Trial Lawyer, AI & Privacy Pioneer: How Courtroom Storytelling Builds Attention, Trust & Influence

**Junaid Ahmed** (0:00)
Thank you for tuning in to Hacks and Hobbies with your host, Junaid. We're visited by our amazing guests coming from all walks of life. Want to learn their story, their struggles and their journey on how they got to where they are today. So stick around.
Most busy professionals say they don't have time to create content, but what if the fastest way to build trust, clarify your message and stay top of mind was not another marketing funnel, but a simple conversation.
By the end of this episode, you'll learn how busy professionals and business owners can quickly and easily create and share podcasts, use AI to streamline the process and turn conversations into credibility, relationships and opportunity. Today, I'm joined by Mitch Jackson, an award-winning California Trial Lawyer, Author, Speaker, and longtime voice at the intersection of law, technology, AI, privacy, and communication. Mitch has tried more than 70 cases to verdict with a 95.7% win rate, built Jackson and Wilson into a nationally respected trial firm, authored 14 books, including Artificial Intelligence in Law, Privacy in America, and Leading with AI, and publishes the uncensored objection newsletter on Substack. Mitch, welcome to Hacks and Hobbies. I'm so excited for you to be here.

**Mitch Jackson** (1:35)
I'm excited to be here, Junaid. You left out something. I consider you a friend. We're friends. Yes, we are friends.
We had lunch down at Danea Point Harbor together, looking at the ocean, looking at the boats, fighting the seagulls off of our lunch place. To me, that's what this is all about, is building connections. If you build connections, you can build your business. It's a pleasure to be here today.

**Junaid Ahmed** (2:00)
You're so right. That was a fun experience. On my way back, I had a crazy nosebleed. I'm like, what's going on? Maybe it's too dry. Maybe I'm not used to the California weather anymore because I've been living in Northern Virginia for so long. But Mitch, before we talk podcasting, I want to start with communication. We literally have been connected over the years through so many different platforms. You spent decades in courtrooms where words, timing, and trust matter. How beautiful is that?
Now, the question that comes to me is, how did that shape the way you think about creating content today? Because a lot of people thinking about, what should I talk about?
What's going to rile people up or what's going to get people to be on my side? How do you think about creating content outside of, outside of being prepared but being also having the context of having that inside, hey, this is something that's really matters to me, and this is what needs to be talked about?

**Mitch Jackson** (3:10)
It's interesting because back in the early days of social media and Junaid, we put up our first website in 95 I've always been kind of a tech guy, right? But as social media started to roll out, what we noticed, especially with the early live media platforms, whether it was podcasting or live videos, instead of one to one, it was one to a thousand or one to 10,000 or in one show I had, it was one to 25,000, right? And I realized even though I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I realized this is a really interesting way to connect with people, not only across the street or on the other side of town, but on the other side of the United States and the other side of the world. And so, I just dived into the entire digital communication spectrum of podcasting and live video and writing post, which I'm doing now in Substack. But what I have learned, and I think what a lot of people do wrong, and that's why I wanted to come on your show today, is it's so much more than just creating content. You can create content all day long, but if you're not creating content that's interesting, unique, sometimes entertaining, adding value, and I'm going to share a couple of tips that allow people to do this very easily, allow me to do this easily, you're really going to be wasting your time because there's a lot of stuff going on out there.
When I decided to become a lawyer, I was the first person in my family to go to college, much less law school, my dad, who was a cowboy, we had a ranch in Tucson, you know, you're sure you want to do this, there are a lot of lawyers out there. And I said, yeah. And I said, but you know, there's always room at the top for another good one, right? And so that was kind of my mentality is I'm going to drop gloves, throw some punches and make it happen. What I noticed in the courtrooms is that when you earn the trust of a jury, and a judge, and even opposing counsel, and why don't we just say witnesses on the witness stand, good things start to happen, right? You start building a rapport, you start becoming the leader in the courtroom, and that's how you win cases, that's how you get good results for your clients. Well, guess what? Social media, digital, podcasting, live video, it's no different. As a matter of fact, if you recall, I had a best-selling book that came out back in 2017 called The Ultimate Guide to Social Media, and it was in three sections. And the reason it was such a damn good book, Junaid, I can say this, is because I only wrote three or four chapters in the book. I reached out to about 50 friends of mine who were experts in the different platforms and had them contribute chapters, right? And that's why the book was so good and so successful. And the first part of the book had to do with the why behind social media. Why are we on these platforms? Why do you want to do a podcast? You guys got to figure that out, right? Bob Berg wrote the first chapter about the why. And we love Bob Berg, right? He wrote the go-giver. The go-giver, yeah. Yeah. And so the whole first section of the book has to do with the why. Why are we doing what we're doing? The second section of the book had to do with how to use the different platforms, understanding the algorithms, what works on Facebook may not work on X or Twitter back in the day. And so we did a deep dive on that. And of course, that's kind of changed over the years.