Oct 13, 2024 | Season 1 Episode 25

Jason DeSouza

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About the Episode

In this episode of Celebrating Justice, we dive into the career and advocacy of Texas-based trial lawyer Jason DeSouza. From his beginnings in Toronto, Canada to settling into San Antonio, Texas, Jason shares his journey from considering tax litigation to becoming a champion for personal injury clients in underserved communities.

He recalls his transition to plaintiff work, driven by his passion for fighting against insurance companies and corporations that mistreat individuals who lack resources. Jason recounts powerful client stories, including how he once lent his personal car to a client in need and emphasizes how his blue-collar upbringing and family experiences motivate him to serve those who are often neglected by the system. In his Closing Argument, Jason highlights the reality of how corporations and insurers devalue human lives and explains his commitment to exposing their negligence in court.

Key Takeaways

Fighting for the Underserved: Jason’s mission is to represent those overlooked or mistreated by big business and insurance companies.
Career Shift to Personal Injury Law: His passion for advocacy and competition led him away from tax law into personal injury, where he could make a real impact.
Client Dedication: Jason goes above and beyond for clients, including lending his car to one in need.
Maintaining Personal Connections: Despite managing a growing firm, Jason ensures every client receives direct attention and support.
Exposing Corporate Negligence: In his closing argument, Jason stresses his commitment to holding corporations accountable for prioritizing profits over people.

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Transcript

[Theme Song Plays]

Jason DeSouza: They were just outright and openly hostile towards these people. The reason that I do this is that there’s so much mistreatment in the world from people who big business and government and insurance have decided their lives don’t really matter. “Settle this case.” He was like, “Jason, nobody would do that for me, man. Like you gave me your car.”

Narrator: Welcome to Celebrating Justice presented by the Trial Lawyers Journal and CloudLex, the next-gen legal cloud platform built exclusively for personal injury law. Hired by the nation’s top trial lawyers, share in the stories that shape our pursuit of justice. Follow the podcast and join our community at triallawyersjournal.com. Now here’s your host, editor of TLJ and VP of Marketing at CloudLex, Chad Sands.

Chad Sands: Welcome back, friends, to Celebrating Justice. In this episode, we hear stories from Texas-based trial lawyer, Jason DeSouza. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Jason thought a career in tax litigation or returning to Bay Street—the Canadian Wall Street—and making a ton of money doing financial wizardry was in his future. But he quickly realized his personality and advocacy were built for personal injury law. So I asked him, why did you want to become a trial lawyer?

Jason DeSouza: I originally wanted to be a lawyer when I was in college. And the reason why I wanted to be a lawyer is I had started a company in college selling entertainment lighting, theatrical lighting. So the stuff you’d see at a club or bars or wherever. And my dad was in manufacturing and he was like, this is a great business. They make tons of money. I was like, okay, great, great idea. Let’s do it. So I would go out and I would sell this theatrical entertainment lighting. And it was just a disaster. It wasn’t going anywhere. I wasn’t selling anything. Nobody knew what these items were. I was getting somewhere with some places. And one of the things that was continuously happening is people were negotiating me all the way down, all the way down, all the way down. Cause they just thought my prices were ridiculous. And we were, the work that I was doing was reselling. So I remember, I met with a bank and the bank just thought that my rate was ridiculous. And I remember driving back and I was like, you know, I’ll bet this never happens to lawyers, you know? And of course it does now that I’ve been practicing for as long as I have. It’s just like any other business.

Chad Sands: What about when you were a kid, you know, did you have any parents who were attorneys? Were you around lawyers as a kid?

Jason DeSouza: So I come from a blue-collar family. My dad and his brother owned a tool and die shop. So my dad’s a machinist. My mother, I guess in the eighties and nineties, you would call them secretaries, but she’s an admin assistant. Sure. Worked for the city of Toronto, and I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. So in college, I figured out, okay, well, I think being a lawyer is a good business to get into, but growing up, I always kind of got into scrums and got into fights and got into that type of thing. Not, not like a violent kid, but I just liked to, you know, mix it up a little bit and I thought, okay, well, being a lawyer and getting into this business where, you know, litigation at a minimum involves pushing your side and fighting for somebody and, and being enthusiastic about something and not really caring so much, you know, if you get, if you get a black eye. You know, and then as I, as I kind of got into it a little bit more, when I started, I realized that I think that my area that I would enjoy getting into based on my personality and based on what I enjoy doing would be being a plaintiff lawyer. And it’s one of these things where as a plaintiff lawyer, you’re rewarded based on your, your performance. And, and growing up, I played high school baseball. I’ve always enjoyed athletics, basketball, football, hockey, that type of thing. So I really enjoy the competitive aspect of things. I enjoy the performance-based aspect. I like the merit-based aspect of being a plaintiff lawyer, where if you don’t perform, then they’re going to laugh you out of the courtroom. Or unfortunately, you may go to trial more than you actually like. If your performance isn’t that good, working, you know, working it up. So that, that was kind of the genesis of like where I felt I could like target this personality and, and where to, where to put all these different personality aspects, was being a plaintiff lawyer, being a trial lawyer.

Chad Sands: So did you go straight into the plaintiff’s world after law school, or did you move around and try different practice areas or what was kind of your first job at a law school?

Jason DeSouza: So I thought that I should go work for an insurance company. So I applied to at least 400 insurance companies that were registered with TDI, Texas Department of Insurance. And I got a callback from like two of them. And the callback was, “I don’t know why you applied to us because we don’t hire lawyers.” So I ended up working for a guy here in San Antonio and I thought maybe I’ll get into tax litigation because, you know, taxes are never going to go anywhere. They’re always going to be around. People are always fighting taxes. So I showed up to his office and he’s like, “Oh man, you’ve got a great attitude, and you like to fight, and you’re real enthusiastic. I’m going to give you 25 of my worst cases in my firm that are going nowhere, you know, and I’ll pay you a really low salary, and I’ll give you 25 cases that are going nowhere. I really don’t even know how you’re going to fight your way out of these cases, but hey, you know, you do whatever you want to do. I’ll give you wide authority.” And they weren’t even tax-related. They were completely unrelated to tax. They were, you know, random breach of contract cases and, you know, just people fighting with each other, for no reason. And he was like, “But it gives me a good opportunity to focus on my tax practice while you take care of like 25 nuisance cases for me.” So I did that for about 15, 16 months. And then I got into plaintiff’s personal injury because one of his clients owned a law firm and they were making a bunch of money, and they needed a lawyer to kind of come in-house because they weren’t doing a whole lot of litigation at all. And I was like, okay, well, I guess it’s something to do. And it kind of just, it kind of just grabbed me because one of the things that I found working at the second law firm I was at was how much I was losing. I was just losing and losing and losing, and they didn’t care. These defense lawyers and these insurance companies didn’t care to be fair. They didn’t care to negotiate fairly. They didn’t care to respect my clients. They didn’t care to make fair offers. So, you know, I wouldn’t win in negotiations. We would take some depositions. They wouldn’t care what my clients had to say. They were just outright and openly hostile towards these people. And a lot of my clients were black, African American, Hispanic, low-income Hispanic, and I found it… You know, I mentioned my father’s a machinist, and my mother’s an admin assistant, and they were both born in India. And they told me how, what their experience was in dealing with insurance companies on their own. And they would always say, you know, “Jason, they hear our accent. And as soon as they hear our accent, they know that they can kind of play games with us and mess around because they know that quote-unquote, we’re not from here.” And I think that’s what really grabbed me. And kind of was like, hey, this is something that is, you know, my parents—I saw my parents get treated like this. And these people who… they’ve got a Hispanic accent, or you can tell maybe they’re working class, right? Or they come from a background that’s different than the white-collar background of the average insurance company. I thought this was great because these people need representation. They deserve representation. They’ve been hurt. They’ve been injured. And I can identify with them because I see my parents, and I see my uncles and aunties, and I see my cousins, and I see, you know, the people that I grew up with, you know, they’re exactly who I am.

Chad Sands: So your parents came from India to Toronto, and then you made your way ultimately to San Antonio?

Jason DeSouza: Yeah. So my dad moved to, he immigrated to Canada in 1973. His father was killed. Completely unrelated, but his father was killed in an accident, a workplace accident. And you know, they had a really tough time in India, and there was a German school that came over to train machinists in India. So he was actually planning to move to Germany until the last minute his visa to Germany was pulled, and then Canada just came out of nowhere. They’re like, “Hey man, we need machinists. We’ll take you.” So he moved to Canada in ‘73, then he married my mom in ‘79. And I mean, I had every intention of remaining in Toronto. But I guess I enjoyed college too much, so my GPA wasn’t quite there, and I found a law school that was like, “Hey, we’ll give you a shot, but it’s going to be tough for you to get out.” I went to Cooley Law School in Michigan, and they let everyone in and kind of let nobody out. It was a good reckoning for me, and it was good discipline for me. It was discipline that I hadn’t really—academic discipline—that I hadn’t really learned previously in my life. And then I met my wife there in Michigan, and I was like, it’s cold in Michigan, and she’s like, yeah, it’s cold in Michigan. I was like, it’s cold in Michigan, like give me one year in Texas. Just give me one year in Texas. And that was, you know, that was 2009 and here we are.

Chad Sands: I got to ask, out of those 25 cases you got from the tax guy, were you able to do anything with those that he was like, good luck with these?

Jason DeSouza: Oh yeah. So I actually, one of those cases, it was an eviction lawsuit. And I represented, I actually represented the landlord against a former tenant of his who owed him back rent. And I tried that case before I even got my bar card in the mail. And during that trial, it was like a three-day trial and somehow like my bar card arrived. I checked the mail one night and, you know, the judge, the JP is asking me my info, and I was like, I don’t even know my bar card number. I had to pull it out of my wallet, write it down. So I tried that. There was another case where it was like, these two shareholders… It was, there were three shareholders, one sold out to another one. I represented that guy and then he wanted to sue his former partner. She couldn’t afford a lawyer, so it was like a pro se case. I went to trial on that one and then I was actually getting ready to go to trial on another one. So they were getting resolved. I had one case where we went to mediation and I remember telling my client, I was like, “I’m going to go to the restroom. I’ll be right back.” I come back 10 minutes later, the guy has the case settled and he traded the other guy for like a used BMW, you know? And I’m like, “Dude, I was literally gone for 10 minutes and you got a used BMW? Like how are you going to pay me?” And he was like, “It’s a nice car, Jason. It’s a nice BMW.” Okay, perfect.

Chad Sands: So funny. A lot of PI attorneys down in Texas. How do you distinguish yourself from the competition? You know, what makes you unique?

Jason DeSouza: Well, for one, we don’t refer anything out. Yeah. So we originated our own cases through advertising, lead gen, doing events. For example, this Saturday, we’re going to give away 750 backpacks over five cities over the course of Saturday, little clear black backpacks, put the things in them, insert. So I get to shake the hands of people, meet people who are actually in these small towns. You know, you’re right. Texas is 100% overserved with PI lawyers, saturated. But nobody comes to these small towns. There are no PI lawyers who are dedicated to these small towns. So if I get a case from one of these little small towns in Texas, it stays in. I make a point to try to visit with at least five to 10 clients a week over Zoom. So we’ll have Zoom appointments. I mean, I run the firm. We’ve got about seven other lawyers that work here with me, but I make a point to get on Zoom with them, just talk to them about their case, talk about their injuries, talk about what their needs are, let them know that I’m here, that they can always talk to the boss whenever they need me. And we try cases, and if we lose, we lose, but we’re going to go to the mattresses, we’re going to go hard, we’re going to fight, we’re not going to back off. I have no interest in withdrawing from a case on the eve of trial. I personally vet all the cases that come in, so I know if something’s valid. So the lawyers who work with me, they trust me because they know that my eyeballs and my mind have already looked at the case. So, I make a point to have a real personal relationship with the client. So it’s been very helpful for my referral-based business. Because a lot of people who have been my clients or people who have referred their, you know, tias and their uncles and aunties and their friends over, they’ll say, “Hey man, Jason’s a great guy. You could text Jason right now. Don’t call him, because he’s not real good with phone calls, but you text him. That dude’s going to text you back in like under a minute.” I was in San Francisco last week. I went to go watch my Blue Jays play the Giants, and I didn’t get back until late. And I was texting with a new client at like 1:30 in the morning, which is 3:30 Texas time. And I was like, why am I even doing this? But you know, it is what it is. I love what I do. I think my passion comes through to people. I love representing people. I love fighting defense lawyers. I love fighting the insurance company. I love making a difference to people. I love getting people money that makes a difference in their lives, you know, like that allows them to buy the land they wanted, buy the ranch they wanted, buy the car they wanted, buy the house they wanted, allows them to move. Maybe, maybe they’re medically underserved in that small town, and they need a good settlement so they can move into like a bigger town to get access to better doctors, you know, pay for their kids’ college or even just like making a difference in their lives by treating them like normal, regular people that actually get looked at and served and taken care of. I think that people really feel that. They feel the energy, they feel the love, and when they feel that, and I make a point to make sure that that culture comes through the firm, and that we only have people here who love doing the job. And if they don’t love it, it’s all good, man. You can go elsewhere. Don’t worry about it. There’s no hard feelings. It’s all good. I get it. But you know, that’s not what our team’s about.

Chad Sands: Yeah. I actually saw on your website, one of your staff is a former client of yours, and then she came to work for the firm.

Jason DeSouza: Yes.

Chad Sands: Speaking of fighting for clients, I know it’s hard to choose one, but could you share a story about a case that you’ve had that had a significant impact on you and how you kind of approach what you do and work with clients?

Jason DeSouza: I guess if I had to pick a case, I would pick the first trucking case who hired me. And it was a bad 18-wheeler case. He’d gotten plowed into; he was driving his 18-wheeler. He was getting ready to make a right turn into a ranch. He got plowed into as he slowed down by another 18-wheeler out of California. And he was taken by ambulance to the scene. A lot of treatment, had multiple surgeries. Didn’t know me, came in because of one of my paralegals, Shelly, he knew Shelly. And I asked him at the beginning, I was like, “Dude, you don’t even know me.” And he’s like, “Hey man, I know Shelly. I know that you’ve already gotten on the phone with me twice in the past week personally. I know that you’ve taken the time to make sure that I’m seeing the right doctors. I know that you’ve asked me how I am.” After he got his surgery, he had, he ended up having a 360 fusion. I had actually just bought a car, and I hadn’t had a chance… I got low-balled on selling my car to the dealership. So I was like, you know what, I can—now I will just trade in cars. But before, you know, when you started the practice, it was real tight. And so I held onto my vehicle, and he needed a vehicle that he could get into. And I gave him my car. This Nissan Maxima that I had at the time. And I remember when we settled this case, he was like, “Jason, nobody would do that for me, man. Like, you gave me your car.” And I was like, “Of course I gave you my car, man. You needed a car, brother.” And I just remember that case because we collected the entirety of his liability and then he also had underinsured motorist coverage on it. And we collected a good chunk of that too. And I remember the mediator saying, “Nobody does this, man. Nobody gets like all the liability and then also comes back and collects the underinsured as well, or even tries to go after it.” And I said, “We’re just going to sit here, and we’re going to fight for him and do the best we can.” And him and I are still in contact. We still text every now and again, he refers me clients. I represent his brother right now on another 18-wheeler case out of Corpus. And every now and then, I just check in with him. And when we started the podcast, I wanted to… we were talking about the magazine. Well, one of the articles in the magazine was about referrals and how to get your referral sources hot again. Well, I was reading the article, and I was like, man, I haven’t talked to Rudy in a long time. So I texted Rudy, and I was like, “Hey Rudy, how you doing?” And he’s like, “Hey Jason, what’s up? What’s up?” And I was like, “Hey man, you know, I haven’t talked to you in a while, and I want to send you something to show you some love, you know, cause you know, I still love you, brother.” And he’s like, “Oh man, if you send me like a gift card to like Texas Roadhouse, I’m happy.” And I’m like, “Nah, no, no, no. I got some Astros tickets. I know you love the Astros.” So I sent him a pair of Astros tickets. And he was like, “Dude, you didn’t have to do that. You could have sent me like a Bill Miller gift card. I would’ve been happy,” you know? But yeah, so I just kind of think of Rudy because we took care of him really well. And if I treat every single client like they were my first client, like all my money and my practice was depending on that first client, that’s why I come back to Rudy, and I try to make sure that I treat everybody at the firm like Rudy—all my clients.

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Now, here is this episode’s closing argument.

Jason DeSouza: I’ll be brutally honest. A lot of times, when I hear lawyers answer the question of why you do what you do, they’ll say that one of the reasons—a big reason—is we make good money doing it. And in order to make good money doing anything, you’ve certainly got to love doing what you do. But if you love doing what you do, but you can’t really pay your bills, and you don’t come from money, it’s very difficult for you to love doing what you do because eventually, you’re going to hate doing it because you’re not making any money. So it’s very nice being able to treat your family to nice stuff and to have nice things. But I always thought, I think initially when I went to law school, that I was going to return to Toronto and work on the Canadian Wall Street, Bay Street, because I thought, you can take a JD, you can go work on Wall Street, do like financial wizardry, and you can make a ton of money. You can make a bunch of money, more than, you know, some of the richest lawyers. Apart from the money, the reason that I do what I do, and what motivates me to come to the office and work every day, is because there are people who are mistreated, and they’re not treated well. They might be mistreated by a manufacturer because the manufacturer just doesn’t care enough about the quality of its products or the type of people using its product. Or, you know, maybe it’s a vehicle manufacturer that cut corners on safety and seat back safety and rollover safety and microchips and that type of thing. Maybe it’s the company who is an oil field company, and they’ve put into place policies where if they go a certain number of days without a safety violation or an accident or an injury, everybody on the site gets bonused. So they decide that they’re going to put literal profits over safety. Or maybe you’re a mother of three, and you’re trying your best to go job to job, and you get rear-ended by a guy who is also just trying his best. The difference is, he drives a pickup truck, and you drive a Toyota Corolla. And he totals your Corolla. The insurance company says, “Hey, we’ll give you two grand for your Corolla.” What are you going to buy with $2,000? Nothing. You can’t buy anything. You can’t get anywhere. You can’t do anything. You can’t work anymore, right? The reason that I do this is that there’s so much mistreatment in the world of people who big business and government and insurance have decided their lives don’t really matter. These people don’t really matter. They’re disposable. They’re just consumers to us. Sell them whatever, build whatever, you know, meet the minimum regulations. That’s what gets me. And what pushes me along the way is the ability to hammer these companies and hammer them and expose them for who they are. The people who walk in my door—their lives are important to them. Their lives are important to their families. Their lives are important to me. Their lives matter, and their injuries matter, and the money that they receive matters.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Jason DeSouza. Thanks for sharing those stories. To learn more about Jason, visit his firm’s website, jfdlawfirm.com. Alright, I’m Chad Sands. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Narrator: You’ve been listening to Celebrating Justice, presented by CloudLex and the Trial Lawyers Journal. Remember, the stories don’t end here. Visit triallawyersjournal.com to become part of our community. Keep the conversation going. And for a deeper dive into the tools that empower personal injury law firms, visit cloudlex.com/tlj to learn more.

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