This is a siren song for me to come to California, man, but I'm, I'm in Texas, man. We're gonna stay right there. We'll do it the hard way. We're talking about how no state income tax in Texas, and he was telling me he is like, they get you in the end. Yeah. There's no way to not have taxes. Well, there's some ways. No, no. Well, yeah, you, yeah. Some of your friends, right? Yeah. Welcome to this episode of Bourbon of Proof, where we interview those who have been both successful at law and life.
And today we are honored to have in today straight from Texas. Angel Reyes. What's up brother? I thought you were supposed to hook him. Horns. You just did a piece. Either this, I'm not from Texas. I live there. He's Puerto Rican man. But you got a little bit of a Texas draw now, but I don't, no. Anyone in Texas will tell you. No. You sound like you're a Yankee. Believe me, people in tech, they torque luck. You know, they got real southern accents and uh, mine's kind of neutral. I love it.
And of course, ma Fre Jr. Yes, yes. Of uh, Maori Fiori legal. Fre Legal. You're legal. Yeah. And his hat says, send. Lawyers, guns, money. Yeah. Send lawyers, guns, money. And it's supposed to stay strippers, but we ran outta room. Ah, well you wrap it around. Probably a good thing strippers are gonna be on the back. Oh, there you go. All right. Probably a good thing. So we always start off with the poor, and today we're doing a non-alcoholic episode. This is our first non-alcoholic Oh man.
Gin that we've had on the show, man. We've done, well, I think we might've done a gin once with Jeff Dye. We did a gin, but we did other whiskeys with him. But this is, but Jeff never drink either. He didn't drink so. Let's give it a go. All right, let's give go. You guys have probably already, did you ever, did you ever drink? Yeah. Remember my younger days you guys have had a probably a few little bourbons, so I mean, it is like 2:15 PM I had a feeling 10.
I hoping I'd come in here and you guys would be. A little bit smashed and we could really have, we're getting, you just don't know yet. We just have, we'll have a little, can you gimme a splash of soda? This? Yeah. So this is called um, li Liars Gin. I don't know. It was pretty, pretty good. They just called 'em liars. Wow. Yeah. They did a good job with this. It's not bad. It's a dry gin. We'll see. Hey, gimme some. It's hard to tell. I put some in there. Yeah. It's hard to tell.
Some are better than others. I haven't found a good whiskey one that tastes like it. I can tell you that this is a lot easier to drink than real gin. Yeah, it is. It doesn't have much, like it's not bad. No. It just has a little bit of a fruity taste. Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. Yeah, it's not too bad. Oh man. This makes me feel worse than actually drinking gin. Why don't you have a No, we're good. All right. Well that's good. So a, you came in today, do you fly in today? I did. I did.
They have a flight direct from, from Dallas. There's a direct flight from Dallas and it's really. Atlanta and Santa Barbara around 12, and we got our luggage 1230 and got over here about one. Wow. And so I've been here about a little over an hour, you know. But you're in California often? Um, I do come to California. Um, I unfortunately this is a sore subject here, your brother. I know. It's, we're leading into, and I don't be able to talk, you get right into it.
Our family's prob we used to come five, six times a year or even more if we could, but we had an unfortunate, uh, uh, just like another 14,000 people. In Palisades? In Malibu. Um, our house, uh, was part of the Palisades fire and it's now down to the sand and we're gonna rebuild. Um, we're on a, on a beach with some other good people that some of you know. Yeah. I mean, funny story. Yeah. I met Angel for the first time at NTL in Miami a couple months ago. He's sitting next to me for dinner.
Uhhuh, I don't know. He doesn't know me. I don't know him. Yeah, he says, I said, where are you from? He said, I'm Dallas. Uh, but I used, I used to go to Malibu a lot because I told him I'm from la. Yeah. And I had a house in Malibu at the burn down. I was like, oh shit. Where was your house? I was on Los Flores Beach. Los Flores Beach. I said, do you know Gary Dordick? He's like, uh, no, I don't know him. Uh, his house burned down too. And then I, and then I texted Gary.
I said, Gary, what was your address? And it was like 2, 9, 4, 6, 7, like two doors down two. And it was his house right next door, 2 0 9, 4 6. Wow. Like literally two doors down. So I hooked him up together and now they're working together to try to rebuild. And yeah, he's been a huge help. Yeah, that's, uh, Gary told me the other night, I don't give a fuck how much it costs. I'm rebuilding. Yeah, yeah. I figured he should.
I mean, it's gonna be hard to rebuild there because PCH is right there to Oh, yeah. But it's, that's the best. Like, we used to go there a bunch with over to Gary's house. We go to Gary's house. It's beautiful, man. Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, you know, it's a sad, sad thing, but we're all gonna get through it, you know? But you were actually on a plane back, like you, uh, yeah, we were evacuated that day and, and I, I could have. I would've sworn on the ranch, if you will. No way.
The beach has never burned. It's been a hundred plus years. And son of a gun, not, not just one beach, but five beaches. Mm-hmm. Ripped down. Burned down. That was So were you watching the news like on the plane? Well, so on the plane, no, but when we landed, it was nine 30 ish and my daughter was on social. And she's like, dad, that's PCH look, that's our house. Look, it's gone. 'cause we have two palm trees.
And in fact, one of the most, um, sort of viral photos, uh, early on, uh, that was going around the world was a photo with the sun setting, uh, in the west to the right of the photo. And two skinny half burned, uh, 40 foot palm trees. Those were our palm trees. Wow. So they took that damn near in our like old. You know, I guess garage, you know, they were standing there on top of it. And, uh, that, that picture went around the world and, you know, sometimes it made me sad.
And right now I'm excited. I wanna rebuild, I'm gonna follow in the footsteps to some of my neighbors. They've gotten a little, you know, they, they live out here, so they're further ahead in the process and they've been incredibly helpful. They share everything. And, um, you know, with some, a little bit of luck, we're gonna, we're gonna have it back in a few years. So, and you know, and Bob too, even more like six degrees of separation now, everything's kind of intertwined. His place.
He got it from Mike Pews. Yeah, I got it from Pews. I do know that house that, that Bob used to work for Mike Pews. Yeah. Well, no, I, I leased my first op when I went on my own. Yeah. At lease an op from my, he was some commercial real estate. Yeah. And that's where, uh, Dordick started in that office. Yeah. A lot of our friends, so after Hughes passed away, he got from ps. P'S family. Uh, funny, funny story. Well, I rest in peace. Mr. Mr. Ps great guy. PS he was a great guy.
He was a, he's a great lawyer. Um, and, uh, what the hell, I'm gonna spill the beans. Mm-hmm. The entire purchase price went to an African wildlife sanctuary. Well, everyone knew that pews, he gave millions and millions of dollars to this African yeah, sanctuary. Now, I didn't know that the whole purchase price went all of it. All of it went to, uh, somewhere in Tanzania. I suspect it's getting put to good use.
Wow. I think you and ma are gonna take a trip there so he could write off his giraffe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might try to bring a giraffe back in my suitcase. A giraffe. Yeah, you have to shrink it. Maybe there's a way to do that. For those of you that are watching, are listening Angels Firm in in, in Dallas. You guys try a lot of cases that we do, people don't realize how many cases you try because you also do a, I mean, thousands of cases a year probably that you bring in. We do, yeah, we do.
So, um, you know, look, our firm has been around for 32 years. Um, as you know, that's an overnight sensation, as they say, right? Um, but since 94. Um, I took the approach in Texas that in order to get fair value for our clients, that we'd be much better off filing lawsuits. And lemme tell you, that was pioneering back then. It's not so much now. Now most people realize that to get paid right on a case, you gotta file it.
But we started filing in 94 and racked up 10 verdicts, 20 verdicts, 30 verdicts. Wow. Mind you. We're batting 500. I mean, make no mistake, half the trials that we end up doing, because guess what? The defense knows. This is one they want to try, right? So we go down there, we'll take a bullet. You know, we have some cases that, you know, we're like, okay, we're going to try it. But if they pay the limits, we don't try it.
Because in Texas, if they pay the limits, there's no point in trying the case. Right? Um, and so we're in this funny betwixt. You know, we, we, we choose cases and we say to them, we're gonna try it. We're gonna try it. And then they freaking pay the policy limits. Right. Which is a good thing. Um, you know, kind of, but after making you spend a lot of money, make your client wait for Yeah. But that's okay. I mean, we don't mind, we're pretty fast. Our, our, like, we can get.
To a trial in, in, in certain counties in Texas, Harris County, which is Houston, uh, Dallas County, which is Dallas, Collin County, which is like Plano, McKinney, uh, Tarrant County, which is Fort Worth. Um, and, and the bigger urban counties, you can get to trial in 18 months. So from the day you file, not from the day of the crash, I mean, so what we try to do is accelerate when we file. So if we know.
For instance, that you have a positive MRI and that you've had some pain management, even if it's just a. You know, a report saying you're gonna need it. Um, but especially if you've had, you know, any kind of injections, even facet injections, we will immediately file your case before you're done treating that kind of compresses. Mm-hmm. You know, it doesn't go into 30 months now, it's 19, 20 months from the date of the crash. Um, and we're, we're working on that.
That's one of our big objectives this year. It's called, we're calling it our crash to close. The timeline, you know, we're really trying to shrink the, the, the days, weeks, and months that it takes to get the result. But is it like I, 'cause I, I'm licensed in Texas. We have an office there too, and it's much different in California to Texas. Um, much different. I've heard. It's like it's harder to resolve 'cause the laws just aren't as favorable on the bad faith laws.
This is what makes is harder. This, this is a siren song for me to come to California, man. But I'm, you're, I'm in Texas, man. We're gonna stay right there. We'll, this conversation before, so we'll do it the hard way. We're talking about how. No state income tax in Texas, of course, California, much different. We can pay a lot of taxes here. And he was telling me he is like, they get you in the end. Yeah. There's no way to not have taxes. Um, well there's some ways.
No, no. Well, yeah, you, yeah. Some of your friends, right? Yeah. Some of the ones that we learned about earlier that don't have law licenses, um, no. But in Texas, look it, you gotta pay for stuff some way, right? Texas doesn't have a state income tax. They're very proud of that. But at the end of the day. You know, schools still have to be funded, roads still have to get built, firehouses and everything else.
And that's done with, uh, property taxes and, uh, the property taxes that we pay in Dallas County, Tarrant County, the bigger counties, the urban counties is, uh, 3% of appraised value. And it moves up every two years. They reappraise it every two years. So you can imagine we're like 1.1%. Yeah. Well I think it's 1%. 1%. So, ' cause I had a house here too, and I was like, man, it's one third. It's like facing the Pacific Ocean, but it's one third, the, the tax burden. Yeah. Imagine this.
We used to be able to write that off here. I know we did too. We had the salt thing, but you know, we got, we got that ripped out of our hands by. Oh, you know, this, this, uh, new administration that I guess is backing up. They're off to a real cracking start, man, I gotta tell you. I think what? But if they, if they made, if they made Puerto Rico, yeah, you're an idiot. If they made Puerto Rico the 51st state, we would have a no problems. I would love it.
We'd have two more Democratic senators and probably three Democratic, uh, Congress. Congress of folks, you know, Puerto Rico's. Um, you know, the, the thing that I always thought. Felt, felt. What was weird about Puerto Rico said Puerto Ricans have American passports. Yeah, but we don't. American citizens, if you live on the island, but they can't vote. But you can, if you, if you're in Florida or Texas or whatever, you can, you just can't vote if you live on the island.
Same thing with, uh, Washington, DC I mean, yeah, same. Yep. It's true. It's wild. Just makes no watch. Never Bob. Me and Bobby used to have a, a men's, you know, adult. Fast Pitch Baseball League. Oh yeah. Mm. We had a Puerto Rican pitcher on our team named, he was Kickass. Aramis. Mm-hmm. He was a badass. And I think the son of bitch had lived in the United States for a long time. He didn't speak a word of fucking English. We, so I was, I was a catcher at that time, not word of English.
We had to bring in a Spanish species, Spanish speaking catcher when he pitched because it was like, couldn't, and I would talk to him, him because I speak, he was really good. Yeah. The air. How the fuck can you not speak English? Man, you've been here for a long time. He, these excuses, I, I don't get how he didn't speak. The best story about him is the first time he started complaining with it, he would just bring like this little duffle bag with him and he was one of the best players.
And yeah, I looked at his bag one time. He just had his MIT at a bottle of Fireball. I was like, this is not a real person. Like a bottle. Like a bottle. He a ball of fireball. That's awesome. Yeah. Oh man. Well, he's obviously a good player, so. Oh, he was great. I love that. That's kind of cool. Our team name was. We were at Los los los los and we just said it was really funny 'cause we were like.
For when I was took over the team way back when we were the La Squires and we were like, this all white lawyer team s in this Mexican fast pitch league. Like, but now you, now you turned it into, turned it now Laa Rasa. They've actually won that, they've won the championship two years in a row. Oh, we were not on the team. Of course they, you, you guys suck. And they got rid of, they got rid of us man off. They put us off to pasture.
How is you gonna win the, you know, the city, the city championship with a couple of old, you know, white was bat there. My last season I was okay. Yeah. Bob. Bob was, Bob was a good manager. He was good. Good play. Bob used to get some hits. That's good. That's good. You actually have, they keep lifetime stats. If you go to a.org, God help you. You can search for our names and you can see our lifetime stats year by year. Scrub it. I mean, I'm kidding. That was pretty good.
You're, you're excited. You guys, by stolen bases. One from 15 to zero very quickly. Wow. And so I, until I got a pinch runner. Wow, you went back up again. Oh, man. Went back up again. Oh gosh. That's cool. Now we, we had a few lawyers on our team that, um. Actually bid win was on that team for a bit. Yeah. Like we had a lot of good, Joe Barrett I think played with us. Mm-hmm. Wow. Super. Yeah. But, um, super.
But yeah, so like you're, you're, you're in this file first mentality in Texas, which Yeah, it's a little different California. 'cause if they open up a policy limit, it's a different, it's a different story's. A different story's a minimum policy in Texas, uh, the minimum state, uh, is 30, uh, per person a 60 occurrence. Right. 36. That's not, and and that's about, uh, about half the state has that, but. 28% of the state has nothing. So only 30% of the state has a policy in excess of 30 60.
And they have their, um, coming and going laws are, is not as consumer favorable. They're, they not Texas. No, they're not. They're not. Employment law is, you don't wanna get hurt in Texas if you can avoid it. But if you do get hurt, call me. God. Oh yeah. So how, so how did you get there? What's your origin story? Oh my gosh. Um, well. Context matters. So I'm gonna give you a little context and I'll tell you the story.
Um, when, uh, when I was a newly minted lawyer, uh, I was working in New York City, uh, I worked at the oldest law firm on Wall Street. Um, this firm had. Former partners, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a partner before he became the governor of New York, and then subsequently the President of the United States. Wow. That's an old firm. They also had married his cousin Eleanor. Yeah. And true. He, uh, let's see. There were others.
I mean, I, I don't want to get any, any of the names wrong, but you get the idea right. It was a silk stocking, uh, you know, law firm. This is 1990, you guys. Um. I got there and I was excited. I mean, you know, I was given it a chance to go to a Wall Street firm, do corporate securities and finance work, which is what I thought I wanted to do. I'm more of a business. Why? Why did you think you wanted to do that? I, I was more the law school I went to. That's what everyone did.
We all went out and did corporate work. Where'd you go to law school? University of Michigan. Ah, one of those highbrow guys. Yeah, so, so as a result, just a little bit above my, my old school. So as a result, you know, everybody that I went to school with was always getting a job at Proskauer, at Wachtel, at Sullivan and Cromwell. You know, I worked for a bit at Sherman and Sterling. I worked at Morrison and Forrester, and then finally I took a real job with, with Cutter Ard in Melbourne.
And when I got there, I gotta tell you, man, I, I quickly realized like, I'm not from this world and. I don't know if I'm gonna be of this world for terribly long. Okay, so a year into my practice in New York, um, I had a dear, dear friend who was still a dear friend and now works at my firm who was in Dallas and, uh, look in 1990 and 91 and 92. Um, Dallas had, you know, some, some Dallas proper law firms. It had 150 200 lawyers, but it was, it was considered a legal backwater. Quite frankly.
It's no longer considered that, but it was, at the time, it didn't have any of the national, uh, firms there yet. That didn't happen until like 2000. And so he called me and it was March and it was slushy and lousy and shitty weather, and he goes, Hey dude. Come on down, man. It's, it's sunny and beautiful down here. Of course, in March, if you wanna get suckered into moving to Dallas, go in March. And if you don't go in March, go on October. Best time to be there. 72 degrees, sunny.
Anyway, I go down there, it's March 30th or something, and I'm like, shit, I don't wanna go back to New York. And he goes, Hey man, when you get back there, um, let me see if my firm, he worked at a firm called Garden and Wind. Let me see if my firm will interview you. And I'm like, cool. Yeah, that sounds cool. Well, I, I, look, I had no, no ties to New York, other than some friends. And how did you get to New York? Um, from Michigan, I got hired outta law school. Just outta law school.
I got hired. They were your folks in Michigan or were, where were you? Were they in Puerto Rico? No, no, no, no. Um, I, no, I never lived in Michigan until I showed up for law school. Um, at Michigan, the, the big firms would all come and recruit and everybody got a job. Like if you wanted to work at. Melvin Myers, you were gonna get a job. If you wanted to work at mofo, you're gonna get a job you wanted to work at. What about Fjord?
Legal Skadden, Arps. You're gonna get a, a job hires that the best. I mean, this was, that's that, that that law school puts forth those folks, right? And so I was like, oh, cool. I got a job in New York. I'm gonna go to Wall Street and I'm gonna. Learn how to be a minister of the universe. I just read Tom Wolfe's bonfire, the Vanity of, and I remember thinking, man, that's, that's gonna be great. And then I got there and thought, oh, I'm fucked. And so, um, how long did you last? Uh, one year.
A year. And a little, a little a year. And some a year and some change. Um, 'cause I'd been there the year, the summer before and, you know, yada. So, uh, my friend said, why don't you talk to the folks here in, in Dallas? And I'm like, yeah, you know, I got, I don't know why not? I'll check it out. Um, I, uh, I talked to the, uh, hiring partner at his firm and he said. Come on down, we'll hire you. We, we got a chance to meet you. Um, we, we, you know, I went down and did another interview.
You're in, you're in. So I, uh, I said, man, listen, here's the deal. My lease doesn't end until July. And he's like, well, you gotta take the bar. This is back before you could wave into bars. Right. Yeah, I have taken three freaking bar exams because this was all before you could just go, oh, look, I'm, I'm licensed in California. Shouldn't I get waived in? This? Didn't happen back then, 25 years ago. So I, um, waited and I studied for the bar and I went to Texas. I took the bar.
I passed the bar, and about six months into the working at that firm, I said to my friend Jim, I said, Jim, this is. A chicken fried version of New York City and he is like, oh, that's a classic great description, Reyes. I said, well, yeah, that's kind of how I feel, man. It's, it really is kind of that way. He goes, what should we do? I go, I don't know, man. Let's just put our heads down and get through this one night. I am there at seven ish. We worked hard. We did.
How, how many years into practice are you now at this point? Two. Two. I am two years. Yeah. And I'm at my office and it's seven ish. And the cleaning crew is, uh, you know, moving around kind of, Hey, can we come in, get your trash can? And uh, at that firm we all had our names on the door. And you know, my name is Angel Reyes or in Spanish Re, and. Uh, the cleaning lady was, uh, an immigrant and she didn't speak English, but she looked at my name and she asked me, and I went, yeah, I do.
And she's like, oh, and I'm gonna say this in English unless you want me to say it in Spanish. Um, you know, she asked me if I could help and I said, well help with what? Her, her son had been in a very bad car accident. And he was at, um, a hospital. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called Baylor Hospital. There's a university attached to it, Baylor University, and it's in downtown Dallas. And I said, you know what? Let me go with you. Let's check it out.
So I went with her and he was in real bad shape, ICU, the whole nine yards. He could, he was. Like, he could, he could say a few things, difficultly, I can see what I can do to help you. Right? And so the mom, uh, and I left and I called my friend Jim, and I said, Hey Jim, uh, man, I wanna do this case. So, um, here's how naive I was when I was, you know, 27 or eight. I, I go back to the law firm and I, and I go to the managing partner and I say, Hey man.
Um, his name was Ed. I said, ed, ed, I got a great case and I explained it to him. And Ed goes, angel, you do know that some of our largest clients are Chubb Insurance, a IG. And he goes, under no circumstances are we touching this case with a 10 foot pole. Wow. And I went. Oh, that's a bummer. 'cause it was like me generating business. I was like so excited. I was so naive and young and, uh, anyway, so he said no. Jim said, you know what? Help him. Anyway. So we sent a letter.
To the insurance carrier because it was a, a ranch owner's policy because it was a ranch vehicle. I didn't know what to expect, but I got a letter back saying, we acknowledge your claim, send us the medical bills. The mom went and got the medical bills and I sent them. Then I started talking to 'em and I went, Hey Jim, this case is gonna settle for $300,000. Man, it's a hundred thousand fee. So he goes. Fuck it, we're quitting. He goes, we're quitting.
And so he walked in to the managing partner's office and said, Hey man, here's Reyes and I, well, we're, we're resigning. And he is like, huh? What? What? Why? He goes, we're outta here man. We're gonna go do our own thing. And uh, so 10 days. 10. So 10. I like your friend, sounds fucking, so 10 days later he is a badass. 10 days later, um, I. WII, we, we didn't have like a postal place, right?
I then arranged to go pick up the check from the insurance company, and I walked in and I picked it up and I left. And we, we were so like, okay, we're gonna start a firm and we're, we don't have jobs now, but we got a hundred thousand, right? We have a hundred thousand off fee. And so we knew that lawyers needed trust accounts, right? But what we didn't know is that every fricking bank has one. So, so we went and found Northern Trust because it says trust account Trust in the name, right?
We're like, oh, they'll have trust accounts. And so we go in there, we open an account and um, two interesting things happen. One, we were. Kind of flush. I mean, you know, that was a lot of money to a couple of guys, you know, making 80 grand a year. Like whoa, a hundred grand. That's, you know. Um, so we opened our accounts and we're like, okay, we need an office. So we got like an office, not even as big as this conference room. We split it in half. He was on one side. I was on the other.
We wired, this is back when you did your own. We, we wired our two computers together, you know, so that we'd have a network and a printer out there, and. I said to him, Hey man, I think there's more people that speak Spanish mm-hmm. That need help. And he goes, what do you wanna do? I go, I wanna go all in. He goes, what's that mean? I said, I wanna spend $30,000 for the next two months on Univision.
From what I'm told, um, we were the very first, um, legal advertisers on Univision in, uh, 1993. Um. That's what I've been told. I had to go down to Miami. I had to, uh, present in front of the board of directors for UN Uni, which at the time was not owned by A, B, C or whoever the hell owns. Now, NBC owns NBC owns them now. They were just, you know, they were doing their own thing. They had 15 markets and they said, uh, man, uh, lawyers, we're looking for Ford.
We're looking for, you know, Kaiser Permanente. We're like, who are you? And I'm like, well, I'm willing to spend some money and you ain't got any of 'em. But most of these ads are shit. And they're like, alright, we're gonna give you a shot. So we spent the 30 grand and the phone rang off the hook. Wow. We ended up hiring three people to answer the phones. Uh, it was, there was that much need and no one meeting it. Right.
And, um, within six months, I mean, I should have got like a little, little, little scratch off of, of Univision. Right. Because within six months. All 15 markets were full of fucking lawyers advertising, man. I was like, oh shit. But, um, that's, that's how it started. It started with that one case. Wow. That, that the big, the big law told you not to take this, we gotta help this person. And they, well, they couldn't, I mean, they didn't say, don't take it. They said, we can't take it.
And so, you know, from there it's like, what a, what an experience like, you know. We, we were successful with her case. Then we go on TV and all kinds of cases are coming in and we're trying to find people, doctors, and we're doing the best we can, but with a very low knowledge base. I mean, we were, I. We were trying to learn as we go. And it was, it was challenging to discuss, but you know what, as I did the same thing, I mean, you know, went out on my own, didn't know shit.
I was super young. Yeah. Uh, I didn't know better. But ignorance is bliss, man. Sometimes, sometimes you don't know what the fuck you're doing. No. Uh, you know, I, I, I was very successful very early in my career. Mostly 'cause I was not scared of anything. 'cause I didn't know anything. Yeah, me too. And you just bumble bamboo, so your way through it and next thing you know, it's like, fake it till you make it like they say. For sure. It was crazy.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, fast forward now, I mean, you had that one client when you took 30 grand and went all in. Yeah. How many, how many, how many clients do you serve now? What's that look like? Um, so, you know, we've grown since then. It's been 30 years. Yeah. Okay. So in the last 30 years we've grown to the point now where we. We bring on, uh, 1300 to 1500 new clients every month. Whew. Um, now they're not all Spanish speakers anymore.
Most of the Spanish speakers we had in the nineties, their children speak English. Now they may also speak Spanish, but they're gonna call us and they're gonna be like, you know, they may have a name like mine, you know, a Spanish name. Hispanic name, but they're gonna speak to us in English. You know, we still have a lot of Hispanic surname clients, but you know, our, our client base now is 70 30. 30% can only speak Spanish. 70 is irrelevant.
In the mid nineties until about 2002, it was the exact opposite. 70% of our clients could only communicate in Spanish. So it's been kind of fun to watch the maturing. Of the Hispanic population in Texas. Um, it's, it's near and dear to my heart. Um, you know, I, I've always felt a real kinship with immigrants. Um, and the main reason is that, uh, while, while I do have the benefit of I, I have a US passport because, uh, you know, my family's from Puerto Rico.
All Puerto Ricans, no matter where they're born in the world. Are US citizens, period. Full stop. Um, but I went to school in Puerto Rico from first to fifth grade, and when my parents divorced and we left my sister, mom and I to Kansas City. Wow. I felt like I was on Mars. And you know, for what it's worth. Yeah, you know, I got picked on. I got messed with, you know, it was a really interesting experience.
It's one that I never forgot, and it's one that I couldn't help but resonate when I fell backwards into Texas, backwards into injury, work backwards only because of my name and the fact that I speak Spanish. Created the, the foundation of our law firm. And I said, man, what a freaky deal. Like I would've never predicted that because when I was 14, man, I was ready to change my name, bro. Mm. I mean, I was, I was like, fuck.
You know, I don't know how you felt, but man, you know, I, I, it was, it was. It was tough enough. All right. I mean, I'm sure people have had harder experiences than I have, but you know, I didn't really experience too much. It was my dad's Italian from Italy. Ah, okay. My name is Maro Fre. Yeah, ma. Yeah. So I have an Italian name, so I didn't experience much of that. Yeah. My wife always says she did. My wife's name is Alejandra Lopez. Yeah, I did. So it's she, I did.
She, she identifies with it. I'm just grateful. Look. Texas was booming in the nineties. It's booming in the two thousands. It's booming in the 2020s. It's the fast, one of the fastest growing metropolitan places in the country. We have 8.3 million in our statistical area now that is the equivalent of everyone that lives in LA County. I mean, that's a lot of people. We also have an office in Houston, 7.9 million people in an office in central Texas. About 5 million in central Texas.
So you can do the math on that. Uh, everything east of Dallas Fort Worth. You're talking about 21 million Texans. So we feel like those are the, you know, our, our strongest markets. We're gonna stay there. We're gonna keep doing what we're doing. Um, we're real proud of the fact that our firm is bilingual. We have, um, we have 550 ish employees. Wow. And I can tell you that at least 300 are fully bilingual. Yeah, so it's kind of cool. Did you ever think about going, moving back to Puerto Rico?
'cause we know a lot of our friends that Yeah. That live there, right? Yeah. I mean, people like tax dodgers. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm with you Moto. Look, the only people that have moved to Puerto Rico that aren't Puerto Rican are Buccaneers. They're tax dodgers and, and some of them are doing it right, some of 'em are doing it wrong. Um, it's about 2,900 to 3,200, uh, total people. It, it's not even one 10th of 1% of the population of Puerto Rico.
They all live in one concertina, wired, you know, Dorado Beach Community, Dorado Beach, and you know, I happened to know Dorado Beach when I was in college. My father lived in, in Dorado Beach and, uh, in college, I, I worked in Puerto Rico. Um, it wasn't any fancy work. It was construction work, digging ditches, driving, driving loads of shit all over Puerto Rico. But it's a poor island. It's very difficult to live there. Um, if you're getting a tax advantage, then maybe it's worth it.
Um, I would not move back. I don't have any sort of romantic. I, I look at it for what it is. It's a distressed poor island with crumbling infrastructure and very little is gonna lift it. It's not gonna get better. It's only gonna get a little bit worse. Now that comes from a guy that lived there from 70, uh, 71 or two to 77. And os honestly, I go back. And nothing's changed. Wow. I can see the same condos, the same beaches, the same everything. And it's like it stood in time.
I mean, it just didn't change. Nothing really. Nothing blossomed. And so, while I loved Puerto Rico, I respect Puerto Rico. Um, I, I have to be candid. Um, I will never live there. You've evolved a lot. I mean, 1970s Puerto Rico hasn't changed, but man, you've lived so many different careers and lives and helped, like Yeah, you've probably, you've probably helped a million people if you do the math. I mean, if you do 1200 times, all their family, 1200 Yeah. A month times other family.
Yeah. I mean, you know, we look at it like this, we've, I think we've settled 75,000 cases in the last 32 years. And, you know, the knock on effects of that, you know, might be five times that, right? Mm-hmm. Because family members, you know, who knows? Um, we're really proud of helping the people we help. Um, you know, to do this work, you, you have to, you know, you can't just do it because you're gonna make a fee.
You do it because, man, those people needed some help and you got 'em the help that they needed. You got 'em in to see some good doctors and you got 'em a settlement and. That's the best that our tort system really offers, if you think about it. And are you still doing television and stuff? Like how, how are you generating these 1200 cases? Yeah, yeah. So there's a, here tell us how you get 1200 cases a month.
Yeah. So here's a, an interesting, um, an interesting counterintuitive, uh, story, and that is from 1993 to 2016, I spent. Tens and tens of millions of dollars on regular broadcast media tv. And then in 16 I had a, I had a, a new, uh, CMO who was very digitally focused. He came from the digital world and he's like, man, let me, let me run some stuff. Let me see. You know, let me see what I can do. Um, because we were still so heavily dependent on the.
TV ads ringing, you know, making the phone ring. What's the name of your firm in Texas? In Texas? Angel Reyes and Associates. Angel Res. Yeah. Um, and so I said, all right, Eric, I'll, I'll give you a shot. A year later, he came to me and said, all right, here's the proof. All right. We got a hundred cases that month and it cost you $260,000 on tv. All right? And we got a hundred on Google. All right. And it cost you $180,000. Mm-hmm. So what do you wanna, do?
You wanna keep spending on broadcast media or not? And I was like, you know, uh, you know, I just had this weird intuition, like a lot of people aren't watching broadcast television anymore. My. Younger people than me. You know, it's YouTube, it's uh, they're streaming, it's whatever. Right. And I thought, you know what? I'm gonna go all in. And, you know, last year we spent $24 million on Google and we spent zero on broadcast tv. Wow. Because we don't believe in it anymore.
You can't attribute it. You can't track it the way you can. Google and it's not just Google, it's, it's LSAs, of course it's paid. Um, you know, we're, we're agnostic. If a, a lead generator can bring us cases for what we internally can bring them. We'll buy we're buyers, um, you know, our organic, you know, we'll bring a couple cases a month, just people finding our website that heard about us, et cetera. But, you know, our, our big, our big wheelhouse is definitely Google.
Wow. Um, and, uh, and we're really. Well, I'm never looking back. I mean, I'm not, I'm not suggesting don't do tv, but I just don't think it can deliver the way Google and LSAs can. I just don't, I mean, I do agree with you there. Yeah. Well, interesting. Not everyone does. I depends on your ego. Like, wait, I'm on tv. I'm sweet James. I'm kidding. Sorry, Steve. Nah, just fascinating. Well, angel, thank you for coming on the show. I mean, so, oh, you're very welcome, man.
So how do people find you? What's the easiest route? Oh, the easiest way to find me is on the website. Uh, or on the web anyway, just Google Angel Reyes attorney, and I promise there'll only be two people that'll show up. One, I'll be the top three. And the next one is a guy named Angel Reyes from the show, Mayans. He's, he's the lead actor and damn it, he took my name and I'm so. Pissed because for 20 years nobody else even popped up. First three pages.
And now Angel Reyes from the Mayans is over here on the right because he is got an IMDB and all online. How many people are doing negative keywords? Are buying your name though I bet you if I Google right now, somebody's trying to buy your name. Of course they are. And you know what? Here's the funny thing guys. You wanna try this? I know, I know. An all look. I. I feel like I'm in the forefront of what's called competitive conquesting.
You know, when people are bidding on other trademarks and other people's names, it's totally co copacetic. Google's okay with it. There's only three states that aren't, uh, Florida being one, North Carolina being another, and I'm, forgive me for forgetting. Forgetting the last one. Um, but I've written two law review articles and went to the Texas Ethics Board. Uh, against Jim Adler and won the hammer. Yeah. And um, and of course our good friend Glenn Lerner just learned the hard way.
Also, the hammer, there's two hammers. Just learn, just learned the hard way that, uh, wasn't that an Arizona learner? No, no. Lerner is in Arizona. He Arizona. But he just learned from the ninth Circuit. That, uh, everybody can bid on everybody's name because it's not a violation of trademark law. So many lawyers are so confused about this, but it's, it's really simple. It was a Arizona, it was a federal court decision I saw in October, 2024. It was 11 on people's names. Of course, of course.
You just can't trick the consumer. They, you can't write like, so I called somebody out recently where they were bidding on my name. You can't, but they copied our website. You look like you were calling my offer. You can't do That's, that's, that was a problem. That's a problem. But. Now this is Ray is with an E, right? If you watch previous episodes of burning proof, Morrow bids on people's names. Yeah. But minus one letter or a different number.
One number off Ray is with an, here's the thing. RAYS Ray is Ray. Yeah. No, shush. Um, so, you know, you can look at the end of of the day, Google solved this in 2012. Lawyers were late to the game. I started doing this in 2014. And of course got sued and got taken before the ethics board in, in Texas. And I'll never forget when I showed up, I went Sued. For what? For?
Well, uh, Adler said it was unethical to bid on someone's trademark or name and, you know, that you were trying to swindle or steal his cases. And, uh, I remember going down there and, and seeing the, the, the ethics board and I thought, holy shit. Everybody's over 70 and I went, they'll never understand this. Within five minutes, every one of those guys go, well, this is just a new form of advertising on the, on the internet. Don't hotels do this. Don't like, don't car rental companies do this.
And it was like, I was like. Kick ass. These old dudes got it. Yeah. And so they shut it down and, and, and, you know, it dismissed. So he's also was, um. Our friend Lauren Essa. Oh yeah. He was also messing with Lauren with for, 'cause he was trying to say she was doing the same thing. No, no, not me. No. Lauren, not you. No. Jim Adler Aler the hair. So Lauren and I are friends. I love Lauren. She's great. And I think that Lauren's doing a really good job.
Um, she just donated, you know, Lauren Vaughn? Lauren, yeah. So she just owned like $8 million to like a school in Oklahoma or some had a big endowment. Wow. Now she's, she, she almost gives like 50% back to a lot of charity. The stuff that she does. Yeah. Wow. Good for her. She, uh, she and I have been through that sales rep named Kayla that works for her. Yeah. Yeah, she does. Kayla works for Kayla. She was in our office the other day. Leo's her husband. I know, I know Kayla.
Um, I'll tell you something about what Kayla brought to us was Injury rx, and I'll tell you, oh, I love injury rx. I'll tell you man, the, the telehealth er visits are game changers. It makes your client's case better. And we're so glad to have it now. Yeah, tell me about that. I'm glad you're with them. Oh my gosh. But as far as like Laura Laura's been through the wars just like me. She and I have been co-defendants and then I got out, um, because I. The lawyers.
Oh, you were involved in that one? That was the one. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I can remember reading it because we were doing work together and I looked back to see some of those lawsuits to figure out what it was about. Yeah. I just educated myself on the space of like, yeah, this is bs. Yeah. Yeah. So in the Fifth Circuit, you know, BA basically said it's BS for lawyers, but for white label, uh, lead generators. Let's be careful with confusion because like for us, it's like res law.
You, you, nobody's gonna think that's. You know, it's just the disclaimer. It's just like it was the consumer confused, did you think it was this law firm? No. Right. And it, when it says law, they're generally not. Yeah. Um, but man, lawyers are, are so, so funny When they territorial and egos, they are, there's a bunch of ego driven craziness. But, um, you know, we've been through a few wars and, you know, we don't, we don't mind going through a few more.
Um, you know, that's just the nature of the beast. Yeah. We, uh, we're happy warriors. Gio, thank you for coming on this episode of Bourbon Approved. We're here in Santa Barbara for the even up summit. Yeah. Glad to be here. We hope to see you more in California, my friend, during the rebuild, whatever. I would love to, man. I would love. To you know that I would love to thank you.
So send, send lawyers guns money and when it fits on the hay and the other, if you wanna get, we'll put it on the bourbon approved store. You could buy it at tomorrow's, uh, little creep shop.