Robert Simon is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now he’s a practicing personal injury attorney in California. He’s passionate about technology and the legal industry, and his interests have combined to create an innovative online attorney membership platform called Justice HQ.
How did you come up with the idea for Justice HQ?
Robert Simon: My wife is big into entrepreneurship. At one point, she was talking about this coworking space she wanted to start for female entrepreneurs. After looking into it, we realized real estate is just too expensive for something like that. And it’s the same for new lawyers… Real estate creates a lot of overhead for new lawyers who want to go out on their own. So that started getting the juices flowing…
Then we had so many young lawyers who were coming to us and wanting to work with us. And we had about 50 cases a week coming in, but there’s no way we can take all those on, especially since some of them aren’t in our area of expertise. Our head of marketing, Teresa Diep, came to me and asked, ‘What if we create a WeWork place for lawyers and have them all under the same roof? We could develop a platform where all these lawyers can be in one place, talk and work together, and give these cases to the best lawyer possible?’ It took a while to build out the tech and platform, but that’s why we started Justice HQ.
What’s your story? How did you end up working as a personal injury lawyer?
Robert Simon: I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and now I work and live in California. I’ve been married for 10 years and have two daughters; one is seven, the other is three. My wife is also from Pittsburgh, but we actually met in LA, oddly enough.
I’m the oldest of 5, and I have a twin brother. He co-founded the Simon Law Group with me. He develops systems and manages the practice while I do trials. We both got accepted early admission into George Washington and majored in Criminal Justice.
After law school, I started working at a small personal injury law firm and stayed there for three years. Then we opened up our own firm in 2010.
Just about our entire family works at our law firm. My dad used to drive trucks for UPS for 30 years, and now he’s working with us. He also remarried, and his new wife works at our firm too. We hired my younger brother right when he got out of law school, and our sisters and mother work with us too. It’s truly a family affair all the way through.
Why did you become a personal injury lawyer?
Robert Simon: When I was 12, my uncle was paralyzed in a car crash. That experience inspired me to want to fight for people who didn’t have a voice. I saw the chronic pain that comes with it and how people were undervaluing it. People just don’t truly understand that chronic pain is long-term and won’t go away.
