Eric Toscano is the Founder & CEO of Tenant Law Group, a California law firm dedicated exclusively to representing renters who have been harassed, discriminated against, or illegally evicted. Under his leadership, the firm has grown into one of the largest tenant rights law firms in the United States. Eric brings over 20 years of entrepreneurial and legal experience to his role and has been recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer every year since 2021. He is passionate about social justice and is committed to ensuring that all tenants, regardless of financial resources, have access to legal representation.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [1:57] Eric Toscano talks about his early entrepreneurial influences
- [13:02] How Eric transitioned from Big Law to starting his own firm with no set plan
- [17:10] Discovering tenant rights law and the case that changed Eric’s career path
- [23:25] How to manage the unpredictable cash flow of a contingency-based law firm
- [25:31] Scaling a remote and international legal team to serve more clients efficiently
- [27:46] The role of AI in modern law firms and how Tenant Law Group is integrating AI tools
In this episode…
Building a law firm that truly makes a difference isn’t just about legal expertise; it’s about vision, strategy, and impact. How do you create a firm that not only thrives but also serves a mission-driven purpose? And what does it take to scale while staying true to your values?
According to Eric Toscano, a seasoned legal entrepreneur, success in tenant rights law starts with a deep understanding of clients’ needs and the ability to navigate a contingency-based business model effectively. He highlights the importance of balancing financial sustainability with mission-driven advocacy, ensuring the firm remains profitable while representing vulnerable tenants. Eric’s approach involves leveraging technology, building a strong remote team, and implementing AI to streamline case management. By focusing on scalable systems and data-driven decisions, he has transformed his firm into a leader in tenant representation.
In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host John Corcoran sits down with Eric Toscano, Founder & CEO of Tenant Law Group, to discuss how he built a thriving mission-driven law firm. Eric shares the challenges of managing unpredictable cash flow, the key strategies for scaling a remote legal team, and how AI is reshaping modern law firms. He also talks about how to balance business growth with a strong social impact.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- EO San Francisco
- EO Accelerator
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Eric Toscano on LinkedIn
- Tenant Law Group
- How to Manage a Small Law Firm
- Get Staffed Up
Quotable Moments
- “Big Law didn’t vibe with me. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do with my career.”
- “The problem has never been finding clients. We must ensure continuous onboarding without recurring revenue clients.”
- “AI is a tool that, if wielded properly, can create a massive unfair advantage for law firms.”
- “Who wouldn’t want to work in a practice where the problem has never been finding clients?”
- “AI, when used properly, gives law firms a massive unfair advantage over those not utilizing it.”
Action Steps
- Leverage AI to streamline legal workflows: Automating repetitive legal tasks enhances efficiency, allowing attorneys to focus on high-value client advocacy and case strategy.
- Build a remote and international team: Expanding beyond local talent reduces costs while increasing access to skilled professionals, improving firm scalability and service delivery.
- Develop a data-driven case evaluation system: Accurately assessing case value and collectibility minimizes financial risk and ensures a sustainable contingency-based business model.
- Narrow your firm’s focus to a niche practice area: Specializing in a specific legal field strengthens branding, increases expertise, and attracts a steady stream of clients.
- Prioritize financial planning for contingency cases: Predicting cash flow and managing financial reserves is crucial for long-term sustainability in a plaintiff’s law firm.
Sponsor for this episode…
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 00:02
Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 00:12
All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the co-host of this show. And you know, every week we talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. You can check out our archives. We’ve got lots of great episodes there. And of course this episode is brought to you by EO San Francisco. EO San Francisco is the Bay area Chapter for Entrepreneurs organization, which is a global peer to peer network of more than 16,000. Actually, I think 18,000 now influential business owners across about 200 chapters, 60 plus countries. If you are the founder, co founder, owner or controlling shareholder of a company that generates over seven figures a year in revenues, you want to connect with other like minded successful entrepreneurs. EO is for you and you can learn more about how it works and come to a test drive by going to EOnetwork.org/SanFrancisco. All right I’m excited about today’s guest. His name is Eric Toscano. He is the CEO and Founder of Tenant Law Group. I know him quite well because he and I are in a EO forum together, actually started one together and is is one of the most entrepreneurial lawyers that I know. And as a recovering lawyer myself, I have met quite a few entrepreneurial lawyers and most of them are not as entrepreneurial as Eric is. And so he’s really an interesting guy, and I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation. But Eric, let’s start. I always love starting people with knowing a little bit more about what they were like as a kid. I know you had this really strong relationship with your grandfather growing up who had a car lot, I believe an RV lot also to sold cars and RVs. Correct. And and one of your first foundational working experience was he would pay you to go clean things around the the car lot. What were you cleaning? Carburetors. What are you cleaning?
Eric Toscano 01:57
You know, I the clear memory I have was. First of all, thank you for the kind introduction. Appreciate it John. It’s great to be here and thank you for hosting me. My, my my memory is I think he he gave me like ten bucks. $10. He’s like, just go organize a bunch of it was like a storage closet. So that was my job to like organize the storage closet.
John Corcoran 02:15
But I was so old. Were you here when I was. 9 or 10?
Eric Toscano 02:18
Because I was living in Los Banos still.
John Corcoran 02:21
So it was. Clearly trying to keep you busy.
Eric Toscano 02:23
Yeah, just trying to keep me busy. Stay out of his way. Exactly.
John Corcoran 02:26
Yeah. And. And so he had a car lot and talk, talk a little bit about that. What, what you learned from this entrepreneurial grandfather of yours.
Eric Toscano 02:34
So he was an entrepreneur pretty much his whole life. So this is my father’s father. This is his grandpa Luigi Toscano, first generation American. His parents were both immigrants from Italy, grew up speaking dialect, and then when he went to kindergarten, didn’t speak any English. Was really funny. Grew up born in the US, didn’t speak any English. So he after he got back from World War two, he was in the Navy. He I think he started a melon cooling business like he just started businesses. He may have worked for a car lot. No, he started a he started selling cars fairly early on. He started a melon cooling business. At some point. This was all.
John Corcoran 03:07
What is a melon cooling business?
Eric Toscano 03:09
It was like, okay, so Los Banos, which is where I’m where he was born, raised, the whole family is from there. That’s why it’s.
John Corcoran 03:14
In the Central Valley of California.
Eric Toscano 03:16
In the Central Valley. It’s in Merced County.
John Corcoran 03:18
Which is a very big agricultural area.
Eric Toscano 03:20
Big agricultural area like the produce it’s famous for are melons and tomatoes, like it’s really popular. And then there’s all sorts of dairies as well too. So I don’t know, I guess there was a need for cooling melons and he started this melon cooling business. I don’t know if it was still in existence. I know my dad did some picking of melons, I don’t know, it was for my grandpa at some point, but that was a business. I’m not quite sure what happened to it. This was all pre me, but I know that I think it was. He had Gigi auto sales first. His nickname was Gigi Louie, Gigi Toscano and he. I think he operated that. He opened that in his 30s because I know he was. It was like 1964. He was 40 when he launched Toscano Ford. So that was a car dealership right off the main drag in Pacheco Pass, right down 152 in Los Banos. It’s still a Ford dealership. It just I think it’s a different Ford dealership now. And he ended up opening it up, and he ended up opening an RV lot across the street. I think he opened that up in the 70s, and at one point in the 1970s, he was the biggest leaser of Airstreams Toscano. RV was like in the western US, like he won a bunch of awards for cool stream sales and leasing. Yeah. So yeah, that’s the person that I grew up watching. And not just like how he interacted with his employees and his team, but you know, how he would close a sale. And that was really fun. My dad was the general manager at the time. So here I am, you know, age basically. I moved there when I was born to ten, and those were like the formative years. I would go to the car dealership and my dad would let me in his office, and I’d watch him on the phone and I’d watch grandpa and then do their thing. So those are.
John Corcoran 04:59
You. So since you mentioned watching him close a sale, how did he close a sale? Did he have some secret strategy or something?
Eric Toscano 05:05
I have this clear image in my mind of the guy was chain smoking throughout the 80s, right? So he’s got, like, a cigarette in his fingers right here. He’s wearing a suit and tie. He’s got his hair all slicked back, like, you know, dark haired Italian guy. And he’s like, walking across the car lot. He’s got his arm around someone and he’s doing this. You know, I think there’s actually he’s doing it. He’s like a.
John Corcoran 05:25
Caricature of a car salesman.
Eric Toscano 05:27
He’s the full caricature. But he was really effective. You know, he did a good job. You know, he was you know, he was kind of a big, big fish in a small pond. Yeah. In Los Banos, it was a small. When I left, it was about 10,000 people.
John Corcoran 05:40
I mean, for a child of immigrants, I know he built it to Multi-millions in sales, right? I mean, it was a significant business that he built.
Eric Toscano 05:48
Yeah. So from what I understand from my dad, I remember I was talking to him about this a few years ago. I think he said that at its peak around the mid 80s, they had 50 or so employees, and I did did the 2023 equivalent because I remember converting it. They did about 5,000,000 in revenue. So yeah, it was a multi-million dollar business. I mean, in a pretty small town.
John Corcoran 06:09
Yeah, yeah. But significant. Anyways, so you learned a lot from him and you. So, you know, even though the family was doing well and had this successful, thriving business in a small town as you as you put it, they taught you the ethic of going to work. And you actually had a job working at deli at 13 years old.
Eric Toscano 06:28
Yeah. So so fast forward we moved ten years old. We moved. My dad’s family is from Los Banos, my mom’s family from City of Sonoma. So we moved there when I was ten. And I think right the summer before high school, I got a job at the Sonoma Cheese factory that was like my first actual hourly job as a deli clerk.
John Corcoran 06:47
Still there. If anyone goes to visit the town of Sonoma, it’s still there. It’s an institution. Everyone goes there.
Eric Toscano 06:52
Still there. Yeah, I had some very fun memories I still am in touch with like some people that I well, they were friends. We all ended up working there and yeah, I mean, I think I was earning, I started like $5.15 an hour, but you know, it was the 90s.
John Corcoran 07:07
Yeah. But I mean, the fact that you’re 13 working there, that’s impressive.
Eric Toscano 07:11
Yeah. It was I think it was right before my 14th birthday. Yeah. So yeah, I probably wasn’t 13 there that long. But yeah, they hired me and yeah.
John Corcoran 07:18
So you, you, you also sold Cutco knives in college. And then you ended up having this foundational experience where you decided to go off to Italy. I think this was after college. You ended up spending a couple of years there and starting businesses in Italy, which to me sounds that sounds really intimidating. Talk a little bit about these these businesses you created.
Eric Toscano 07:38
Yeah. So I had studied abroad as a junior, was absolutely fell in love with it. I was there for three months and I was like, this is not the end. I need more of this. And so I graduate. I work for about a year and a half, and then I bought a one way ticket I did, I actually had a job lined up, so I had a job as an English teacher at a private language school in Italy, and so that was my job, and I did that for the first year. And while that process was going on, I think I was there on like a student visa. I’m still not quite sure how that worked out, but whatever. I was technically studying Italian I guess, and working part time at this job, but I realized I wanted to do more. I mean, you know, you’re kind of limited on, I think, life experience and certainly, like, you know, what you can earn and to, you know, while you’re living overseas. Yeah. On a teacher’s salary. I mean, you know, it was, it was. Anyway, so I was in the process of getting recognized as an Italian citizen through ancestry. So I was able to get it through my mother, grandmother, who was then living great grandfather who had passed away at the time, but he was born in Italy, came to the US, gave birth to my grandma, and then he became naturalized. So because Italy recognizes citizenship through blood, he was still an Italian citizen when he was here in the US, in the US when he gave birth to my when my grandmother was born. and so citizenship passed to her, passed to mom, passed to me. So the way the they described it as the consulate is that we were all citizens. We just didn’t have it recognized yet. So it was kind of a complicated process. And I thought to myself, once I was recognized, it was like a full year and I got my citizenship. I said, you know what? This would be a really cool business. I bet you there’s tons of people who, whether for sentimental reasons or maybe they want to move to Europe, I don’t know, it was 2001, 2002. Maybe they would, you know, enjoy learning about it. And so I started Italian Citizenship and Genealogy Services in, I think, the summer of 2002.
John Corcoran 09:27
The idea what was the early days like? Was it hard? I mean, this is kind of early internet days, right? I mean, it’s like Google had been around for a couple of years in 2001. But how did you get clients?
Eric Toscano 09:39
My so interestingly enough, I remember like coming up with like a very rudimentary business plan. I had like this, like my first business plan. I mean, it was 24 years old. So it was like, yeah, it was already a college grad. I think my biggest expense with like a PC that I bought in Italy. And then I’m know, my biggest expense was paying someone to build the website. Like, that was a big expense back then. Now, at least with PayPal, it was. Yeah. I mean, it was it was. I didn’t really know. I didn’t have a technical background. So I was really relying on someone else. And it was funny because the guy who built the website was a former startup during the first.com bubble. Like a founder whose company didn’t make it and he had little free time. So he was like, you know what, I’ll build you a website. And I met with him and he basically did it over a month. Yeah. So it’s kind of cool to interact with someone like that, but yeah. And then go ahead.
John Corcoran 10:27
Did you. So did you get clients? Did it take a while to get clients.
Eric Toscano 10:30
So it was interesting because. So in 2002 I got clients. I was my only advertising was Google AdWords. I think it was that it was then called Google AdWords. So I was an early adopter of that in 2002. And I would just get, you know, link my website up to PayPal and people would want to get translations, which I would do for a fee, and then certificates like get a birth or a language, a birth, marriage or death certificate from an ancestor that they would need as part of their Italian citizenship application, and I would do that for a fee too. And so just link my PayPal to a bank account and that’s it. And so like, you know, I could charge us rates for what people would pay. Meanwhile I’m living you know, it’s just a solopreneur just doing my thing over in Italy. So it worked out great. And I would, you know, do the research, do the translations and. Yeah.
John Corcoran 11:16
And you, you start another business at the same time. So you were also, I think it was a translation business or a tutoring business at the same time.
Eric Toscano 11:22
It was an I started my own English school. So my first year I lived in a small town called Saluzzo, which is about an hour south of Turin in the Piedmont region. And then I moved to be closer to some relatives and friends that I knew that I had met. And that’s in the Veneto region. And the city was called Montebelluna. And it was it was a cool, industrial, very entrepreneurial city. All my friends in their 20s had their own little shops. It was like it was really cool. It’s like kind of went against the stereotype of the dolce vita. Italians like these were active, you know, very much business minded people. So they were very supportive of me. And I opened an English school called the English Language Institute of Montebelluna. So that was a different experience. So marketing for that one. I remember printing out, no joke. I printed out flyers and I went and like, like personally delivered on a bicycle riding around Montebelluna in like mailboxes.
John Corcoran 12:15
Now that sounds very Italian though. I mean, there must have been a basket on the front and like everything, you’re like, ding ding going through the cobblestone streets.
Eric Toscano 12:22
Yeah, yeah. It was it was fun. And, you know, I ended up getting I had enough students to sustain myself. So between that and the English Language Institute and Italian citizenship, that was enough to basically sustain me. I didn’t say I was making a killing by any means, but certainly I could survive. And I was I mean, had a blast. I was there for three years.
John Corcoran 12:42
So but the longer term plan was you’re going to come back to the States, you’re going to go to law school, which you ended up doing. You go to law school. And it sounds to me like you, you probably had an idea that you’d maybe be doing something entrepreneurial. Did you? Was the idea that I would start a, you know, a public interest law firm representing tenants, or how did that come about?
Eric Toscano 13:02
No. I mean, I did have a have a sense that I wanted to go out and start something up on my own. It was kind of in my DNA from a pretty young age. And so I knew that that was probably going to end up happening. But I worked for, you know, I graduated in 2009. I worked for a big firm for a couple of years. It just wasn’t it didn’t vibe. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do with my career. I kind of stumbled into having left the firm with really no plan. I didn’t have another firm I was going to because I didn’t want to continue working at big firms. It wasn’t a great experience, so I wanted to do something different, and I had a pro bono client who offered to pay me, and that basically became I remember, like putting my name on letterhead, Eric L Toscano, Esquire. And all of a sudden I had a client and like, oh, I guess I have a firm now. Okay, cool. And that happened like a week after I left the big firm I was working at. Because I told this person on my way out, I’m leaving and her response was, oh, sorry to hear that. You know, I’d pay you to do this work. And I said, I will do that work if you pay.
John Corcoran 13:59
Yeah, it’s funny because actually I’m looking at your LinkedIn here and you start it says that this started in November of 2012, and I started my firm right around the same time.
Eric Toscano 14:10
Oh, really?
John Corcoran 14:11
Yeah. And the.
Eric Toscano 14:13
Crazy.
John Corcoran 14:13
Well, the crazy thing about it, too, is that it had gotten so much easier to start a law firm if you’re scrappy. You know, like if you look at these big firms and they spent tons of money on to put these big books on the wall, right? And they have expensive real estate and they have a receptionist up front. But I looked at other, you know, lawyers that were able to keep their expenses way down and was, you know, lawyers charge enough that you didn’t need that many clients in order to, you know, keep the lights on.
Eric Toscano 14:42
That was exactly my experience, I think officially I launched, but I wasn’t really marketing it in November. I think I actually started trying to market myself and I. You’ve heard me say this before. It was basically a practice door law. So like kind of whatever came into the door. I was patient attorney for a little bit. I did business, you know, entities for a while. And then I got my first landlord tenant case. That’s kind of what got me interested in tenant rights law in mid 2013. But I remember distinctly I sent out like a zillion messages on LinkedIn. Hey, I started my own firm and one of my former colleagues at the big firm sent me a referral, and he basically said, I have this client who needs a lot of attention that I don’t have time for, but, you know, great, great client. And that person ended up being I ended up working with that client for a really, really long time. We have a great had a great have a great relationship. And I remember that one client made my first full month, January, profitable. It was great because.
John Corcoran 15:37
It’s amazing that difference, right? Yeah.
Eric Toscano 15:39
It was it was so easy to start a firm and like you just don’t have that much overhead.
John Corcoran 15:43
Yeah. Yeah. Of course the risk then is you got one client, right. That person leaves and it’s like, oh no, no you’re right.
Eric Toscano 15:50
But it was it was like it paid the bills for like the first month. I definitely was, was trying to get more clients. But you know, it’s tricky when you practice your law because you know, you’re getting referrals based on who you are and not what you can do for clients.
John Corcoran 16:01
So talk a little bit about I know you had a, had a firm with a couple of partners for a little bit, and eventually you zeroed in on this idea of representing tenants. Now, what I love about that is it really distinguishes the firm that you represented, that you created and and it also it is also for those who don’t realize it’s the most entrepreneurial type of law that you can practice, like in some ways, like being a lawyer and serving traditional clients like business clients is is kind of old school in a sense, right? There isn’t anything scrappy or entrepreneurial about it. But for you, you are representing people that have experienced, in some cases, really horrendous conditions. And but you also have to be very selective about which clients you represent, because if you choose the wrong clients to represent, then you will lose your shirt, right? Because you’re putting the money up and you only get paid if it’s successful. So that’s why I think it’s so entrepreneurial. So let’s talk a little bit about how you decided on this as a practice area.
Eric Toscano 17:10
I would say I decided on this as a practice area. I took my first case and I told you this story. I probably heard this story before. Maybe I took my first case. It was a referral through the Bar Association of San Francisco, and my client was a woman named Virginia, and she didn’t know what to do, but she knew that she was in a bad situation. She had rented. She had a rent controlled apartment in the city of San Francisco. And one day she came home from work. This is an immigrant from El Salvador, three sons, I think, ages like 10 to 2, and single mom working 2 or 3 jobs, super sympathetic, paying low rent at a rent controlled department. One day she has a sewage leak, and it just. It’s disgusting. Like raw sewage out of the sink floor. She calls the property manager. Calls the owner. She’s trying to, like, get some help and no one will answer. No one will help. She ends up mopping like raw sewage, up by herself in between her jobs, while making sure her kids like dealing with this like stench. So she ends up just eventually her her young son ends up developing a rash. Eventually she just, like, leaves most of her belongings what she had and just walks out the door and calls the bar association. I think she was living with family or friends, so she contacts me. I’ve never done a tenant rights case before. I contacted some people I knew in the community to kind of give me some guidance, filed a lawsuit on her behalf, and ended up securing a settlement for her. That worked out really well for her. Was able to give her a fresh start, allow her to go rent an apartment for her son’s. I still remember handing the check to her. It was really a special day. Still in touch with this client too? She’s actually done volunteered to be, you know, to help me with some marketing, which is great. And and it was that point I was like, oh, this is my calling. I’m a plaintiff’s attorney. I’ve been doing this defense work, but I’m a plaintiff’s attorney. This is this is fantastic because it was also, you know, a contingency fee that that paid pretty well also. So I was like, I could do more of this. This is cool.
John Corcoran 18:59
Yeah. And and so then you kind of you pivot the firm, you rename the firm all focused on this and talk a little bit about the early years. Like was it, did it take a while to build a reputation in this area?
Eric Toscano 19:13
Yeah. So I, I merged my solo practice into a partnership for a couple of years where our focus was business litigation, which were mostly my clients personal injury and tenant rights. So we had like one hourly and two contingency practices. After a couple of years, I ended up withdrawing and then starting my own, starting what is now Tenant Law group. It was originally Toscano Law Group. In January of 2016. I still had all three of those practice areas and yeah, I guess I was doing all three. And then I joined an organization, a law firm, management organization, how to manage a small law firm. And one of the first masterminds I went to, it was like, you have to pick a practice area. Just pick one and that’s what you’re going to be good at, and that’s the one you want to do. And I thought about it and it was like, okay, what is the one practice area. Personal injury. There’s a million attorneys doing it. Business litigation is a million attorneys. So that’s kind of interesting I love it I love working with mostly indigent clients. I love the challenges and strategies of being a plaintiff’s attorney and trying to navigate your way to a successful resolution. And just being a plaintiff’s attorney really called to me. So I, you know, I chose that practice area. And conveniently, Toscano Law group still had the same initials. It was still TLG.
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