The Personal Injury Marketing Minute is a podcast dedicated to marketing personal injury law firms online. It is produced by OptimizeMyFirm.com.
Chris Mullins, The Phone Sales Doctor, joins us today to discuss her upcoming PILMMA roundtable – Intake. You can spend millions of dollars on marketing and have it be all for naught if your intake team is dropping the ball. Afterall, your intake sales specialists are the first warm introduction between your law firm and your prospective clients. They need to not only collect the right information, but they need to do so while showing empathy and compassion to people experiencing trauma. On this episode, we talk about: What to look for when hiring intake sales professionals How to train intake sales professionals for each type of case Big mistakes law firms make with their intake specialists Visit Chris Mullins here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismullinsphonesalesdoctor/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Lawrence LeBrocq, CEO and Managing Partner of Garces, Grabler and LeBrocq PC (GGL), joins us today to discuss Processes and Systems to Maximize Profit in a Personal Injury Law Firm. He'll be speaking at the PILMMA Super Summit this year. There are many skill sets that come into play when growing your firm. It is easy to oversimplify it. One might think, “I'll invest in marketing, get more clients in the door, then add more attorneys once I have the business growing.” While those are all important, there is a crucial piece missing for maximizing profitability long-term: systems and processes. Without these in place, you risk costly inefficiencies, poor client relationships, and employee burnout. In this episode, we discuss: Processes to maintain consistent communication with clients Systems and checklists for streamlined workflows Setting standards to prevent under-settling cases Visit Lawrence LeBrocq online here https://ggllawyers.com/our-attorneys/lawrence-a-lebrocq-esq/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
As we continue our Spotlight on PILMMA series, Attorneys Greg Ward and Jany Martínez-Ward of join us to discuss the strategies and pitfalls lawyers face as they scale their practices. The Ward Law Group has grown significantly, and has offices in both Miami and New York. Growth is exciting — but without the right foundation, it can become a nightmare – leaving you with damaging scars. But real success isn't just about getting more clients — it's about scaling the right way. In this episode, we cover: The mindset shifts that are required to grow Core systems and processes for scaling your firm How to hire and manage the right employees for your firm's values Visit The Ward Law Group online here: https://www.855dolor55.com/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcription coming soon.
Cindy Speaker, CEO of Speaker Media and Marketing, joins us today as we continue our "Spotlight on PILMMA" series. At the PILMMA Super Summit 2025 conference, she will be discussing the Best Strategies for Business Marketing. But today, she will be walking us through some of the bigger mistakes lawyers make along the way. Using videos in your marketing strategy just makes sense. People are regularly searching for videos to summarize complex issues. Google is even starting to prioritize videos in search results. You just have to start doing it. In this episode, we discuss: What types of content to make in your videos Legal and ethical missteps while making videos (so you don't get sued) Cliché tropes to avoid so that you don't blend in with all of the other lawyers Visit Cindy online here: https://cindyspeaker.com/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Tanscript:
Sterling Hawkins joins us today to discuss his “No Matter What” approach to success. This mindset has helped him grow through some of the most challenging transitions in his life, and he is sharing this mindset with the PILMMA community as the keynote speaker. Growth is uncomfortable, but it is an inevitable part of change. This is unavoidable if you want your law firm to grow. But how do you navigate the discomfort so that you can thrive in your firm and successfully achieve your goals? In this episode, we discuss: Sterling's “No Matter What” approaching that stems from unwavering commitment to goals Embracing and growing through discomfort The importance of external accountability This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series. Visit Sterling online here: https://www.sterlinghawkins.com/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the personal injury marketing minute where we quickly cover the hot. Topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. As business owners, we didn't just wake up one morning and go, I think I'll be a lawyer, or I think I'll run an SEO agency. We had visions for success. We had inherent goals, even if they weren't 100% hashed out. Maybe your goals have shifted over time, or maybe you've reached your initial goals and are building on the results. Either way, you are listening to this podcast because you want more. Not only that, but you're willing to take steps and time out of your day to learn how to get to your next level. Continuing our Spotlight on Pilma series, Sterling Hawkins:, Pilma's keynote speaker, joins us today to discuss his upcoming presentation on his no-matter-what approach to success. STERLING HAWKINS: Thank you so much for joining us today, Sterling. Lindsey, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to diving in together. Lindsey: Absolutely. Well, let's get started with a bit about yourself and about your background. STERLING HAWKINS: Yeah, of course. Well, I... I grew up a fifth-generation retailer in my family's supermarket. From there, I got into the entrepreneurial software tech world and got pretty lucky early on. I mean, don't get me wrong, we worked really hard as well, but the first company I founded became part of this Apple Pay before Apple Pay. Lindsey: Nice. STERLING HAWKINS: And we raised hundreds of millions of dollars. I thought it was only a matter of time until I'd crowned myself the next Steve Jobs. But when the housing market collapsed, our investment dried up, and things went a totally different direction for me. Lindsey: Yeah, that will absolutely make a big shift, and unless you are able to pivot out of that, you can really get bogged down with that first big dip. STERLING HAWKINS: Totally. And I did get bogged down for a number of years, just sitting in my self-doubt and self-pity and everything else. But what I started to realize is that that failure was an opportunity. We learned a lot of things as an organization, what to do in a culture, and then just for myself, what I need to do as an individual to grow. And it was reflecting on some of those really hard, even dark times that kind of gave me the tool set first for myself, and then for organizations I worked with all over the world to help them grow, regardless of the circumstances. In other words, no matter what. Lindsey: Well, nobody wants to listen to a motivational speaker, if you will, that hasn't failed hard, because why would anybody who has just succeeded over time be able to speak to business owners and attorneys who are struggling, who are here because they don't have all the answers?
Law firm hiring expert, Jay Henderson, joins us today as we continue our Spotlight on PILMMA series. Having the right people in place makes all the difference when it comes to scaling your law firm. Obviously, each role requires a different skillset. Beyond that, each person has unique requirements to keep them performing at an optimal level. This can include management style, motivations, and overall corporate culture. In this episode we discuss: The benefits of assessments prior to making hiring decisions The “Road to Money” process that helps unlock big profits Identifying revenue gaps that can be addressed through better hiring and management processes This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series. Visit Jay Henderson online here: https://www.jayhenderson.org/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. One of my favorite quotes is hire hard, manage easy. This is such a simple concept, but makes a world of difference in the long-term operations of your business. The same is true whether managing a CEO agency, law firm, or even a Dairy Queen. You simply cannot thrive as a business. Without having the right people in place doing the things that need to be done. We are continuing our Spotlight on Pilma series with hiring expert Jay Henderson:. At the upcoming Pilma conference, Jay will be discussing how law firm owners can earn new profits by unleashing higher performance from their people. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jay. Jay Henderson: My pleasure. Thank you. Lindsey: Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your hiring agency. Jay Henderson: So, I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina. As I have just learned, you're right up the street from me, which is awesome. And I've been helping law firms for about 15 years make excellent hiring decisions. You know, get the best people in the door that they can. Avoid the problems. That's really where you start. If you can avoid the problems, you're going to default straight into a better team immediately. Right? So, yeah, working with law firms for about 15 years. And speaking of Pilma. But I got into working with law firms because of Ken Hardison. So that has been a great, great connection and relationship. I consider Ken a good friend. In fact, he's from Raleigh. So I met him in Raleigh. So that's that, you know, outside of business. So that's how that worked. But yeah, so it's a lot of fun. I love working with my law firm clients. I pretty much only focus on working with law firms. And that's it. Lindsey: That's great. Yeah, we just had Ken on the show a couple of weeks ago. And what a great guy. He's got some great vision and a huge heart for helping out attorneys, clearly, as you do as well. And so what is it about the legal profession that drew you in and made you want to focus on that for hiring purposes? Jay Henderson: Well, it was a pretty selfish decision, actually. I, well, 2008, 2008. In 2009, I was doing a lot of management consulting work with Cisco Corporation. They happen to have a big campus, as you know, right up the street from us. And so then the economy sort of went sideways, as we all know, a little bit. And I stepped back and I asked, where am I unique and different, where I can add value in the world and be super helpful? And in fact, Ken and I were sitting right here in this office, and we were talking about the different industries that are struggling and what people are going to do to, you know, pivot, which was a big COVID word.
Trey Harrell from Charleston's Trey Harrell Law Office joins us today to discuss his upcoming PILMMA presentation on how to compete with that 800lb gorilla. Every law firm has different goals. Some want to be the big fish in their small pond. Some want to be the big fish in a big pond. Others are happy just to have a few really great cases a year. Either way, law firms need to attract cases in order to meet their goals. In today's episode, we discuss how small firms can capture a sliver of the market, how to build a brand by leaning into your authentic personality, and how to create consistent, authentic content across different platforms. This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series. Visit Trey online here: https://treyhelps.com/about/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. Law firms come in all shapes and sizes and have different goals to match. Some firms want to dominate their area, while others would be happy getting just a handful of really great cases every year. Regardless of the goal, every law firm wants to get their piece of the pie. But some... Locations make that challenging, especially when you are competing against the giant-sized law firms spending millions of dollars every month to dominate their area. How can a smaller law firm compete against them to get even a bit of attention? Trey Harrell:, founding partner of Trey Harrell: Law Office in Charleston, joins us today to discuss his PELMA topic, Competing Against the 800-Bound Gorilla. Thank you so much for joining us today, Trey. Trey Harrell: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Lindsey: Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your law firm. Trey Harrell: Yeah, we run a small three-day attorney shop in Charleston, South Carolina. We represent clients all over the Palmetto State. We've been open for about five years. I've been practicing a lot longer than that. Before we opened up this firm, I was a special assistant United States attorney, a federal prosecutor. So, you know, we did our time for the government and then decided to go out on my own. And here we are today. Lindsey: That's great. Well, talk to us about some of the challenges that you see, you know, especially when you have some of these monster personal injury firms that are kind of encroaching on your market. Trey Harrell: Yeah. The hardest part of dealing with one of those big firms is their budget is at such a massive level. And then being able to saturate the market that they do in the way they do is just such a challenge for us to deal with. So you got to be really smart and very strategic in how you market and how you go about getting the clients because you can't, you don't have the dollars to waste on a bad TV commercial or a bad billboard. You've got to be very strategic in what you do. Lindsey: Right. You're not going to be able to go toe to toe against them using the same methods that they're using or else you're going to be bankrupt in an hour. Trey Harrell: But see, there's also a kind of a benefit to that is because they're spending so much money, they have to bring in so much revenue in so many cases. I think a lot of problems. Problems with a lot of small lawyers, particularly when they're starting out. They try to compete with the big dogs. We all know who I'm talking about, right? They try to go head to head with them. You don't need the whole pot, right? You don't even need half the pot when you're a small law firm. You need just a little sliver.
In today's Spotlight on PILMMA series episode, Raquel Gomes, the founder of Staffi, joins us to discuss how hiring virtual assistants can help law firms support their operations. This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series. As law firms scale their practices, having the right support staff in place is essential. Now, more than ever, law firms have options when it comes to how to fill these roles. You can opt for a traditional route of having someone in office. You can hire remote workers who still work for your firm directly. You can hire agencies and outsource responsibilities. Or you can hire virtual assistants who are managed by an outside company. In this episode, we discuss: How hiring the right team can give lawyers time freedom What roles can virtual assistants fill The financial benefits of hiring virtual assistants Visit Raquel online here: https://getstafi.com/what-is-stafi/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. In the age of remote hiring, we are well beyond the need to exclusively have employees in office, or even in the same state. While some roles are helpful to fill on location, you can streamline operations and find substantial savings by filling the positions with virtual assistants. Continuing our Spotlight on PILMA series, Raquel Gomes of STAFI joins us today to discuss her upcoming PILMA presentation, How to Thrive with VAs. Thank you so much for joining us today. Raquel Gomes Thank you for having me. So, let's start out, tell me a little bit about yourself and about STAFI. All right, so I grew up in the south of Brazil in a very traditional family where my father was an entrepreneur and my mom was fully dedicated to her family. And I heard often that because I was a woman, I had to choose. I couldn't have everything I wanted from life. And my mom, she lived her life like that. And I love and admire her to death, but she's an incredible lady. But that never sat well with me. That really created an inner fire. And I studied psychology actually to challenge those limiting beliefs. And I decided early on that my mission was to help women believe that they can get to live a full life with everything they dream and desire. She We've We've done it. it. well done. While having the time to do the things we love, while being able to be present for our families, while being able to stop working to go get my daughter from school, because that's what I cherish, and, you know, to take on those guilt-free vacations where you can bond with your family and friends, and I feel that time is our most valuable asset, and being able to be present is the most expensive luxury there is, and if you're doing everything yourself for your business, you're killing yourself. That's not a life that I want for me, and it's not a life that I want for any law firm owner out there either. And that's what we do at STAFI. We provide you with the support that your business needs in order for you to be able not only to grow your businesses financially, but also to be able to live the life of your dreams in your own terms. And we do this by providing the best talent there is in Latin America. They're fully bilingual, college-educated, trained, and ready to go. And we also Go one step further and provide you the support to alleviate you from onboarding, training, and managing of that VA because the truth is, anyone can tell you that they can get you good VAs, but then it's on you to onboard them, to train them, to coach them, and to incorporate them into your firm.
Mary Ellen O'Connor, founder of O'Connor Law, PLLC, joins us to discuss how she hires, retains, and works with remote team members. This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our “Spotlight on PILMMA” podcast series. Mary Ellen also covers what she is looking forward to the most at PILMMA Super Summit 2025! Visit Mary Ellen online here: https://www.nyworkerslaw.com/our-team/mary-ellen-oconnor/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. When it comes to SEO, we have long known that you need to hire the best of the best in order to move the needle. As it so happens, the best of the best didn't all decide to move to Raleigh, North Carolina, so we hire remotely. Our web developers in Texas, our Google Business Profile expert is in Ohio, and we have writers in a handful of additional states. That way, we can source the right talent for the job. The same is true in the legal field. In order to best serve your clients, as well as your operational needs, you might You might need to look beyond your own hometown for the right professionals. Continuing our Spotlight on PILMMA series, Mary Ellen O'Connor of O'Connor Law in New York joins us today to share some insights on remote hiring, her presentation topic at the upcoming PILMMA conference. Thank you so much for joining us today. Mary Ellen Oh, thank you so much for having me, Lindsey. I really appreciate it. Lindsey Well, tell us a bit about yourself and about your practice. Mary Ellen So I am the owner of O'Connor Law, and we've been in business for almost 16 years now, and we represent injured workers in the state of New York. When they're injured on the job, we have five attorneys and a support staff of 25. So we've been growing particularly fast over the past four or five years, and it's mostly due to remote work. Lindsey Well, and with that sustained growth and, you know, exponential growth over the past several years, getting the right people in place to... scaffold that growth and make sure that your operations are supported is necessary if you want to be able to build out and continue to grow long term. And so clearly, you know, as you said, you have hired remotely. Why do you consider remote hiring to be necessary in this situation? Mary Ellen So I think that remote hiring provides you with not just the opportunity to open up the market to the best and the brightest, but also, from my own experience, I actually started working in 2005. So back when remote work was sort of, you know, not a non thing. And I remember when I got hired and they told me I could work remotely, I didn't actually believe them. So, you know, I know that when the CEO of the insurance company said to me, hey, why are you on calendar next week on September 7th? It's the first day of school, don't you have children? And I said, yeah. Yes, I've only been here three weeks. I don't have any time to take. And he's like, well, work from home that day. So I was like, I'm not allowed. I'm still on the six-month probation. And he was like, I'm the CEO. I just said to work from home. And it started a relationship with someone that had my full dedication because it provided me with an opportunity to never really have to give up being a mother and or being an attorney. Now, you really can't have it all. But this was the best of both worlds where I could work from home, pop in for that 15-minute pumpkin story that they needed to read and then run back home and not miss work and not miss the event. So being afforded that opportunity also then gave me a dedicati...
Erica Caviness is the founder and lead consultant at Thrive Concepts. In this episode, Erica discusses “How lawyers can leverage their operational strengths.” In this discussion, we discuss how Thrive Concepts uses the Kolbe assessment to identify operational strengths, how the effective implementation of operational strengths leads to less stress, higher productivity, and better bottom-line results, and ongoing accountability and follow-up to sustain improved work performance. Also, Erica tells us what she is looking forward to the most at PILMMA Super Summit 2025! Erica will be speaking at PILMMA Super Summit 2025 again this year. This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our "Spotlight on PILMMA" podcast series. Visit Erica online here: https://thriveconcepts.org/about/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. Today we are kicking off our Spotlight on PILMA podcast series. Over the next couple weeks, I'll be interviewing speakers for the upcoming PILMA conference that's taking place in Denver and the end of April. This year's PILMA lineup is full of highly successful lawyers, marketing experts, and legal operational gurus, all sharing their insights on how to take your personal injury firm to the next level. For many of these speakers, taking a law firm to the next level means lead to a generation. However, that will only lead to short-term growth if your business isn't scaled appropriately and run efficiently. Our guest today is Erica Caviness, the founder and lead consultant at Thrive Concepts. She'll be focusing her PILMA presentation on leveraging your firm's operational strengths. Erica Thank you so much for joining us today. Yes, Lindsey. So good to see you. Thank you. Lindsey Well, tell us a bit about yourself and about Thrive Concepts. Erica Yeah, so I am Erica, course, and Thrive Concepts is a coaching and training company that is focused on helping law firm owners and their leadership teams really leverage their unique strengths and build a firm that they love and can actually thrive in and not just eat by and survive. So it's actually the name Thrive Concepts is really a legacy to my late mother. And the biggest lesson she always taught me growing up was we really want to thrive in life and not just eat by and survive. And so when I decided I wanted to start my own company, I knew I had to incorporate some of that. And I love being able to work with law firm owners and their team members and really help them unlock their potential and really get to the next level, whatever that means to them in their growth journey. Lindsey Well, and that's a beautiful mission. And when we think about growing our law firms, so many lawyers are focused on that survival mode and getting the next client and making sure the lights are staying on and making sure payroll has enough funds. But really having the purpose to thrive in that. are pouring so much of your life and your resources into your law firm that you should be doing that efficiently enough that you're not just in survival mode, but you're actually growing, expanding, and thriving both personally and professionally as a part of that firm. Erica Right. Absolutely. And, you know, sometimes it will be easier than others. And there's nothing wrong with being in survival mode. Lindsey You know, having seasons of that, that's normal. That's, you know, we're all human. That's life. That's life. Erica That's I think resources and someone on your side, a third party who can really give you that, you know,
Cassidy Lewis, Chief Marketing Officer at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, joins us to discuss prioritizing profit over calls. Cassidy will be speaking at PILMMA Super Summit 2025. This episode and the next several will feature PILMMA speakers in our "Spotlight on PILMMA" podcast series. In this episode, Cassidy discusses her role at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, some of the marketing campaigns they run, KPIs, profitability, limitations to profitability as a metric, assessing profitability, ROI, and what she is looking forward to the most at PILMMA Super Summit 2025. Visit Cassidy online here: https://cooperhurley.com/our-staff/cassidy-lewis/. We'll be at PILMMA Super Summit 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/pilmma-2025/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the personal injury marketing minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. In marketing, we tend to focus on a handful of KPIs to evaluate the performance of any campaign we're running. In SEO, most of our clients want to know what keywords they're ranking for, how well they're showing up on the local map, and how many phone calls are coming in from the web. Of those, the number of calls tends to get the most attention. After all, what better metric is there to demonstrate the success of an uptick than an uptick in the phone ringing? Continuing our Spotlight on PILMMA series, Cassidy Lewis, the CMO of Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, joins us today to talk about her upcoming diploma presentation, Prioritizing Profit Over Calls. Thank you so much for joining us today, Cassidy. Cassidy Thank you so much for having me, Lindsey. Lindsey Busfield (optimizemyfirm.com) Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers. Cassidy Sure. So I have been the chief marketing officer here for seven years, a little over seven years now. When I started, I was a one-man band, and now we are a team of five and a half. So we've come a long way. My day-to-day changes, I don't have anything that I do twice in a week or sometimes even a month, but I focus a lot of my efforts on high-level strategy, right? So how to make the phone ring, but how to make the phone ring with the right calls, with the clients that we want. Prior to this, I think I've been in every facet of my... So I got my start in politics. used to run campaigns. And then I worked at two Fortune 500s, one at headquarters, one locally, done some nonprofit work, some sales, own my own marketing firm. Just, I came to Cooper Hurley with, I feel like, a good amount of experience. And I always tell people that, not to brag, but to say, legal marketing still kicks my butt. Lindsey It is a whole different level than anything else out there. So, yeah, but I've been here a little over seven years and we're having a blast. That's excellent. sounds like you guys have had, you know, tremendous amount of growth to be able to grow it from that one man band to, you know, having, you know, several more people on staff and to be able to draw in the business support and scaffold that growth is fantastic. Clearly, you've had some success with the marketing campaigns that you're running for your firm. Cassidy What types of campaigns do you guys run? So we definitely have the multi-channel approach where we do some of the advertising pieces like TV, billboards, bus ads. And we do social media, but not social media in the way you think. We don't look for cases on social media. We use that as branding. We talk a lot of community. We talk a lot of our employees. We use social media to meet our clients, to meet our future clients, right? And then we focus a lot of efforts after the phone call. I always say that's where the most money can be made...
Jan Roos from CaseFuel joins us today to discuss Meta advertising. Meta ads can be effective for PI lawyers if used strategically, focusing on educational content and earlier stages of client awareness. Success metrics should focus on qualified leads/transfers and cost per case, not vanity metrics like impressions. Ad fatigue is a key challenge; campaigns require frequent creative refreshes and strategic targeting. Meta ads can be more cost-effective than Google Ads, with clicks often $2-10. Visit Jan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-roos-27078732/. His company, CaseFuel: https://casefuel.com/home. Check out The Law Firm Growth (LFG) Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/the-law-firm-growth-podcast. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the personal injury marketing minute where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world I'm your host Lindsey busfield when discussing marketing options with our clients We constantly get asked if doing social media marketing is with it and we typically say no While social media marketing is great for some businesses I know I have personally spent a ton of money at Halara because of their facebook ads We just haven't seen much success for personal injury lawyers who try their hand at meta But the lack of success isn't necessary necessarily because of the platform. It might be that lawyers have the wrong expectations of what success should look like when using meta or their marketing specialist isn't leveraging the right opportunities. Fortunately, Jan Roos: joins us today to discuss how personal injury lawyers can best use meta to grow their practices. Jan Roos: Thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, thank you for the awesome intro Lindsey. Lindsey: Well, I'm so happy to have you here, but why don't you tell everybody else who's listening who you are and what you do. Jan Roos: Cool. So my name is Jan. I got into the legal marketing space back in 2015. So at the time, I had a lot of friends who did SEO, and I was just like, honestly, I feel a little bit intimidated by the length of the contracts you have to sign. So I got into a paper click, but I was also some step I was doing in a previous business. I exited business a short earlier that year, and I basically paid traffic was a huge aspect of what we did. So gone to Google and then shortly, kind of afterwards ended up focusing on where personal injury attorneys were actually the first clients that we ever worked with. So we kind of went a little broader on paper click within the legal niche there. you know, by the time it was getting around 2020, the Google AdWords climate had changed a bunch. I still think it's a great platform to go on, but it's just, you know, they've kind of had that creep like everything else in PI, so getting harder in order to find stuff that wasn't already exploited by somebody else. So we made a pivot to social around the end of 2019. And it was after reading one of my favorite books on marketing, which is Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. Have you ever ever read that one, Lindsey? Lindsey: I haven't read that one. Jan Roos: Yeah, it's super old. I think it was published in the late 60s or early 70s, but he basically talked about these stages of market awareness. And this is kind of disseminated through a lot of the marketing lore over the decades that have come since. But basically, I was like, well, we have all this competition at this last mile of the customer decision journey, which is the solution stages he describes it, which encompasses pretty much everything, referrals, search, directories, anything that most people, that's most of the legal marketing play with, but what if there was something that was outside of that? And that's kind of where we ended up looking into around 2019.
Steve Fretzin joins up for Episode 93 to discuss coaching for Personal Injury Attorneys. Steve works with solo attorneys on up to multi-million dollar firms with multiple attorneys. In this podcast, Steve discusses planning, business development, administration, intake, tech stack, systems and creating time. He helps attorneys learn leadership, hire the right people and scale with peer groups, accountability & one on one coaching. We also touch on his podcast, "Be That Lawyer". It's a great episode. Tune in now. Visit Steve online and check his podcast out here: https://fretzin.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Ken Hardison from PILMMA joins us today to discuss what PILMMA is and how it started. Ken also covers the benefits of mastermind groups, how the PILMMA Super Summit works, his favorite part of the conference, how firms grow with the help of each other, and the future of PILMMA. PILMMA Super Summit 2025 will be April 29, 2025 - May 2, 2025 in Denver, Colorado. Visit PILMMA online here: https://www.pilmma.org/. Get Ken's book, The Mastermind Effect, here: https://www.amazon.com/Mastermind-Effect-Owners-SECRET-Growth/dp/0983937974. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Intro: Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. As a legal SEO agency, the law firms we work with all have a dedicated interest in growing their firms with strategic marketing initiatives. As such, we field a lot of questions regarding which marketing strategies are worth investing in and which are more hype than results. One organization we have been asked about multiple times is PILMMA. Many of the clients we work with are already PILMMA members and they consistently praise the strategic marketing and business management strategies that they receive as a result of their membership. Additionally, I had the opportunity to meet Ken Hardison, the Founder of PILMMA at their annual summit last year. And while I could talk secondhand about the great work that PILMMA does, nobody is going to be able to explain the game-changing resources PILMMA provides as well as Ken can himself. Thank you so much for joining us today. Ken: Oh, thank you, it's my honor. How Did PILMMA Start? Lindsey: Well, let's start with a little bit of information just about you. Can you share a little bit about your journey from becoming a lawyer to a leader in the legal marketing and management industry? Ken: Yeah, so I started practicing in '82 in a little town called Dunn, North Carolina. And I was a partner in another firm from 82 to 96. And I wanted to start marketing because I had went to court one day, I used to do PI, disability and criminal, and one of the partners did estate, real estate and the other one did domestic. And I went to court and this guy came in with crutches and I said, "What happened, Joe?" He said, "Well, I got hit by a semi." I said, "Well, you know, I do PI." He said, "Yeah, but I hired this guy off the TV." And it just hit me. Well, I went and tried the case and we won the case and I drove back to the office and I told my partner, I said, "I wan to have a meeting," I said, "We have got to change with the times," I said, "We need to start marketing." And they said, "No, it's unprofessional. We're not going to do it." So we had a dialogue for about six months. I left, took one associate and three staff and I went out and kind of went out, spent three days with John Morgan, this is in '96. Back then he only had 25 lawyers. I went Ken Nunn up in Indiana, and I shadowed him for two or three days and then I went and got involved with Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham, and I just learned everything, read everything I could about marketing and then tried it to law firms. And I went out and mortgaged everything I had to my name, half a million dollars at that time and went on TV and started Yellow Pages. And of course the Yellow Pages are dead now. But anyway, in five years we went from two lawyers, three staff to 13 lawyers, 47 staff, and the rest is history. 2010, I just got up one morning and I just wasn't challenged, I wasn't looking forward to going to work, and I said, "I think I'm ready to do something else." And so I sold a law firm and I was going to retire, and I moved down to Myrtle Beach from Raleigh, I was living in Raleigh then, and I fished in golf for about six months,
Attorney David Maloney runs fantastic Super Bowl TV ads for Maloney Lyons, LLC. In this podcast, David explains how he got started running Super Bowl ads, and why the people of Mobile Alabama eagerly await his firm's ads each year. David also covers how he got started creating commercials, creating commercials in a conservative area where attorney advertising was frowned upon, which ads get traction, how the ads are created, how Super Bowl ads differ from regular TV ads, call to action vs branding, funny vs informative ads, negotiating with various TV stations such as NBC CBS Fox ABC, attention to detail, measuring success, lessons learned, and if he actually returns everyone's call. Visit David Maloney here: https://maloney-lyons.com/maloney-david-j-esq/. Watch his 2025 Super Bowl commercial here: https://youtu.be/A8tKgSKTOBw. See the Personal Injury Super Bowl Ads of 2025: https://optimizemyfirm.com/super-bowl-lix/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. Watching the Super Bowl is one of the highlights of my year. While I'm always a little disappointed that the Broncos hardly ever make it to the big game, the commercials never let me down. This has been especially true with a handful of personal injury commercials this year. Maloney-Lyons had a particularly hilarious commercial that aired during the Super Bowl and I'm excited to have David Maloney as our guest today. David: Hey. Thanks for having me, Lindsey. Lindsey: Well, tell us a little bit about yourself, about your practice. David: Well, what's interesting is I had a commercial about what made me decide to become a lawyer to begin with. Which is that when I was 13, I had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for Mrs. Wesselman's English class. And then, that was followed up with us being able to watch it as well. And when I read it, I first started thinking, "Okay. I think this is what I want to do." And then, when I saw it, that solidified it further. And then, I was on... My father had visitation with me. I think it was like over maybe spring break or something and we were driving somewhere on the New York State Thruway. And I had told him that we had read this book and watched this and that I thought that I wanted to be a lawyer. And at that point, he told me that that was what he had always wanted to be. But that my being born kind of changed plans, and so that then bolstered it even more. And so, I decided to become an... I went to law school and I knew I wanted to represent the underdog. And then, you realize criminal law is a little different. And then, you realize also that when you're dealing with personal injury, the victims, since they're going up against big insurance companies, are usually the underdog. So ironically, years later after I'd become an attorney, I did an ad that... Especially being down here in Mobile, Alabama, which is right up the street from Monroeville, which is where the courthouse is that they still have that to Kill a Mockingbird plays every year, because that's where a lot of it was based off of. It resonated to have a commercial that focused on that. Lindsey: Well, and To Kill a Mockingbird, I think most of us read that that freshman year of high school. And Atticus Finch was such a profound character and so meaningful for people on a lot of different levels, both for career aspirations in terms of social justice. And it was one of the first books that I really connected with and it inspired my love of reading. So I love to hear that you say that and that that was part of your journey as well. David: Well, it struck a chord in the idealist in me. Lindsey: Yeah. And I mean, just such a well-written character from a literary perspective....
Attorney Loren Schwartz, Partner at Rouda Feder Tietjen & McGuinn in San Francisco, joins the Personal Injury Marketing Minute to discuss Top of Mind Awareness. We discuss some of the marketing strategies Loren has used, and not used, return on investment, advice for other attorneys, and what's worked for him. Top of mind awareness has worked well for Loren thanks to his authentic, genuine relationships. Loren maintains contact with past clients, contacts them on their birthday, he is personally active on social media, and he has become true friends with past clients. His biggest piece of advice is to simply be yourself. He is about to launch a quarterly newsletter as well. Top of mind awareness results in referrals. Visit Loren Schwartz online here: https://www.rftmlaw.com/attorney-profiles/loren-schwartz/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/.
Attorney Brittnie Panetta joins us today to discuss wildfire lawsuits. Brittnie works with the Matthews and Associates law firm, which has handled many wildfire lawsuits in California and Hawaii. This episode covers the current status of the Eaton Wildfire (as of March 2025), why there is likely a good case against Socal Edison, how the Eaton Fire compares to other fires, legal concerns fire victims fast, lawsuits filed to date, possible evidence, how long these types of cases take, and much more. Visit Brittnie online here: https://www.dmlawfirm.com/attorneys/brittnie-panetta/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Seasoned Trial Attorney Gary Miles mentors attorneys and entrepreneurs. He joins us for Personal Injury Marketing Minute #88 to discuss how he helps them obtain health and wealth. In this episode, we'll cover the importance of mentorship, challenges for young lawyers, effective mentorship strategies, advice for listeners and more. Check out "The Free Lawyer" Podcast and visit Gary here: https://www.garymiles.net/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Distinguished Centre College alumni who work in law discuss how Centre College in Danville, Kentucky helped prepare them for their career. Guests include Andrew Mize, Barrett Freeman, Ashley Eklund and Zach Shewmaker. In this podcast, the guests (and host) will discuss why they chose Centre, how they ended up becoming attorneys, what their major was, hurdles, how Centre could improve, and advice for incoming students interested in a legal career. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Michael Bonamarte, IV is the Managing Partner at Levin & Perconti. In this podcast, Mike will discuss how the law firm has grown over the last 20 years to become a major law firm in Chicago. Mike joined as a Law Clerk and worked his way up to Managing Partner. He goes over how the firm has grown over the last couple decades - including branding, intake, marketing, growth, AI and more. Visit Michael Bonamarte, IV here: https://www.levinperconti.com/attorneys/michael-f-bonamarte-iv/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Mark Longo and Daniela Bittner, owners of beloved social media stars Peanut the squirrel and Fred the Raccoon, are suing New York State over their seizure and killing by authorities. Their attorney, Nora Constance Marino, joins the podcast today to tell us more about this case. In this podcast, Nora provides some background on what allegedly happened, possible missteps in how New York State and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation handled the issue, how the matter could've been easily resolved, where the case is now, and goals moving forward. Visit Nora online here: https://marinojustice.com/. Visit the Legal Action Network for Animals here: https://lanalawgroup.org/. Visit P'Nuts Freedom Farm here: https://www.pnutsfreedomfarm.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Intro: Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. While many personal injury lawyers exclusively represent car accidents and slip-and-fall cases, there is room in sub-practices to take on cases that stray from the traditional, advocating for justice beyond personal injury. Nora Marino has been actively working on a case that has taken social media by storm, the case of Peanut the squirrel. Marino joins us today to give us an update on the case and the constitutional issues surrounding it. Thank you so much for joining us today. Nora: Hi, my pleasure. Thank you. What happened to P'nut & Fred: Lindsey: So for listeners who haven't been closely following the Peanut case, can you give us some background and context on what happened? Nora: Sure. So my client, Mark Longo, and his wife, Daniella Bittner, originally it was Mark had rescued a squirrel when he was just a baby, literally a couple of inches long. His mother had been hit by a car in front of my client, and he rescued the baby, who would've clearly died had Mark not been there. And Mark ended up raising this squirrel, tried to release him, Peanut, and Peanut just did not do well out in the wild and wanted to be in the house. So Mark did what any compassionate person would do, I would hope, and provided shelter, food and a home for this animal. Him and his wife then actually opened up a sanctuary, where they now have 300 animals that are rescued animals that they are caring for, and they had a raccoon who had been delivered to them, a raccoon in need, an injured raccoon who they were caring for, and apparently the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation got word of Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon. Peanut actually was a social media sensation, so that's not surprising. But instead of handling this in a way that would've been reasonable, in my opinion, they handled it in a way that was very unreasonable. Technically, there are issues and questions about whether or not people can maintain, quote, "wild animals" in their residences and homes. We are really dissecting the law on that issue, when I say we, I mean my office, as to what constitutes a wild animal, what constitutes a companion animal. The law is always subject to interpretation, as we all know, how one person may read a statute, another person may read that statute differently, so there are going to be questions about that. But regardless of how the DEC interpreted those laws pertaining to wild animals versus companion animals, they went in and got a warrant to search Mark and Danielle's property, which they did, and in my opinion, it was a very unreasonable search. It was five hours. We don't know what information was provided to the judge who signed off on the warrant. We have made freedom of information requests to get that information, which so far have not been responded to. I'm assuming I'll get that information in discovery down the road,
Courtney Walton, a legal assistant at The Lanier Law Firm, joins Personal Injury Marketing Minute #84 to share her story on the exciting journey to law school, and how her employer inspired her and assisted her. Courtney covers how she began working at the firm, what inspired her, how she is supported, challenges, how her growth aligns with the firm's goals, how her position might evolve, and advice for other law firms considering investing in their employees' professional development. Visit Courtney Walton here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-walton-7a8599196. Visit the The Lanier Law Firm here: https://www.lanierlawfirm.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Barret Freeman of Freeman Childers in Corbin Kentucky joins us today to discuss their approach to marketing in rural areas. We'll discuss unique challenges of advertising in a rural town, the close-knit nature of rural communities, common marketing misconception, marketing channelsand measuring success. Visit Barret Freeman online here: https://www.freemanandchilders.com/barrett-freeman. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Brenda Barnes and Camille Stell, authors of “RESPECT - an Insight to Attorney Compensation Plans”, join us today for Personal Injury Marketing Minute #82 to discuss how to create a fair compensation plan for your law firm. In this podcast, we'll cover challenges creating pay structures for attorneys, components of an attorney's pay, transparency, compensation, evaluation, motivation, negotiation, and other tips for attorneys who are trying to create an equitable pay structure. Get “RESPECT - an Insight to Attorney Compensation Plans” here: https://www.lawyersmutualconsulting.com/books/respect-an-insight-to-attorney-compensation-plans/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Jon Groth, of Groth Law Firm, joins us today to discuss his acquisition of another personal injury law firm and how that helped him to grow his caseload. Jon discusses his background, how he ran into a firm to purchase, what was appealing about the firm, metrics, obstacles, unexpected things, SEO, how the old partners handled the transition, how employees handled the transition, and tips for other Personal Injury Attorneys considering acquiring other personal injury law firms. Visit Jon Groth here: https://grothlawfirm.com/attorney/attorney-jon-groth/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Personal Injury Marketing Minute #80 features Attorney Chadwick Johnson from Mindful Injury Law. Chadwick discusses something all attorneys need, mindfulness. Chadwick's peacefulness is infectious and we're instantly at peace speaking with him. He's very focused on the "now". In this podcast, Chadwick tells us what mindfulness means, why he is mindful, how to be mindful, how to integrate mindfulness into your practice, examples of keeping clients calm, how mindfulness impacts cases, and most importantly, how to just be in the present. Visit Mindful Injury Law here: https://www.mindfulinjurylaw.com/. Read "The Power of Now": https://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Personal Injury Marketing Minute #79 features Taylor Neuffer, the president of Chamber Media. Taylor joins us today to discuss how to make a memorable brand identity, even if you are more introverted or reserved. Taylor discusses what Chamber Media does, the importance of branding for personal injury lawyers. elements of a brand, authenticity, being memorable and other branding tips. Visit Chamber Media here: https://chamber.media/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Gabriel Stiritz, the Founder and CEO of Lexamica, joins us today for Personal Injury Marketing Minute #78. We discuss how your law firm can both increase your leads, as well as profit from cases you don't necessarily want to handle internally. Gabriel goes over why he founded Lexamica, how Lexamica helps Personal Injury Lawyers, how leads work, how to accept a lead, referrals, how referring attorneys are paid and the communication and fee structure. Visit Lexamica online here: https://lexamica.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Stephanie Sherman joins us for Personal Injury Marketing Minute #77 to discuss representing the underdog. Stephanie is a multiple award-winning trial lawyer and partner at Wisner Baum, and she has won landmark cases worth hundreds of millions against some of the largest companies in the world. Today we're going to dig into what motivates her to take on these cases, the challenges that arise, and how to overcome some gigantic obstacles. Visit Stephanie Sherman here: https://www.wisnerbaum.com/attorneys/stephanie-b-sherman/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Of all of the website chat platforms available, few have gotten as much hype as the Intaker chat platform. Six months ago, I had never heard of them. But now I see their program on legal websites everywhere. Even some of our clients have started making the switch to Intaker. I am not one to just flatly endorse a product or service. However, after seeing the shift in results that our clients are experiencing across the board, I can safely say that Intaker is on to something. Chris Chiquet, the strategic partnerships manager for Intaker, joins us today to talk about the platform and how it is helping generate more leads for personal injury firms across the country. Visit Intaker here: https://www.intaker.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Catherine Register is the Director of Marketing at Fasig Brooks, a well-respected personal injury firm in Florida. She joins us for Personal Injury Marketing Minute 75 to tell us what a CMO does. This is an excellent episode all personal injury attorneys should listen to! Catherine discusses how she successfully approaches marketing, what is often kept in-house vs being outsourced, budgeting, marketing silos, referrals, measuring ROI, what's been the most effective strategies for client acquisition, branding, collaboration, SEO, billboards and much more. Visit Catherine online here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineregister/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Karl Seelbach, a successful personal injury lawyer and the founder of Skribe.ai joins us today to discuss how to master delegation with people and technology. Delegation can be a struggle. You know your practice and how you like things done – so it can be hard to relinquish control. Or you might have no clue how to do something and therefore have no clue what to look for as you hire someone to do it. Either way, delegation is an art. Visit Skribe.ai online here: https://skribe.ai/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Roger Foisy & Aby Alameddine join us for Personal Injury Marketing Minute Podcast #73 to discuss "Private Footprint", a permission-based tool designed to allow clients to grant personal injury attorneys permission to review and analyze client social media content. Private Footprint flags (public) questionable content which can ruin good personal injury cases. Visit Private Footprint online here: https://privatefootprint.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Rob Jarchi joins us for Personal Injury Podcast Minute #72 to provide advice for new lawyers. Rob discusses how he obtained his first job, mentorship, work-life balance, skills, communication, challenges, burnout, goals, books and advice! Visit Rob online here: https://www.gbw.law/team/robert-d-jarchi/. Or on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-jarchi-46240925. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Kenny Eliason joins us for Personal Injury Marketing Minute #71 to discuss the RECORD app. RECORD is for your clients, is HIPAA compliant, and integrates with CASEpeer, Clio, Filevine, MyCase, Smokeball, Zapier and more. RECORD helps you increase the value of existing cases. Check out RECORD here: https://www.recordclient.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Andrew Trusevich joins us for Personal Injury Podcast Minute #70. He has had an impressive legal career in both labor and employment law and civil trial law. Andy joins us today to talk about taking those next steps into a fulfilling and purpose driven retirement. In this podcast we will cover Andy's career, satisfying your intellectual curiosity, hiking the Camino, and advice for other attorneys considering retirement. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Dan Ambrose joins us for Personal Injury Podcast Minute #69 and discusses Trial Lawyers University. Complete with destination venue, all-star speaker lineup, truly fun activities, and amazing networking opportunities. Dan Ambrose, the founder of Trial Lawyer University is here to tell us all about the BEST conference for trial lawyers. In 2024, TLU takes place in Vegas! Visit the TLU Live Event site here: https://tlulive.com/. TLU On Demand: https://tluondemand.com/. Visit Dan online here: https://triallawyersuniversity.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Kassidy McVey and Tim Jakubowski from Nota by M&T Bank join us on the podcast today to discuss Nota. Nota is a cloud platform which provides business banking solutions for attorneys managing small law firms. This podcast covers why M&T created this great product, how Nota differs from other products on the market, what Nota replaces, how Nota increases efficiency, how M&T supports the product, product pricing, and more. Get set up with Nota by M&T Bank today: https://www.trustnota.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Doug Burnetti joins us for Personal Injury Podcast Minute #67. Have you seen his billboards around central Florida? In this podcast, Doug will go over what has changed in Personal Injury marketing over the last 30 years, how he expanded outside of traditional marketing, and what he does now to get cases. Visit Attorney Doug Burnetti online here: https://www.burnetti.com/attorneys/doug-burnetti/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming shortly.
Attorney Steve Levin, founding partner at Levin and Perconti in Chicago joins us for episode 66 of the Personal Injury Marketing Minute to discuss social media and kids. In January 2024, the senate judiciary committee held a full committee hearing with testimony from some of the largest social media CEOs in an effort to examine Big Tech's failures to protect kids online. This podcast covers if social media harms children, addiction tactics, if parents can sue, possible reforms, pending lawsuits, and what you can do. Find Attorney Steve Levin online here: https://www.levinperconti.com/attorneys/steven-m-levin/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Juvo Leads Co-Founder Ted DeBettencourt joins us for episode 65 of the Personal Injury Marketing Minute to discuss AI vs human chatbots attorneys use on their websites in 2024. In this podcast, we cover what Juvo is, which types of chat platforms are available for attorneys, the advantages of human operators, challenges with human operators, conversion rates of AI operators vs human, and more. Find Juvo Leads online here: https://juvoleads.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Levi Lascak joins us for podcast #64 to discuss creating content on YouTube. He's a real estate agent and what worked for him can work for personal injury attorneys as well. Levi covers how he got started with YouTube, what's different about YouTube, what PI lawyers could cover on their channel, topic research, formatting, video ranking and many other additional tips. If you are not publishing content on YouTube you will want to listen to this. Find Levi online here: - On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PassiveProspecting - Instagram @LeviLascsak: https://www.instagram.com/levilascsak/ - TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/discover/levi-lascak See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon
Attorney Tom Wagstaff is an attorney in Kansas City who focuses his practice on complex litigation involving nursing home abuse. In this podcast, Tom discusses Elopement Cases complexities, examples, and winning these types of cases. Tom also covers What is elopement? What are some of the reasons that elopement happens? Can you tell us about an elopement case you represented? How do you go about investigating elopement cases to determine liability and hold the nursing home accountable? In a traditional wrongful death case, the settlement would generally include loss of income and other financial damages. That doesn't seem like it would be true when it involves a senior citizen. How are wrongful death settlements for elopement calculated? Are there any particular challenges or complexities associated with proving negligence in elopement cases compared to other types of nursing home abuse? What preventative measures can nursing homes put into place to stop elopement? Do you have any other tips for lawyers who are taking on elopement cases? Visit the Law Office of Tom Wagstaff Jr. here: https://www.thewagstafflawfirm.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Brandon Banks is an attorney in San Francisco, California who practices Employment Law. In this podcast, Brandon discusses some ways he attracts Wrongful Termination cases. All Employment Lawyers can tell you all about the wrong types of cases being in business can attract. Brandon covers what types of cases he accepts, why he works exclusively with those who have been wrongfully terminated, some ways he attracts these types of cases, marketing challenges, turning away cases and offers some advice for other attorneys who wish to target a certain type of case. Visit Brandon Banks Law, APC here: https://brandonbankslaw.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Attorney Tom Wagstaff is an attorney in Kansas City who focuses his practice on complex litigation involving nursing home abuse. In this podcast, Tom explains some of the challenges and differences between nursing home abuse cases and the more run of the mill personal injury cases such as motor vehicle accidents. Tom also covers The different types of facilities Which types of facilities are notoriously the wort for abuse cases What types of injuries are the most common How long these cases take Nursing home abuse cases vs typical personal injury cases Case value Referral marketing Additional tips for personal injury attorneys Visit the Law Office of Tom Wagstaff Jr. here: https://www.thewagstafflawfirm.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon.
Megan Braverman from Berbay Marketing and PR is joining us today to walk us through the challenges and opportunities for personal injury lawyers trying to score some media attention. Great PR can do so many wonderful things for law firms. Not only does it tout your professional achievements, but it also positions you as an expert in your practice area. Additionally, the backlinks your website gets from the coverage dramatically helps your overall SEO positioning. While some law firms naturally get press for big cases, some legal sectors struggle to get attention. This is especially true for small to mid-size personal injury firms. But there are ways to make that happen. Contact Megan Braverman at 310-405-7343 or visit https://www.berbay.com/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. Great PR can do so many wonderful things for your law firm. Not only does it tout your professional achievements, but it also positions you as an expert in your practice area. Additionally, the backlinks to your website gets from the coverage dramatically helps your overall SEO positioning. While some law firms naturally get pressed for big cases, some legal sectors struggle to get attention. This is especially true for small to midsize personal injury firms, but there are some ways to make that happen. Megan Braverman from Berbay Marketing and PR is joining us today to walk us through the challenges and opportunities for personal injury lawyers trying to score some media attention. Thank you so much for joining us today. Megan: Thanks, Lindsey. Happy to be here. About Berbay: Lindsey: Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and about Berbay. Megan: Sure. I'm the owner and principal of Berbay Marketing and PR. We specialize in working with law firms. We've helped hundreds of law firms increase their visibility via the media, speaking, nominations, online and more. We have been around since 1995, and really serve as law firms outsource marketing departments and becoming their strategic asset to help increase their visibility and get more business in the door. How Public Relations Helps Law Firms: Lindsey: Well, this is a really simple question, but why is it important for personal injury firms to get PR? Megan: Public relations helps in a wide variety of ways. I mean, first and foremost, it helps increase your visibility. It gets your name out there more. The other really important piece is it reinforces your credibility. So, you get that recognition, but it's enhancing your credibility. This is a third party quoting you, a third party featuring you, and that really adds a lot to your credibility. It also positions you as a thought leader. Think of you're the expert in your practice area. PR is a very powerful mix of your marketing. That top-of-mind awareness among prospective clients and referral sources is really key because what you're trying to do is that prospects and referral sources think of you first when there's a need. And so, ultimately, that's what PR does, is it keeps your name out there. And then, the end goal is really to bring in new qualified leads. Lindsey: Right. And so, when somebody either sees your name multiple times and they think of you first, or if they're looking on the Google search results and see your name pop up, they know that they have seen you somewhere else before. And that credibility and that presence of mind will hopefully push them over the edge so that they call you before they call someone else. Megan: Absolutely. And that's a really good point because you're a search engine optimization firm. And so, the more things that point to your website, the better. These placements and media coverage is a great way to prop...
In this podcast, Personal Injury Attorney Will Gosney provides some insight on how TV ads have helped Ylla Gosney, Attorneys at Law with their practice in Oklahoma. With heavy spenders in the area, they chose to create very high quality, memorable TV ads to build their brand. Their commercials are top notch and the partners are able to discuss their values in them. Personal Injury Marketing Minute 59 addresses why some TV ad campaigns fail, their tactic to compete, proceeding with ads during Covid, ROI, traditional TV vs OTT and much more. We strongly recommend listening to this episode if you are considering running TV ads for your law firm. Visit Ylla Gosney online here: https://yllagosney.com/. Visit Will Gosney's profile here: https://yllagosney.com/william-gosney/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript coming soon
Attorney Brian Glass shares outstanding advice on work life balance for lawyers. Personal Injury Marketing Minute #58 will cover why is it important to disengage and create work-life balance, how can a lawyer structure their time to create a more balanced lifestyle, what happens to this structure when things catch on fire at the office, and how lawyers can they break the cycle. Brian Glass on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fairfaxpersonalinjury/ His Bio: https://benglasslaw.com/bio/brian-glass/ Time Freedom for Lawyers Podcast: https://www.timefreedompod.com/ Great Legal Marketing, LLC's GLM Tribe: https://www.theglmtribe.com/ See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcript: Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. Over the past 10 years, there has been a major shift in the mentality of work where society used to glorify the 100-hour work week. We are now embracing having some semblance of work-life balance. While there are some industries where employees can fairly easily put in natural work-life boundaries, lawyers often struggle with this concept. When your clients are in crisis mode, there are deadlines to meet and big money is on the line, it might feel as though everything is going to fail if you don't just power through and burn the midnight oil. Well, you don't have to. Brian Glass joins us today to discuss how you can be a great lawyer and still have a life. Thank you so much for joining us today. Brian: That's such an introduction, and I really hope that I can live up to the stage that you just set for all the listeners. Lindsey: Well, I know that you will. You have a lot of experience putting together a great law firm, but also putting in some of those natural boundaries, and I can't wait to get your thoughts on how you make it work. So tell us a little bit about your background and about your practice. Brian's Background: Brian: So I'm a personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. I've been practicing for 15 years, and so hearing you talk, Lindsey, about the shift over the last 10 years away from 100-hour work weeks is like, "Wow, I predate the shift." But more importantly, I've got three boys and a wife who I want to make it home to for dinner and for soccer practices and baseball practices. And so we structured all of our practice around that first, and I'd love to talk to you about that today. But so our practice, we have five lawyers in the firm, three of them are in an auto accident practice with me. The other two are in a nationwide long-term disability appeals practice, which is different than SSDI. We've got about 15 staff members now and we've grown 4x in the last five years. Why Lawyers Don't Trust Anyone: Lindsey: That's phenomenal. That is some great growth and clearly you're putting in the infrastructure to support that. And we see lawyers struggling all the time to pull away from the office and they get glued into that. Why do you think that's going on? Brian: Largely because lawyers don't trust anybody else to do the work, right? Lawyers, we got to where we are because we were the smartest people in high school, so we went to the best colleges. We were the smartest people at those colleges, so we went to the best law schools. We were the smartest people in law school, and that's how we got the job. And then we don't trust our team to do any of the work for us. And so the practice that we designed, Lindsey, really has the staff doing the 80% of the work that gets all the results. Our job as lawyers is to create the framework where your team can operate knowing what the vision of the firm is, knowing what the goals for the clients are, and knowing where those guardrails where you're not allowed to touch that because that's actually legal advice.
Gary Kilpatrick is an expert witness who has extensive experience with automotive accident reconstruction. He has a degree in engineering paired with a lifetime of knowledge of industrial mechanics. Gary joins us for Episode #57 of the Personal Injury Marketing Minute! Visit Gary's website, The Kilpatrick Group, PA, here: https://thekilpatrickgrouppa.com/about/ or call 336-841-6354. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Transcription: Introduction: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. In the personal injury world, the majority of your cases will be settled out of court, but there are some of those complex cases that will require mediation or court proceedings. In those cases, you have already invested long hours and countless resources to build the best case possible, hoping that there will be a big payoff at the end. Part of building that case might include the involvement of an expert witness. If it does, you want to make sure that you are leveraging that asset to its full potential. We are going to talk about how to do just that. Gary Kilpatrick is an expert witness who has extensive experience with automotive accident reconstruction. He has a degree in engineering paired with a lifetime of knowledge of industrial mechanics. Thank you so much for joining us today. Gary: Yeah, it's good to be here. Why Did You Become an Expert Witness? Lindsey: Well, tell us briefly why you decided to become an expert witness. Gary: Well, back about 2000, 2001, I read an ad in our local newspaper where University of North Carolina at Charlotte, UNCC, was hosting a presentation on the introduction to forensic engineering, and so I signed up. I was curious, so I signed up, and it was an eight-hour presentation. Dr. Young, who is a civil engineer, may or may not be there anymore, but he's got a PhD in civil engineering and is a licensed professional engineer, and his presentation was mainly for the civil world, but I could see how it would be applicable to other areas. And so at the end, he gave us a book, and I've still got that book today. At the end of the book, there are a couple of pages of references, one of which had different professional societies that we could go to for more information, one of which was the National Academy of Forensic Engineers. And so I contacted them and I spoke to the founder of that organization, Marvin Specter, and we talked for a bit and he encouraged me to join and become at that time a correspondent, and they were really the mentors behind how I got really more involved in this profession. Lindsey: What types of accidents are you routinely providing expert witness services for? Gary: Well, being a mechanical design engineer, it allows me to work in different areas. One is going to be motor vehicle crash recon, because as the engineers and the engineering dynamics and all the coursework we take, that goes front and center right down the list of everything that they talk about, and they get into the conservation of laws of linear momentum, work dealing with things sliding across a surface, kinetic energy and so forth and so on, and all those concepts are used to calculate the impact speeds of two vehicles coming together. I'm also heavily involved in industrial accidents, because I've got 20 years plus of experience working in the industry, one of which was where I worked for Clark Equipment, who invented the forklift and the front-end loader, and they were a major competitor to Caterpillar back during that day. So, I'm heavily involved in industrial accidents, dealing with OSHA regulation, machine guarding, forklift accidents, crane accidents, and amusement park ride accidents, because they are machines. And let's see if I missed anything. Mobile elevating work platforms,
Katie Briel is a Digital Marketing Manager at the international law firm Womble Bond Dickinson. She joins us for Episode #56 of the Personal Injury Marketing Minute to discuss how personal injury attorneys and other lawyers can develop a personal brand online. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. When it comes to legal marketing, you, as an individual, are one of the most important marketing assets for your firm. Yet, just as a poorly planned marketing campaign will fall flat, an unexamined personal brand can be a mismanagement of one of your most valuable assets, you. Katie Briel is joining us today to discuss how to build your personal brand, so that your identity can become a unique value add for your firm. Thank you so much for joining us. Katie: Thanks for having me. Lindsey: For those who didn't catch your first episode on leveraging LinkedIn for lawyers, refresh us a bit on your background in the legal marketing landscape. About Katie Briel, Legal Marketing Expert Katie: I worked for a large transatlantic law firm for over five years as a digital marketing manager, and one of my duties there was to help people to develop their online brand, personal brand, and utilize social media. So, I trained a lot of people on how to optimize their profiles and maximize their efforts on LinkedIn. Lindsey: That is definitely an important tool in the digital sphere for your personal brand. There's a lot that you can do with your LinkedIn other than just essentially post your resume and have a headshot up there. There are some tools that you can use that can help define that personal brand. But before we get too much into that, what exactly is a personal brand and why do lawyers need to have one? What is a Lawyer's Personal Brand? Katie: Well, I think that what you need to know about people, and if you think about this yourself, I'm sure it resonates and makes sense, is that people remember things that give them some type of feeling, whether that be an image, a conversation, or anything else. So, a personal brand is utilizing your strengths to resonate with people through giving them some type of feeling about either what you represent, what you're passionate about, the services that you offer. That's how I would define it loosely is giving people something to hold onto and remember you by. Lindsey: How can that play out in a tangible way? What does that look like when you're looking at a lawyer and you can say, "Yes, this is what his personal brand is," or hers? Katie: I think that first of all, people are going to recognize something that they personally relate to. Is it relatable? This person is a sports fan, they like baseball, or are authentic online in any work that they create. Do they seem trustworthy and someone you can easily talk to and come to for help? Because these people for personal injury lawyers in particular are going through a hard time, and so they want to find somebody that they can relate to and feel like they can be themselves. A lawyer that is very unapologetically themself is easier to relate to. Key Elements to a Lawyers Personal Brand Lindsey: Absolutely. When thinking about building this personal brand, what are some of the key elements to building a personal brand that you can do both online and offline? Katie: Well, I think first, people really need to understand what is their goal? What are they about? What are your passions? How can you relay those in a professional way? There's a lot of different avenues that you can take here to be memorable. You definitely don't have to go out and be over the top about everything, but there are definitely a lot of different ways that you can be memorable.
Attorney Esther Labovick joins us for Personal Injury Marketing Minute #55 and discusses building an authentic, genuine community. She goes over what inspired it, how it's helped the community, and how it's helped Labovick Law Group. She founded Hispanos Unidos (United Hispanics) to help educate Hispanics about free programs available to them in Palm Beach Count, Florida. Her events are huge, with thousands of people showing up. They draw in volunteers, important organizations, key leaders from the Florida, the United States, and other countries. Check out Hispanos Unidos here: https://hispanosunidos.labovick.com/. Read more about Esther Labovick here: https://www.labovick.com/our-attorneys/esther-labovick/. See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/. Lindsey: Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I'm your host, Lindsey Busfield. At Optimize My Firm, we are fortunate enough to meet a lot of great lawyers who truly care about their clients. Some lawyers donate to amazing charitable organizations, others go the extra mile in providing pro bono legal services. No matter what they do, they are contributing to their communities in meaningful ways. I was recently introduced to Esther LaBovick of LaBovick Law Group, who is an exemplary model of how to go big or go home when creating community. As a member of the Hispanic community, she identified a need for access to resources and a sense of unity within her area. As such, she organized a gigantic festival that brought people together as well as information and fun. Not only was this a great way to contribute, but it provided a great way to connect their law firm with the Hispanic demographic. Esther is joining us today to tell us all about this event. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Esther: Hi, Lindsey. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Lindsey: Well, tell us a little bit about your background, about living in Florida as well as your law firm and all about you. Esther: Oh, okay. That's a lot. Lindsey: It's a lot. About Esther Labovick Esther: So basically, my background is that I am a Cuban-American, meaning I am a first generation. My parents came over from Cuba in the early '60s as they immigrated here, fleeing communism. So I was born here and raised here in a very assimilated way. My parents really believed that if they came here, we were going to be United States citizens and be Americans. So my upbringing, I wasn't really mixed that much with the Hispanic community. I did grow up in a pretty American area in Fort Lauderdale. But at home, we were completely Cuban. At school, I was American and whatever. So anyway, fast-forward, I went to college out of state, came back and I went to University of Miami, Law School where I was now reintroduced to my Hispanic roots because Miami is very Hispanic, as I think everybody knows. And I started this law firm with my husband. And honestly, in the beginning, we didn't target too much to the Hispanic community. We were just trying to make ends meet and be above ground and get clients in any which way. And our firm is not in a really Hispanic part of Palm Beach County. But as the years went by, I did start doing some things with chambers, Hispanic chambers, and I started meeting some of my fellow peers. Not only lawyers, but also just other professionals in the community that were Hispanic. And that was a long time ago. We also opened up an office in an area that was predominantly Hispanic with me being the main lawyer there, since I do speak fluent Spanish. We spoke it at home the whole time. So we did that for a few years. And then, I don't know, life got busy. We closed down that office and really concentrated on the growth here in Palm Beach Gardens.