His private damage regulation agency did $2 billion in income final yr and his enterprise empire features a crime museum with O. J. Simpson’s white Bronco.
By Brandon Kochkodin, Forbes Staff
Despite the photographs on his over-the-top and omnipresent billboards, John Morgan isn’t an astronaut, swimsuit mannequin, leather-based clad biker or Santa Claus. He’s a lawyer, self-made billionaire and the founding father of Orlando, Fla.-based Morgan & Morgan, the most important private damage regulation agency within the U.S., with greater than 1,000 attorneys (and 6,000 staff complete) throughout all 50 states. Last yr the agency generated simply over $2 billion in income and is now rising quick, on the again of $350 million in annual advertising and marketing spending (heavy on cable TV in addition to freeway and digital advertisements) and a current push into large cities like New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Las Vegas.
Naysayers (and a few opponents) nonetheless wish to dismiss Morgan, 68, as an “ambulance chaser” or a “TV lawyer.” But between his promoting and political activism (he’s poured $14 million into getting Florida to boost its minimal wage and legalize medical marijuana), he’s earned sufficient goodwill that opposing counsel typically information a movement to maintain jurors from figuring out Morgan’s agency is concerned in a case. In high-stakes trials, he will get round that by displaying up in individual—a tactic that after brought about Home Depot’s attorneys to protest his presence.
“They can’t preserve me from displaying up,” Morgan declares. The tactic works as a result of Morgan is likely to be essentially the most recognizable lawyer since Johnnie Cochran. (Morgan helped Cochrane begin his personal nationwide agency, suggested him on advertising and marketing and served as a pallbearer at his 2005 funeral.)
Photo by Daniel Brown for Forbes
Make no mistake. Morgan & Morgan isn’t your typical authorized agency with possession broadly distributed amongst unrelated companions. It’s extra of a household enterprise (they promote that too). Morgan’s spouse Ultima (they met in regulation faculty 43 years in the past) and their three lawyer sons are all companions and the household owns round 50% of the agency, with about 140 fairness companions proudly owning the remainder.
We estimate the entire agency is now price a minimal of $2 billion, primarily based on its revenues and strange model worth. But that’s simply part of Morgan’s wealth. One large payday got here final yr, when Bessemer Venture Partners paid $300 million for 60% of Litify, a authorized software program platform Morgan co-founded in 2016. Morgan says his household obtained lower than half of that and all of the after-tax proceeds they did obtain went to his youngsters.
That makes Morgan one among just some attorneys within the nation’s historical past to turn into a billionaire strictly by authorized ventures, versus, say, shopping for a sports activities franchise. The most well-known billionaire barrister was Texas tort king Joe Jamail, who made Forbes’ listing of the 400 richest Americans repeatedly earlier than his loss of life in 2015.
But there’s extra to Morgan’s wealth than the regulation–he’s bought an eclectic, debt-free assortment of holdings starting from actual property, to 6 indoor wacky WonderWorks science museums to a stake within the late Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville. WonderWorks alone throws off $33 million a yr in EBITDA, making it price, by our estimate, not less than $150 million. (Forbes estimates Morgan owns about half of WonderWorks.)
Morgan’s newest interest turned enterprise is the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, the place you possibly can take a look at O.J. Simpson’s notorious white Bronco and serial-killer Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle. It’s already making him $5 million a yr and he’s planning to construct one other crime museum too, to show extra of what he describes as a “complete warehouse” of memorabilia.
All informed, Forbes estimates Morgan and his household are price not less than $1.5 billion. Asked if he’s a billionaire, Morgan factors out he’s been placing property in his 4 youngsters’ names for years. “I’d be a billionaire simply if I had all their stuff,’’ he says. As for his private web price assertion, Morgan says he values every thing at what it value him to purchase or to construct, not what it’s seemingly price as we speak. Given that he doesn’t tackle debt, he explains, he’s bought no incentive to puff it up.
Morgan additionally takes pains to dismiss any suggestion he lives or spends like a billionaire. “The reality of the matter is, I do not dwell like I earn. All our houses are paid for. It’s most likely two million a yr that I dwell on. And that is taking good care of seven homes. Most of the cash I dwell on is spent on paying the HOA, gardeners, and [stuff] like that. I do not dwell extravagantly.”
John Morgan wears his humble roots proudly, as a supply of his drive and, as a part of his attraction to his on a regular basis Joe purchasers. He was born in Kentucky to folks who struggled, he says, with alcohol and preserving the lights on. The household moved to Central Florida when he was 14. As the eldest of 5 kids, Morgan turned a surrogate dad or mum and took on each odd job he may—paperboy, poinsettia salesman, Yellow Pages hawker. He even labored in costume at Disney World, beginning as Fiddler Pig and King Louie earlier than being promoted to Pluto, a task he earned, he says, as a result of he may dance.
Morgan’s brother Tim additionally labored at Disney, lifeguarding on the Polynesian Village Resort’s pool. One day, a lady went lacking. As Tim dove in to go looking, he struck a desk hidden beneath the water’s floor. The influence left him paralyzed, with a C6 and C7 spinal wire damage. As Morgan talks about Tim, who handed away in July on the age of 65, his eyes begin to water, and his voice slows, heavy with grief. He remembers how Disney “fought Tim like he was the Taliban” when his brother sought advantages after the accident. (Disney didn’t reply to our requests for remark.)
Enraged, he informed his household, “I didn’t know what a private damage lawyer was. But I do know what I’m going to be.”
After graduating from the University of Florida’s regulation faculty in 1982, Morgan began out at a small agency. He shortly determined he was underpaid and in 1985 teamed up with different younger attorneys to begin their very own agency.
The Supreme Court had blessed lawyer promoting again in 1977, however at their new agency, Morgan’s companions balked at how far he needed to push the promoting envelope. So he left in 1988 to begin Morgan, Colling & Gilbert, his present agency. “The (promoting) prepare was leaving the station,” Morgan informed his spouse, and a agency that jumped on early may turn into like “Kleenex”—a model so fashionable, its identify is synonymous with the product itself. (The agency was renamed Morgan & Morgan in 2005, after John Morgan purchased out his authentic non-family companions, once they disagreed along with his formidable progress plans.)
The promoting labored—the agency bought so many calls that John’s brother Tim arrange a name heart in 1993 to deal with the a whole lot, then hundreds, of calls they obtained every day. Even with the telephones ringing off the hook, Morgan felt one thing was lacking: a famous person litigator to enhance his personal enterprise and advertising and marketing aptitude. He began courting Keith Mitnik, a famend Florida plaintiff’s lawyer, taking him out for steak every year. Finally, in 1997, after 4 years, Mitnik caved. “I watched him develop and develop, and eventually I shut down my place and came to visit right here,” says Mitnik, now 65. “I inform individuals I’ve one remorse: I ought to have executed it 4 years earlier.”
It was a win for each of them. Since becoming a member of, Mitnik has helped safe greater than $130 million in judgments towards R.J. Reynolds alone whereas taking over excessive profile instances like representing the Backstreet Boys in a lawsuit towards their former supervisor, convicted Ponzi schemer Lou Pearlman. His fame gave Morgan the credibility to draw extra high expertise. “Keith was already a legend,” Morgan says. “He was getting large verdicts all over the place, and now he was right here.”
Thanks partly to Mitnik, the agency has gotten into large-scale class motion lawsuits. It’s among the many regulation companies that recovered a mixed $750 million in information breach instances towards Equifax, Capital One, Yahoo!, and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (Morgan & Morgan served on the plaintiff steering committee); $13.5 billion of settlements in 2023 in water contamination instances towards 3M (it was co-lead counsel) and DuPont in Stuart, Florida; and a $1.8 billion settlement in 2021 from Southern California Gas over a methane leak.
Fees in school actions are set by the decide and cut up amongst a number of regulation companies. So private damage, with its hefty 30 to 40% contingency charges, stays Morgan and Morgan’s bread and butter. All informed, it’s logged $22 billion in awards since founding. In 2023, for instance, the agency’s largest particular person win got here from a business auto accident, the place a tractor trailer slammed right into a shopper’s parked semi-truck on the facet of Route 30 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, leading to a $26 million award. It additionally will get income from instances referred to different regulation companies.
Thanks to its ubiquitous and John Morgan-centric promoting, individuals throughout the nation typically suppose Morgan & Morgan is an area agency–an phantasm that rankles opponents. In 2018, Philadelphia lawyer Jeffrey Rosenbaum sued claiming Morgan’s advertisements had been deceptive because the agency merely referred instances to native attorneys and Morgan himself wasn’t licensed within the state. Morgan employed an area employees lawyer and the case settled, although Rosenbaum put up his personal billboard alongside I-95, labeling himself the “actual Philly lawyer.”
Not that Morgan—who as soon as put up a billboard of himself flipping the center finger—cares what different attorneys suppose. “Everybody is a capitalist till any person desires to compete,” Morgan says. “Wherever I am going, all of them have a stick up their ass.”
As the large judgments have rolled in, Morgan has cemented himself as a political energy participant. He’s been a mega-donor and bundler for Democrats—he’s contributed tens of millions because the 1980’s and raised $800,000 for President Biden’s 2024 marketing campaign earlier than Vice President Kamala Harris changed him on the highest of the ticket. When that occurred, Morgan informed the Democrats he wasn’t fascinated with doing extra. Pictures in his workplace present him with the Bidens, Clintons, and Obamas. He’s teased a run for Florida governor for a lot of the final decade—partly, he admits, as a result of it’s free promoting. But it’s difficult since he turned a registered impartial in 2017, after, he says, “they began placing the phrase socialist subsequent to Democrat.”
Meanwhile, in what he manufacturers “political philanthropy,” Morgan has poured his cash and affect into particular points. In 2020, he spent $6 million to go a state constitutional modification elevating Florida’s minimal wage by steps to $15 per hour in 2026 (it’s now $13, the best within the Southeast). At the time, Morgan confronted criticism for outsourcing his agency’s name heart work to corporations paying lower than $15. In 2016, impressed by how medical marijuana helped his brother Tim handle his ache, he spent $8 million on getting Florida to legalize it. He and Tim crisscrossed Florida in a bus, incomes Morgan the nickname “Pot Daddy” alongside the way in which. He says he now takes a marijuana gummy each evening earlier than mattress. Morgan didn’t finance the November 2024 referendum that didn’t legalize leisure marijuana too, however was vocal in his help for it.
For Morgan, it’s not nearly successful, however altering the sport. He and Ultima contributed $1 million to assist construct the Morgan & Morgan Home, a 120-bed shelter for victims of home abuse with two bulletproof secure rooms, and $2 million to Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, the place the 100,000 square-foot facility now bears the identify Morgan & Morgan Hunger Relief Center. And there’s extra to come back—Morgan plans to depart his property (which he hopes will exceed $1 billion) to charity. (Remember, he’s been doing transfers to his youngsters all alongside.)
“Being poor, helpless, hopeless, and powerless, that’s an issue,” he says. “But the great factor is the style by no means leaves your mouth.”
Morgan doesn’t spend a lot time within the workplace as of late. He prefers winters in Maui, the place he says his ashes shall be scattered sometime, and summers in New Hampshire. So when he does present up on the agency’s downtown Orlando headquarters, there’s loads of gawking–what he calls “the panda impact.”
Inside his workplace, there aren’t any pandas in sight, simply giraffes–three golden giraffe statues stand guard on his desk and a cluster of stuffed ones huddle within the nook. Morgan explains he desires to purchase a farm in Florida, inventory it with giraffes and elephants, and “deal with them like royalty.” He’s already scouted property in New Smyrna Beach for his private sport reserve. But his spouse isn’t thrilled with the thought. To cool his obsession, she buys him giraffe tchotchkes, a sort of “right here, you’ve bought them already, now let it go” ploy. But letting issues go simply isn’t Morgan’s model. After our interview wraps up, he walks me to the elevator. He plans to trip all the way down to the bottom flooring when one among his staff shortly sticks her arm between the closing doorways to cease us. She tells him there’s a bunch ready to debate a giant case involving Publix, the Florida-based grocer with $57 billion in annual income.
“Nice speaking to you,” he says to me, reaching out for a goodbye handshake. Then, with a smile, he provides, “But Publix has cash.”
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