Latest / Technically Sound Strategy / Episode 43 - Private Equity and Non-lawyer Ownership of Law Firms With Steve Gursten

Transcript

Episode 43 - Private Equity and Non-lawyer Ownership of Law Firms With Steve Gursten · Technically Sound Strategy

• 0:02
  Welcome to Legal Marketing Radio, a production of LaFleur Marketing.
• 0:06
  Today's guest is Steve Gersten of Michigan Auto Law.
• 0:09
  Steve is one of Michigan's top trial attorneys and a nationally recognized
• 0:13
  attorney in auto accident litigation.
• 0:15
  He's led multiple legal organizations frequently, lectures on brain injury
• 0:19
  and trucking cases, and has secured record breaking settlements and
• 0:23
  verdicts across the state of Michigan.
• 0:26
  On today's episode, Steve and I discussed private equity and
• 0:29
  non-lawyer ownership of law firms.
• 0:32
  There's been a big shift I. In the legal industry that we've been seeing.
• 0:36
  And you brought this up at the conference down in Nashville that I was able to
• 0:40
  listen to and it really got me thinking.
• 0:42
  But there's been a shift that's happening at, I think it's starting in Arizona
• 0:45
  and Utah, maybe some other places.
• 0:46
  But private equity is starting to enter into the legal market.
• 0:50
  And, I have concerns about that.
• 0:52
  I think knowing you, knowing your firm, what you've stood
• 0:55
  for it's really values based.
• 0:57
  And I think that brings a lot of value to the clients that you represent.
• 1:00
  But g give me a, give the listeners myself just a quick primer.
• 1:04
  What's happening, what is, what does it mean to you?
• 1:06
  Why is there some concern to be had?
• 1:09
  Well, like with Everything Chip, there's.
• 1:11
  Opportunity and there's lots and lots of potential for concern
• 1:16
  with that opportunity, right?
• 1:17
  What we see happening right now and there was a really good Wall Street
• 1:20
  Journal article on this, is no one knows just how much private equity money and
• 1:26
  hedge fund money is pouring into these new ABS business structures right now.
• 1:31
  But we know it's a lot and we know it's pouring in and we know it's gonna make.
• 1:36
  An already ultra competitive and very expensive industry for case
• 1:41
  acquisition in overcrowded markets that much more competitive and crowded.
• 1:48
  And it's interesting to me because the whole premise behind ABS in Arizona
• 1:52
  and Utah was trying to make legal services more affordable and more
• 1:59
  accessible to low income consumers
• 2:02
  . That was how they sold it.
• 2:05
  And now it turns out about 40% of the ABS law firms that have been
• 2:08
  started in Arizona and Arizona seems to be much more aggressive than Utah.
• 2:12
  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick on Arizona a little bit, but going into mass torts
• 2:17
  and personal injury, single event tort cases, how that makes legal services more
• 2:23
  affordable, for low income consumers?
• 2:25
  I have no idea.
• 2:27
  From the conference that we were at.
• 2:29
  You know what I said was, I feel like we're at an inflection point, right?
• 2:32
  Where you have after 1977 when you had the Bates versus State Bar of
• 2:37
  Arizona and that opened up the door to legal advertising, everything changed.
• 2:43
  Right?
• 2:43
  And now you had the advent of big dominant TV advertisers.
• 2:49
  You had the growth of those 800 pound gorilla law firms, the Morgan
• 2:54
  Morgans and normally every big market has their own homegrown version
• 2:59
  of a, a big 800 pound gorilla.
• 3:02
  So like, we're in Michigan, you know, it's always been Sam
• 3:04
  Bernstein here in Michigan.
• 3:06
  And that's been the way it's basically been, where you have these smaller law
• 3:11
  firms and solo, small firm personal injury practices, general practices
• 3:16
  with these big TV advertisers and these bigger advertising law firms.
• 3:22
  And now all of a sudden in, 2024 and 2025.
• 3:26
  We're gonna see, I think, another giant inflection point where you're
• 3:30
  going to be having now private equity money and hedge fund money pouring in.
• 3:38
  But with that comes a whole bunch of different things that will make our
• 3:45
  profession for your average lawyer.
• 3:47
  So much more difficult and so much more challenging because
• 3:52
  let's face it, most people that go to law school can't do math.
• 3:57
  And most law firms, if you really peel it back, are really poorly run.
• 4:03
  They're not run by numbers and metrics and KPIs.
• 4:07
  Yep.
• 4:07
  And there are massive inefficiencies in law firms.
• 4:13
  And what I think we're gonna see now um, you know, you had one of my
• 4:17
  favorite people on your podcast not too long ago Tim McKay from Vista.
• 4:21
  Imagine you're gonna have like.
• 4:23
  A thousand, Tims, with Vista type business efficiencies and systems
• 4:29
  add that with massive economies of scale in buying power and things like
• 4:34
  ad spend and sophistication when it comes to things like AI and software.
• 4:41
  And you compare that to just.
• 4:43
  Lawyers that are still overpaying for Staples orders and, and the question
• 4:48
  really becomes, and it's already becoming very difficult for your
• 4:52
  solo small practitioner, very small law firm to be able to compete with
• 4:56
  those 800 pound gorilla law firms.
• 4:59
  What's gonna happen now with private equity and hedge fund money pouring in
• 5:03
  and MBAs and all the math majors and.
• 5:07
  Efficiencies of scale like we've never seen.
• 5:10
  I look at it very similar to what happened with the dentist and
• 5:14
  a lot of small doctor offices.
• 5:16
  In the early aughts where you had these doctors that were profitable
• 5:20
  but running really inefficient offices and, private equity came in and,
• 5:27
  really changed that whole industry.
• 5:29
  And I would expect we're gonna see a lot of those same challenges with law
• 5:34
  in the well, in the very near future.
• 5:36
  Yeah I think so too.
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  I think there's a case to be made that building in and
• 5:40
  creating those efficiencies.
• 5:41
  There's a place for that and there's a lot of value in that.
• 5:43
  That's why Tim has Vista and that's why Vista does what they do.
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  And we've been, affiliated with them for many years.
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  And I always benefit from what they talk about because I can
• 5:53
  apply it to my own business.
• 5:54
  So I think the efficiency piece is valuable.
• 5:57
  You talked about some of the things you're doing for your firm that.
• 6:00
  Don't negatively impact the client experience, but do
• 6:03
  increase that efficiency.
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  So learning to run a firm like a business has value.
• 6:07
  But I've also been down the road, I've worked with PE firms in some of our own
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  projects, and it is driven by the dollar.
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  And that kind of brings me the question, how, what should law firms,
• 6:18
  what should private firms be doing right now to try to stem this tide?
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  Is it stoppable?
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  Or is it a foregone conclusion?
• 6:27
  So I'm gonna say both.
• 6:28
  Which Is the most unhelpful answer you could possibly get from me.
• 6:31
  But so there's a lot you can do.
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  I've always kind of felt if you do the right things those right
• 6:37
  things tend to also reward you.
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  In your role, for example, with search engine optimization, right?
• 6:43
  Like having really happy clients that love you, that lead great reviews, well,
• 6:50
  that translates to where you show up on location and, things like frequency
• 6:54
  and now for example, with AI and what looks like to be entity search and
• 7:00
  knowledge graphs and everything else.
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  Having clients that, leave those reviews that maybe mentioned that,
• 7:05
  you know, Steve helped me with a car accident in Detroit, he would call
• 7:09
  me at night, you know, I loved him.
• 7:10
  He'd go through walls for me.
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  Those are the kinds of things that you would do anyways if you care about your
• 7:14
  clients and you're trying to provide.
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  Great service and great results, but if you take that next little step, it also
• 7:21
  rewards you with the search engines.
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  And I believe that is also going to be our best defense against these new
• 7:30
  challenges from these ABS law firms.
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  Because if you think about it, the problem with scale, the problem
• 7:38
  with mass efficiencies is normally the client will suffer, right?
• 7:43
  And you have to think if we have a future where like let's say
• 7:49
  State Farm starts offering legal services for personal injury.
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  And we Get bombarded on football games saying like, you'll get a 20%
• 7:56
  discount on your insurance premiums if you also enroll in State Farm Legal.
• 8:01
  Yeah.
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  Well, it's so fascinating to go down these rabbit holes and think about
• 8:05
  these massive conflicts of interest.
• 8:08
  And state firms have a really interesting example because on the one
• 8:10
  hand they, they have a direct conflict of interest because, state firm uses
• 8:14
  Xactimate software to try to lower.
• 8:17
  What they pay on claims.
• 8:18
  But if they're now offering legal services, let's say for people
• 8:21
  who've been injured, you have a direct conflict in terms of trying to
• 8:24
  maximize the results for that client.
• 8:27
  Or maybe you don't, right?
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  Maybe the results you're gonna offer your clients are similar to what the
• 8:31
  Xactimate software says you should.
• 8:34
  So it's fascinating in a lot of different ways.
• 8:36
  But going back to what I think you can see already is, the big
• 8:42
  law firms the mass advertisers, and there are a couple exceptions.
• 8:46
  But for the most part, they don't do a very good job in terms of client service.
• 8:50
  Yep.
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  And it's a revolving door in terms of their talent.
• 8:54
  Their attorneys tend to have 300 plus cases.
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  They can't breathe.
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  Legal services suffer.
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  They can't be proactive.
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  They're always reactive.
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  They can't return phone calls.
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  And that pretty much describes every mill I know around the country.
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  It just, it's the business.
• 9:12
  Na it's the nature of the business, but these firms exist the way they
• 9:16
  do because it's also very profitable.
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  And when you look at some of them, they have it down to a science that
• 9:23
  every phone call is going to be, $5,600 or whatever it's . And that
• 9:28
  plays very well with an MBA mentality driven by, hedge fund guys looking
• 9:33
  at what they can do to scale profits.
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  So to me, I think we have to lean into.
• 9:40
  The things , like service.
• 9:42
  To me, I think we have to embrace that we are the hometown lawyers.
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  I think we have to really become even more involved than we ever
• 9:50
  have been before with our community.
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  So it's funny, I was invited to speak at a seminar where a lot of TV advertisers
• 9:56
  were there, so I got to sit in, even though I don't do TV myself, but I got
• 10:01
  to sit in and I got to hear them talk
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  . During the seminar, and a lot of them were saying that they sponsor
• 10:06
  like the local football team, the big football team of that state.
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  . And how it doesn't make any sense.
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  And they're all losing money and it's not really increasing phone calls.
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  But you have to wonder if doing things like that, maybe on a lower scale, but
• 10:20
  sponsoring, the high school football teams, getting much more involved in
• 10:23
  the civic clubs, in the churches, in your community, like helmet, giveaways
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  car seat installations, like if those kinds of things are gonna become
• 10:32
  really important as a way to separate you from, the giant outta state ABS.
• 10:39
  Law Firms that are, coming to eat your lunch and take your lunch money.
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  Playing defense really means I think, going back to our roots and just,
• 10:47
  providing above average service and above average results to your clients.
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  And if you do that effectively, I don't think the ABS law firms are
• 10:55
  gonna be able to compete with that.
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  Because their whole business model is based on scale and moving cases.
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  And what is the median average settlement?
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  Not, how do we explode the value of these cases and provide extraordinary
• 11:07
  service to the people we represent.
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  We have a really unique perspective because.
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  We are uniquely positioned to have conversations and relationships
• 11:18
  with many more law firms than any consumer is ever gonna have.
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  We've worked with different size firms, we've worked with more of the mills,
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  not very often, but we have and we've worked with the more bespoke, community
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  firms and I include you more in the latter because you have relationships
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  that you build and that you grow.
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  E even though you have a great footprint here in Michigan, but
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  . As we've done that we see the difference.
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  And like you said, it's not always the case, right?
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  We've worked with bigger firms that have a great ethos and a great vision
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  and mission, and they stick to that.
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  And that's how they, that's how they've grown.
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  But oftentimes, when you have a larger firm, you do lose that.
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  And just the conversations that we have with the lawyers when we're on the call.
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  There isn't talk about how they're helping people.
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  There's talk about how many cases they can get in the door, how much
• 12:06
  each of those cases are worth.
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  And as soon as you make that direct correlation with the dollars and
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  it's a business and I get that, but as soon as that's your first go-to
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  instead of the people that you're impacting, then that's a concern.
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  And so we've had all these relationships through the years with all these different
• 12:20
  firms and so we've really seen the difference in the two methodologies.
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  I think too, that.
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  When it comes to like state sport teams, things like that, the
• 12:28
  bigger players can get in there.
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  The big colleges, right?
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  Like they can get in there and they can sponsor and they'll take the money.
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  But man, it's really hard.
• 12:35
  I. To manage a marketing budget where you're plugged into your kids'
• 12:40
  high school's team's sponsorship.
• 12:43
  You just a marketing team can't do it effectively, and they certainly can't
• 12:47
  be at any of the games and show up.
• 12:50
  And so you made that point at Vista and I thought it was really relevant.
• 12:54
  The other thing that I think is interesting is how you
• 12:56
  position yourself as a firm.
• 12:58
  If you're going for volume, then your play is so very different than if you're going
• 13:03
  for good cases that need good lawyers.
• 13:07
  And establishing and positioning yourself in that way is, has
• 13:12
  to be a big differentiator.
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  And that's where I do think that they, that these big PE
• 13:17
  backed firms will struggle.
• 13:19
  The other point that you made that I'd love to have you expound
• 13:22
  on is the importance of being able to do that deep dive.
• 13:26
  Looking at every case like it has a potential to be a TBI case.
• 13:29
  I think it's hugely important because it is that level of complexity and expertise
• 13:34
  that these big firms are gonna have a very hard time replicating because it's
• 13:38
  not gonna reflect the business model.
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  How do you see that level of legal e expertise as really an opportunity
• 13:45
  for smaller firms to outcompete?
• 13:48
  It's funny I look at my own life experience my own lived experience,
• 13:52
  and I really do believe that if you can establish yourself as.
• 13:57
  Really the best or one of the very best in, in an area, then no matter how crowded
• 14:04
  that area of law is, lawyers will come out of the woodwork to refer you cases.
• 14:11
  The problem most lawyers have is they can't separate themselves from all the
• 14:17
  competitors and they become commodities.
• 14:21
  I remember thinking, so it's funny, I might be the only personal
• 14:23
  injury lawyer in America that was an econ major in college.
• 14:26
  I go back to what makes a good business, right?
• 14:29
  And it's normally two things.
• 14:31
  It is meeting an existing demand, which is really important.
• 14:36
  And the second thing is some element of scarcity.
• 14:40
  So you're not just commoditized and lumped in with everybody else.
• 14:46
  And I think that's where the opportunity is.
• 14:48
  And that's what your question goes to, right?
• 14:50
  So how do you make yourself stand out?
• 14:52
  And there's so much frigging noise out there and there's so much advertising
• 14:57
  and it's just gonna get louder.
• 15:00
  But let me just, like, how many lawyers are really trying cases these days?
• 15:04
  There's very, very Few true trial lawyers and like for my firm we
• 15:10
  set out every year with one goal.
• 15:12
  It is really, really important to me that we get the top auto or
• 15:17
  truck, or both, that'd be nice.
• 15:19
  But the top auto or truck settlement or verdict in Michigan,
• 15:23
  and we've been really fortunate.
• 15:24
  And honestly more years than not, we've actually gotten both.
• 15:27
  But that's very intentional.
• 15:29
  Because up until two years ago, you gotta remember, I grew to 25 lawyers without
• 15:36
  ever doing any brand marketing whatsoever.
• 15:40
  And most of my cases were lawyer referrals or through the internet.
• 15:44
  'cause I was also an early adopter of the internet.
• 15:47
  But for lawyer referrals, it's really simple.
• 15:50
  Like it's not hard to figure out, they're looking for someone who's
• 15:53
  not gonna stiff 'em on a referral.
• 15:55
  Where.
• 15:57
  The lawyers just don't know what they don't know, and they never get the
• 16:01
  treatment and help that they need.
• 16:03
  Trucking is a great example of that.
• 16:05
  These big mass firms, they don't know anything about trucking and they treat
• 16:11
  'em like they're, car accidents with bigger policy limits and they're not
• 16:16
  doing all the little things to really work up the value of these cases.
• 16:20
  I had a case recently with a huge marketing law firm, TV
• 16:24
  law firm in Michigan where I represented one person in the car.
• 16:28
  And that law firm represented another they went all the way through the case thinking
• 16:32
  that the policy limit was 1 million.
• 16:34
  It was actually 10 million.
• 16:36
  And the funny thing is I was, I left two or three phone calls for the
• 16:41
  lawyer at that other firm just to.
• 16:43
  Tell him, 'cause he wasn't showing up at any of the depths.
• 16:46
  He thought it was a rear-ender clear liability.
• 16:48
  So he settles his case at the end and he never called me back, by the way,
• 16:52
  which is also very par for the course.
• 16:54
  Yeah.
• 16:55
  Talk about a legal malpractice case.
• 16:56
  Like he settles that case thinking it's a 1 million policy.
• 16:59
  Wow.
• 17:00
  I got my client $9 million more.
• 17:02
  But you know that, that's a great example where like he didn't know to
• 17:06
  look for other insurance policies.
• 17:08
  And in a AI driven world with tons of outsourcing and, remote lawyers
• 17:14
  working in India and what have you.
• 17:16
  The one thing that they can never replace is a lawyer that makes an appearance
• 17:20
  in court and knows how to try a case.
• 17:22
  And to this day like in Michigan, there's only a small handful of law
• 17:27
  firms that actually go to trial.
• 17:29
  Yeah.
• 17:29
  It's insane.
• 17:30
  Everyone else is basically a mills, they settle.
• 17:32
  Yeah.
• 17:33
  And you'll never maximize value if you.
• 17:36
  Settle every case short of taking it to trial because the insurance companies can
• 17:40
  figure out real quick who you are and they know you say you'll never get top dollar.
• 17:45
  Yeah.
• 17:45
  I mean they're using Xactimate.
• 17:48
  Right.
• 17:49
  And you know, that included in that data is the lawyer and the
• 17:52
  law firm that they're up against.
• 17:55
  And I guarantee that is informing what the settlement offer is.
• 17:58
  A
• 17:59
  hundred percent.
• 17:59
  So it's funny.
• 18:00
  Yeah we, we've had about a almost a dozen now, believe it or not verdicts
• 18:04
  over policy limits over the years.
• 18:06
  So I've actually been able to get into the black box in some of these cases as
• 18:10
  a result of the bad faith litigation.
• 18:12
  Yeah.
• 18:13
  So I'll give you a quick example.
• 18:15
  One of our bad faith cases was against farmers on an excess
• 18:18
  verdict over policy limits.
• 18:20
  Turns out farmers will pay up to four times more, four times more,
• 18:27
  depending on who the lawyer is.
• 18:29
  So yeah, so if you wanna make it like really simple.
• 18:33
  At the end of the day, if you're trying to get a case settled, there's
• 18:36
  not a whole hell of a lot you can do to really increase the value of the
• 18:40
  case when they are inputting values.
• 18:42
  Yeah.
• 18:43
  And data into, whether it's Colossus or Xactimate or what have you, they're gonna
• 18:47
  use the median average settlement value for that injury in that geographic region.
• 18:53
  And there's not a whole lot you can do, but the one thing you can do.
• 18:57
  Is who you are as the lawyer.
• 19:01
  Yeah.
• 19:01
  And my dad retired about almost 10 years ago.
• 19:06
  And, a lot of his peers have now started retiring over the last years.
• 19:11
  And they call me sometimes and they're like I'm outta here Steve.
• 19:14
  I wanna go to Boca, or Scottsdale.
• 19:16
  And I've got these 20 auto cases where you come over to my office and take a look.
• 19:19
  Yeah.
• 19:20
  And I, I'm not kidding when I say this, but I would take over files from these
• 19:25
  lawyers that already had existing demands.
• 19:28
  I would just essentially change the demand a little bit, but put it on my letterhead.
• 19:33
  Yeah.
• 19:33
  Put
• 19:33
  it with my name and I could get two or three times the, what was the previous
• 19:41
  highest offer because the insurance companies know when they put my name in.
• 19:46
  That I'm a trial threat, that this law firm is a trial threat.
• 19:49
  And that's, and it's funny, these other referral lawyers are like,
• 19:52
  how the hell did you do that?
• 19:54
  But it's because I try cases.
• 19:56
  Yeah.
• 19:57
  Yeah.
• 19:57
  So it comes down again to like in a overcrowded field, what
• 20:00
  are you doing to stand out?
• 20:02
  Yeah.
• 20:02
  How are you gonna be that purple cow?
• 20:05
  As a lay person, historically when I've heard lawyers say the insurance
• 20:09
  company knows who your lawyer is, and they know that, we try cases that had
• 20:14
  always had a little bit of a mystery to me because I'm not a lawyer and
• 20:17
  I'm not plugged into all of the things that that you run into in a case.
• 20:21
  And, it was really when you pointed out like.
• 20:24
  They are using systems and they're using data to make sure that the
• 20:28
  adjuster and the people who are working on the other side of that case
• 20:31
  know who they're up against, right?
• 20:33
  And so it's not just that the person happens to know who the
• 20:35
  lawyers are, they've got the data, and the data is informing their
• 20:39
  decisions and powering that through.
• 20:41
  And that is just going to continue on.
• 20:43
  And to think that, the big PE firms that backed firms that are out
• 20:46
  there, they're gonna be in there too.
• 20:49
  They're gonna know what their goal is and what their purpose is.
• 20:51
  And then you have a whole ecosystem built around on the one side, making
• 20:56
  money for the lawyer on the other side, making money for the insurance company.
• 20:59
  And then you have the consumer sitting there in the middle and
• 21:01
  they're really losing on both ends.
• 21:04
  I just, I don't see how the business model will work for most of them.
• 21:08
  Now I'll give credit to John Morgan because he's got Keith Mitnick and
• 21:14
  he's got a couple other, like Rick Block, a couple other real talents.
• 21:19
  And Rick is actually an old friend of mine.
• 21:21
  He's this crazy gunslinger, but, and, the point is they're smart because
• 21:26
  they're able to say, if you don't settle on the adjuster level with my.
• 21:30
  Lower end much lower paid associate attorney we're gonna give it
• 21:35
  to Keith or Rick or a couple of these other guys to go try it.
• 21:39
  Most of these other law firms don't have their Keith Mitnicks, right?
• 21:43
  Yeah.
• 21:43
  And the reality is if you really look at these TV law firms, they can't
• 21:49
  afford to have their lawyer be out of the office for a month in trial.
• 21:53
  It just, it doesn't scale.
• 21:55
  They're not gonna make money.
• 21:56
  Yeah.
• 21:56
  They will lose money.
• 21:57
  You've got 300 plus cases back in the office.
• 22:00
  You can't go in and try a case.
• 22:03
  That is gonna be one of those things that I think again, is going
• 22:06
  to probably start to collapse.
• 22:09
  Average settlement values with a lot of these larger more analytical law firms.
• 22:16
  Yeah, that makes sense Fi So final question then, takeaway.
• 22:20
  You're a small firm, you value your independence, your integrity.
• 22:24
  What do you do this year to try to get prepared for the change that
• 22:28
  may be coming in the near future?
• 22:32
  So what I would say I still believe there's tremendous opportunity.
• 22:39
  In law.
• 22:40
  I just think it's important for us sometimes to take a step back and
• 22:45
  not be those lemmings following everybody else off the cliff.
• 22:48
  You don't need to be, if there are 6,000 lawyers in your state that are
• 22:52
  all marketing for car accidents, you don't have to be the 6,000 and, first,
• 22:57
  there are areas that have amazing opportunity built in existing demand.
• 23:03
  I. And very little competition.
• 23:05
  Yeah.
• 23:06
  So you do have that scarcity principle.
• 23:10
  And what I really do believe and this is what I've done at the conference
• 23:14
  we were at, I talked about a couple of my other law firms that I also own,
• 23:17
  but look at, the key word volume for various areas of law, and then look
• 23:25
  at what your local competition is.
• 23:28
  And sometimes you'll see an amazing opportunity with very little competition.
• 23:34
  And it might by the way, be an area that has lots of other lawyers, but not a
• 23:38
  lot of digital competition on the web.
• 23:41
  But the point is you don't have to be a commodity.
• 23:45
  And do what everybody else is doing.
• 23:47
  I think there's still, I mean, what I would really recommend someone does if
• 23:50
  they're, if they're a small lawyer and they're listening to this, is they call
• 23:55
  you up or you know, someone like you, but honestly, I mean, you're, you're
• 23:59
  smiling, but have, have you sit down, go through in that market, in that
• 24:04
  geographic region various areas of law.
• 24:08
  Look at what is the low hanging fruit?
• 24:10
  Yep.
• 24:10
  That it, that could be very profitable.
• 24:13
  And I would build very targeted niche websites around those areas of law.
• 24:19
  And I would become the expert in that area of law in that state or in that big city.
• 24:26
  And like why do you need to do economic dog fighting against 6,000 other.
• 24:31
  Lawyers when you could literally own an entire area of law with really
• 24:36
  high profit margins and scarcity.
• 24:39
  Yeah.
• 24:40
  That, that would probably be my number one piece of advice.
• 24:43
  And at our conference we talked about how I did that myself with a couple of my
• 24:48
  other law firms, and the point is I'm not.
• 24:51
  If I can do it, anyone else can do it too.
• 24:53
  I just have to think outside the sandbox a little bit.
• 24:55
  Yeah.
• 24:56
  You made the point too at that conference to, to build your reputation in the
• 25:00
  community, and I think that, with AI on the rise and with people being distrustful
• 25:06
  of the digital world, because AI is on the rise, they can't tell what's
• 25:10
  written by a human and what's not.
• 25:12
  Those personal relationships, and this is not my point.
• 25:14
  You made the point.
• 25:15
  At the conference, but those personal relationships cannot be replaced and
• 25:20
  no firm can scale up to the point that they are planting people, in
• 25:24
  the community to get to know who's around, get to know other business
• 25:29
  owners and things like that.
• 25:30
  And I think that was that struck a chord with me because.
• 25:34
  That is non replicatable.
• 25:37
  You can't throw money at it.
• 25:39
  And it comes from the interpersonal relationships that we have.
• 25:41
  The human Element is so important.
• 25:43
  Yeah.
• 25:43
  We Touched on that a little bit earlier when I said embrace your community
• 25:46
  and really become embedded in it.
• 25:48
  but if I can give you a quick example of that.
• 25:50
  So I believe personally very much that we have a safety epidemic on
• 25:54
  our roads with distracted driving.
• 25:57
  Yeah.
• 25:57
  And I will tell you as a lawyer, I. Some of my most heartbreaking cases
• 26:01
  are the ones that involve the loss of a child or a teen because the
• 26:06
  family always is destroyed afterwards.
• 26:09
  It's almost always, it's just devastating.
• 26:11
  And I Care about it.
• 26:12
  And I go back to something my dad told me when I was.
• 26:17
  Thinking about coming home to practice law and he basically said, you
• 26:21
  can't come home and work with me.
• 26:23
  I'm like I thought you loved me, dad.
• 26:25
  You know what do you mean I can't come home?
• 26:26
  He's you can't come home unless you can honestly, truly say that you really like
• 26:31
  people and you really want to help them.
• 26:35
  And if you can have that kind of ethos, right?
• 26:38
  And apply it to your practice.
• 26:40
  I. So every year I give at least a dozen talks now to various groups in
• 26:47
  high schools and school, mom, coffee clubs and what have you on distracted
• 26:52
  driving because it means a lot to me.
• 26:55
  And I created a scholarship with Bonnie Raphael, who is the woman
• 27:00
  in Michigan, who single handedly.
• 27:02
  Created Kelsey's Law when her daughter Kelsey Raphael, died in
• 27:06
  a distracted driving accident the most remarkable woman in the world.
• 27:10
  And she and I have created the scholarship together.
• 27:13
  We speak together on the road all the time, but I touched
• 27:17
  thousands of people every year and that kind of personal impact.
• 27:22
  Yep.
• 27:22
  It's amazing.
• 27:23
  Like , all the people that heard me speak at a church seven years ago that have kept
• 27:28
  my phone number for seven years because they always knew that if they or someone
• 27:33
  they loved were in a car crash, I was gonna be the lawyer they wanted to call.
• 27:37
  And that is something that hedge fund money can't replace.
• 27:42
  So I would say and by the way I really truly believe this, as you can tell.
• 27:46
  I do believe that personal injury is a calling.
• 27:48
  It, it is an honored profession.
• 27:51
  It is something that we should take enormous pride in and, and
• 27:55
  everything about the new ABS structure the hedge fund model.
• 28:01
  Really flies in the face of being a people lawyer.
• 28:05
  And trust me, they're still gonna get theirs.
• 28:07
  There, there will still be plenty of cases, but if you can separate yourself
• 28:12
  because you really love people and you want to help your community and make
• 28:16
  your community safer and embed yourself in the community in causes that matter
• 28:21
  deeply to you, I think that probably is the best Armor building resilience.
• 28:28
  That you can do with the big challenges that we're gonna face ahead.
• 28:34
  I couldn't agree more that, that was very well said.
• 28:37
  Thank you so much, Steve.
• 28:38
  I appreciate you taking the time to join me here today and appreciate
• 28:41
  your stories, your insights as well,
• 28:43
  chip, I always enjoy talking with you.
• 28:45
  Thank you so much.
• 28:48
  Thank you so much to Steve for joining us today on Legal Marketing Radio.
• 28:51
  You can connect with Steve on LinkedIn or at Michiganautolaw.com.
• 28:55
  Legal Marketing Radio is a production of LaFleur Marketing.
• 28:59
  Find us at LaFleur.Marketing or on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.