Robert Shapiro: OJ's Attorney Reveals Untold Stories

[Music] what do you think about the legal system that we have in America today the system is skewed in favor of the prosecution even people that are innocent can unfortunately get kind of the next morning was Sunday morning and you know the phone starts to ring the words were Brent is not breathing and he's turning blue the day that I'll never forget one of the things I loved doing this interview and interesting characters who have an incredible background and an experience with business and that's exactly who we're sitting with here today Robert Shapiro who was the dream team leading the defense attorney for OJ Simpson also the co-founder of Legal Zoom as well as write counsel he transitioned from what he was doing there to also work in with civil litigation right now so with that being said thank you so much for making the time and opening your office to us well you're welcome to release thanks for being here I love your YouTube channel great to be here with you so obviously LA I lived here for 25 years I'm now in Dallas and every time I come back here there's an affinity to this city I got growing up seeing I was telling you earlier I said you know there's a lot of attorneys out there that you'll see on TV and a lot of them that have different approaches they take and I don't know what it is every time I see you I watch any of your content I've seen you on TV you read about you you're so consistent and a class act I just wanna make sure I give you that props because I know sometimes you don't hear that what attorneys well that's the reason you're here but yeah I knew you're gonna say nice thing one thing about you so but let's get right into it prior to you becoming who you are today you've represented a lot of different characters you know Paul and I are big on baseball he's a KC guy he was talking about Vince Coleman Canseco whether we know or strawberry that's right strawberry your list of people you rub her car - and recently there's a list of a lot of people that you've worked with but take me back to what I want to know about is if I'm in high school with Robert Shapiro who was Robert Shapiro on high school I was this very very small undersized kid had a good memory but didn't really study hard was not really athletic when I entered high school I was in five feet tall I had struggles in high school on a social level because of my size and my lack of maturity from a middle-class working family my father drove a lunch truck my mother was a sales lady in a clothing store had a nice family existence only child did fairly well I was able to get accepted to UCLA directly out of high school and spent the next five years of my life there because I liked it so much UCLA well you stayed a little little longer than usual I took the long term program well you haven't found where you were you a guy that I have fun with if I was in college with you were you so focused on classroom and reading your books and all that stuff I see I see a fun humor side of you as well well there was an organization at UCLA called the kelps and there was really a fraternity within a fraternity so every fraternity would put up a certain number of people and it was primarily made up of athletes kareem abdul-jabbar was a kelp when I was there a lot of the football players and there was a spirit organization but the spirit had no limits so we pretty much we pretty much exceeded expectations of having fun I like that I mean answering you'd like an attorney the spirit had no limits you know you gotta read into it that's great for me my spirit had no limits in the army I wanted to make sure I contributed to society when I was in the army there were a lot of fathers that loved us when we lived in Kentucky so so I was in the ROTC oh really yeah it was mandatory at UCLA okay I went in I entered UCLA in 1960 the draft board was right across the street on Westwood Boulevard and it was mandatory for two years of ROTC if you decided to stay four years you immediately went in as a second lieutenant if you did two years then you were eligible for the draft and I was one a fit and ready to go when I was at UCLA I never wanted to be a lawyer and never thought about being a lawyer I never knew what lawyers did and it was only upon graduation when the war in Vietnam was raging and there were a couple of ways not to go into the service one was to burn your draft card and become a conscientious objector which I wouldn't do to was to move to Canada or three was to go to graduate school and I was a finance major at UCLA and they didn't have any graduate business school at that time so myself and a few of my fraternity brothers who were in the same position said you know what why don't we apply to law school we sent out applications virtually flew any fluke to anything that was below a first-rate law school because we hadn't done any education we hadn't prepared for testing etc and the three of us got accepted to the University of San Diego law school and we went down to San Diego enrolled and the first day of class I get a call from Loyola where I had been wait-listed that one seat opened in the night school I said guys you know Loyola was a lot closer I don't have to live away from home they were a little bit it's pushed off yeah to say the least I went up to Loyola to start at four years in night school I get to Loyola and lo and behold the last guy in the day school drops out and one seat opens up in the day school and they asked me if I want to take that turned out to be the beginning of my law school career something I never never thought about something of its own high school you weren't somebody said I'm gonna grow up and be a lawyer that wasn't you my mother wanted me to be a dentist that's why I spent five years in UCLA my first year was as a pre dental major and I was doing okay until I met physics and chemistry with these geniuses that were at UCLA so but I was able to struggle my way through those classes what I didn't know is they give you a piece of chalk and an exacto knife and they say cut a tooth no preparation I'm not really good with my hands other than when I box every time I did it I broke the chalk so my first year I had to drop out a free dental program and get into the finance interesting so now your other friends who once you see UC San Diego you said and they went to law how do they end up doing in their couriers did you end up staying and long you know one ended up being an assistant to the Commissioner of baseball Richard Levin who was a lifelong friend and the other became a lawyer and still practices still practices so all three of you went to the top all three of you did well for yourself yeah in that amazing yeah when you were a kid were you one that would debate all the time where you won that would always argue because you're the only child will you argue with your mom or your dad was there some of that in you or not really yes okay yeah I had a gift for gab you did I could talk my way out of most things and into a few things so you knew you could go this route and do something with this gift that was given to you yeah so now you are now a lawyer you're coming up how was it and what was the first breakthrough you had upon graduating law school I said you know what I'm gonna give it a shot being a lawyer one thing that happened in law school was we had Moot Court Competition I was fortunate to win the oral argument in moot court they got the highest grade in the school and became the chief justice of the wood court and got to meet judges that would be judging the next competition and so they said you know you you really should go into trial law and at that time I thought I need to get some experience so I had a choice of becoming a deputy district attorney a public defender or City Council City Council lawyers rarely if ever got to court the public defender's had long hair and were on the very liberal side and I was on the liberal side but my hair was short and then I said you know if I'm a public defender I'm gonna be going up against DA's who know as little as I know but as a DA I'm gonna get exposed to other lawyers who are in private practice and that's what I did for about 18 months then went into private practice and I got the first publicized case in America when I was out of the DA's office for about six months I got a call from somebody I didn't know who identified themselves as Liza Minnelli and said I was told to call you because David winters a choreographer who I knew because our sons went to the same preschool and Linda Lovelace just got arrested in Las Vegas for possession for sale of cocaine went to the airport rented a plane flew to Las Vegas and ended up representing Linda Lovelace on the first nationally publicized case in America how was that adjustment for you from being not in the limelight to all of a sudden everybody's it just gets a momentum of its own you don't plan on it and all of a sudden that's Linda Lovelace the first legitimate porn star prior to stormy Daniels that people knew her name actually showed her movie deep throat in theaters where people would go on dates she inspired a lot of men yeah oh she was she was an inspiration to a lot she had god-given talents I get national publicity and now it's it's the 70s and it's drugs sex and rock and roll and I seem to be getting calls from lots of people in the music business who are getting arrested for drugs and developed a niche for representing people in high-profile cases so let me ask you is a good friend of mine Rick he was a criminal defense attorney in the 80s for 20 years and he was doing very very good for himself here locally in LA and then he started kind of getting a little bit too deep into it where he ended up picking up the bad habits of the people he was representing and then obviously lost his license went to prison for 20 years and you know god bless his soul he passed away six months ago just a sweetheart of a guy he could tell stories all day honestly if he sat here and told stories the guy was a non-stop four to three full days how did you yourself while you were representing and while you're in this world how did none of that like get to you where you're like this is just purely business none of this associations gonna rub off on me well I've always viewed being a lawyer as something that was a profession and I always separated personal life from my life I never socialized with clients and was always anti-drug even though I was representing people in the 70s primarily for possession of drugs I mean marijuana in the 70s was a felony and today it's legal in some form in 29 states are in this country I never got to the point where I got seduced by anyone in the drug business or people that were using drugs and and was then and still I am very anti-drug that's one of the reasons why you start your foundation which is something yes talk about the later on going back to your career are you as you were coming up from seeing it from your standpoint Robert what is different between the legal world you were in then versus what it is today what dynamics has dramatically changed in the last 4050 years with social media one word the internet I wrote an article about 20 years ago it was called how to deal with the press I gave a speech only the lawyers and they said you know that there was a great article can we have a copy of the speech and I don't write anything out so I said no it was you know I've done extemporaneously and they said what why don't you try to put it on paper so so I did and became one of the ten best articles of the decade from the legal journal then the news was on a daily basis not on a second-by-second basis so there were ways you can get messages across the way you would like got it you could have more time to be intentional versus today it's more spontaneous --is its instantaneous Wow instantaneous and so that's why you can catch people at an off moment saying things that they hadn't thought about making statements that they regret they made that they have to claw back on but then you know I mean if a reporter would call it said you know give me a few minutes I'll get back to you get your get your thoughts together and well it was that article stole a bill is there still public key can it still be found I think it Kenya has opportunities for the law as an industry obviously you you were also co-founder right counsel and the legal zone is the business and amount of opportunities for lawyers to go to business higher today than it was 40 50 years ago yes no I think it's much it's much higher I mean today today anybody can put a website up doesn't matter what their office looks like it doesn't matter about anything they can put up the most gorgeous website and have walked out of law school yesterday I think about today when you're saying that you know makes you think people are getting caught with mistakes more today than they did before which means there's more of a need to have somebody represent them today than 30 40 50 years ago yeah and you know what we said is is one of the reasons we started both of the companies LegalZoom in 2000 which is now 18 years to make legal documentation available to virtually everyone at an affordable price and more recently right counsel because today any person can put up a fancy website and people don't know where to find lawyers especially if they've been injured if they've been injured either in an auto accident if the insurance companies haven't treated them fairly if they've been unfortunately affected by bad drugs if they've been injured in the workplace if they've been discriminated against any kind of case that a lawyer would take on a contingency that is they'll get their fee at the end of the case as part of the recovery but people don't know who these lawyers are so they'll just type in a keyword accident lawyer and up will pop a bunch of very fancy websites of lawyers who you may know nothing about and so people would ask me even in my own law firm a friend of ours was in an accident who was a good lawyer for this or we had a wrongful death we had a horrible injury through the years of practice I've gotten to know lawyers across the country and so rather than having a service where people are actually buying territories you have this 1-800 dentist for example well people will come in and say I'll pay so much to get referrals in Los Angeles so much in Orange County lawyers do the same thing we said you know you're not getting the best lawyers you're just getting somebody who is paying to get a referral what if we did this with no charge to people if they called and used our expertise and our backgrounds and people that were working with and put them in touch with the best lawyer had no cost to them and then we would try to put together the right lawyer with the right person for the right case almost like a matchmaker exactly that's right exactly and that's right counsel com so right counsel comm is a matchmaker between the client and the lawyer how do I as a lawyer to get filter to make it on right counsel you would not qualify I didn't tell the media but but how does somebody like to be all right counsel okay so first of all it's people I've known throughout the years lawyers that I've worked with lawyers that I've seen in court lawyers that have distinguished themselves by getting special recognition being the tops in their field are people that are coming to us are getting the best representation shotta how many total lawyers are right counsel well we don't have any lawyers on right counsel every case is individually so they analyze little venue match make exist well I'm not gonna really know who it is you're gonna direct me and you give a few options you say here's this here's this you know typically what we try to do this we probably try to say you know you've filed the claim for insurance you've had tremendous flood damage in your house and you think it's gonna cost you two hundred thousand dollars to fix the insurance company says no we think it's twenty thousand dollars well you can either give in to the insurance or try to find a lawyer who will say they're acting in bad faith I'm sure all the people here would have no idea where to find a lawyer that deals with bad faith I happen to know the top lawyer in the country that deals with bad faith yeses bomb right counsel you connect me with them exactly and in all legal sin which were a customer about we use LegalZoom God knows for how many years phenomenal sight easy to use all of it's pretty simple to find the documentation there so LegalZoom was inspired for reasoning to find what to do the basic stuff obviously we know right counsel how about legal okay so so league LegalZoom started out with a simple simple premise that people needed important documentation basically wills everybody should have a will and should at least have a living will durable power of attorney if god forbid something happens to you get ill and it started with this concept that we had four founders Brian Lou Brian Lee and Eddie Hartman and myself each had different roles and in putting this business together and we were hoping to do forty wills a month and breakeven and today it's the biggest company in the world doing legal documentation biggest company in the world doing legal documentation so how many wills do you do per month now to break you it wills is not the biggest thing that we do primarily its incorporation okay we do more corporations than everybody else combined in California even though you're nationwide though in California you have to in California okay but LegalZoom is it's the nation nationwide nation yes so so let me ask you I've hired a lot of attorneys I've fired a lot attorneys that somebody that runs a business himself we've had some incredible attorneys Cooley law firm we worked with a lot of guys here locally we have them some in New York we have some in San Fran but when you get a good one you got to keep it because it's tough to find a good one good lawyer good doctor all things that you always have keep them keep them for a long time right the question becomes I've also had some bad experiences with attorneys when I was early on coming up so I didn't know how to decipher between the two and hold them accountable right and that can be pretty costly for a lot of people how does a client who is running a business you're running a budget so you don't have a lot of money you don't have $300,000 in trying to get this business going and every $10,000 counts every $5,000 counts every single penny you put counts to make your business last how does a client hold an attorney accountable so when you get the statement that says this really took me 42 hours at 380 dollars an hour you owe me this much versus he had his other guys doing the legwork assistant who are $120 you know $75 an hour how do you hold them accountable with the math it's a question that's it's something a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with and with good reason sure because the law practice is really a law business from a business model talking to entrepreneurs perhaps the worst business model anybody could come up with only lawyers could think of a business model like this number one most lawyers work on an hourly basis only so many hours in a day only so many hours in a year that you can bill for number two there is no passive income you have to continually put in hours to build people tremendous overhead tremendous back support needed hours are incredibly long because judges require documentation almost instantaneously overnight to be filed but then the worst part of the practice of law is you could build up the best law firm in the world and at the end of the day you can't sell it it has no capital value whatsoever the only time a law practice has some value is when you get a divorce and the goodwill is put to the other side but other than that there's no passive income and there's no residual income so having said that and that capitalization and I hear that a lot so that's why on the other side but there's also a lot of money to be made on the front end right there's a lot of money to make if you do it right again the right market but how do you hold the attorney accountable how does the entrepreneur the CEO hold so for instance have you ever had anybody represents you have you had lawyers representing yes so how do you hold them accountable to make sure they don't charge you 50 percent more than they typically would you're in the world so teach us as an expert how do you hold you attorneys accountable alright so the first lesson that I learned and I actually learned this from the general counsel at Wynn where I was just involved in in a very significant case for the last five years and she said I hire lawyers I don't hire law firms so any lawyer that was going to work on the case had to be interviewed by the general counsel to see whether or not this was a lawyer they wanted number two they don't pay to train lawyers so if you have a first second or third year lawyer that you're giving an assignment to that lawyer is learning on the job and the client is paying for it I'd recommend to entrepreneurs number one make sure you're hiring a lawyer not a law firm number two that the person that's going to work with them has experience is not there to learn on the job and number three don't spend a lot of time talking on the phone because lawyers build by the milind good at it don't talk on the phone hole hold it until you really know I see a lot of people last long except us as attorneys know how to have a run-on sentences for 18 minutes and 18 minutes get you past the first fish that's right now you're paying for 30 that's right Oh believe me I put the phone they're not watching us so you know I know what he's doing I said this okay I gotta go so for me it's okay I gotta go or else we're gonna get that bill and I make the note so hire lawyers not law firm to if you are gonna hire the lawyer don't hire a lawyer that's gonna be a $200 an hour I think this is what I'm taking from what you're saying be willing to pay to 450 right because he's not gonna just come in trying to learn on you he's already had it before him with ten plus years of experience paid to X the price you know I closer while our law firm here that I've been a partner for thirty years we don't hire lawyers to train we don't have first second or third year lawyers here all our lawyers are lateral transfers who have proven themselves at other firms and what I want to come to a place where there's a great atmosphere great camaraderie and legal services available I like that so what makes a great lawyer by the way I mean being in the world that you're in you watch everybody see somebody and you say this guy has it or dead girl has it or the lawyers that people know are the trial lawyers are the attorneys that are in court and the ones that you see to be a great lawyer as a trial or number one you have to be able to be very quick on your feet you have to be able to analyze things quickly and you have to be able to present things to a jury of 12 people who may know nothing about the law in an understandable way I'll give you an example years ago there was a major lawsuit here by the NFL against the Raiders who were at the Coliseum this lawsuit was whether or not the Raiders could move from Oakland to to Los Angeles even though there was some controversy with the NFL and I knew Pete Rozelle and I knew one of the owners Jean Klein who was the owner the charges was uh was a good family friend and so they asked if I would come watch part of the trial and so I went to the opening statements and there were two different styles one was a lawyer from a major law firm who got up and gave the greatest treatise on monopolies and lack of competition that you could ever hear and he had behind him about 15 other lawyers and in those days there were file boxes not computers in the courtroom he was stunningly brilliant then a guy named Joe Alioto lawyer from San Francisco got up he didn't have anybody sitting next to him other than Mac's bleach or another lawyer who was representing the Coliseum he was representing al Davis and they got up with no notes and there was six people sitting in the jury box and they just started talking to him the way the NFL was manipulating and taking advantage of these small people we had lunch and lawyers were sitting around and the team owners that were with the NFL they were talking about how brilliant their lawyer was and the other lawyers didn't even know anything about antitrust and about monopolies and I said you know what they knew one thing that you guys don't you know how to talk to those jurors those jurors were listening your lawyer was great if he was teaching a class in antitrust at Harvard Law School six people sitting there after five minutes had no idea what he was talking about and Al Davis won Wow that's what makes a great lawyer you see it also style wise you see some is very in-your-face you're not an in-your-face type of a an attorney you think the fact that your pacing is slower than the most gives you an edge because the way you know the same sentence a person can say in two seconds I think you say in four seconds and I think that gives you an additional two seconds to think about an answer and maybe allows you to think a little bit more of a better answer you think there's an edge for you I see it from an outside as an edge for you you know I picked up lessons in life one of the people that I got to know during the practice was Jack Nicholson and he said something to me that has stuck with me throughout my career speak low and speak slow I took that advice to heart oh you big movie guy that you do you watch a lot of movies about law and all this stuff where you know you don't really go no I hate these about law really I and real reason is because they're legal fiction I mean there's some 12 Angry Men stands out as a realistic movie but the rest of them are legal fantasies legal fiction it's nothing that takes place in the courtroom you don't have lawyers running up to the bench and yelling at a judge or going back in chambers alone I mean and so those kind of things frustrate me and that's really one of the reasons I have always advocated cameras in the courtroom so the public can really see what lawyers do how it's done yeah so have you watched primal fear there's a part of it where I think you said in a megyn kelly interview you said there's a and by the way the fact that it's since the OJ Simpson case you've done you did to interview says right off the bat and you said you did one just recently with megyn kelly 20 years later so we're not going that side because you've consistently said I'm not commenting on the case and you have been like that for all this time three interviews to write after one recent with megyn kelly but I thought it was interesting when you said when it comes down to it there is moral justice there is legal justice right so you see a lot in the movie primal fear you see Edward Norton the character comes out and Richard Gere's just doing his jab and all of a sudden is like oh my gosh I was representing you did you ever have an instance yourself where you were thinking how do I set aside my emotions when Robert you've represented God knows how many people over the years were you ever in a position yourself where you're sitting there saying I really don't like the gun representing but you know what I'll get the job done were you ever in that position lots of times lots of times especially as a young lawyer when I relied on court appointments there were conflicts with the public defender's office and judges would would ask you to represent somebody I recall representing one of the people that was in the Aryan Brotherhood sitting next to me with a swastika on his neck you know I had to put aside the hatred I had for seeing that symbol and focus on the facts of the case and he was acquitted Wow that tells me you're very emotionally tough and you're very mentally tough what is your formula to keep yourself mentally and emotionally tough in situations like that to still go out there and do the job I'll give you an example and I used this example well shortly after a controversial verdict I was in the hallways leaving my doctor's office and a doctor came up to me with a name that was obviously a Jewish surname and he said how could you ever represent somebody like that that you knew was guilty and I said doctor let me ask you something have you ever worked in an emergency room yeah I mean that's part of our training we do so well I want to give you an example let's say you're on duty in an emergency room and the cops come in with a guy on a gurney and the cops are saying you know we caught this guy in the act of molesting a child and he tried to get away we had to do a pursuit he wouldn't stop so we had a shooter and unfortunately we didn't kill him but this is really a bad guy doctor and the guys coming in now on a gurney and it's a code blue and you're called to attend to them and so you have to do a emergency tracheotomy open up his shirt and I use this example because it happened to me and you see a swastika on his neck what are you gonna do you say well I'm gonna call another doctor well let's say it's two o'clock in the morning and you're the only doctor there what are you gonna do is it well I'm obviously going to have to do my best to save his life there's the answer to your question I'm not a judge I'm not a juror most cases are not cases of who did it most cases are cases of something did take place who is responsible and if they are responsible what is it so for example you could take a set of facts where two people are in an argument one person takes a baseball bat hits the other person and kills them so you would say that's got to be murder if you weren't there perhaps there was an argument before and the other guy had the baseball bat and was disarmed and this guy held or fell down and fell on the baseball bat or it could be an accident so you could have anything from not guilty to involuntary manslaughter voluntary manslaughter or second-degree murder we know a crime took place we don't know what it was do you want to know do you want it I always been you know I want to know I don't want to drive down the road really I don't want to drive down the road and somebody says you know just go straight you're not going to have any shoes and if I hit a bump in the road and I don't know about it I'm gonna be taken off guard so I want to know the facts I don't know the true facts and not make any judgment on so first step is tell me everything is that what the first step is with you before you take them up as a client is that that is that the problem no no you have to really sit down you have to get confidence with somebody and then once you start getting into the facts whether it's a civil case or a criminal case so is a process except first then information or it's give me the info let's sign that I'm not going to disclose anything and an acceptance what's the process in the world you're in the way I do it if somebody comes in I want to hear them I want to listen to the about their case I want to tell them whether or not uncomfortable with this type of case whether it's something that I have the time to do and and want to do especially now with civil matters and then once we get into the preparation I make it very clear that you know everything you tell me is privileged I will not share it with anyone without your permission and I want to know exactly what took place it's not going to affect the way I represent you however I will not let you take the stand and lie or misrepresent maybe we won't have you testify but I need to know all the facts that's do you approach you take okay so when you are getting that information how are you processing the information to say okay create a baseball bat he hit him no maybe the other guy hit and the other guy grabbed and hit him maybe if I let me hit the head on the baseball bat right so is there a part where you say these are the facts if I go this fraud we're gonna lose if we go this right but I'm gonna go this rod because I know this is gonna be the argument that's gonna be beneficial to this case is that what the creative you know look at the stuff I'm doing now and the stuff I've been doing for years are serious major things especially on the civil side and it's really an intelligent fact-gathering method of getting a tremendous amount of information being able to put it together in a way that you can present to a Trier of fact that's understandable and advocate your clients position the best you can what do you think about the legal system that we have in America today would how its set up with the fact that we have did percentage that we have in prison and some that probably don't belong in there and some guys do belong that are not in there what are your thoughts on okay so we've got two parts we've got a civil system and a criminal system so you're talking now about the criminal system first of all it depends where you are in the country in some parts of the country it's relatively sophisticated in the federal courts it's more sophisticated in the state courts and in some areas it's more sophisticated than others the system is skewed in favor of the prosecution there's just no question about it the judges are generally former prosecutors police are generally believe more than private citizens and the overwhelming majority of people that get involved in the criminal system end up working out a settlement a plea bargain hmm why because the risk of going to trial in serious cases is overwhelming even people that are innocent can unfortunately get convicted can Kim and have shown reality we've had historically innocent people executed which is the worst thing that could ever happen and so we've developed the system that cases get evaluated by prosecutors and defense lawyers and judges and get settled because people cannot take the risk when they're facing 20 years if they can settle a case for probation and house arrest and so you have a tremendous amount of people that if they went to trial may quite often be successful but they can't take the because the exposure is unknown so does it need to be changed systematically or socially like do we need to start talking about it more to minimize it or systematically some changes need to take place for that percentage to go lower you know the problem is this is that financial resources limit the ability in criminal cases judges are simply overwhelmed with calendars federal judges have one calendar themselves they may have three four hundred cases a year on a calendar state court judges are hearing on criminal matters ten or fifteen cases a day until they get to a point where they're sitting there with high-profile trials the system is just too big to fit the individual needs which is very unfortunate and so people fall into categories so you think it's gonna continue to wait as right now yeah I think it is first of all we have too many laws on the books I think we have to start focusing more on on things that are really important to society and to individuals and try to minimize the smaller cases and find ways to take them outside of the court system which we're doing there's a lot of diversion programs for first-time offenders on drug cases especially and there's been tremendous in advancements in not incarcerated people who have a drug disease and we'll talk about that a little bit later so why don't we transition to that you know I read up on I was also speaking to your assistant and she was talking about your passion for the brain Shapiro foundation this story I don't want to say the story I wanted you to say the story on why it's friendship hero so in 2005 my wife and I lost our son to the disease of alcohol and drugs brent was 25 years old we had discovered that he had a drug addiction probably from the 17 or 18 but we didn't discover it early enough I had some suspicions about it my wife thought it was part of growing up and experimentation and so there were there was some some conflict within the family but then it got to the point where it was very very obvious that that he was in trouble and needed help fortunately was a bright kid so he was able to cover it up and and you learn through experience that people who have this this addiction in which I am convinced as a disease are incapable of telling the truth so the mother may accept statements that would seem incredulous to most people drug addicts have have a way of being very cunning and being able to convince you that they are not addicted to drugs and that there's no real problems and then you get to the point where where you know that there's a problem and your friends and their friends start telling you and so then you start the process of rehabilitation a real problem in this country number one there are no standards for rehabilitation - nobody has ever come up with any proven way to treat this disease it's all based on oh we have great results here out in Malibu and we have great results in Florida it's not true it's just not true so there are very few people who have the expertise of how to deal with mental diseases in general and drug disease in particular and that was the experience we had with Brent he went to a 30-day program and like most people on a 30-day program on the 31st day they relapse I could put him a drug addict in my home lock him up for 30 days feed them and talk to them and they're not going to use drugs for 30 days and next day they leave that they will definitely relapse there's just no question about it then you go back and then you try to go to sober living unless somebody's in a program for a year or more there's really virtually no chance and Brent fortunately at the end got into a year-long program in Virginia got sober went to SC was on the Dean's List was ready to graduate core Law School and he relapsed he took a half of ecstasy and two shots of Jagermeister according to everybody who was at a back-to-school party not a wild crazy party something at the Elks Club in Hollywood and he got sick he got really sick and started to projectile vomit and nobody wanted to call the paramedics for a very simple reason they didn't want us to know that he had relapsed he was engaged the wedding would be off he'd have to go back into rehab so they said just let him sleep it off and he went home with his fiancee and the next morning was Sunday morning and a day that I'll never forget that you know the phone starts to ring and it's a little too early and it seems to be ringing a little bit too long and the words were Brent is not breathing and he's turning blue did you call the paramedics yes just before I called you where are you we're in West Hollywood I wake up my wife Linnell we get in the car and go to cedars-sinai and we got there before the paramedics arrived I knew that wasn't a good sign and the news wasn't good he wasn't breathing and he was in a coma doctors worked with him and the next day conclusively told us that he was not going to recovery and so we had to make that decision that parents never want to make and and let him go we had a memorial 2,000 people came a a lot of our friends and a lot of his friends very popular very social kid and one of my friends who has since unfortunately passed away Michael King came to me and said you know I'm so moved by what took place because at the memorial we only talked about drugs and addiction we dealt with it head-on and the only people who spoke were his friends who were also drug addicts and his counselor and myself and he said I want to make a donation in your son's name to your favorite charity and I said you know I don't know that I have a favorite charity but I want to start one for drug and alcohol awareness and he wrote me a substantial check within eight weeks we had a public charity called the Brent Shapiro foundation for drug and alcohol awareness from 2005 to about 2011 we went around the country we published two children's books one called so mo says no for five-year-old kids how to introduce drugs with parents at an early early age and then followed up by a book called David's discovery twelve year olds all available free to any school or any group that wants them through us we developed something called the save a life card it's just a very simple message and it tells you what the symptoms are people are reluctant to call nine for a couple reasons number one they think they're going to get in trouble if they have drugs so we were trying to push along the Good Samaritan Law which Governor Brown signed four years ago that nobody can get arrested if their have drugs themselves bringing somebody to a hospital with drugs and we've sent those out by the hundreds of thousands they're also on our website brent shapiro org and then you know around 2011-2012 people started to talk about this disease and in public and now it's on the news and it's talked about about this epidemic that's sweeping this country and it's a major epidemic and we're losing an entire generation of young people and others from addiction to prescription medication that is another subject that we should talk about at some point in time but we decided you know let's see what we can do for prevention and so i met with the head of addiction medicine at cedars-sinai dr. Jeff Wilkins and I said is there anything that keeps people off drugs and he said yes we have found that rewards work reward rewards if you give a drug addict an alternative between using drugs and a substantial reward they will not use drugs that day I said well what if we try this with kids what if we tried to give kids rewards for not using drugs so I'm met with the Boys and Girls Club of America and found out something very interesting that kids once they became teenagers leave the Boys & Girls Club of America it's no longer cool and I said what if we had an incentive that we could keep kids there and so we got vans we closed down for blocks in East LA Cincinnati Avenue in the heart of gangland 900 families came we had food trucks Ferris wheels and we pitched this idea that there's an epidemic and we can help your kids if you and your kid will allow us to test them randomly with saliva for alcohol and drugs welcome rewards will give them educational opportunities we'll take them to college campuses to see what college is like we're going to make them eligible for college scholarships if they graduate as a silver high school student that started about four and a half years ago right now we have about 5,000 kids in this program we have six clubs in Los Angeles one in Malibu when in Long Beach one in East LA one in Monterey Park Los Angeles Dodgers just sponsored our club AHA and in East LA Steve Tisch and the New York Giants last summer were sponsored our team in the Bronx our club in the Bronx so there's kids in Bronx as well in the brown Califano Cal yeah this is in New York we're opening a club in Chicago at the Jordan boys and girls club that's going to be sponsored by the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago White Sox and just yesterday I got off the phone with the president of the Oakland Raiders and they're sponsoring a club in Oakland so we want to take this to every city that has a major sports franchise the cost is minimal the rewards are amazing to date we have not had one child fail a drug test in over four and a half years you're kidding me not one in four and a half years because the pure pressure now is how cool it is to not fall into the traps where they see what is happening to people in their own families and certainly in their own classrooms and so that's what we're doing it's called Brent's Club looked up let's see what we're doing at the bread Shapiro org brent shapiro org first of all the story like that the last thing a parent ever wants to experience is is something like that every spoken a few parents who have had experience i'm like they tell me practice there's nothing more painful than this so sorry for your loss but on the other to the fact that you and your friend I think you said Michael King that you decided to do that is turned it to something like this the man upstairs sometimes there's some strange things to us that lead into something that's even bigger than that that we don't even know about because one story like Brent can end up influencing thousands of other kids that secretly struggle with the challenges of drugs that they're so embarrassed to talk about with their parents we're dealing with some right now with very very close relative of ours that we have to fly into a city and state to take them in and it's exactly what you said it's that part of while you're on it well finally I told my family I said you just got to go address it immediately you got to go surprise the house and she did and when the surprise happen it was exactly what we expected so the accountability of that it's a lot of work so appreciate you for doing that with the well thank you a foundation and more importantly you know like I said earlier class act thank you so much for taking the time and allowing us to come here to your office and spending some time with you I really enjoyed the stand with you Robert truly so did I truly I mean you're you're inspirational and you you bring out a lot of things that I don't talk about and thank you for doing that thank thank you for sharing it with the rest of us thank you so much thank you welcome thank you Oh

Channel: Valuetainment

Views: 206,765

Rating: 4.6732631 out of 5

Keywords: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur Motivation, Entrepreneur Advice, Startup Entrepreneurs, valuetainment, patrick bet david, robert shapiro, lawyer, oj simpson, legalzoom, legalzoom llc, oj simpson trial

Id: Im2mUZ9XhdQ

Length: 51min 9sec (3069 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018