Robert S. Fakhouri is the founder and leading lawyer of The Fakhouri Firm. Licensed to practice law at 23, he started out with a big firm until he decided to forge his own path with The Fakhouri Firm at 25.
Photo Credit: The Fakhouri Firm | Haute Media Group
Mr. Fakhouri joined Haute Media Group co-founder and COO, Seth Semilof, to discuss his prodigious beginning in law and much more during an exclusive webinar with Haute Lawyer. Here are some of the highlights of their conversation:
Seth Semilof: As an entrepreneur, what’s really impressive to me is that you opened your own law firm at 25. Most of the time, you graduate from law school and work at a firm and maybe, 10 or 15 years down the road, you’re lucky enough to open your law firm. Would you mind explaining this achievement?
Robert S. Fakhouri: Looking back on that time period today, I consider it a blessing. At the time, it was a curse. I was licensed to practice law at 23 and I started out with a big Personal Injury (PI) firm. One day, I get a call from reception at the front desk and they tell me there’s a sheriff in the building prepared to serve me papers for an eviction. I had no idea what was happening.
My father was working in commercial real estate at the time and I asked him if he knew anything about this. The long and short of it is that he got hit with the real estate that he had, and suddenly I had to step up to the plate and provide for my family as they had always done for me. The first thing I did was request a higher salary from the owner of the firm I was working for at the time because I had signed a significant amount of PI cases in my short time with the firm (especially for an attorney fresh out of law school). He did not raise my salary, but he very generously allowed me to keep all of my cases. I then went to every single floor in that corporate building that would lease me space and that’s how the Fakhouri Firm started.
Watch the full conversation below:
