where I’ve found the most success.

Viktoria Altman: That was a good answer. that’s very interesting and unique I see your point, Getting away with murder is actually very literal in this case. That’s the first time I’ve heard that used, literally. you said your new clients come from word of mouth, from previous clients or other attorneys. Uh,How easy or difficult is it for a criminal attorney to get? old clients to recommend you. That seems to be,more difficult than, for a estate, let’s say.

Sean M. Jones: I’ve not had any trouble getting criminal clients,to refer family and friends the bigger difficulty is getting them to post reviews because nobody wants to go online and talk about how they committed a crime,and I helped them out. Civil clients love posting reviews, criminal clients love referring friends.

I’ve never had an issue with that. I really try not just in the courtroom, but with criminal clients, helping them,get a job,[00:07:00] take care of, family issues, anything they can do to improve their lives is always gonna. put us in a much better negotiating position, especially if they’re looking at custody time.

I get to know their family, friends. We talk to, their employers and get letters I end up,involving myself in a lot of my criminal clients, networks, and so that it’s not a deliberate effort to create referrals. I think it does have that downstream effect.

Viktoria Altman: That’s interesting. I speak to a lot of lawyers, and you’re probably the first criminal attorney who says you get actively involved in the life of the person enough so that everybody gets to know you to the point where they’re giving you referrals.

is that something you learned from your dad?

Sean M. Jones: I learned from my friend Michael Hernandez,an early mentor of mine while I was in law school. he was telling me, the DA and the judge, get the case file, but as the defense attorney, you get the human and there’s more you can do with that

Cases I helped him with. it makes total sense [00:08:00] now,looking back, we had this client who, was a young kid and he was,a graffiti artist

All he did was draw snow cones on buildings That was his tag. he did a big snow cone on a church and he got busted and they hit him with, vandalism Mike got him as a client. And just day one, Mike’s like, Hey, we’re going to the church, we’re gonna clean up the snow cone.

I’m gonna take you around to everywhere that you’ve drawn snow cones and we’re gonna clean it up together. We’re gonna wash it or paint it we’re gonna take pictures of. the fact that you corrected this on your own. You didn’t have to be ordered by the judge. it wasn’t part of probation.

you cleaned up your mess the case was dismissed it blew my mind that, you could be charged with a criminal offense and fix it. without being forced to, or, doing that in an orange vest with a probation officer over your shoulder.

that reframed the role of a criminal defense attorney.

Viktoria Altman: I hope I’m never in trouble. [00:09:00] But if I’m ever in trouble, hopefully I have somebody who can both get me outta jail and do it in a nice way that,helps society. getting outta jail would be the priority.

Sean M. Jones: Yeah,

Viktoria Altman: Okay. speaking of being nice,you mentioned that you try to be generous with other lawyers, not make enemies in the community.

does that help build your practice? Do a lot of criminal lawyers get confrontational with colleagues?

Sean M. Jones: I don’t think so. Every now then you’ll get a client that’ll, get mad they saw you being friendly with a da, say, I wanna get rid of the public defender. I saw him chatting with the DA and it was like their old friends, and I’m like, It’s not gonna change with me. I’m not out here screaming, yelling picking fights. I live in this community and see these people on a daily basis. I’m not trying to create friction just to, be super aggressive in one case, at the expense of harming my.

Deal making ability in every other case. but two,the long game. as an attorney, you’re part of a community and,you [00:10:00] never know what opportunities lie ahead, five 10 20 years, your reputation, takes your whole life to build. But can be destroyed quickly.

as an entrepreneur,there’s nothing more valuable than your reputation, name, brand, and community. when relying on referrals never knowing exactly where your next client’s gonna come from, it’s hugely valuable to take that long term approach of.

being generous, giving where you can, and understanding that’s gonna flow back to you in some way down the road.

Viktoria Altman: I totally agree with you, and you never know when it’s coming back, but eventually it always comes back.

Sean M. Jones: let’s talk about marketing. you get paid leads from Thumbtack. this is usually for contractors. How did you find it? How does it work for you?

Thumbtack was good early on ’cause it doesn’t require to put down thousands of dollars. You can start, like, when I started with 20 bucks a lead. if that was all I had for the month, I could just, bid on a lead. so it was like very low barrier to entry.

but then I [00:11:00] started getting some cases through Thumbtack, and then I had the client come in and I said,how did you find us? They said, oh, I just Googled best defense attorney, San Diego. Your picture popped up. I clicked on it. you seemed legit.

I called you and here we are. I said,that’s really odd. I don’t do any,Google AdWords. any paid SEO. and they’re like, check it out. So when I Google,I typed in best criminal defense attorney San Diego and boom. Thumbtack will. Use some of its users’ profiles in their ads.

And so it was,Thumbtack had bought the Google ad word,but then they had put my profile in there. it ended up being a weird way to backdoor into a,search ranking. I’ve stuck with it. It’s not. Making me rich. and also on Thumbtack, it goes to three attorneys like a race to the bottom.

everybody’s competing on price there. early on it was great to keep cases coming [00:12:00] in. those cases lead to more referrals. it’s been good to me. I’ve been in there so long, I have a ton of reviews, within the Thumbtack community of defense attorneys,I’m killing it.

It’s a very market, but

Viktoria Altman: Yeah,

a lot of these, like,lawyers.com, they will advertise. Eyes it always pays to have a good picture. It always pays to have a good profile because you never know when they might end up using you. but also it’s,clients have multiple touchpoint, right?

And for instance, a criminal attorney client might end up looking on Reddit, might end up looking at GPT, in Google. the more often they see you, the more familiar they feel with you. Now for these guys, it’s a very quick. Sales cycle. they might be looking for somebody now and then hire somebody three hours from now. But as humans, we want to be reassured. We’re making the right decision. seeing you here and here certainly helps a lot.

Sean M. Jones: you mentioned you’d rather have fewer, more complex cases than a lot of volume. Um,How do you market it?

 

Sean M. Jones: I need help. the types of cases I’ve focused on,early on being [00:13:00] willing to take more challenging cases lead to more referrals I’ve always been drawn to more complex cases where

you really get to know the clients,their family, their situation, Obviously you can handle fewer cases like that. the last thing I ever be was like a, traffic attorney that just shows up and goes through, 500 traffic tickets in a day. I remember early on helping a family member with a traffic ticket and watching,

Ticket in there running the numbers each one’s a hundred bucks and he is the only guy in there handling all the cases probably clearing a few thousand dollars a day just. standing up to see if the cop showed and if not, ask for a dismissal.

if the cop did show up, ask for a reduction in the fine.

you’re not using your skills as an attorney. just churning through like a robot. even if I could make 10 times more money, just, pushing a button I’d have no desire I like the complexity.

I like the difficulty, the novelty of different types of cases the ones that are super complex, [00:14:00] seeing all the different ways, no two. drug trafficking cases are the same. there might be under the same penal code section, but when you get the really complex cases, just the amount of nuance,I think it’s attractive and I think it really,it’s like untangling a puzzle.

and it makes it fun for me.

Viktoria Altman: we spoke about this yesterday marketing criminal lawyers One does DWIs all day. one might be doing homicides. two very different types of marketing.

With homicides or federal cases, we go in depth. with DWI or traffic tickets, we go broadly, so it’s different for us as well. And I, I enjoy both because both are different challenges. So you said you are protective of your image and you had a bad experience with somebody who was posting to your Instagram. talk to me about what happened and what would you like on your social media instead?

Sean M. Jones: I’ve never gone all in branding I’ve seen other attorneys start doing something and I immediately know they hired some crappy agency. I see this, they start [00:15:00] posting pictures of them, arms crossed, we’ll fight for you call today.

then they run like five of those and stop. I never wanted to be like that. when I built my first,WordPress website. There was a plugin called River, it was just like,we’ll boost you across social media,

it was a free plugin I added it. my Instagram went from a hundred friends to 5,000 followers, 10,000 followers. It was crazy. I was like, oh, this is awesome. then I started having friends send me screenshots of stuff that I liked.

‘it would show up if they’d search and be like, oh, Jones liked this. it was the weirdest, grossest stuff. Basically it was just crawling all of Instagram and liking every picture. my friend Keely started a group called Things John Jones likes.

trying to get out from that, it was so bad. some of the stuff was so disgusting, I don’t even wanna talk about it. so that was weird. I don’t want somebody else putting my pictures out there, [00:16:00] writing cheesy,captions and stuff that other people will recognize is not me.

I always wanted to be authentic. Anything I put out there,I don’t want it to have some mismatch between my personality, my identity,and what’s getting put out there.

Viktoria Altman: It’s a great story. I would love to be in this group because I’m fascinated to see the things you liked on Instagram. Uh,to go back to,the best way to do social media for humans, you can. Market, social media to multiple entities. when I work with social media, I’m really not talking to a human.

I’m talking to ai. I’m trying to explain who you are, if you want to market yourself to humans, the best way to do it is actually by hiring somebody in office. And that doesn’t have to be even full-time. It could be somebody part-time, somebody who’s very social media savvy, somebody who is in the same wavelength as you, they have a personality that kind of gets along with people in your office you can Impart to them the type of image you want out there, because what happens with agencies if you don’t have a huge budget like Nike type budget, you are not going to get very thorough understanding of who [00:17:00] you are as a brand. obviously if you’re Nike, Coca-Cola, they will do a great job with social media.

if you are a lawyer and you know you’re not spending tens of thousand dollars a month chances are they’re not going to get you. So there is a way to do this, and it’s not expensive, bring it in house is my advice.

I sometimes have people ask me, why do you not market social media to humans? and that’s why, because it’s hard to understand how somebody wants to be represented to other people. Unless you see them every day, work with them side by side,see how the office interacts It’s very hard to do. So this Instagram thing, sounds awesome, tell me about a marketing strategy where you put a little bit of money and that didn’t work for you. What did you learn from it, and what would you avoid in the future?

Sean M. Jones: I’m trying to think what I’ve actually sunk money into. there haven’t been many things I’ve done some paid leads and Thumbtack, but pretty much everything else been word of mouth. One thing that I did,branch out on was, A golf [00:18:00] course asked if I wanted to sponsor their scorecards.

They said on the front our golf course name And then there’s the scorecard, and on the back, it’s a full page advertisement it was, like, $400 for the whole year to be on all their scorecards. I was like, what the heck?

I was like, yeah, that’s fine. then. I got into this endless loop of them sending proofs to review and wanting to add some other stuff and change it. I don’t even know if the thing ever actually ran because it was such an annoyance. I always wanted to watch that golf course and see if, our firm was on the scorecards.

Viktoria Altman: I don’t think it is. that was a waste of time and maybe 400 bucks, Yeah, that’s a weird place to advertise a criminal lawyer like a golf course. you could go for people who play golf or doing white collar crime. I don’t know.

I don’t know. I

don’t know what conclusion to draw from that. what’s next for your practice?

Where are you looking to go? Where are you looking to grow?

Sean M. Jones:

I wanna get to a point where [00:19:00] I am,only responsible for two things vision and trials. I love doing jury trials. that’s when I feel like I’m in my zone of genius. if I could focus on long-term guidance of the firm. And then day-to-day doing jury trials. I would love that.

And, and filling in all the roles below me. Jones trial attorney’s. Been around 10 years and figured a lot of things out, A lot of trial and error. going into this next chapter, the focus is filling out other practice areas.

we get many referrals for family law. people wanting to set up,their own companies, trademarks, I have experience in these things, but they’re not what I wanna be doing on a day-to-day basis. I love doing jury trials and so I,would love to build out,

full service law firm and be able to help people in different areas have the right people,in-house to handle all those types of cases, but [00:20:00] allow me to, really focus jury trials and growing the company.

Viktoria Altman: ambitious plan.

Sean M. Jones: of that is, yeah. but a big part of that’s gonna be growing online presence and solidifying,our image and a lot of these things that have taken a backseat over the years while I’ve been focusing on the day-to-day practice. I’d like to get it more dialed in with the website and everything like that.

Viktoria Altman: Well, I certainly can help you with that. so I’m a big reader. What is your favorite nonfiction book and why?

Sean M. Jones: So I read two books a week mostly nonfiction, so I could give you a long list. non-zero was,the first book that kicked me off on a nonfiction,spree or just made me wanna read more nonfiction, open up the way I see the world.

I absolutely recommend that one,one of my favorite authors is Yal and Noah Harri. most people are familiar with Sapiens, but his recent book Nexus, was fantastic probably my favorite book on ai. the coming wave was [00:21:00] also,

Viktoria Altman: Scary.scary book.

Sean M. Jones: I thought the coming wave was a little more optimistic, it lays out the ways things could go wrong, but ends optimistic with the way everybody’s working together and understanding. nexus I thought,was a little scarier. There’s one,case study about how AI has already

Taken a human’s freedom. in Illinois there’s a program called Compass that assesses,a defendant’s risk level and some judges will use, and they use it in San Diego when they’re casting a sentence, they’ll look at a whole bunch of things.

criminal history, family support, things like that. and then there’ll be the compass level. And most times it’s, it’s not that big of a deal.there was this case in Illinois where a guy had low level everything else, but his compass level was off the charts for his risk of re-offense.

the judge maxed his sentence based on this compass level. compass is driven by ai the [00:22:00] defense attorneys on appeal wanted to see what. Had gone in to the algorithm to generate this crazy risk level, and it ended up gonna, the Supreme Court, I believe may might’ve been just the State Supreme Court, but basically it,they chose to protect Compass’s,proprietary.

Algorithm ruled it could not be discoverable. it would compromise the system if they let anybody peek under the hood and denied the appeal. And so that guy ended up, he’s, I think, still in prison,based on,an AI recommendation,that humans were not allowed to dissect,

Viktoria Altman: problem. It is terrifying,as somebody who works with ai. since it’s infancy every single day at the edge of the, at the edge of the industry,That’s bad, it could have been bad inputs, bad output. It could have been anything.

And that is absolutely terrifying. Okay. Yeah, so I actually read [00:23:00] two books a week as well. I read over a hundred books a year. So we have that in common and most of ’em are nonfiction. we can exchange books. Sowhat would you say to other criminal defense lawyers considering going out on their own, what would be your words of advice for them?

Sean M. Jones: have a plan going into it. I have a business client that runs a huge company now. He is very successful, but he always tells me he built the ship while flying it. And,that analogy’s always resonated,with me. I feel like I’m always just trying to figure out, what the.

I keep learning things I wish I had learned five years ago. if you’re thinking about doing it, just do it,and figure it out. But have network, reach out to people. there’s been so many people that have been willing to help me out.

To send me cases, to give me templates, to guide me through tricky situations. as long as you have,a strong network, you’ll figure it out. my friend Mike Hernandez with the Snow Cone client, he was telling me, so many other.

types of [00:24:00] law you need, A-A-C-R-M system, you need a paralegal, you need an office space, all this stuff. He’s it’s a criminal offense attorney. You need a laptop. And that’s it. He’s you borrow a friend’s office. meet your clients at court. work from home and meet with clients at a coffee shop.

You’re in court most of the time. there’s effectively zero overhead. an entrepreneurial attorney,there’s no barrier to entry you can. Start a criminal practice the next day.

it’s a great place to start. I love criminal defense work. it’s amazing how easy it is to jump into that role. as, long as you know what you’re doing. like doing the work, helping the clients, but. The business savvy can, can really, in that specific area of practice, the business savvy really can, you can figure that out later.

You can start working tomorrow.

Viktoria Altman: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Sean, stick around so we can Finish the upload.

Sean M. Jones:  Thanks.

Viktoria Altman: Cool.