My grandfather was an attorney, my father was an attorney, my uncle taught law, taught constitutional law in college in law school. I have a brother in law who’s an attorney. I have lots of cousins who are attorneys. And interestingly, I would consider them all to be my mentors to a certain extent. I got done with my second year of law school and felt like I was worried that I couldn’t practice law the way that I wanted to practice it and that meant being completely honest and completely ethical. And I was worried because of some of the things that I was taught in law school, some of the professors that I had, as well as some of the people that I had clerked with.

There was a guy, his name was Wilford Anderson, and Wilford took me to lunch one day. I was driving a UPS package car after graduating from law school. I had passed the bar and I was driving a UPS package car and he took me to lunch and said, “Matt, what are you doing?” And I just expressed to him that I didn’t think a person could really be honest and ethical if they practiced law. He said, “Matt, if you run your own shop you can be as honest and ethical as you want to be and frankly, Matt, we need people like you who are honest and ethical in the practice of law.” And so, our firm was founded upon those principles and really, Wilford Anderson giving me that insight that I could do that sparked me practicing law. And so, I consider him even though I don’t deal with him much and never really have, I consider him to be one of my mentors.