Kara Prior:
Content is the foundation of everything we do.
Chris Dreyer:
Most attorneys are creating content, but they’re not getting clients from it. Kara Prior figured out why. She runs James Publishing and they build books, social media, referral systems, and more, stuff that actually brings cases in the door. This is exactly what David Craig did to own the trucking space. Books, content, referrals, all working together. And David’s coming on Thursday to break down exactly how he built that empire, you’re going to want to catch that one.
Kara Prior:
We’ll print the books for you, you can certainly hand them out to prospects and clients who come in to them and a welcome kit, a shock and awe package.
Chris Dreyer:
This is Personal Injury Mastermind powered by Rankings.io. Today we’re going to unpack the tools to make these marketing pieces work without adding to your to-do list. Let’s go.
Kara Prior:
So for gosh, more than 40 years, James Publishing has been a traditional legal book publisher. So publishing law guides, practical guidance. We have library of about a hundred titles. Every time there is a new addition, a new revision to that title, the majority of our customers automatically receive that update, and that has really allowed us to help small law firms grow in other ways. Content is the foundation of everything we do. We’re a publishing house first.
Chris Dreyer:
On the publishing side, and if there’s an attorney listening, do you guys help them potentially ghostwrite and write a book and then do the publishing distribution to get it on the shelves or get it on on-demand publishing? Or is it just like, hey, the library… Define the publishing side.
Kara Prior:
The more substantive content, it’s written by retired or very seasoned attorneys. A lot of times they have a voice of experience. But then on the marketing side, we do ghostwrite marketing, lead magnet style books and booklets for our firms. So you’re trying to establish yourself as the authority, as the expert. Answer common questions you may get from prospects and clients. Our attorney editors conduct an interview with you certainly will provide a detailed outline. What distinguishes you, what types of cases are you really looking to bring in? Let’s cover those topics. And then that’s a book that the attorney owns and it’s a custom book really kind of ghostwritten by us with the help of some interviews and some help from the attorneys.
Why publishing niche authority books helps personal injury lawyers build trust, capture leads, and convert more cases than generic guides
Chris Dreyer:
Let’s say that you’ve got a niche attorney, let’s say a truck accident attorney, a Michael Cowan, Joe Free, David Craig, that wants a trucking book. I mean, there’s many guys. There’s many great trucking attorneys. Those are just some names that popped up in my head. Maybe they want a trucking book that they can put on their website to elevate their social proof, and then maybe they even want to mail it to every prospect because a lower volume and they can actually send it to every single prospect. So is that something that would fall in line with the assistance there?
Kara Prior:
That’s exactly the goal, and often attorneys will come to us, okay, we want an all encompassing personal injury, frequently asked question book, a 100-page book. It’s like, okay, we can certainly do that, but to your point, it’s really kind of niche-ing down and let’s publish a series of titles in varying areas that of course match the types of cases that you’re looking to bring in. And that’s really what we’re kind of rolling out with most of our firms. And then we help with the promotion as well. We’ll print the books for you. You can certainly hand them out to prospects and clients who come in, include them in a welcome kit, a shock and awe package. But we also help to really promote that book in a lot of different ways. So first of all, definitely on social media, we’re creating full funnels to drive traffic to these lead magnets, to these books that typically would live on the firm’s site.
We’ll actually even put some promotion behind optimizing their Amazon presence and then offering them as just traditional lead magnets on their website in exchange for contact information. The digital version of the book is delivered instantly, and we’re entering all of those folks into comprehensive follow up drip campaigns, text sequences that are also very customized, very tailored so that we’re kind of talking as directly as we can to that prospect’s unique legal situation, unique need. So it’s really full circle. It’s not just about… Certainly having the asset, having that book is highly valuable, but putting some promotion behind it can really be low hanging fruit for a lot of our clients. Maybe you have an email list that you haven’t sent anything to in years.
Chris Dreyer:
I got to drill down the one phrase you said, because I’ve heard this several times and I’m like, is this as common in legal? So you said the shock and awe package, right? So I remember talking to another attorney like, hey, you got these mailers, these shock and awe packages. First of all, what the hell is that? Do you guys make those? What is it?
Kara Prior:
It sounds so cool, doesn’t it?
The welcome kit formula that helps win the tie when prospects are attorney-shopping.
Chris Dreyer:
Right? But it’s so specific in the legal space. They’re like, shock and awe package, and I’ve had multiple clients tell me this, and it’s like, no, it’s a welcome package or an orientation package. But anyways, I’ll let you expand that.
Kara Prior:
I would say it’s a glorified welcome package. So something to instantly separate yourself from the competition. Just provide value to a prospect who maybe they’re attorney shopping, maybe they’re not receiving any… They contacted five attorneys. You are the only one that is either delivering physical, an actual mails or an actual physical package of a book, a welcome letter, what to expect, checklists, that kind of thing. Or digitally, we will also deliver these shock and awe packages digitally, allowing… Obviously you don’t have to pay for postage and the fulfillment, but same concept. Instantly delivered, and it’s just a way of setting you apart from the competition.
How a single 2½-minute video shoot creates a video avatar that generates endless consistent content—posting across five platforms.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Tell me about just top level, what you guys do on the social side.
Kara Prior:
Yeah, so we really do offer a done for you social media package. What that means is we are posting 16 to 20 times a month for our law firms and the foundation of those posts really custom videos. For years, we were shooting custom videos so remotely, so our attorneys would hop on monthly, maybe take 30, 45 minutes a month to jump on with one of our video directors. Again, we provide all the scripts. It’s very collaborative, but we’re creating the scripts. Like I said, our attorney editors who work on our law books are also drafting all of these scripts and then topics, because sometimes that can be the hardest thing. Like what the heck do I even talk about? What do I post? You have to keep fresh on an ongoing monthly basis. Big game changer for us. This past year has been really pivoting to more AI clone avatar videos.
So up until really about six months ago, we weren’t comfortable enough with the technology to go to really offer the clone avatar option. So we use Hey Jen to create clones. We’ve created hundreds of clones for attorneys at this point, but there really is an art to it. You can’t just hop on Hey Jen, sit behind your desk, read a boring script and expect this amazing performance. I mean, your clone will be robotic and awkward because that’s how the foundational footage was collected. So there’s really an art to it, but really a game changer for us because even though we felt like we had streamlined the process as much as possible, right? With the live shoots, you just show up to 30 minute monthly shoot. We’re batch recording, collecting all the footage we need in that single shoot. We’re providing the scripts, we’re loading a teleprompter.
It was pretty painless. But getting attorneys just to show up to that darn shoot is a huge, huge hurdle. And pressing client matters always take precedence. We understand that. We’ve worked with attorneys for many decades. We understand that the pressure is there. So then to have the option of creating a lifelike, natural clone that you don’t even have to show up for those monthly shoots. You approve some topics, you look at some scripts, you don’t have to get camera ready. I tell attorneys a lot of times, your clone can actually perform better than you believe it or not, and you don’t have to kind of dedicate to it.
So that’s really kind of the foundation of the program. Of course, there’s a lot of content that we’re sprinkling, peppering in throughout the social media pieces. We’re closely monitoring the views of all these videos. When one performs better than the others, we’re boosting those top-performing videos and really creating lead gen ads from those top-performing videos gives us all that organic content, gives us a really nice test rather than let’s just boost everything or let’s just arbitrarily pick some videos to boost. This is what’s already resonating. This is what is really helpful to your audience. Let’s put a little bit of money behind that video, really transform it into a lead-generating ad and efficiently grow exposure on social.
Chris Dreyer:
I immediately, when I was thinking of this, I don’t know this for certain, I think Shinara has really stepped up their game, and I think they’ve made a clone for Alex in some of the videos because I’ve seen him jumping over cars and things.
Kara Prior:
There’s no way.
Chris Dreyer:
I know. It’s amazing. So they’re getting a lot of… I really encourage everyone to check out Shinara’s social. They really stepped it up lately and it’s really funny and great.
Kara Prior:
Yeah, that’s cool.
The proven Social Leads system for personal injury firms: run tested ads, pre-qualify responders, and feed your intake team hundreds of phone appointments with vetted prospects—for a flat monthly fee.
Chris Dreyer:
For success, are you still seeing it more on the Meta side from a lead gen perspective? For the injury attorneys, are you seeing the leads come in on TikTok? Just from the lead perspective, what channels are working most effectively there?
Kara Prior:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely the Meta side specifically Instagram is where we’ve been able to really kind of dial in the lead gen for our personal injury. And gosh, probably 60, maybe 70% of our subscribers are personal injury firms. So we certainly have a pretty large subset there. But also we’re kind of bringing in some offline referral techniques that have really helped boost our social media. What I mean by that is we’re actually building referral relationships for our firms. We actually will call potential referral sources in our law firms area, fellow attorneys and non-competing specialties, allied professionals, anyone who would commonly come across the type of client that you’re looking for. And we’re actually the matchmaker. So we’re setting a phone appointment for our firms, for our attorneys with potential referral sources and really kind of taking some of that offline and then kind of full circle creating some collaborative content on social that we can kind of then help keep the firm’s top of mind when that partner does have a business to refer.
The overlooked referral engine strategy that helps personal injury law firms turn cold contacts into steady partner meetings and new case referrals (plan ~3 hours of calling per appointment).
Kara Prior:
So that referral piece has actually been really interesting. We’ve set more than a thousand referral partner appointments for our attorney subscribers. We really know we’ve kind of boiled it down to the most efficient, most effective core. Takes about three hours of work to set one appointment. In other words, about three hours of calling. So it’s not as simple as just picking up the phone and hey, you want to jump on a referral partner call with XYZ firm, and then the referrals just start flowing in. There’s a lot of certainly a lot of callbacks, a lot of voicemails, a lot of getting through the gatekeepers so that we can access either the partner herself, himself, or certainly whoever has access to the partner’s calendar, and then making sure that both parties actually show up to the appointment. It’s a huge part of it. We kind of identify VIP referral sources, the most productive referral sources, and we’re sending handwritten thank you cards, periodic tailored gifts, and then taking the social media piece to make sure that we’re supporting our partners online as well.
Why most law firm marketing ROI is lost at intake — and how mystery shopping reveals where personal injury firms are losing potential cases
Chris Dreyer:
We mentioned like, hey, it’s a truly done for you service and we’re doing this. Having said that, what’s the best chance a PI attorney has at succeeding if they do this? Do they also maybe contribute a little social? Do they engage on the comments? Of your most successful clients in this particular service, what are they doing? What’s the extra sauce to really get it to work well?
Kara Prior:
We call it a done for you service, right? We want to take as much of the heavy lifting off of the firm’s plate, but the firms that are truly successful that are kind of the top performing, it’s all about their follow-up and their intake process. When you’re just not prepared, the firm just isn’t prepared or doesn’t have a system, doesn’t have that foundation in place to accept the lead or to follow up with the prospect who might be super interested, but maybe they inquired at 2:30 in the morning, right? Because that’s when they’re scrolling on Facebook and that’s when they’re seeing the ad, but they have a great case. What are we doing to make sure that we can actually retain that client?
So certainly the folks that have internal processes set up to convert on those leads, and we really try and support even in that area as much as we can. This isn’t working. Let’s take a look at your intake. Let’s audit. Let’s mystery shop your firm. Gosh, I called at 2:00 in the afternoon and got a voicemail. You know what I mean? So what can we do to coach them up and help them to fill some of those gaps?
Chris Dreyer:
You see that wanted case percentage less than 90%. It’s like, guys, come on. We should be trying to hit 94 or 95, and that stretch goal is a 96. There’s a lot of money on the table when we do that. So that makes a ton of sense. For audience listening that wants to connect with you, that has more questions about James Publishing and everything you do, where can I go to connect with you and learn more?
Kara Prior:
Yeah, thanks for asking. So jamesamplifier.com. You can actually set a direct appointment with me. I love to hear from attorneys and I just love talking about this stuff. So even if you just like to connect, I’d love to chat.
Chris Dreyer:
Here’s what you do next. Pick one thing, a book, a social strategy, a newsletter, and go all in with it. Build the systems around it, make it work. And if you want to see this taken to the next level, David Craig is on the show this Thursday showing you exactly how he used this stuff to dominate trucking cases. Don’t miss it. I’m Chris Dreyer. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m out.
