Growing up in Chicago, Frank Ramos would often spend his days hanging out in the public library to avoid the gang-infested streets of his tough neighborhood, where a family’s economic status could often be surmised by whether its children believed in Santa Claus.
“We were not a wealthy family by any stretch of the imagination,” recalled Frank. “We received the sort-of ‘government cheese’ every month. We didn’t really get to believe in Santa Claus because our parents really couldn’t afford Santa Claus. And so those experiences have affected the way I deal with things historically.”
As a kid, the library served as a landscape against which Frank could navigate his circumstances. It was safe, it was free and it opened the doors to a diverse world in which he could explore his many intellectual interests.
“I was always interested in a career in law growing up. I watched Perry Mason and all those old law shows. I found it fascinating. Obviously, those shows were not accurate by any stretch of the imagination. But as a kid, I didn’t know any better. And so, from the time I was a very little kid, I wanted to become a lawyer.”
Eventually, the Ramos family moved from Chicago to Miami, where Frank would finish high school, attend college and eventually graduate from law school. He’s remained in ‘The Magic City’ ever since, going on to build a prestigious legal career in which he’s become a nationally recognized litigator and thought leader.
Today, Frank is a partner in Goldberg Segalla’s Retail and Hospitality, Product Liability, Toxic Tort, Civil Litigation and Trial, Transportation, and Alternative and Dispute Resolution practice groups. And, aside from his distinguished work defending clients in civil litigation matters, he also places a heavy emphasis on mentoring young lawyers just starting out in the profession. In fact, Frank’s become so well known for his guidance that he’s referred to by some as ‘The Miami Mentor.’
“I think we all, whether we realize it or not, had a lot of people in our own careers help us. None of us are completely self-developed. None of us made it completely on our own. Even if you’re a first-generation lawyer or first-generation person to go to college, there were people along the way — teachers, professors, colleagues, friends — who provided some assistance, some guidance, some advice. And I think we all have a duty and obligation to pay it forward. Immortality I think comes with being able to help others.”
As such, Frank regularly makes himself available to young attorneys seeking his guidance and advice. He even created his own coffee shop at his old firm for such occasions.
“I think young lawyers, so often, don’t know how their careers are going to turn out. They see what opportunities they have and pursue what they think is best. Over the 29 years I’ve been practicing, I’ve done pretty much everything from asbestos to zoning and everything in between litigation-wise. So, I’ve had a very fortunate career in that regard. Because of that background, I’ve really focused a lot of my time and energies on helping younger lawyers.”
Frank’s career fortune, he said, also includes making the decision after practicing for more than 20 years at a small boutique firm to join Goldberg Segalla in 2024.
“It’s a great firm, with great people, a great perspective and great approach. It’s very much an outward-looking firm that I really enjoy,” said Frank, adding that Goldberg Segalla’s “national footprint, approach and style, demeanor and brand” made the firm a “perfect match” for his practice needs.
“I’m very much a generalist, which is rare these days. But I found that knowing one practice area gives me insight into another. Things I may learn handling a trucking case might be useful in a product liability case and that may be useful in a commercial case. I think each of us have to figure out what we’re passionate about, what we really enjoy, what challenges us, and find things we enjoy doing and wrap our arms around them. I have an atypical career in that sense, but I’ve really enjoyed all the opportunities it brings.”
One such opportunity upon which he’s capitalized is becoming a thought leader on Artificial Intelligence — another interest of Frank’s that traces back to his days spent in Chicago’s public library.
“I spent a lot of time reading science fiction, HG Wells and Isaac Asimov and all the fathers and grandfathers in that space, and a lot of them had written about AI well before it became a thing,” said Frank, who has written extensively and presented often on AI’s impact on the legal profession. “When ChatGPT-4 dropped in March 2023, I became fascinated with it. I started studying it and spent endless hours on it. And in the last three-plus years, I’ve spent a lot of time doing a deep dive on the various platforms from Chat to Claude to Gemini to Grok to Llama and everything else in between and started creating my own agents, my own tools and simulations. I feel that the future of the practice is completely and inexorably tied into AI. It is very much a tool, and I think Goldberg Segalla is taking the right approach in terms of adopting the right tools and teaching us how to use them.”
That said, he cautioned the technology also poses critical challenges to the legal world, ones that must be heeded and watched closely.
“On the challenges side, what we’re going to see is that a lot of the tasks that we train young lawyers on are going to dissipate. They’re going to end up decreasing significantly. When I started practicing, I had to do a lot of document review where I literally would go into these big warehouses and review boxes of documents. And now you do that online. A lot of things in terms of basic discovery, basic documents, basic research — a lot of that can be done with, or largely supplanted by, AI, certainly with a person in the loop and reviewing the output. I think the biggest challenge is: How do we develop young lawyers when we no longer have the activities or the tasks that we would traditionally give them? We have this tool that thinks for them, where we really need them to think for themselves. And so, every firm — and Goldberg Segalla is certainly at the forefront of this — is developing lawyers who think and do not abdicate their wisdom or their experience to a machine, but who use the machine to help them.”
Frank’s national reputation as a thought leader extends far beyond AI. He has written some 20 books, more than 500 articles and has amassed a large social media following that, on LinkedIn, exceeds 80,000 people.
“I think writing is a great way to express yourself, to share your thoughts, to think through your ideas and figure out how to express them to others. And that really is a great tool for your imagination,” he said. “When I started writing legal stuff, I started writing for lawyers. And that led me to write an article pretty much almost weekly since then. That’s 25 plus years now.
“I have folks from around the world, from Asia to Africa and all the continents, following me on social media and often they’ll reach out, and we’ll have these really interesting conversations because their practice is very different than ours. It’s just a fascinating way to create a community and to create a marketplace of ideas. So, I’ve really enjoyed that. It’s helped with work and business development, of course. It’s led to speaking opportunities and being quoted in various legal publications. But that journey, it’s been great.”
Sharing thoughts and communicating also lies at the heart of Frank’s approach to building trust with clients.
“The biggest reason lawyers get in trouble with their state bars is that they’re not communicating with their clients, they’re not keeping them in the loop, they’re not getting their input. So, I regularly touch base with my clients. And I think clients appreciate that. It allows them to weigh in and have discussions with you. I don’t think that you can have too much communication. I think you can have too little, but not too much.”
Pausing for a moment to reflect on his accomplished career, Frank said:
“I’ve been very fortunate with all the opportunities I’ve had over my life. You know, I did not come from a wealthy family. I was the second person to go to college and first person to go to law school. I didn’t really have that safety net that most people have. And, ironically, I think it helped me. If I know anything, it’s that life is challenging. Life will throw a lot of stuff at you and will knock you down and try to keep you down if it can. And if you feel like your life has been a lot of struggles, kind of embrace that, because I think that makes you a better person to address any struggle in the near future.
“As you get older and you start seeing the end of your career — and that’s still a few years off, but I’ve done more with my career than I have time left in it — you start appreciating, ‘Well, what am I leaving behind? What’s my legacy?’ And if it’s just a billion hours and trying cases, I don’t know if that’s enough. I think ultimately, we achieve a legacy and the ability to live beyond our own lives by influencing others, helping others, and giving them the hand that we received when we were coming up through the ranks.”