Adam Wolk

Show Notes

This episode of Celebrating Justice, we hear stories about the career journey of Adam Wolk, Chair of the Trial Team at Liakas Law, in New York City. 

Adam’s career is as unconventional as it is inspiring — he grew up with dreams of storytelling, originally through film, and found himself navigating life’s many detours, from driving a cab in Montauk to working on fishing boats. After some difficult crossroads and significant personal reflection, he eventually followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps and turned to a life law. But, for Adam, the courtroom has become a new kind of theater — a place where he can present powerful narratives on behalf of those who need their stories heard most.

Adam’s rich life experiences shape his deeply empathetic and determined approach to trial work. He’s a natural storyteller, but his approach is grounded in more than just charisma; he gets to know his clients intimately, meeting them where they are in their pain and vulnerability. Adam believes that the role of a trial attorney is more than seeking compensation — it’s about bringing justice to real people. Adam’s belief in what the American justice system can accomplish is clear: it’s not perfect, but it’s built to protect and support those who need it most.

Chapters

1:26 – Why did you want to become a trial lawyer?
1:19:45 – What makes you unique?
1:25:31 – A case that matters.
1:30:58 – Adam’s “Closing Argument”

Key Takeaways

• Unconventional Paths Lead to Purpose: Adam’s varied life journey taught him how to relate to people from all walks of life, which is invaluable in his work with juries.
• The Power of Storytelling in Law: Adam’s approach to trial law centers on storytelling, giving voice to those who have been hurt and emphasizing their humanity.
• Justice as a Communal Responsibility: Adam emphasizes that personal injury law keeps communities safer by holding wrongdoers accountable and incentivizing care and responsibility.
• Balance and Resilience in Practice: Adam’s career reflects the importance of perseverance, but also the need to take on challenges that align with personal values and family commitments.

Transcript

[Theme Song Plays]

Adam Wolk: In this country, when you’re hurt, what we do is very unique, and it’s beautiful. It’s really unknown what the value of this case is where somebody died; they died very quickly, and then the sister, who’s surviving, observed this person die. I wanted to be a storyteller. I really just loved films. I loved telling people stories.
So that’s what I wanted to do.

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. Get inspired by the nation’s top trial lawyers and 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 sit down with Adam Wolk, chair of the trial department at Liakas Law in New York City. Adam’s path to becoming a trial lawyer took many unexpected turns, from working in film production to becoming a fisherman to driving a cab in Montauk. His resilience in overcoming both personal and professional challenges has shaped him into the formidable presence he is in the courtroom today. To get to the stories, I asked him, why did you want to become a trial lawyer?

Adam Wolk: I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be a lawyer. My dad’s a lawyer; he does real estate transactions. My grandfather was some type of lawyer. He passed when I was young. I grew up wanting to play baseball for the Yankees, obviously, but then I wanted to do film and TV. I love movies. I was the president of my film club in high school. I went to a standard liberal arts college. I went to Colgate and got what I like to call my double BS major—my major in political science and philosophy/religion.

And after that, I said, you know what I want to do? I want to write and direct movies. I wanted to be a storyteller. I really just loved films. I loved telling people’s stories. I went to the New School. I went there at night; it was a two-year program that I did in one year. And it was learning how to tell a story, to write a screenplay, and also to use film.

It’s probably the last year they ever actually used film. Everything’s digital now. Nonetheless, I shot a short movie on film. So, I did that at night, and during the day, I worked at a law firm. Actually, I worked as a technology assistant at a big law firm, Kramer Levin, in New York City.
During that time, I spent my summers working in Montauk throughout college and into my time in film and TV, into my young twenties—mid-twenties, actually. I was at first a fisherman out in Montauk; I worked on the fishing boats. The Lazy Bones is a boat I worked on. I highly recommend it. The Viking Fleet is also a boat I worked on, and, you know, those were half-day, full-day trips where you got to interact with people and teach them how to fish.

Great job. Then I became a cab driver out in Montauk. The best, one of the best jobs — other than being a trial lawyer — a cab driver was just absolutely awesome. I did that for four summers and met so many interesting people. This is before Uber. Then I started working in film and TV. And if you know film and TV, you start at the bottom of the barrel, right?

So you’re the production assistant, a P.A., which really means you’ll do whatever they tell you to do. So, I worked on a couple of television shows as a production assistant. I Want to Work for Diddy was actually one of them. True Life was one of them. Now, I was behind the scenes in most of this stuff. In the sense that I would set up the dining room for food.

Chad Sands: You got to help Crafty set up. You got to put out the chairs for the director and the crew and sweep the floors before they start shooting.

Adam Wolk: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I’ll be honest—I thought it was pretty cool. You know what I was doing? I was managing to survive in New York City, working as a production assistant on these television shows. And then I got a cool opportunity to be a PA on this film called City Island. It’s a movie with Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies. I think this is now 2007, maybe into 2008. And I am the head production assistant on this film. Big feature.

Chad Sands: Like a big feature. You’re the head PA on a big feature.

Adam Wolk: Big feature. Real cool. I got a car and everything because I got to be there first, and I leave last. My first job was to install 14 air conditioners in the various houses we were using to film City Island and to house Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies and to make sure they’re comfortable. Listen, I’m a lot of things. I’m a fisherman. I’m a cab driver. I’m now an attorney, but I’m a New York kid—Jewish—not super handy with my hands other than tying fishing knots. So, suffice it to say, I was very concerned about installing 14 heavy-duty air conditioners.

Nonetheless, I was able to find a local assistant. This movie was filmed on City Island. I found an assistant, he assisted me, and I’ll never forget my first time meeting Andy Garcia. I’m installing the air conditioner in the place, in the house. I have no shirt on, and I’m a big cigarette smoker back then.

I was not the healthiest person in the world. And I see Andy Garcia comes over to me with the director. He sees I’m just, like, it must be spitzing, and it’s been a long day. They haven’t started shooting yet, and he sees I’m looking for something in my pockets. I didn’t even see him there.
He says, “What you looking for, kid?” And I was like, “Oh, I’m looking for a lighter.” And I turned over to Andy Garcia. He gave me the lighter. I never gave it back to him, though. He did, toward the end of filming, ask me for the lighter back. I lost it by that point, so he never got it back.
But anyway, I did that — great experience, but it wasn’t giving me what I wanted. What I wanted was to make enough money to be self-sufficient and to somehow get behind the camera, tell stories, direct, and move up from the P.A. who will do anything anybody needs, that will drive late at night, you know, yeah. And I just—the path wasn’t a straightforward one.

And it wasn’t happening. And I ended up actually getting an interview for Dog the Bounty Hunter, and it was Dog the Bounty Hunter. He was filming in Hawaii, and they were interviewing for a production manager. It was a massive job, one that I honestly was not qualified for. It was going from being a P.A. to managing the production.

I’d be in charge of lots of things. And I’ll be honest — I didn’t think I was qualified for it, but this was the opportunity, right? I was like, I’m going to make this move. I’m going to make this jump. This is going to pay me the money. I’m going to move to Hawaii. I’m going to get this big reality television show.

I’m going to be the head guy that runs it. And now my career is going to take off. That was the plan. And, you know, I didn’t get the job. I think I made it to the second round; I was one of the last two people interviewed, and I didn’t get it. And I remember it bothered me for a bit, but hindsight being 20/20, it was very good. As I think I hinted at when talking about my time on City Island, I wasn’t the healthiest individual at that point in my life, mid-twenties.

I don’t think going to Hawaii, being overwhelmed by work that I really wasn’t prepared for, would have been the right thing. So, I didn’t get it. I ended up getting fired from my job where I was getting all this TV work. That’s a story for another day as well. But at this point now I’m like, Oh my goodness, I’m living in New York City.

I’ve got a few thousand bucks in my account, you know, I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, to be honest. So, like any person would, I decided, well, let me go back to school, right? Like, I’ll be honest—I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My dad’s a lawyer. People had always said I was good at arguing.

I was like, you know what? I’ll go to law school. The real reason I went is because I saw it as, I’ve been working for four years; let me go to school for three years. The government’s going to pay, right? They’re going to pay for my housing. I’m going to get to live in New York City. I’m going to get to school in New York City.

They’ll pay for my computer, and I get to go to school for three years. Then I’ll worry about what I’m going to do with the degree and let alone paying back all this money the government has given me. Just to give everybody a timeframe, summer 2009, I think I make the decision. I’m going to study for the LSATs, and I’m going to talk about this because if there’s anybody out there listening that didn’t do well on their LSATs—persevere and continue pushing.

So, I’m going to study over the summer. Where do I go that summer? To Montauk to drive a cab. So, I go to Montauk, I drive a cab, I never study. I’m working like six nights a week, smoking cigarettes—not super healthy, not living the healthiest lifestyle. And I go and take the LSATs in, I think, September. They gave it, I remember, and I go and take it, and I didn’t think I did particularly well. Again, I was not the healthiest; I wasn’t thinking long-term. I was very much like, what’s the next move? What am I doing?

Chad Sands: Kind of the P.A. mindset. Like, what’s the next gig? How am I going to get paid, to pay my rent…

Adam Wolk: A hundred percent. And I got the score back. I remember—back when there were internet cafes—so I went to a Montauk internet cafe, you know, since I didn’t work during the day. My cab driving was 6 PM to 6 AM, so I’d sleep till 2, wake up, walk to the beach, do a little fishing. I look, and I’m like, one—it was like a 144 or something like that.

I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but I Googled it, and it was not. There were very few law schools, in fact, that would even consider you if you had that score. I think most of them were not accredited law schools. Some of them might have had religious undertones, I don’t know, but it wasn’t any of the ones that I would want to go to.

So, I said, I’m going to take it again, except this time I was going to study. So, I went home to Maryland where my family was that fall, studied for two months, did the Barbri course or whatever it was, if I remember correctly. Didn’t do particularly great, but I got a score that got me into law school, and I was happy.

So now, let’s say it’s January. I’m in law school starting next September, but I don’t know what I’m doing for the rest of the six months. So, I end up going to Colorado. I have a friend from Kramer Levin, a partner there who knew me, who was on the board of The Ritz-Carlton, and they had a timeshare out there, like a really, really nice hotel where it’s like $200,000 per week to stay there.

And I was going to be a bellhop. So, I do—I drive cross-country. I go out there, and, again, I’ve been hinting a little bit throughout this that I was not a healthy person. I might have had some dependency issues that needed to be addressed, and I was not addressing them. I go out to Colorado. I’m having a great time.

I’m skiing. I’m doing the bellhop job. Now, this is back when marijuana was not legal as it is today. And I was aware that I was going to be drug tested for this bellhop job. When I think back on this time, I wonder what I was thinking—not that much, really. I was thinking, I got to Colorado, I met some new people that were also working, and I thought, that joint looks really tasty.

So, I smoked some of that joint, and then I had to take a drug test. A month later, I get a call, and they say, “You know, Adam, you failed the test. Do you want to retake the test?” And I advised them that that would be bad for everybody involved. Nobody wants to see that, right?
Because also, I’m coming from New York where it’s not legal to Colorado where it’s legal. So, I don’t know what level they had me at when I first got there, but I’m at a higher level at this point. So, I say, “You know what? No, thank you. It’s been a great month. I’m going to reassess my situation.” And then I remember calling my father in tears, right?

I’m a little lost at this point. Sure, I have law school, but I’ve just been… I’m in Colorado, I’ve been fired, I was doing film and TV, now I’m not. And I know that I have a dependency issue. I’m not sure if my parents know yet, but I know that things aren’t going super well and going to law school isn’t going to fix them, right?

So, I go back to Maryland. I go out that summer to Montauk to drive a cab. And at that point, the first week out there, I realized that I’m not doing well. So, I call my parents, who had hinted at me that they’d always be willing to provide me help. Without going into details, that summer, I go back to Maryland, I get the help I need, and I say, “Okay, I’m going to law school.” And I remember people in, without going into the details, Narcotics Anonymous saying to me, “You know, Adam, you really shouldn’t go to law school now. You just got clean, and you’re really putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation.”

Chad Sands: Interesting—they were telling you that.

Adam Wolk: In fact, they actually told me not to go out to Montauk, right? Because I went to Montauk, realized I needed to go to rehab, went to Maryland, and got in my rehab. Then, I was like, now that I’m doing well, I need to go back out to Montauk and drive a cab because I love it out there. I love the fishing. I love the beach.

And if I can’t stay sober when I’m driving a cab at night and chilling during the day, then how the heck am I going to stay sober when I go to law school and have all this pressure? So, I say, you know what? Everybody says, “Don’t go back out to Montauk, don’t go to law school,” and I say, “No, that’s absolutely incorrect.”

I need to go out to Montauk to make sure that I can make it out there, and then I’ll be able to go to law school. I go out to Montauk, have a great summer, work two nights a week—this is like the last hurrah before Uber—so I’m working two nights a week, driving people from the Surf Lodge, making a thousand bucks a night, setting up all the dates with the girls I’m driving for when I move into the city in the fall and start law school.

Not joking. It’s great, right? And knock on wood, it was a good result. I made it, and I went to law school. But I do want to make a point that for five years after I got healthy, I used Suboxone, which is a medicine that is controversial. And I want everybody to know that if you are dependent on opiates or anything, for that matter, there is help. This medicine was a lifesaver for me; I would not be where I am today without it.

Chad Sands: And then, real quick, I could see them saying, “Hey, you shouldn’t go step back into driving a taxi in Montauk,” you know what I mean? “That’s not going to be a good environment—you might be exposed to some things.” But they actually said, “You shouldn’t be going to law school,” which hints that they already knew the substance abuse problems that happen for law students in law school. Do you think they were hinting at that?

Adam Wolk: I think that, you know, these people saw me that first summer when I came back. They saw me real low, right? They saw me… I remember I was at this Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and the first one I went to there after entering the outpatient rehab program.
And I remember I was there early, and I remember saying, “You know what’s crazy? I was just all day waiting for this meeting. This was the meeting I was looking forward to, and I haven’t slept in a day.” You know, I’m going through withdrawals, and I went to rehab, and it was a turnaround, to be honest. I was in outpatient rehab for six weeks. I was going to multiple NA meetings, and once I was on the Suboxone and on the program, I felt ready to push forward.

Chad Sands: So, you kind of gave up on the dream of making movies, had some cash from driving cabs all summer, had some dates lined up maybe for fall, and then you stepped into law school finally. What was that like? Where did you go? Who accepted you?

Adam Wolk: So, New York Law School accepted me. New York Law School is an awesome law school. It is New York’s law school. I’m going to tell you a little bit about law school and how awesome it is. But I just really want to highlight that New York Law School is awesome.
They threw me into internships and externships, which helped me figure out what I wanted to do as a lawyer because you think, right now, I didn’t even know I wanted to go to law school. I’m really going because I don’t know what else to do. I know I like to argue, but I don’t know what kind of law I’m going to do.

My dad was transactional, so I really don’t know. So, I go to law school. I get an apartment in the West Village. This sick apartment—one bedroom, Christopher and Waverly. It must have been a weird real estate year. It’s 2010. I don’t know how I got it. One bedroom, $1,600 a month—that’d be like $3,000 a month now, maybe even more.

I get the sick one bedroom, I can jump on the one train, zoom down to New York Law School. So, I go into law school, no idea what it’s about. I didn’t speak to my dad about it. I didn’t do research. I had no clue. I just knew that people said, “It’s hard, and you really got to work,” and I thought, “Okay.”

Oh, and I also knew you needed to get a study group. I remember that—you need a study group. So, I go to law school, and I’ll tell you two stories, which I think encapsulate my first year of law school. One is—and they’ll say this, and I think this, if there’s any form, anybody that has any sort of addiction will understand this—when you have an addiction, that addiction takes up your life, right?

That is what consumes you, hours of the day, how to get the substance, where you’re going to get it from, when it’s going to run out, what you’re going to do next. When you stop that, you have this huge void, right? Like, I used to spend eight hours of my day figuring out how I’m gonna get drugs. So it opens you up for other “addictions,” right?

They’ll say, don’t ever get in a relationship within a year after rehab because that will become the new addiction. Well, I went to law school, I met this really cute girl, I was still smoking cigarettes then, and her name was Annie. I met her, and she became my girlfriend, and we were together all throughout law school, and she was an awesome person, is an awesome person.
But she also required a lot of attention, and I say that in the best way. And that was good. I needed that—I needed somebody on me, watching me. I needed somebody that I felt I could help, and we pushed through together and went through law school. Eventually, we separated and went our own ways. She’s a successful lawyer. But anyway, she was my replacement.
Because it’s lots, lots and lots of work. So, at New York Law School, you’re put into a unit of 30 people, a small section, and you have some of the same classes. So, I’m put into this section, and I don’t really remember the circumstances, but I remember looking around at the 30 people. There was one guy—his name was Fabio—but I was like, “Oh, this guy knows what he’s talking about.”

I want to be in a study group with him. So, I go up to him after Civ Pro class with Molly Land, and next to him is this kid named Jared. I didn’t think that much of Jared at that point; didn’t know him very well, but he wasn’t impressing me or blowing my mind.

Chad Sands: Not like Fabio. 

Adam Wolk: No, me and Fabio were on that level. But I could tell when I went over and said to Fabio, with Jared right next to him, “Let’s do a study group. They say to do study groups. We should do it. I think you’d be a good member.” Fabio was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and then he looks over at Jared. And at that point, Jared’s like, “Can I be in the study group too?” And I’m like, of course you can, of course you can. So me, Jared and Fabio joined a study group. And then this is it gets even better. 

This other guy, I don’t remember his name, I’ll call him Mr. Banks. Mr. Banks comes up to me and says, “I’m looking for the best of this 30 people, and I think you’re it. I want to create what I call the A-team study group.” In the back of my mind, I’m like, well, first off, I already have this study group, which in your mind is probably the B-team, but you want me on the A-team?
Yeah, I don’t blame you. I like you already because you see what I have to offer, and who doesn’t like that, right? So I’m like, cool. The greatness, greatness, right? Obviously. So I’m like, A-team, that sounds good. Okay, let’s, let’s join in, Mr. Banks. And he brings on, forget who it was, another person, and this guy named Bobby Carroll, Bobby Carroll, who’s now a state senator for Brooklyn.

Great guy. Good friend. A-team material. Senator. A-team material. So we have this first A-team study group with Mr. Banks, me, Bobby, and somebody else who I don’t actually remember. And man, this Mr. Banks guy sure could pontificate a lot. But it was not helpful. I remember just, I didn’t know Bobby that well, but we’re starting to give each other eyes, like, what is this guy talking about?

Like, why are we here, and what can I do to not be here anymore? You know, I don’t, I don’t want to be here. I can tell you don’t want to be here, but I like Bobby at this point. So I’m like, you know what? You would be a good addition. I don’t know about this Jared guy, but Fabio is good. You’re going to be good.

And we’ll, we’ll bring Jared along. I promise no matter what. So we all joined the study group, and it’s awesome. We start studying, I guess, like we have all the same classes. So we have all the same exams and exam schedule. We all smoke cigarettes after class. We would get in one of the rooms in the law school, and we would just talk about the topic.

We would just go at it and at it and create these outlines. And I’m talking hours at a time. And then on the weekends, we’re getting together, and it’s known people see us as the study group, right? I’m trying to think. I’m a very intense guy at that point, much more intense than I am now.
And I’ll never forget being on the study on, like, the fifth floor. And we’re in our study group. It’s very clear we are in the stuff; we’re studying for exams. We are in it. And this nice person, Lindsey Blackard, comes along and has a question. And listen, me, Fabio, Jared, and Bobby, we talk, right? We talk during class. We were not quiet. So people, even if we don’t know what we’re talking about, people think we do. So if they have a question, they’re going to come over to us and be like, “Hey guys, what’s this?” So it’s like maybe this exam is in two days. And Bobby and everybody relays the story quite a bit whenever we’re together.
And he’s like, we’re on the fifth floor. It’s like a lunchroom area in New York Law School.

Chad Sands: Are you guys like smoking inside?

Adam Wolk: No, we’re not smoking inside. We did go to my West Village apartment one night. And Bobby still tells horror stories. It was like, we’re all smoking in the smallest apartment.
It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s like snowing out. And the floor is also angled, so every time you sit on the rolling chair, Bobby’s like rolling to the window. It’s really, really a scene that I think Bobby Carroll can paint perfectly well. 

Chad Sands: Yes. 

Adam Wolk: Nice person comes up to us and starts to ask a question. I think she might have gotten one or two words out, but I knew what she was doing. She was asking us a question, and I was not having any of that at this moment. So I just put my hand up to her face, looked at her, and said, “No, walk away.” Again, I’m not a mean, I’m not a mean guy. I didn’t mean to be mean. It probably came off super mean. And I think at some point later in my career, I crossed paths with her. And I’d be like, “Remember that time I just put my hand up to you and told you no?” You know, that’s like first-year law school stuff. That’s like, if you’re in law school, first year, you’re just trying to survive, figure out what the heck you’re going to do. You can understand and relate. We joined the study group. We had a great time. I got some good grades, and it was a success. I remember, I vividly remember, I’m living in the East Village. I’ve lost my place in the West Village. I’m in a studio apartment. Smaller than a studio. It’s tiny, and I’m walking by. There was a falafel place, and there was a Ray’s Pizza, and then you would hit Katz’s Deli, and I was walking. There was an ice cream place, Laboratorio Del Gelato, that was down at the end of Houston. And I was walking there. I remember passing Ray’s and getting the notification that the grades were in, and, like, I’m trying to remember if I had to call something or look it up online or whatever, but I got the grades and they were A’s, A minuses, and maybe a B plus or something like that.
Suffice to say, I got those, and that was very reassuring. That was awesome. Fabio tried to break apart the study group. But I said, no, I said, we’ll change things. We can’t. This is such a solid crew, but we can change things and we can adapt, and we did. And then the next year or the next semester, Fabio reached, you know, the same grades as us. And then whenever we happened to be in the same class for the rest of our time there, we would do study groups, so much so that we actually set the curve in our constitutional law. I can’t imagine how many other students hated us in that con law class because we would talk. We loved it. It was the professor. Francois was the man. It was awesome. We knew our stuff and we knew it really, really well. And when we all got A-pluses, I realized that we just screwed everybody else in our class.

Chad Sands: You’re the A-team, the true A-team though. Setting the bar.

Adam Wolk: Setting the bar. So now I’m in law school a year in, and I’m succeeding in law school, right? I’m supporting myself, or the government is supporting me. I’m not asking my parents for money. I made it through the first year, which they say is the toughest. And now it’s the summer, and I need to get an internship. And I decided I’m going to get an internship for every opportunity that I can while at law school because I don’t know what I want to do.
I interned at a real estate firm. I interned at a government waterfront commission. I interned at the Brooklyn DA’s office. I interned at a variety of places. All to say at year three, when you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to do, I knew that I wanted to work at the DA’s office. That’s what I wanted to do. I really enjoyed my time working at the Brooklyn DA’s office as an intern. It seemed like one of the few jobs where you’re going to get a lot of responsibility at a young age as a new lawyer. And I always was approaching life, and I guess my career path, as I value experience over money, at least initially. So I knew you didn’t get paid well as a prosecutor, but I wanted to be one.

Chad Sands: And do you think that exposure to all those different internships helped clarify your path forward and what you really wanted to focus on?

Adam Wolk: 1000%. Practical experience is the best experience. That’s the only way you’re going to figure out what you like and what you don’t like.
And while I found big firm real estate stuff tolerable, and I thought that government work was tolerable, I never loved writing. I like it now more because I use it for something I want to do, which is trials. But generally, writing was not something I wanted to do. Not a big data guy, more a big-picture storyteller guy. And I knew what did appeal to me was the DA’s office. Again, I didn’t know that much, but I knew that’s what I wanted to do. So you start applying to all these DA’s offices. You apply to Queens, Bronx, Kings, all of them. And it’s a really, really, really long interview process. I think back then it was probably the most sought-after job because if you want to get experience and do trials, that’s where a public defender is the place to get the experience.

So I apply to all the jobs. I go through all the interviews. Some I make it to the second round, the third round, but I don’t get it. Very frustrating. Neither does my friend, Jared. Fabio got it. Fabio got the Bronx DA. Jared didn’t get anything, I didn’t get anything, and Bobby Carroll, I think, had no interest in being a prosecutor. He was helping his dad out, who did landlord-tenant.
And he knew he was going to do politics and theater and so on and so forth. So I’m disappointed. We’re just like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? I think I jinxed it too, because it was Jared’s birthday in March, and we were waiting to hear if we got the job.
So I remember giving him a birthday cake. He lived, I lived on Avenue C between 9th and 10th, and he lived on 14th and C, and I walked over there with a birthday cake, and it said ADA Jared Mobile. And then I think two days later he got the rejection letters or all of them. And I was like, it’s my fault. I jinxed you.

Chad Sands: So every year you give him that cake still?

Adam Wolk: Well, no, no way. Because I’m not going to let my friends down. I’m not going to do it. So what happens is I now don’t have a job, right? I study for the bar. I pass the bar. And my dad knows a solo practitioner in Long Island that can hire me to do some drafting and whatnot.
So I go out there. I go out there—that’s my job—my first job, September 2013. And I’m going out to somewhere in Long Island, the Long Island Railroad, working for this very nice gentleman, Mark Melman, a really good attorney, but I wasn’t loving it. You know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I had this law degree, but I was like, I don’t know what am I doing with it?

And this, this is not what I want to be doing with it. There was an election going on in Brooklyn at that point. Charles Joe Hines, who had been the DA in Brooklyn for 40 something years, was running against this individual named Ken Thompson. He was also running against an individual named Abe George.

Abe George, I had been introduced to randomly a year and a half prior through a court attorney that I worked for when I worked for a New York County Supreme Court criminal court court attorney knew this guy, Abe. He was running for DA also. And somehow I got invited to his opening campaign event where I met him.

Fast forward, it’s September a year later, and I’m looking in the newspaper. I think it’s a New York Post. And I see this article about Ken Thompson winning the primary against Joe Hines, Abe George withdrawing from the race and throwing his support behind Ken Thompson, and then I see a note that Charles Hines is thinking about running on the Republican ticket in November. So Ken would actually have to oppose him. So I call, I call my dad and I remember saying, do I just ask to become a part? Do I call Abe George and say, Hey, can I come help out and just totally drop this Melman thing?

And my father, he told me a story where he had an opportunity to do something he didn’t. So he said, no, if you have the opportunity, you should take it. So I called Abe George up, and I said, “Hey, you know, you remember me and my name’s Adam. Can I help in any way?” And Ken Thompson, he said, “You know, in fact, you, we really actually need help because we thought we were done, but Hines just switched sides.” So we have a whole other three-month campaign…

Chad Sands: Right?

Adam Wolk: So I stopped going to Long Island and go to Fulton Street in Brooklyn, where we’re opening a campaign office for the general election. And I remember that first day my job was to take a paint scraper and peel off the name of whatever salon this place was before, to put up the, you know, the Ken Thompson campaign.

Chad Sands: It’s like you’re almost back to being a production assistant now.

Adam Wolk: 100%. I mean, I am, I’m, I’m organizing events, I’m getting volunteers. Now I meet Ken Thompson and realize that, like, this is my full-time gig. I’m not making much, though I think they ended up paying me, not a lot, but I got a small position where I actually got paid.
And I knew that if I did a good job, I would have the opportunity to interview for a position at Brooklyn. My hope was that I would get the job, knowing that my friend Jared wanted to do it as well. You have to realize there are events every weekend, marches, races, all these things. I didn’t have a car, but Jared did, and he had a job during the week. So I said, Jared, I think with you and your car, we can make it work. I’ll get you some face time with Ken, you’ll become a, on the weekends, you’re just going to dedicate to us, and let’s see how it works out. I also did the same thing with my friend Katie Lee Wright, who also got to come and do some time on the campaign. Fast forward, we win.

Fast forward, I interview for it. I get it. And I don’t know why Mr. Thompson didn’t give Jared or Katie Lee the job when he gave me the job. I got the job in November, maybe a month after we won the election, and I was starting in February. And still not Jared and Katie Lee. They interview, but they don’t hear anything. Then a week before we’re scheduled to start, I get a text back-to-back from Katie Lee and Jared, each saying, we just got the call, we’re starting next week. Thank you. I’m not going to thank me, you know, but they got the job. We all started at the DA’s office, and that’s how I got my foot in the door to the DA’s office.

Chad Sands: And you guys all started that February after the election in November?

Adam Wolk: Correct.

Chad Sands: So you started in the DA’s office. Was that your first step into the courtroom?

Adam Wolk: That was my first step into the courtroom. I was a line assistant. I have so much respect for police officers and all law enforcement officers, but I’m a liberal stoner from New York. I didn’t love cops. Like, just didn’t, didn’t love them. Now I love them because I’ve worked with them, right? Now I totally appreciate it and have the utmost respect.

But I remember my job was to tell cops, when they’d come in on these drug arrests, “Yeah, you didn’t have probable cause; you didn’t do the right thing.” Right? So, “Sorry, Officer, but bye-bye.” I remember I liked that too much. A prosecutor shouldn’t like telling the officers tough news that much, but I did. I enjoyed it. So I did that. Then I went to being a line assistant, and I did a bench trial, which was cool. That was my first trial. It was in front of Judge Chang, who was also a Colgate graduate, really respected judge, might be on the appellate court now, I’m not sure. And it was an assault case between two people who lived in an apartment building.
I forget the details, but it was a silly little, not silly—somebody hit somebody else with, like, a chain and they were hurt. And I did a trial in front of the judge. And I remember loving it. And I remember, I think the defendant got, like, a violation or something. The judge was a fine result, whatever it may be. But I remember the judge saying, “You know, I look forward to seeing more from you. You did really well,” and I enjoyed it. But again, it was just a bench trial. So, you know, we’ll see.

Then I get my first jury trial. So it’s a DWI case. And very briefly, what happened is the defendant was driving drunk, and she sideswipes, let’s call the guy John. She sideswipes John and continues driving. Now John follows her, sees her park in front of this house, and sees her go into the house. John calls the police. The police come, and the defendant, who was driving drunk—she’s a woman—is inside, and her husband is outside. Long story short, they finally get her to come out. The eyewitness is like, yeah, that’s the one that hit my car. They try to get her to do a breathalyzer. She refuses and is arrested. So that’s the case. The case is a DWI refusal case. There’s no blood alcohol content level. It’s an ID case, meaning the police officer didn’t see her driving, right?

Chad Sands: What puts her in the car is this eyewitness who got sideswiped and then followed her.

Adam Wolk: Exactly, exactly. And this eyewitness was from Bed-Stuy and did not like law enforcement. And I am law enforcement; I’m a prosecutor, right? So I remember trying to call him when I got the case because I had the eyewitness number, and it took me weeks to get in touch with him. Then I met him in a Dunkin’ Donuts and chatted with him. He’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to testify. I’m going to testify.” So anyway, we start the trial, and the defense is that she wasn’t driving; it was the husband. The husband was going to take the fall. He was going to say he was driving.

Chad Sands: He was outside when the cops came, you know.

Adam Wolk: Correct, correct. So, I present a good case. I present the officer who arrests her when she refuses. I have her testify, and she says, no, no, it wasn’t me; it was my husband. I call the husband; I subpoena him, obviously. All-female jury, six jurors. The husband was convicted of rape of a stranger in a subway in the 1970s.

Oh, so I remember two things. One is I got to, when he said he was wrong, he was driving the car, not his wife, I got to ask him a question like, “Well, were you wearing a dress?” Because I knew my witness was going to say the person was wearing a dress. And then I remember saying to him, “Also, just so everybody knows, you were convicted of raping somebody in 1970, a stranger in the subway. Isn’t that true?” Yes. “And that was against the law, right?” Right. I was like, “And so there’s nothing to say you’re not lying and breaking your oath right now for your wife, who you love, when you would rape somebody who’s a random person.” And suffice it to say, it discredited any of his testimony. But still, it’s not a closed deal because I have yet to get John to the stand.

John is MIA. Yeah, I’ve told the judge, Judge Quinones, that I’m trying to get John, I think I’m going to get John, and I’m going to have John tomorrow or she’s closing the case. My case is done. Now, I promised John to the jury. And without John, honestly, I may have a sustainable case that doesn’t lose a directed verdict.
But I think the judge would have dismissed it because there’s the ID; there’s really an ID missing. So I need John. So I text John and say to him, some attorney says, “You know, why don’t you mention to him that if she’s convicted criminally, it’ll help him civilly if he ever wants to sue her.”

Chad Sands: Right.

Adam Wolk: So I said that to him. I set him up with a car for the next day. The car picked him up. He showed up, gave the testimony, and that was it. And I remember the defense counsel, who was a really nice guy, Darren Winslow, who’s now way up there in the defense bar, he was like, “I believe my client when she says it wasn’t her, but now I know she was lying to me the whole time.” Clearly, you know, “Can we plead guilty? I want to plead guilty to the top charge.” Now I don’t know, and this was not my call, so I’m not really particularly worried, but I remember I told that to my supervisor. I won’t say the name of the supervisor; it wasn’t the right move.
And I said, “They want to plead guilty. Now the jury’s out. They want to plead guilty to the top count.” My supervisor was like, “Nah, nah, nah. We’re getting this verdict. We’re going to hear what the jury has to say,” which I don’t know if that’s okay, to be honest, because if you want to plead to the top count, I think you have the right to do that. But we didn’t; we wanted to hear what the jury said. So we said no. “Sorry, we’re going to wait for the jury.” And the jury came back unanimous, you know, guilty. And then the defense counsel was like, “Please don’t ask for jail, all this stuff.” And I was like, “I’m not going to ask for jail, don’t worry.” You know, clearly, I want her to get some help that she needs and don’t worry. So I do that trial, and it was great. It was a win, and I was hooked. I mean, I was hooked. I loved it. I remember being in front of that jury and I’m not blacking out, but like, you get lost in it. And I had a seasoned co-counsel because you’re not doing it alone, and she said something to me. She’s like, “Wow, you’re, you’re like a young [experienced supervisor].” She was referencing one of the respected supervisors in the DA’s office who’s like the homicide attorney. She said, “You’re really, you’re good. You have a natural ability to speak to the jury.” And it was fun. I like winning, and I like doing things that people say I’m good at. And this was a lot of work. I mean, hours and hours and hours of work. It was also awesome work. Like, it was fun. I remember the morning of my opening, I was a single guy, and I met this girl, Natalia, and I had this great, three-month thing with Natalia. And the morning of my opening, I’m with Natalia and I start reading to her this opening. I’m so into it, and I remember, I didn’t really think about this until years later, but I remember Natalia being like, “Wow, it’s so awesome that you’re so excited about what you’re going to do,” you know? And I remember she reiterated that a few months later when she broke up with me. “You know, you really…” But I remember doing the opening. I remember getting to the office, and I remember being outside of the office before I went in, getting ready to take everybody to court, like, practicing my closing. Like I’m an actor. Some people were like, “What are you doing?” And I guess that was weird—not everybody does it—but that’s what I did.

So I lasted there about three and a half years. I did a few more trials, and then I wanted to… I was in the grand jury for a year, which was great. And I could tell a whole bunch of podcasts about that, but I will say this: There was a juror on one of the juries. They sit for two weeks. Her name was Alexandra. And her name now is Mrs. Wolk, let’s just say that. She was a grand juror. I waited for her to be dismissed off the jury and then, using a dating app that uses proximity, I was able to find her and then date her, marry her. We now have a kid together. We have twins due in a couple of months. So every time I’m like, “Why did I ever become a lawyer?” I realize that I wouldn’t have met Alex in the grand jury if I wasn’t a lawyer. And she says I waited 20 minutes or maybe five minutes after she was discharged. I thought it was like two hours.

Then I realized that, okay, I met somebody. I need to start thinking a bit more long term. So let me get some other skills. And I saw that in addition to being a prosecutor and getting experience in trial, a way to make yourself very viable to outside job prospects is to do wiretaps and long-term investigations, because it’s a whole other skill set. Long story short, I went into this long investigation unit. It was interesting. I did a wiretap. We took down this 36-person, uh, chain throughout Brooklyn. This was before fentanyl was what it is now. And it was awesome. It was great. Lots of work, all behind the scenes, ’cause it’s a lot of wiretap listening, but it also made me realize, okay, this is great and I could do the hours of work and reviewing the wiretap and all the stuff, but I don’t love it. And I really don’t love it because I know the evidence at the end of this is so strong that nobody’s ever going to trial, right? So there’s just no trial at the end of this. There’s me gathering evidence, and there are cool aspects of it, right? I listen to a wiretap, and I’m like, “Oh, they’re doing a drug deal here. This, we should bust them.” And I call my cop guys and say, “Go over there, when this car comes.” It’s cool—definitely good stories—but on a day-to-day, it’s definitely not fulfilling or exciting the way I want it.

So I wanted to go back to be a line assistant, and the DA said I needed to wait six months. I didn’t want to wait six months. So I had my buddy Jeremy, who I went to Colgate with, who was the best man at my wedding—not yet at that point, but he ended up being the best man at my wedding. And he was a lawyer working for Liberty Mutual in-house as an insurance defense attorney. And the way he described it to me was he did depositions every day. He had a caseload, but he was doing depositions and then trials.

Chad Sands: Yeah.

Adam Wolk: And to be honest, depositions are great, but like now it’s not super exciting to do a deposition. I’d rather, like, unless it’s for my trial, I’d rather concentrate on my trial. But back then, when I was spending days listening to a wiretap, typing up probable cause affidavits to get the wiretap extended, listening to the various ways you can identify crack as cronk, crack, crick, whatever they call it, and just figuring out their sort of code language, I was like, this is not what I want to do. And the prospect of doing a deposition every day in a car accident case sounded super appealing.

So I go for an interview with Mr. Harris. He’s also a Colgate grad. I remember thinking the interview went great. I remember just being like, this seems cool. He’s like, “Why do you want to do this?” I was like, “Honestly, this seems like I get trial experience, I’m going to learn the civil field, and be on my feet.”

And this seems like a good gig. Albeit, it paid very little, but it was a way to get really good experience. He says, “Oh, you’re not going to hear for a few weeks.” Then Jeremy calls me and says, “No, no, no, the interview went really well. He’s going to offer you the job tomorrow.” And that was how I went from criminal to civil, because I always heard that if you stay in criminal too long, you’re going to get stuck. And I see that in some of my friends, and I don’t mean stuck in a bad way. If I could still do criminal, I honestly would, if I was independently wealthy, and could spend my days making sure violent people are in jail. But more importantly, making sure that people who we look at as criminals are afforded the help necessary to allow them to not be criminals, right? The alternative programs, sentencing, all that stuff, I could do that. I would, right? But I can’t because I’m not independently wealthy. And my father and my grandfather, while great lawyers, were not making generational wealth. So here I am. So I said, I gotta figure this out. I think the increase in salary was like $10,000. It was really not a lot, but it was the experience that I was getting. Yes. And now I’m working for a big insurance company, Liberty Mutual. And I remember thinking, this is great, right, because I don’t know what I’m doing with civil, and I’m going to go do these trials. And if my clients lose, boo-hoo, big Liberty Mutual needs to pay, right?

Like, my clients are the ones that caused the accident, most likely, or so the plaintiffs are saying. So whatever, if they lose, it’s not like my client’s going to pay; it’s Liberty Mutual that’s going to pay. And it was great. I mean, they threw me right into the fire. I was doing depositions every day, going to court every day. This is, like, now 2017. It is an insurance job, so after court, I’m usually able to work remotely. It was a really nice lifestyle. Me and Jeremy had a lot of afternoon work days together where we were doing everything. But I remember we saw Mission Impossible once on one of our workdays. We worked in the morning, went to court, and then we were like, “Mission Impossible.”

Listen, you get what you pay for, right? But I also, when it came to trial, if I had a trial, I’m working my butt off, right? I don’t know about Jeremy, to be honest. I feel like he was prepping it on the subway there. But I worked because I wanted, I was wanting to kick some butt. This is the craft. This is it. So I would prep, prep, prep, prep, prep for these hundred-thousand-dollar cases, $50,000 cases.

Maybe I had a $500,000 case. Car accidents, trip and falls. And I went on a run. I got six defense verdicts in a row. I remember, after the sixth one, I go up to this nice plaintiff counsel, who I still see sometimes now. He looks at me when I come in and says, “Not you, come on, man, not you,” because I cared. And I was going to go that extra mile. And most of the defense counsel didn’t care that much, nor should they, honestly. Most of the plaintiffs are hurt. The defendant’s insurance companies should pay. But when I worked for the defense, the plaintiffs were faking it all. It’s all BS. You’re all trying to game the system. Don’t let them do that. And my job for a year was telling injured people, “You’re not injured.” And I was really good at it, and I won, and I prevented a lot of plaintiff’s attorneys from making money. And when I think about it, I probably… There’s probably some injured clients that, because of my strong advocacy, didn’t get compensation. I was a better attorney than their attorney, and I won.

Adam Wolk: So I’m doing this. I’m loving it. It’s great. I’m making like $70-something thousand. I calculate that I’ve saved Liberty Mutual $3.4 million or something like that. I go through all my verdicts, and I’m like, okay, the exposure was like 4 million, and they ended up paying $120,000. So, theoretically, you know, I saved you guys $3.7 million. I think I was getting paid $74,000, so I thought I could survive on $90,000. So I said, I would like a $16,000 raise. They offered me a gift card. So I’m like, okay, that’s not going to work. What do I do?

I had my friend, Mark Battipaglia, who I knew from law school, see me in court one random morning. And he’s like, “I work at a plaintiff’s firm, Rubenstein & Rynecki. One of our main trial guys just got let go. So we need a trial guy. You should interview.” So I remember going back home to my wife, and I’d sort of… Not that I drank the Kool-Aid exactly, but I was a criminal guy putting criminals away, then I was an insurance defense guy making sure people weren’t gaming the system and accusing my innocent clients and making money off of injuries that didn’t really happen.

So in my mind, it’s always been like, plaintiffs? That’s some crazy stuff. I mean, they’re crazy people, and it’s a crazy world. They’re all making stuff up. And I don’t want to be a slimy plaintiff’s attorney, but I do need money. And I started thinking, they say if you make it in New York, you make it anywhere, right? So I was like, it could be kind of cool to at least see what the plaintiff’s side is about, right? See what it’s about. Worst case, the insurance companies, they aren’t going anywhere. I could always go back to, you know, the big corporation.

So I decided to take the leap of faith, and I go interview at Rubenstein & Rynecki. I’m making $76,000, and I ask for $125,000. And I remember Mr. Rynecki saying, “Okay,” like immediately. I was like, “But… what?” Now to me, like, I’d always imagined that I would be happy and able to afford my lifestyle if I could make $120,000 a year. My wife would work; we don’t need to be rich, but we’ll survive. Now, that’s not close to enough money to survive in New York City. I didn’t really know that yet. I’m thinking, $125,000? Whoa. My wife’s like, whoa. She’s already asking if she can now become a Pilates instructor. We’re holding off on that because she’s always wanted to do that. And I take the job.

And it is Rubenstein & Rynecki, a great firm, great people. It is the antithesis of a New York plaintiff’s firm with real cases. There are plaintiff’s firms that are mills, and then there are plaintiff’s firms that have the vibe of a plaintiff’s firm but are actually fighting for your rights, with real cases, and that’s what this firm was. We did a lot of civil rights work. You weren’t assigned any case; it was everybody’s cases. So I was seeing different cases every day—slip-and-falls, car accidents, police brutality cases, all this stuff.

Then finally I get my first trial, and it’s a rear-end car accident in Queens, with a 55-year-old plaintiff who is a teacher and missing days from school. But at the end of the day, it’s a soft tissue case—a bulging disc on a 60-something-year-old with one injection. And it was an awesome trial, and it was fun, and I got into it, and they awarded $120,000, and everybody was super happy. And that’s when I was like, okay, this is awesome. This is more fun than the defense side.

Now, I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I did a couple more trials there. I won one, I lost two. I’ll never forget—one was in Staten Island, and it was a slip-and-fall at a Speedway gas station. I forget what the client’s name was, but I told him from the get-go, he was a gay Black guy, and I said, “They’re not going to like you in Staten Island.”

Listen, it is my job to convince people, so I have to take people for who they are. Staten Island’s full of police officers, FDNY officers. It’s a great jury pool for certain plaintiffs and not a good jury pool for other plaintiffs. I told this guy, “You’re going to lose. I don’t care. I’m looking at this jury. I think we have a good case. I’m going to present it well, but you’re going to lose. Take the offer.”

I go and do my job. And at that point, I’m good. I’m a little more showboaty, so maybe I even appear better than I actually am. But I remember leaving court the first day, and my client was like, “You’re amazing. You’re a rock star. We’re going to kick their butt.” And I was like, “Dude, take the money.”

A wise attorney once said to me that if you’re a trial attorney and you never lose any of your trials, you should probably get a different career. If you’re a trial attorney who wins all of their trials, you’re a cherry picker. I definitely learn more from the cases I lose than from the cases I win, and it helps to make me a better lawyer every single time.

So now I’m doing this standard PI stuff in New York City, and I get an email from a headhunter. It was a grabbing subject line in LinkedIn. I forget what it was, but it grabbed me. So I looked at it, and essentially it was a weird job posting. It was a job posting for an asbestos trial attorney. They wanted a trial person; they didn’t want you to know about asbestos. And the job would be to travel throughout New York State doing asbestos trials, initially with someone who’d been doing it for a long time, and then eventually on your own. And I didn’t know much about asbestos, but I knew that it’s high-end litigation, that it’s serious, that people are dying, and I knew that I had now gotten a taste of criminal work from the DA’s office, insurance defense from Liberty, and plaintiff’s work from Rubenstein. And I’m like, this seems like a cool opportunity. Traveling sounds interesting for work, and I want to hone my skill set, and I want to have someone to look up to because I know I still have so much to learn.

So I take the job. I leave where I’m very happy, at Rubenstein. I get a significant increase in my salary, and my job is to learn asbestos. I’m going to spend a little time talking about this because it’s a really interesting job. So I get hired, and I really don’t know what my job is. There’s this guy, James Long, who’s like a 70-year-old trial attorney, used to be a prosecutor in Philly, then was like the head guy at Weitz & Luxenberg, and now he’s at Belluck & Fox, which is where I worked. He’d been doing asbestos trials throughout New York for the last 10 years, and he was looking to retire, and I’m going to learn it. Great guy, great attorney, but he’s set in his ways. He doesn’t use technology, and he’s not the most amazing teacher. No negative—he’s a great guy and a great teacher when I was on trial with him, but day to day, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. So I read. Literally, I just read about asbestos, and then I read transcripts. I spent the first like four months just reading asbestos trial after asbestos trial after asbestos trial.

We end up finally getting on trial. This is February 2020. It’s my first asbestos trial. I’m really just the second seat, but asbestos is a horrible naturally occurring fiber that causes cancer that is incurable. When we take on these cases, either the person is dead or dying, and I’m speaking with them as they die, or I’m speaking with their spouse. So this was a case where the individual was dead, so I remember going to Philadelphia with James to meet the wife and the daughter, and I observed him speak with them, and we spoke for a couple of hours.

And then we go and do the trial. And it’s in Philly, and I do a direct with the daughter about what it was like to care for her father. I remember, towards the end, I mean, it’s just really tough stuff that you have to listen to, and the jury has to understand it, but it’s really hard stuff. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the jury pool after that testimony. We ended up losing the case—don’t need to go into the details why—but then COVID hit. So I got this one taste of trial in Philadelphia, asbestos, then COVID hits, and I’m one of the newest people at the firm, so I’m let go. Not let go—I’m furloughed. Furloughed, that’s the word. I’m furloughed.

Yes, but it’s COVID time, and I mean, clearly, I don’t mind not working. I went to law school and didn’t work, so like the government’s gonna pay me money. I’m chilling with my—she’s my wife at this point. We’re living in Greenpoint. Okay, you know, whatever. I’m not working, but I’m getting money from the government, and eventually, I get a call back four months later, and I come back.

So I come back. James is gone. They’ve hired this guy named Adam Cooper, who’s a rockstar asbestos attorney from Weitz & Luxenberg, nationally known, really cool that he’s there, but I don’t think they told him why they hired me. I don’t think they told him that I was told I’m the trial guy and I’m going to learn trial work. So I remember coming back from COVID and feeling things out with this guy, Cooper. And he wasn’t really giving me much to work with, so finally I went to his office and was like, “Yo, I’m the trial person. You need to train me. I didn’t come here to not do trials. I don’t know what they told you, but unless you’re going to teach me how to do these trials, I’m not staying here.”
Right. I’m willing to work. I admit, I don’t know much, but you need to incorporate me and involve me. And I think he was a little taken aback, but he did—he incorporated me. He was super into technology; he had a whole system, and he was able to teach me how to present an asbestos case. The medical records are voluminous; the records with respect to the corporate defendants are voluminous, but anyway, from that, I learned how to try a case and my job.
In the asbestos world, and for the two or three years that I did this with Mr. Cooper, my job was to present the witness testimony of, if the person who has the disease is alive, of the person and of their loved ones. From that testimony, I need to establish the liability of the defendant.
Meaning, did the defendant’s product expose my client to a level of asbestos sufficient to cause his disease? And then once I prove that, it’s all about pain and suffering. It’s all about telling my client’s life story and making the jury understand that this disease has taken everything away from him and is going to make him leave this earth much earlier than he ever wanted.
And it’s tough testimony, but that was my job. He did the science; my job was to tell the story of the victims, for lack of a better term. And I’ll be honest, I dealt with some death cases in the DA’s office, but this is pretty heavy stuff. Now I’m at my first trial.

It’s the first trial; it’s in the middle of COVID. They’re doing trials in upstate, and I get told that the trial is this: There was a 32-year-old kid who was autistic and nonverbal, and his father worked for Mack Trucks on the brake pads or something.

When the kid was a baby, three years ago or two years ago, something was clearly not right. The parents knew something was wrong, so they took him to the doctor and found out that he had been exposed to asbestos. The father would come home when the kid was a baby, all the asbestos all over him, hug him.

And that’s enough exposure. The father had passed away by this point, and the autistic son had passed away. I’m blanking on the town in upstate New York, but I’m going up there. The trial is scheduled for two months in Saratoga, and my job is to go up there and get to know these people. I need to know the father and the mother.

Chad Sands: And the father’s still alive? He didn’t get infected?

Adam Wolk: Father didn’t get infected; father’s fine. My job is to go to them, learn about their life, and learn about their son’s life. I decide immediately that this is not something that can be accomplished in an hour, let alone one day.

So I decide to go up there for three days. I’ll stay at a hotel and go there for a few hours the first day, a few hours the second day, and a few hours the third day, and speak about their son and their observations of him. I speak about what the father experiences, knowing that his job, which he thought was supporting his family, essentially killed his family.

I mean, it’s really horrible stuff, but this is what you need to do. My job is to tell their life story, and that’s what I did for the next two and a half years. I would fly around the country, spending multiple days with victims of asbestos exposure to learn their story and get them comfortable enough to speak with me.

Then I would formulate that into a direct. That first case was a horrible situation. We prepped the case, I think I gave my opening to some of the defendants, and eventually, it settled during jury selection. My next big trial was in Seattle, where I had to go. I went to Seattle and met this guy, Mr. Viglietta. He was a lawyer. He went to school upstate in Buffalo. One summer in college, he worked at this factory. Then he went to law school and became a member of JAG. I mean, he’s a great, awesome guy, and he ended up getting diagnosed with mesothelioma in his seventies from that one summer in upstate New York.

So I flew out to Seattle and spent three days with him and his wife because I needed him to identify the defendant. His testimony was not just about all the pain and suffering he was going through; it was about identifying the defendant. I remember that being a really impactful experience for me. One, because it was me speaking to this gentleman, who was very articulate, intelligent, and able to express his emotions better than the other clients I had spoken with. And he’s dying, and he has an awesome wife, and he’s just like a real person. It was my job to get to know him to be able to tell his story. He was a great guy. I remember spending days there, learning about him, talking to him, joking with him, and taking pictures of various things he did around the house.

I spent three days there, and we went and did the trial. It was in Lockport, New York. He was so sick he couldn’t come; he testified over Zoom, but some of his family members came. We did the trial. It was my biggest asbestos trial. I put him on; his testimony lasted about three hours. I put the wife on; Adam cross-examined the experts. We ended up getting a verdict of 2 million, which is like a 20 million verdict in New York City because Lockport, New York, is as upstate as you can go, very conservative, with very low numbers. So it was a good result, but more so, it was impactful for me. For the first time—I had seen the good result my work had had, helping criminals get off the street, helping them when they needed help, and getting money for injured clients.

But this was something different. This was telling somebody’s life story and helping their family get some semblance of security for the rest of their life. It just made me realize that while I like this job and it’s fun and I like trials, it’s a lot of responsibility.

I remember thinking that it’s a lot of work. I remember thinking that to do a trial really well, you’ve got to go to somebody’s house. You’ve got to spend time with them. And I remember thinking after that, do I want to do this type of law? Do I want to spend my life encountering people who are dying or recently dead and getting justice for their families?

And I didn’t know. To be honest, I didn’t know. Anyway, I was like, this is great. We continue to do this. My wife gets pregnant. We have our first son, Benji. In fact, we had our first son, Benji, when I had that first big trial in Buffalo that we won, which was a great experience for me. But it was very stressful on my marriage and on my wife.
Understandably, she felt I had abandoned her. She used that term quite a bit, actually. And I guess I had. I had no choice; I had to support my kid. This was my job. I was there for a month, and then I was gone. She ended up having to go live with her family in Maryland.

Eventually, I realized, well, this is great; I want to continue doing it for another year. I want to learn from Adam Cooper and hone my skills. But I knew this probably isn’t sustainable because I can’t be gone for weeks at a time. It’s not fair to my wife, and it’s not how I envision my life. Maybe it’s fine now, when the kid’s really small, but when they’re older, I mean, I want to be there.

I want to take my kids to baseball games. I want to do trials, but I don’t need to be all over the United States for them. So I start looking for other jobs. Now I really liked my job. I was just doing trials, and as horrible as it may sound, my job—going and speaking with people who are dying or their loved ones—was also extremely fulfilling. You realize, and this is something that has impacted me greatly, that everybody is very different, but we’re all very much the same.
We all have loved ones; we all have life events that we care about—weddings, births. We all have jobs. We all have these things that are universal. My job was to figure out which aspects of these victims’ lives I could tell the jury that they would be able to resonate with. What I learned very quickly was that as horrible as it may have been, especially for the widows, to speak to me about their husband, their dead husband, or their dead son, or whatever the case may be.

Eventually, I was able to develop the skill set necessary to turn that into a fulfilling experience for them, because I wasn’t asking only about the bad things. I wanted to know how they met, to hear all the awesome things they did together. And 95 percent of the time, after telling the story, they were just so pleased they got to share it. Obviously, it was emotional because they had lost this person, but they got to tell their story to someone whose sole job it was to listen and empathize over the course of days, and we got close.

For many of these widows, they never had that opportunity. I mean, when do you get the opportunity to say, “I’m going to talk to you about my dead husband’s life, how I met him, and everything that impacted him”? I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about my wife to someone, talking about all the amazing things and all the reasons I love her. And that’s what I was asking them: why they loved their husband, what made them fall in love, what they cared about, and how the disease had taken that all away.

This taught me the ability to speak with people about serious issues and great losses in a way that they would feel comfortable opening up. I always had the same approach. I would say, “This is a job for me, right? I go around the country encountering people who have just lost their loved one. If you ever get the sense that it feels like a business, that’s because it is for me. I can’t get too personally involved, or I will get too emotional. But I don’t forget for a moment that this is a person.”

My job is to highlight the great aspects of their deceased husband and show how this disease has destroyed all their lives. That’s my job because that’s what will resonate with the jury. And to do that, I need all the stories—the good and the bad. It made me realize that while people can go through horrible stuff, listening to them and being there for them can do more good than you’d ever think, both for them and for the case. It allowed me, as a trial attorney, to get the information I needed to actually do my job and pursue justice. Because when you’re talking about the loss of someone’s life, if we don’t win, at least I know we put everything out there.
I liked the job. It was great. I didn’t want to go find another job, but I needed to for my family. However, I wasn’t going to do a job I didn’t want. I wanted to do trials. I enjoyed trials. I was gaining respect in the New York scene for trials, so I wanted to do them—and I needed the income because I had a kid.

Most plaintiff’s firms don’t focus exclusively on trials. Some do, but most require you to manage a caseload in addition to trials. Then I got a job interview. Somehow, Liakas Law Firm reached out to me. Liakas Law Firm is a preeminent personal injury firm in New York.
I don’t know how they got my name. Three young brothers run it, and one of them, Nicholas Liakas, reached out to me and said, “This gentleman, Nicholas Liakas, has heard about you, has seen you.” I don’t know if he was exaggerating, but he wanted to interview me. Now, at this point, I was at Bellic and Fox. I had asked for a raise, but they didn’t give me the raise I needed. My wife and I had a child, and we needed more income.

At this point, I considered continuing asbestos work but moving to Philadelphia because I worked remotely most of the time except when on trial. Philadelphia is half the price, so if I couldn’t get a raise, at least we could save money and do the things adults are supposed to do. We were looking at places in Philly when I got the interview request with Nick, and I was supposed to go in.

Chad Sands: The refusal of the call, if we go back to screenwriting.

Adam Wolk: Yes, refusal of the call. The Zoom call with Nick was scheduled for 1 p.m., and that morning, for whatever reason, I backed out. But the headhunter pressed back. I was supposed to go in person, but they said, “Just do a Zoom.” I thought, “What am I, an asshole if I don’t do the Zoom?” So I agreed.

I remember getting on the Zoom, hitting it off with Nick immediately. Trial guys recognize other trial guys—that’s just how it is. If you’re a trial attorney and you love it and you’re good at it, there’s a certain camaraderie. I remember him saying, “I want you to be on the trial team. It’s me, someone else, and you. We do trials—million-dollar construction cases, million-dollar car accident cases, and so on.” I thought, “This could be cool.”

I went to meet him and his other brothers. It was five days a week in the office, no remote option—a big shift. But I’d be doing trials, high-value cases. It wouldn’t be asbestos; it’d be car accidents, construction accidents, trip-and-falls. I thought, “Let’s make the jump.” They offered me enough, so I jumped and started at Liakas Law. Nick tells me, “By the way, Adam, we have an inquest your first week that we need you to take care of.” Sure. Being the hard worker I am, I prepare. If you follow my Instagram, @TrialAttorneyWolk, you’ll know that the only thing you can control about a trial is the amount of prep work.

An inquest is not a trial, but I figured I’d better go to the office to see what this was about a week before I started. On my first day at Liakas, I was supposed to be in Kings Civil Court for the inquest. So I got into the office, looked at the paperwork, and realized, “No, this isn’t an inquest; it’s a trial.”

It was a trip-and-fall in Brooklyn. My client was a 33-year-old plaintiff with two kids who had a small herniation and a percutaneous discectomy. At most, the injury was valued at $500,000, more realistically $200,000. But I picked a jury for liability and damages. And you have to understand, I had been second seat for three years now, so while I’d done openings and closings, I hadn’t been on my own.

But now I was back on my own. And I just had so much fun with it. That first week, I rocked it. I was in my zone. Everything that could have gone well at the trial did. The defendants came off as slumlords, doing themselves no favors. My client testified. Long story short, we won. We went to damages. I asked for millions, and the jury awarded $3.175 million or something like that. Within the first week, I texted Nick, “Hey, I just got the verdict for this case that’s really only worth $200,000. It’s $3.5 million.”

So, long story short, I’ve been here for the last year and eight months. I’ve become the chair of the trial team, meaning I’m responsible for cases post-note of issue, ensuring they’re ready for trial if they don’t settle. In essence, I have 70 firm trial dates for the next year, and it’s my job to make sure we have everything necessary.

I have a trial next Thursday that’s going to go. It’s not going to settle. I also have a trial the following Wednesday, and I’ll have to say I’m engaged Thursday. It’s back-to-back trials. Most settle, but it’s fun. It’s exciting.

I’ve done some fulfilling work here. I had a horrible car accident case where one sister died, and another sister observed that sister die. I remember getting this case in a situation where we were doing a mediation, and there were six other victims with $6 million to divide. Honestly, the economic value of this case was not very high—the pecuniary loss from the decedent was only a few hundred thousand dollars. So, it was really unknown what the case was worth. The surviving sister witnessed her sibling’s death and had emotional trauma and some soft-tissue injuries.

But what is the value when the decedent’s pecuniary interest is only a few hundred thousand dollars? The range could be huge. I went to the mediator not knowing how to value it, and I didn’t know how badly the other people were hurt. I knew one other person had died and had millions in pecuniary loss.

So, I decided to approach this case like I did in asbestos. I went to meet the clients—the surviving sister and their mother. I spent a couple of days learning their story. Their story was tremendous. They weren’t just sisters; they were partners. They worked together, did everything together, and supported their mother. It was a really horrible situation, and spending those days there allowed me to tell their story.

I told the story in a way that explained there were millions of dollars in damages because the surviving sister observed her sibling die by suffocating on her collapsed lungs. I was able to relay that story to the mediator. It was a horrible story, but it’s one of the cases where I realized how impactful storytelling can be in conveying emotional trauma.

The mediator could have awarded $200,000, and it would have been fine. Instead, he awarded $2.3 million. This was a recent case, and the surviving sister and mother were just in the office before I came here to do this podcast.

This case impacted me deeply because it was one where I can confidently say another lawyer wouldn’t have gotten the same result. I got a really good result for a very deserving client, and I attribute that success to the skills I’ve learned in this job. But more than that, it’s the experience I gained in Montauk, on fishing boats, and in all the days I spent speaking with widows and people dying and their families. That’s where I learned how to tell someone’s horrific story in a way that compels a jury—or, in this case, a mediator—to award my clients a significant amount of money.

That’s my job. I’m a lawyer, and I think like a lawyer, but really, I’m a storyteller. I’ll throw in one more story real quick.

Between the $3 million case and the $2.5 million mediation case, I had a few other trials. One was a gut punch—a damages-only trial in the Bronx, which is generally a favorable county for us. I worked really hard on the trial; my client was happy, but we lost. We got $50,000 in future medical damages and no pain and suffering.
After the trial, I asked the jury why, and one juror told me, “Well, your guy said he could still play golf. How hurt could he be if he can play golf?” That response hit me hard because, in New York, there’s a concept called loss of enjoyment of life. If you’re injured due to someone else’s negligence, and you can no longer do the things you enjoy to the same level, you’re entitled to compensation.

It doesn’t matter if you enjoy playing golf, watching TV, or something else—what matters is that this injury has reduced the pleasure you once derived from it, and you’re entitled to compensation. When the juror told me they didn’t award damages because he could still golf, I realized I’d made a mistake.

Now, in voir dire, I always address loss of enjoyment of life, explaining that if someone can’t do the things they love—whether it’s golf or something else—they’re entitled to compensation. If someone used to play four times a week and now only plays twice, they deserve compensation for that loss.

It was a tough loss. It wasn’t a complete loss; the client received money, and we recouped our expenses. But it was a lesson learned.

I don’t view myself as a typical lawyer. Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of myself in a suit, I think, “Wow, I look like a real lawyer.” But I don’t approach my work that way. I just see myself as a person, like the jurors, the plaintiffs, and even the defendants.

It’s not just my approach in trials; it’s also how I interact with people. I don’t view myself as any better than anyone else. I’m no more intelligent or special than anyone I encounter. My experiences, from substance abuse to my unique path to becoming an attorney, taught me that I could be in a very different circumstance if things had gone another way.

Because of that, I feel fortunate to be here, and I work hard to help my clients. I listen to them, learn about them, and when I speak to the jury, I just tell their story. That resonates with the jury. I also think my background makes me good at reading people, reading a room, and knowing when to push hard in cross-examination and when to back off.

I can read a jury and adapt accordingly. My life experience as a cab driver, talking to people and relying on tips, taught me that skill. I needed tips to survive, and I learned how to connect with people, which has made me better at my job.
What makes me unique as a lawyer is that when people meet me, they don’t just see a lawyer; they see someone trying to do right by his client. I think that resonates with the jury.

Another thing that sets me apart is my unwillingness to be unprepared. I knew nothing about asbestos when I started, but I learned. I knew nothing about civil law and car accidents, but I studied it. That doesn’t happen without stepping out of your comfort zone.

I pushed myself to get to this point, chairing the trial team and handling multimillion-dollar cases, by putting myself in positions where I could excel. My dad always told me to do what I’m good at, and that’s what I’m doing. I’ve taken job opportunities to learn from experienced people, and that’s why I’m here. I like telling stories, doing trials, and helping people.

The last thing I’ll say is this: I can be critical on the stand, cross-examining a doctor or a defense attorney, and I’ll be tough when needed. But when it comes to interacting with my adversaries, coworkers, and peers, there’s no benefit to being critical.

It’s better to lift people up. You get more help from paralegals when you’re kind, and you earn more respect from your adversaries by treating them with respect. In this highly adversarial field, I make a conscious effort to ensure that my combative side is the last thing that comes out. You want good results with people, whether they’re loved ones, coworkers, or adversaries, and you achieve that through kindness more than criticism.
Chad Sands: I think the world would be a better place if people followed that line of thinking. Do you have one more story about a case that had a significant impact on you?

Adam Wolk: Sure, I’ll share a case that wasn’t a trial but had a big impact on me. I was a prosecutor—a liberal prosecutor, actually—and I encountered this gun case in the grand jury. A kid was in a cab that got pulled over, and when they pulled him out, a gun fell out of his jacket.

Chad Sands: He was just riding in the cab?

Adam Wolk: Yes, he was in the cab with a friend, and the gun fell out. He had no record—he was 21, went to Medgar Evers College, grew up in the projects, but no prior encounters with the law. I rarely saw first-time gun charges in the grand jury.

His defense counsel called me and said, “Adam, it wasn’t his gun. He was in the cab with friends, he’s a good kid, he works, and he made a stupid decision for his friend.” The defense asked what we could do. I went to my supervisors and said, “We should offer this kid an alternative program.” There were a few gun programs available, so we made an offer with conditions he had to meet.

The case was indicted, but months later, I saw emails about it. During that time, gun violence in Brooklyn had increased, and policies changed, so first-time gun offenders were no longer eligible for alternative programs—they’d face a felony instead.

I wasn’t okay with this. I went to my boss, Tim Goff, and said, “This isn’t right. We promised him this program, and he deserves it. This is why we have these programs.” I even emailed the DA, Eric Gonzalez, and explained that we needed to help this kid. He eventually agreed, and they gave him the alternative program. Last I checked, he had graduated from college. I don’t know where he is now, but I suspect he’s doing well. If another prosecutor had handled his case, he’d likely have a felony, and his life would be very different.

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Now, here is this episode’s closing argument.
Adam Wolk: Our work as trial attorneys in the personal injury field is an integral part of this society. And there are two main aspects of that. One is on an individual level. I encounter people that have been hurt by somebody else’s negligence, and in some cases have lost loved ones. And have died and are in a very vulnerable situation and they’re coming to me to ask for help, to ask for justice, to ask for me to listen to them, to hear them.

And that’s what I do. I listen to them. I hear them. I gather all the information and I tell their story. I know that that impacts people’s lives. I know it impacts my clients when I get a good financial result for them, but I also know it impacts my clients when we just get to speak and they get to understand that somebody’s hearing about them, hearing of their loss, hearing of their struggles, and that they’re going to have an opportunity to voice it to someone, to say what the defendants did was wrong, to say what was taken from me or taken from my loved one should not have been taken. It’s a very individual personalized job. I think that’s why I like it so much because I really do enjoy it.

I mean, you get to help people, but I get to talk to people and learn their stories. And again, I, nobody’s coming to see me when they’re in a rough spot and they need somebody who has an expertise in an area that they’re unfamiliar with. It’s my job—that is a major part of being a plaintiff’s attorney.

It is a fulfilling part and it’s part of what I like to do. The other part that I think gets lost a lot is that personal injury law is absolutely necessary to have a safe society. It just is. You go into a store to buy something. That store is supposed to be safe for you to walk around in. Now, I would like to think that store owners will spend money to keep their store safe, but they won’t, and they don’t.

They keep situations safe. They keep a store safe because they know if they don’t, somebody gets hurt, they can be sued. We have laws, criminal laws that say you can’t rob or you’re going to jail. Those laws aren’t so clear when it says you need to make sure that you drive safely and don’t hurt somebody.
If you get in an accident and you didn’t intentionally do it, there’s not a legal repercussion per se, but there needs to be a repercussion because there needs to be an incentive for people to look where they’re driving. There needs to be an incentive for store owners to keep their stores safe. There needs to be an incentive for big corporations who have dangerous ingredients like asbestos to tell the people using it that they could die from it.

This is serious stuff. I mean, I think sometimes we get lost in your ambulance chaser, your this or that. You can walk safely in the streets because we sue those people who let their properties fall into disrepair and endanger others. You can be assured that the products being sold to you are most likely not going to hurt you because the corporations who know and only care about money know that if they put a product out there, that’s bad and going to hurt somebody.
Even if it saves them some money than making a good product, it’s gonna hurt them in the long run because plaintiffs’ attorneys are going to come and they’re going to sue them. They’re going to ask for money. They’re going to say you were wrong because you knew this was a dangerous product.

You thought you put it in the marketplace anyway. And now because of that, my client’s life is forever changed and you’re going to pay for it. We keep the world safe. I know it’s silly. I know it’s crazy, but we really do. I don’t think that people unfortunately go about the world saying, I want to make sure everybody is treated well and everybody’s safe and everybody’s good just because the system of justice that we have is something to be proud of.
I think it’s something that most attorneys lose sight of. In certain countries, there’s a king. If you do something, the king is going to decide what your punishment is or what you get. In other countries, it’s just a judge. In this country, when you’re hurt because of somebody else’s negligence, what we do is very unique and it’s beautiful.

It really is. We gather other members of your community where you live and ask them to be actuaries. Ask them to assess the injuries that you have sustained, that their peer has sustained, and ask them to come to a number that compensates them for their injuries. Ask them to look at somebody’s life, see how somebody’s negligence has impacted that life and as a community come to a number that will help that person make up for everything they’ve lost.
Also as a community come together and say, no corporation, you were negligent in putting this into the marketplace or no defendant driver. You were negligent because you didn’t look left before you made the right turn because you were in a rush somewhere and you were really only caring about yourself when you really need to care about everybody else in this world.
When you’re driving a 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound machine that can kill people, you don’t get to just say, I’m in a rush and I’m not going to look to the left because that’s going to change somebody else’s life. And when you do that and you hurt somebody. There’s going to be somebody to sue you. There’s going to be somebody to hold you accountable.

There’s going to be somebody that gets other people of the community to say, no, this is wrong. This is not how things should be. And how are we going to make things right? That’s what being a trial lawyer is. That’s the value of personal injury law. It’s keeping this world safe, speaking up for those who don’t have a voice.
And it’s making sure that people who have had their life absolutely destroyed, traumatized, or even just hurt a little, are compensated appropriately.

Chad Sands: That was trial lawyer Adam Wolk. Thanks for sharing your stories. To learn more about Adam and the trial team at Liakas Law, visit their website, liakaslaw.com All right, 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 and 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.