In a conversation with Arthur Rothrock on The Litigator's Path, Koster walks through how he and his former partner split responsibilities at a lean two-partner firm, why he screens clients as much for temperament as for the merits of their case, how he calibrates litigation strategy to a client's actual budget, and where AI tools fit (and don't fit) in a property litigation practice. The common thread: running a small firm on real property work in one of the most tenant-friendly cities in the country demands constant cost-benefit thinking – not just in the courtroom, but in every decision about staffing, technology, and which cases to take in the first place.
How Koster Screens Clients Before Taking a Case
For a firm that represents individual landlords in landlord-tenant litigation – not corporations – client selection has an outsized effect on profitability and sanity. Koster says he has learned to read early warning signs during intake. The biggest red flag: a prospective client who makes "really confident, assertive legal claims" but cannot support them with dates, specifics, or documentation. Someone who insists they are being harassed but cannot describe a single incident that meets the legal standard is, in Koster's experience, likely to be difficult throughout the engagement.
A second filter is stubbornness about settlement. Koster finds that clients who push back on his legal analysis during the initial conversation – or who repeatedly ask the same questions after receiving answers – tend to resist counsel's advice once litigation is underway. That resistance translates directly into higher bills and longer timelines, which individual property owners in the Bay Area can rarely absorb. He also watches for the deposit test: a client who is eager to litigate but hesitates at a meaningful retainer is signaling a mismatch between expectations and resources. "You have to listen to the words that come out of my mouth," Koster says, summing up the baseline requirement for any working attorney-client relationship.
Why Thomas Koster Tailors Litigation Strategy to Client Budgets
Koster describes a decision-making process that many solo and small-firm litigators will recognize: before choosing a litigation posture, he runs the economics. An aggressive strategy – early motions for summary judgment, extensive discovery, multiple depositions – can shorten a case by months. But for an individual landlord whose building generates modest rental income, the legal fees may exceed what the faster resolution saves.
In many of his cases, Koster finds that a measured approach – doing "what needs to happen" procedurally and letting the case reach a mandatory settlement conference – produces comparable outcomes at a fraction of the cost. He applies the same logic to the choice between court and arbitration. A three-day binding arbitration might cost each side around $12,000 in arbitrator fees, but the total attorney time to get there can be a third of what a full civil court timeline demands, and the resolution comes in six months instead of eighteen or twenty-four.
This cost awareness extends to how Koster staffs his work. He uses contract attorneys for motion work, discovery, meet-and-confer letters, and research memos – tasks that are necessary but that he can oversee without doing every hour himself. For lower-budget matters, he also turns to tools like Legion to reduce drafting time on litigation documents. The calculus is straightforward: if the work product is equivalent, the client should not pay more just because the attorney chose the slower method.
How Thomas Koster Went From Contract Attorney to Building His Own Firm
Koster did not set out to practice property law. He went to Santa Clara for intellectual property and "wanted to be a cog in a large corporation that gave me stock options." That plan ended when an early employer asked him to handle a litigation matter he had no training for – defending a landlord accused of buying a stolen Ferrari – and fired him when he said he was not equipped to do it. He moved into contract work for two former mentors, handling appearances in bankruptcy court, San Francisco Superior Court, and other counties while picking up discovery and motion assignments.
The partnership with his former co-partner started on Craigslist. She was looking for a contract attorney to handle unlawful detainers; Koster answered the ad. She already had business infrastructure in place – an office, accounts, a functioning tech setup – and a steady flow of landlord-tenant work, partly through her husband, a named partner who had done significant appellate work on rent control and anti-SLAPP issues in San Francisco.
The two found they worked well together without friction, which Koster considers the most important factor in any law firm partnership. They split equity evenly, took partner draws as needed, and maintained largely separate books of business: Koster handled litigation, his partner handled transactional work, and shared clients – typically property managers – went to whoever picked up the phone. They considered hiring associates during COVID, when nonpayment evictions were frozen and the remaining cases (mostly nuisance-based unlawful detainers) required heavy discovery and depositions. Once the eviction landscape normalized, they returned to a leaner model with occasional contract attorneys for overflow. Koster has since moved on to open his own practice, the Law Office of A. Thomas Koster, where he now handles both litigation and transactional real estate matters across the Bay Area.
How Thomas Koster Markets a Niche Landlord-Tenant Practice in San Francisco
Koster's marketing relies almost entirely on relationship channels rather than paid advertising. He sponsors events hosted by landlord-centric organizations and presents at monthly or quarterly meetings where dues-paying members can ask general legal questions – sessions that double as soft business development, typically ending with "you should get an attorney" and a stack of business cards.
Referrals from colleagues account for a meaningful share of new matters. Koster singles out one source that solo practitioners often overlook: his own tax attorney. The professional he pays to handle the firm's taxes has sent him "quite a bit of work," including landlord-tenant disputes and issues involving investment LLCs that hold property. It is a pattern worth noting for any small-firm attorney – the professionals you hire for your own business can become a reliable referral pipeline if the relationship is strong.
The practice area also generates its own repeat work. San Francisco landlords who go through one eviction often face subsequent tenant lawsuits, insurance coverage disputes, or new regulatory hurdles. Koster describes dealing with insurers trying to deny coverage as a "peripheral" but recurring part of the work – one that sometimes leads to referring clients out to plaintiff-side bad faith attorneys, which in turn strengthens those referral relationships.
Where AI Works and Where It Falls Short in Thomas Koster's Practice
Koster has experimented with ChatGPT and found it unreliable for legal research. He recounts asking it for case citations, receiving a mix of real and fabricated cases, and then watching it apologize for inventing citations – and, in one instance, apologize for citing cases that were actually real. His conclusion: for well-established causes of action with CACI jury instructions, a general AI tool can point you in the right direction, "but you could also just go to CACI and find the jury instructions."
Where Koster does find value in general AI is in drafting – client-facing letters, deposition outlines, and particularly the tedious work of translating discovery requests into plain-language emails that explain to clients what they need to produce. Instead of manually parsing every request for production into categories, he uses AI to generate a first draft, reviews it, and sends it out. For the litigation-specific work – motions, discovery, pleadings – he uses Legion, which he describes as "a different class of AI software" because it pulls from verified case law rather than generating citations probabilistically.
The firm's broader tech stack is deliberately simple: Microsoft Word, Dropbox (now a business account after an early scare when a folder migration temporarily made files disappear), Gmail, Google Calendar, and Bill4Time for billing and invoicing. Koster tracks his active cases and action items on a yellow legal pad, rewriting the list when he runs out of room and marking urgent items with asterisks. It is not elegant, but every element works, and nothing requires a dedicated IT department to maintain.
What Litigators Can Take Away
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Koster screens prospective clients for two specific behaviors during intake – making confident legal claims they cannot support with any facts, and asking the same questions repeatedly after receiving answers – because either pattern predicts a difficult engagement.
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Before choosing an aggressive litigation posture, Koster runs the math on whether the added attorney fees will actually produce a better net outcome for the client than waiting for a mandatory settlement conference – a discipline that keeps individual property owners from spending more on legal fees than the dispute is worth.
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The most productive referral source is not a marketing campaign but his own tax attorney, who refers landlord-tenant and LLC matters because the professional relationship runs both ways.
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Koster uses contract attorneys for research, motions, and discovery to keep client costs down and layers in AI drafting tools for lower-budget matters – treating staffing and technology as interchangeable cost levers rather than fixed overhead.
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In a two-partner firm, he and his partner avoided equity disputes by maintaining largely separate books of business (litigation vs. transactional), splitting revenue evenly, and sharing clients only when the work naturally overlapped – a structure worth studying for any small partnership.
Listen to the Full Episode
Thomas Koster's full conversation with Arthur Rothrock covers even more ground – from the quirks of San Francisco's rent board to the realities of getting clients to comply with discovery obligations. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can reach Koster at the Law Office of A. Thomas Koster. To learn how Legion helps litigators draft pleadings, discovery, and motions in minutes, visit legion.law.