Tony Sgro is a renowned criminal defense lawyer, known for securing multiple not-guilty verdicts for clients who faced allegations ranging from organized crime, drug trafficking and homicide. He is also a successful entrepreneur. Starting from one employee and limited financial means, he has built a successful multi-city law firm, Sgro & Roger, which he continues to lead as a Partner and Founding Member. But Tony’s influence comes not from his numerous wins in the courtroom or his success as an entrepreneur but from his brave attitude to step forward, confront challenges, to always strive to make a difference.
As a kid, Tony used to do various odd jobs to make some money. He recalls earning the minimum wage of $2.65 an hour. Today, he makes $850 per hour, which is almost equal to what he used to earn per month back then. Pointing that out, Tony says that what he has attained through his firm has exceeded his expectations. But he also quickly adds that they have not achieved anything by sheer luck, but through hard work. “There is no magic to what we do,” he says. “It is all hard work.”
Tony may have discussed his hourly earnings, but he does not define success in those terms. For him, success is being happy in whatever one is doing. “If I start my car and I am on my way to work, and I am happy about where I’m going – that is my definition of success,” he says.
Great Equalizer: Law School
Tony’s family is originally from Italy, and before him, no one from his family had gone to college, and only a few finished secondary education. He shares that he is the first one in his entire family to pursue any sort of higher education. As there was no one around him whom he could turn to for advice, Tony tried to figure out what would happen if he went to college. And even as a kid, he felt that law school would be a great equalizer.
“I grew up in an economically depressed situation,” Tony says. “And I saw that people in my position weren’t treated well.” He often heard that the courtroom makes everything balanced for everybody, and his decision to join law school stemmed from his desire to be an “equal amongst everyone.” “That was probably the biggest driver for me to graduate from law school,” Tony says.
Tony, who is also passionate about music, paid for his school education by playing drums and guitar in different bands – he still plays those instruments. After law school, he opened music schools, which had nothing to do with law but showcased his entrepreneurial spirit. “I eventually sold the music schools that we opened. I still play music, but I also now represent musicians, promoters and venues, as an attorney,” Tony says. He still performs to this day in an Italian Rock and Roll band.
Founding a Law Firm
In the initial phase of his legal career, Tony worked for someone else for a year in Las Vegas. This gentleman soon recognized Tony’s potential and saw in him what Tony couldn’t see himself. Tony tried many jury trials as a young lawyer and won almost all of them.
One day, the gentleman he was working for said, “Listen, it’s time for you to go on your own.” Tony was devastated, thinking he was being fired. “And I’d never been fired from a job,” he says. His employer tried to assure him that he was not firing him, but forcing him to go on his own. It didn’t make sense to Tony at that time.
“He helped me get an office and sent me clients,” Tony recalls. “He did everything that he could other than have me work for him and be on his payroll.” As Tony was quite driven even then, he took this as a challenge. “I made sure I had it in me to make it on my own,” he says.
Not long after that, Tony hired his first employee, which for him was a big deal. He also recalls buying his first cell phone. Although he had hired employees, Tony made his own copies, did his own runs, went to the courthouse, and filed his own pleadings. “I was very careful and very guarded and made sure I could do it on my own,” he remembers.
Another person who believed in Tony was his uncle, to whom he was very close and who had been the closest thing to a father figure for most of his life. When he told his uncle that he could make his firm work if he had $5,000, his uncle immediately wrote him a check for that amount and wished him, “Best of luck.” And Tony never looked back after that. “From those very modest beginnings, it has been quite the journey,” Tony says. He now has law offices in three different cities, Las Vegas and Reno, and in Milan, Italy, where a lot of his family still lives. Today, they have close to 50 employees.
Tony points out that not everyone was supportive when he was establishing his firm. He recalls overhearing some naysayers say that he would never accomplish anything. They doubted his capability to succeed because of his humble background. This motivated him to prove them wrong and make it work. And he did make it work.
Major Challenges
Lack of financial resources initially posed a challenge for Tony. Starting on his own meant he needed money to sustain himself, and he never had enough to begin with. In the initial years, another challenge was not knowing where his next client would come from, and this caused him a high degree of anxiety.
Even back then, Tony got the opportunity to work on larger cases. But, because of his young age, others sometimes didn’t take him seriously, and he had to constantly outwork the other side. Tony recalls that if they were working until 9 p.m., he made sure he worked till 10 p.m. He was determined to work harder than others and know the case better than anyone else. This affected his work-life balance, and his personal life suffered as a result of that. “So that was probably the biggest challenge that I had — always wanting to do the best job possible, which then in turn exhausted any ability to have a meaningful work-life balance in the beginning part of my career,” Tony says.
Almost Quit to Spectacular Growth
Like almost every other firm and business, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Sgro & Roger as well. And Tony, being an old-school person, didn’t believe in remote work; in order to represent clients, he needed to look them in the eyes and shake their hands. “Practicing and going to court through Zoom didn’t appeal to me,” he says. So, except for two people who had lung health issues, the entire team at the firm agreed to continue to work physically from the office every day. During this period, Tony also began to contemplate whether he should retire.
“I thought to myself, there is this pandemic, and I have a few bucks in the bank, maybe the universe is telling me it’s time to slow down or retire,” Tony shares. But he was at the top of his game, and his clients were willing to pay him for the work they wanted him to do. So instead of slowing down or retiring, Tony steered his firm toward spectacular growth. “From 2020 to 2025, we have literally doubled in size and opened up in two more cities,” he says.
Achieving Success Through Hard Work
Tony underscores that they have worked hard and taken risks to be where they are. One case that illustrates that is a personal injury case. According to Tony, he and his partner mortgaged their houses for this case, as the costs were very high. “My partner and I leveraged the law firm and took mortgages on our homes,” he adds. “Had we lost that case, we’d have become destitute.” On top of that, both of them were 10-year lawyers at the time. Still, they risked every dime they had on this personal injury case. “We did that because we believed in this case,” Tony says. But it was the most anxious period of his life. “Thank God we came out on top,” Tony says. And it only happened because of their hard work.
Style of Leadership and Regular Day
It may sound archaic to some, but Tony, as a leader, wants everyone to tell him daily what they are working on. “They categorize me as a dinosaur, which is fine,” he says. Walking in and out of staff and attorneys’ offices allows him to interact with every single individual who works at the firm, even if it is for 5 or 10 minutes. Because of that, he stays on top of what is going on and can quickly identify issues and help solve them.
Tony’s mornings are spent either in court or moving around the office and engaging with everyone. In the afternoons during lunchtime, he and his team typically gather around in the lunchroom. Tony informs that a chef comes in and makes lunch for everyone. Following lunch, he focuses on his work and the cases he is personally responsible for.
At his firm, Tony has created a work environment where everyone uplifts each other and builds each other up. Under his leadership, everyone works in collaboration. According to Tony, they all are driven by the drive to be the best person in whatever they do. For him, his greatest achievement is getting to a place where he can be really proud of the people that he has been able to surround himself with.
Tony understands that in his field, “losing is something that everyone has to deal with.” He too is on the losing side sometimes, but he sleeps well at night knowing that he couldn’t have done anything differently. He always does the best that he can.
Work Is Still a Lot of Fun
“Five years ago, my future was: I’m retiring,” Tony points out. Currently, he is not thinking about the future or retirement, as he says, “I’m really at a place where I like what I do because it’s both mentally challenging and mentally stimulating.” He feels blessed to have a great staff, because of which, he can explore and try out new things, such as representing police officers.
“I made my bones doing criminal defense, beating up police officers in the court for decades,” Tony says. Now, his law partner, David Roger, former D.A. for Clark County, serves as general counsel for the Police Protective Association, the largest police union in the West. Tony shares he took it as a huge compliment that police officers would ask him to help them with a legal issue. In fact, David sought his help with a particular litigation, involving police officers who were not getting paid for all the time spent to get to and from assignments, which in some instances could take a couple of hours.
When David asked Tony for his help, he quickly admitted he didn’t know a lot about labor law, but he was willing to learn it. Recently, after almost five years of litigating, they secured one of the biggest labor law settlements that Las Vegas has ever seen.
“That kind of stuff is pretty cool to me because I took a deep dive into something I didn’t know a lot about. I took a deep dive into something that many others are much more skilled at than myself,” Tony says. “We learned it. We did an excellent job. And then we ended up settling for a significant amount of money on behalf of over 3,000 police officers.” This is what keeps things interesting for Tony.
He stresses that what he does is not a one-man show. It is a collaborative work. Together, his team works on a project and gets it done, which is “pretty satisfying and pretty validating” for him. “All of which is to say, who knows what the future is, because the work is still a lot of fun for me,” Tony says.
Message to Aspiring Leaders
“Remember where you came from and keep it grounded” is Tony’s advice to aspiring leaders in the legal industry. He also tells them that the things that are important are often not the things that they believe are important when they are young. “The things that remain consistently important, your family and friends, and your happiness, will take you through a lifetime,” he says.
“The material stuff and individual advancement opportunities, that’s going to provide potentially some happiness in that very short term, but it’s not what’s going to round you out as a person,” Tony adds.
