Stephanie Forbes:
That one thing could make you an additional hundred grand on a case, just 15, 20 minutes out of your day.
Chris Dreyer:
Case managers are key to the excess of any firm. The right ones can increase case value, deepen client relationships, and make it rain.
Stephanie Forbes:
So I try to go in and talk to law firms about not having vegan cases, which is, there's no meat there. You're just sending demand letters and you're just getting in offers. For every five or seven cases, it should be easy for you to get a hundred in fees.
Chris Dreyer:
You're listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, where we give you the tools you need to take your personal injury practice to the next level. In the world of case management, Stephanie Forbes is magic, a unicorn rainmaker who banks hundreds of thousands of dollars in cases fees month over month. She has consolidated 18 years of personal experience and firsthand learnings from attorneys like Dan Newlin and John Morgan into her agency, Forbes Consult, to accelerate firms nationwide. She takes us on a deep dive on how to find the meat of every case. To maximizing case value, she looks at establishing efficiencies, communicating with clients on an emotional level, learning from medical professionals what client management softwares you should be using, and even personality tests she uses to hire key positions. I'm telling you, this is jam-packed episode that you don't want to miss. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the forefront of marketing is all about understanding people, so let's get to know our guest. Here's Stephanie Forbes, owner at Forbes Consult.
Stephanie Forbes:
I've been in this business now for a little bit over 18 years. I started when I was 18 years old, pretty much, right out of high school. I'd lived in a homeless shelter for a little bit. Prior to starting at Morgan, I thought to myself, ""What do I want to do with my life?"" I was 17 in the shelter. I recall someone saying, ""What are the things you like to do?"" And I love people. I really want to help people. I was taken advantage of and I want to help people not be taken advantage of. I love to research, and so this person said, ""Well, it sounds like you might want to be a lawyer."" And I'm like, ""Oh, really? Okay."" So I stopped by a law firm. I still talk to the attorney, still to this day. And he mentioned, ""Hey, why don't you go up to this paralegal school, get your degree, and right afterwards, come and intern with me."" So I did that and I applied for Morgan. I did the interview. The director at the time said that, she's like, ""The way you answered these questions were very interesting."" She's like, ""We don't have a position open just yet, but do I have permission to keep your resume on file for 90 days?"" And at that point I'm thinking, ""I really don't have this job."" They called me back 60 days later and said, ""I finally found something that's open for you. Could you start?"" And I was like, ""I can start."" So, I spent my career learning from the best. I mean, I would sometimes stop Keith Mitnik in the hall and I would just ask how to do certain things, and just poured knowledge so that I could be better at my job. After I was with Morgan off and on for about a decade, I went to work for a firm where there was no attorney on site, I was handling all their files. Learned a lot there. Then went to a person who'd been practicing for about 30 years. And he had 20 cases, but the whole time I worked there, it was like we were in college. He was just educating me on economic loss, how do you squeeze everything out of every case? And later on, he ended up working for Dan Newlin. At the time I knew that he'd worked for Dan, he was retiring. He said, ""Hey, do you want to come on?"" I ended up not only getting the job through this attorney that I'd known for so long, who'd been practicing law for almost 35 years, but I ended up taking over all of his cases.
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Stephanie Forbes:
So, I was there making over a hundred thousand a month with fees banked. My largest fees banked in a month was $720 and just a month in fees. So that's a third of settlements. Then my second best month was 400,000, and then my third month was over 300,000. I started to realize that I have a bit of a method that I'm able to get these cases, get the cash flow going, and maximize their values all at the same time.
Chris Dreyer:
And we're going to jump into that. Before we do, I just want to talk about mindset. Right? What was the experience like in the mindset of these individuals? Dan's got, I think, the biggest single location firm in the nation, single location in Orlando. And Morgan's the biggest PI firm in the nation. Talk to me about their mindset.
Stephanie Forbes:
John Morgan, he's probably one of the best people you'll ever meet. When I say that, I mean very humble. He really looks after the people that work for him. So it becomes more than a job, when you work for him. You find a calling, one, but then on top of that, you don't want to leave because you realize that we can do this together. We can make history together. And his mindset is truly, he shares a part of what he has. He's not stingy with it. John Morgan, at one point it was said that it takes almost an act of Congress to get let go from Morgan & Morgan because they just truly... they would find a different department for you to be in before they would let you go. With Dan, he's a little bit different. He's a little bit more of a no nonsense type of individual. He's kind of like, the time that you have to be here is not, Hey, clock in and go get coffee. No, you're at your desk, you're working on files. His clients are first. His mindset truly is the client is always right, regardless of anything that you say. So, the clients are always coming to Dan because they know that he has this policy. Wherein Morgan may not have that policy, but their name alone makes insurance companies shake in their boots.
Chris Dreyer:
I've even heard that Dan, earlier this year, this is 2022 through October, he went and visited 60 in-person individuals that left him a one-star review, and convinced them to convert it to a five star. He physically went there. And that just shows that people first, the customer first.
Stephanie Forbes:
As you're aware, he bought a plane for that purpose. So he had a helicopter, he bought a plane. So mindset in terms of he doesn't care if the attorney comes and works for him and leaves in five years. But while you're here, make them lifetime clients, make them remember you in 10 years. And if he can't communicate directly with a client because they've had another attorney and they left a one-star review, that's his first time seeing it. So, what is he going to do? He's going to hop on a plane and he's going to go to that person's house, knock on their door, and say, ""What did we do wrong? I want to help.""And it's not so much him trying to change the review to five stars. I mean, some of it is, but more of it is, how can we learn from this, and what can we do? And a lot of those people, they're not paying attorney fees. He's losing out because he's like, ""I'm not going to charge you if you had a bad experience.""
Chris Dreyer:
When carrying high caseloads, Stephanie offers incredible insight on understanding systems and how to make them more efficient.
Stephanie Forbes:
One of the first things as a law firm that you have to do, is really understand how to do your front end of your work really well. Because your cash flow is going to be affected when you're not sending out the proper opening letters, you're not sending out your ERISA, your lien letters, you're not making sure they received the hospital bills and records within the first 30 days. I recommend getting hospital verbals within the first seven days because, hey, if you have limits that are 25,000 and then you have a hospital bill for 40,000, and then you send that person to treatment, but you don't know until you get a hospital bill three months later, that's not good. So the goal is to try to sniff out any possible issues early on. The way that I've learned to do this over time is put these practices in. There's certain states like Florida where, it's actually the only state in the U. S. that doesn't have mandatory bodily injuries. So in that particular state, one of my systems would be, confirm that there's limits first, and then reach out, send the HIPAA to the hospital, get these verbal amounts, request the bills, because those take the long longest to get. I go through insurance coverages, going in through the police report, showing people how to get BI, access BI, UM, stacking UM of family members and different people who are in the household, [inaudible 00:09:00] vehicle. The most common thing, I think I've seen that hinders process is a lot of times, going to be not finding all insurance policies that are available. And then also not keeping track with clients for treatment or even not getting them to the right doctors for treatment. So in my trainings early on, I talk about, here's all the different types of doctors that you can use, podiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons. Talking about the difference between those two, TBIs. Understanding that there's more than just chiro and ortho. You also want to use those, of course, but there's just other ways that you can add more meat and potatoes to your case. So I try to go in and talk to law firms about not having vegan cases, which is, there's no meat there. There's just sending demand letters and there's just there. You're just getting an offers. For every five cases, five to seven cases, it should be easy for you to get a hundred in fees. And it's one time me walking into a firm and seeing 40 cases equal almost 88,000 in fees. And I was like, ""How is this even possible?"" Almost all their clients went to just chiro. There was no MRI. Also, teaching how to review MRIs and how to get people right to the specialist within a good timeframe. And then talking to clients. A big part of this is communication with your client. And then when it's time to get a procedure or the client's scared, Dan Newlin's one of the first ones that I'll say, ""Why don't you go to the surgery center and hold that person's hand?"" You know what I mean? Why don't you show some care and just not sit behind a computer all day? And so putting that part into the training as well, in addition to understanding processes. But a lot of it is care and knowledge and education and educating your clients. Because once a client understands why they're getting a medial branch block or radiofrequency ablation or a discectomy or laminectomy, they're like, ""Okay, I understand why we're doing this. I'm comfortable moving forward."" Because the doctor's already explained it. And now as the law firm, you're kind of reiterating it. And the client's like, ""Oh man, the doctor just told me that."" Yes, I know because what do I do? I get a lot of trainings from the doctors. I reach out to doctors, I sit in their seminars, I'm also on the phone with them, ask them questions about procedures, how they do it. And then I can reiterate these things and in my training one into clients. And once the client hear you mention it, they then feel way more comfortable. John Morgan once said, ""There's not one person I've ever spoken to and spoke about and talked to them about their case, and they didn't move forward with a recommended procedure that the doctor thought they needed for their injuries."" You could argue, ""Oh, it's because you're John Morgan."" But no, it's because you care. And you have the education behind it and the person can really hear it in your voice, the genuineness. David Ball talks about this in his book of damages. I teach people to connect your cases by looking at the age of the person and say, ""Hey, can you connect this person to someone that appears in your family, and someone who's a grandma, who's a grandma age, or your mom or your dad's age."" And say, ""Okay, so now that you've seen that this person could remind you of someone, relate that person to this case. And then all of a sudden, you'll see and you'll start noticing a major shift in how that person starts to view that case and treat that client. Because now it's a person to you, it's not just a number.""
Chris Dreyer:
This is an unbelievable masterclass for those listening that have paralegals and case managers. I mean, there's so much here to unpack, right? The EQ and empathy, you mentioned a lot of that mirroring and relating to the individual. You talked about processes and training and going deep, like understanding the situations. You talked about maximizing case value, you talked about frequency. That's something that a lot of people don't talk about. The only person. So, I've done over 150 podcast interviews. The only attorney that talked about frequency was over in North Carolina, James Farrin. He's a high volume practice, and he talks about frequency and then how that affects cash flow. And let's talk about first the training when it comes to EQ, empathy, and that customer experience. You talked about communication. Where does it start? Where does it start in terms of that EQ and empathy component?
Stephanie Forbes:
I find that it's really with the welcome call. So one of my biggest things that I push in my program is, I think that a welcome call should be done within two hours of you getting an email and saying that this client has signed a contract. Someone with some level of legal knowledge needs to be calling that client right now. And what you need to be going through at that point is introducing yourself, going through what to expect. But also, just take a moment and listen to what they're saying that happened in the accident. I've heard paralegals and people get on the phone and get an intake letter and just won't let the client speak. ""I just want to verify a few things. Just one moment, please. Your name is, your address is, okay? And then it says here that this is how the accident happened.""Now here's one or two things. I do understand that people do that because they don't want the client to repeat information. The client feels like frustrated. I don't want to repeat anything. I tend to word it in a way where I'm like, ""Okay, well I've noticed that this is a rear end accident. Was there anything else that you wanted to let me know before we move forward?"" And then that's when they can say, ""Well, yeah. I think you have everything there."" Great. Or, ""You know what? When I got out of the car, I was so upset. They ran over to me. They said, 'I'm sorry.', and they did all these things. They tried to give me money because they were saying that their license was suspended."" Whatever the case is, all that information is important. But guess what? I wouldn't have gotten that information if I didn't give the client time to speak. And clients can tell you a lot of things and you realize, and you can just ask more off of that. Sometimes you can get more clients from that when someone's like, ""Oh yeah, other people are in the car. There was like eight of us in the car."" Generally, a lot of law firms will miss that important part of other passengers because they're so quickly trying to just move from just checking tasks off in their CMS in their system. A lot of times I also notice that they're missing important insurance coverages like TRICARE or anything, Medicare, Medicaid, which greatly helps your bill. Because I don't mind reaching out for that subrogation lien because it's going to help my client in the end. So a lot of people feel, I wouldn't say lazy. But there's a lot of lazy staff out there that don't want to just send letters because it's more at work and they have to follow up on it. But hey, if at the end of the day the client gets more money in their pocket and then they tell all their friends around town that you're the one that got them that money, it just makes perfect sense. So the one thing that I say, especially when it comes to... the one mark that I'll give Dan over most law firms, is that his goal is to make sure that they feel great when they leave because the goal... And that's how he built his practice in almost nine years, 10 years. He's the number two law firm in Florida, based off of this one practice of making sure that you're going over all the details. So, that's one. Another thing that I've seen in law firms and you're saying just in the beginning process, is again, that welcome call explaining what to expect in a case. If a client is not aware that your firm doesn't primarily handle property damage and then they handle their own property damage, they will fire you.
Chris Dreyer:
You know what? Stephanie, you know what I call that? We feature our clients not to be crazy.
Stephanie Forbes:
That's it. 'Cause you can send them a welcome letter with 10 pages of the process, they're not going to read it. So, the goal is to just go through it really quickly with them. Let them know, ""Hey, we don't handle property damage. But if you get into any issues where you can't contact the adjuster, call me immediately."" Go through how long their case may take. I always say a range. I don't want anyone to ever give a specific date, but I'll say eight to eight months to, sometimes it could be over a year. Obviously that's a lot of time, and I do teach sending demands out before that time. But the reason why I say that in a call is so that if there's any deviation, the client isn't upset. If you're like, ""Oh, six months."" I mean, I may tell you, make sure you send out that demand, if there isn't any surgeries by 180 days, which is six months, but I'm not going to tell the client that, because what if something happens? You just want to prepare and make sure they have the best experience. The last thing that I'll mention is at the end of the process, is a lot of communication on the settlements and understanding what they're getting away in their pocket. You can tell a client they're getting 25,000, but if they're walking away with a $3,000 check, they're going to be really upset. So talking about, ""Okay, well what do you want to see in your pocket?"" And just getting that raw answer from them. They can say, ""Oh, 25,000, I want to see 23 in my pocket."" And then just bringing them closer to reality and explaining what really happens, and then giving them a range. The range I give is the current medicals minus everything. So basically if I did no kind of reductions, this is what they would get. And I'm like, ""Well, I'll try to get away from seven to 10 grand in your pocket."" And in reality, I'm going to end up getting them 12 grand, sometimes anywhere from 11 to 12. And they walk away, ""Oh my goodness, Stephanie, you really helped me."" We sure did. We did everything we could. And it leaves such a great impression on them. And then wrapping that process up within three to five weeks, they get their check on time. I mean, it was a happy experience for them. So it's a lot of communication in the front end, and just way more at the back end.
Chris Dreyer:
I think if I was in that experience, that's what I would want. I would want the heavy communication, the expectations, the ranges, just for exactly what you said. The one thing that I'm hearing, and I'm trying to put my personal injury attorney owner hat on, is, I've got you Stephanie Forbes, who's a master at this, wants to go deep, entrepreneur, just passionate about learning, and you care about people. It's so clear. How do you-
Stephanie Forbes:
Thank you.
Chris Dreyer:
... incentivize other paralegals, other team members? Is it compensation? Is it just training? Because if you aren't incentivized to extend the case value, that's a lot more work. A lot of times, it's a lot more communication. So, where does that play in?
Stephanie Forbes:
When you're coming into a firm, it's about paying for the talent that you have. So when I go into a lot of these firms and I talk to their staff, they do feel like my way is above and beyond. They're like, ""I don't get paid to do that."" That's how they feel. And I'm like, ""Well, if you're in this role and this is your job title, this is what you're supposed to be doing. However, I understand what you're saying.""The way that I tie it to them is, ""I'm with you for a year. Give this program a few months. You will start to see a major difference from what you banked from this quarter and from your previous three quarters. And from there, you can take just this data to your boss and say, 'Hey, we have doubled our profits in the last 10 months with this new training. And I'm so happy that you were able to give us this training. Can we create an incentive program because I think I can do better, if I'm incentivized?'"" Bring it to your boss in that way. And generally they have no problem, especially when I was part of a firm in Florida, doubled his profits in 10 months. He had never in 12 years, ever given anyone a bonus, ever. And it was his first year giving anyone a bonus because I doubled his profits. All his staff, and they were like, ""Oh my goodness, thank you so much”. But from there, he went and updated everyone's salary as well, because they were actually now doing real case management work. They were resolving cases, they were sending out demands, they were identifying when certain things needed to happen on cases. They were talking and having great communication with their clients. We would run reports, and that's... I'm a big on reports. If you don't have a case management system that won't allow you to run reports on your bills versus where your limits are, a lot of times I will try to set up thresholds for a lot of my clients. So I'll say, ""Hey, 80%, once you hit 80% of whatever is here in the limits, there needs to be an email that's triggered to the owner, the attorney, and the case manager to look into this case immediately."" Because you don't want to get that far in the weeds.
Chris Dreyer:
Stephanie is an expert at creating more value for both employees and firm owners. She doesn't keep her cards close to the chest. She shares her knowledge with the legal industry through her agency, Forbes Consult.
Stephanie Forbes:
I serve attorneys and I serve paralegals. Basically, I also have an attorney that I just hired who is handling all my audits. So, we also do 10 cases per month where we audit your files. This material didn't come easy. This material came from over a hundred thousand dollars worth of books over the years, 18 years worth of mistakes and things that I've done that I have refined, liquid gold knowledge from just the best in the industry. I took all that knowledge and I liquidated it into this program. I'll audit cases, and 10 cases a month for the first three months. I understand all things that I'm finding are things from the past. However, when I get to that fourth and fifth month, I'm starting to look at some newer cases. And I'm hoping to see that you're using everything that I've been teaching. And that's why I extended it to 12 months, because the goal would be for firms to really make sure that they're listening. And if they're not, at that point, I go back to the personality assessments that I take and I see, ""Okay, is this person possibly good for this position? Do we possibly need to have more one-on-one training with this person?"" Then I start to ask, ""What is it that you want to do in the next five years? What is it that you're passionate about?""And when I sit down and I ask staff, paralegals these questions, I can really start to pick out whether this person even wants to be in this position. But the goal is to help them and to nurture them as if they were my friends that I just want to see grow and do really good in this industry. But the people that I generally speak to the most would be obviously, the managing partners. And I send them trainings once a month and then I audit 10 cases a month. And generally, they reach out if they have cases that they want me to audit outside of those 10 cases. So they may have a few million dollar cases and they say, ""Okay, look, I want to know what can we get out of this."", or, ""What did we do wrong in this case?"" And I can kind of point out. One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot is going to be a T-bone accident where they won't have a thoracic MRI anywhere. Studies show that a common injury in a T-bone accident is going to be near thoracic spine. So the goal, especially if I see a lot of cervical herniations going on and it's at C7, I'm like, ""Okay, there has to be...""C7-T1. I'm like, ""There has to be more down there.""So just pointing that out, calling the doctor, not telling the doctor what to do, but just asking, ""Hey doc, I see here that we went this route. I've seen some studies that a lot of times, the thoracic might be a better angle to look at. And the client, they seem have a lot of issues there."" A lot of times before I call the doctor, I will tell the client, ""Hey, do you feel pain in these three fingers, which will signify some cervical herniations? Are you feeling bandwidth pain down here? Are you feeling numbness, tingling in your legs?"" And trying to explain to them what radiculopathy is. And then getting the doctor to make... One plus one equals two, let's order the MRI. But if it doesn't happen at that point, I do recommend four law firms to call and just ask the client. That's what we did in the olden days. Back when the attorneys that were practicing for 30, 40 years, they would pay for a 15 minute, 30-minute call, spend $300 expense to the case for the doctor, and just talk to the doctor about the case. They don't do that anymore. So I just recommend, ""Hey, just call the doctor's office, see what they're working through."" Nine times out of 10, they'll go ahead and order it. I will say that, that one thing could make you an additional a hundred grand on a case. Just that one, just 15, 20 minutes out of your day. It's just not that hard. There's times where I've picked up the phone just to call a doctor. I have a famous three-way split letter where I say, where the medicals are way over. Let's say your medicals are 160,000 and your case was only $50,000. And how do you settle a case like that? I have a famous letter that I send out that generally gets the doctors to accept it with under the third of the case. And generally with that letter, you have to pick up the phone, you have to call, because you have to explain why you're doing this. And then creating a relationship with that doctor. ""Hey, look, the next four cases, all yours. I really need your help on this one."" It's creating that brotherhood relationship with the doctors. So, it just depends on where you are. In that area, I can guarantee you that in North Carolina, it's really rare that I see MRIs on a lot of their cases. And it becomes a point where you're looking at it and you're saying, ""Okay, there's something here between you and the doctors. No one's communicating with each other."" You can tell it by looking at the file. And they're like, ""Oh yeah, well, they don't want to be called experts."" I don't know what the issue is in some of these states, but I'm like, ""Whatever it is, you got to fix it. You have to take someone out to lunch, sit down and talk to them, figure out what's going on, and make sure that you guys are on the same page.""
Chris Dreyer:
Such a great piece of advice and getting on the same page. Communicate-
Stephanie Forbes:
Sorry.
Chris Dreyer:
No, I appreciate this. This is insight that you normally don't hear. You're going very deep, but for the audience that is listening, that's keyed up, they're getting a ton of value from this that are experiencing this-
Stephanie Forbes:
For free!
Chris Dreyer:
... for free.
Stephanie Forbes:
That's what I'm saying.
Chris Dreyer:
Right? And if you're capturing, let's say 10% of these tips and you want to go deeper with Stephanie, you'll have to reach out. And we will include all the contact information on how to get ahold of her. A couple other things, just quick hitters, you mentioned data. Are you Salesforce Litify? And then personality assessments, are you looking at DiSC, predictive index? Are you looking at Kolbe? Just a couple quick hitters on insights in a couple of those areas.
Stephanie Forbes:
For CMSs, Litify is Salesforce, right?
Chris Dreyer:
Right.
Stephanie Forbes:
'Cause it's on the Salesforce platform. So, I do love anything on the Salesforce platform. The company's worth 160 billion and I see why, right? Because they've created analytics that is just tier, tier with Google. I mean, they're just spot on. So I am a hundred percent for Salesforce. I just think the other softwares are out of their league at this point. With personality assessments, I'm huge on DiSC. I think one of the best personalities to have as a case manager, it's going to be like an SI or an S. If you have a DI, which is more of a dominant personality, I think that that's going to be better for litigation than case management work. You really want someone who's supportive, agreeable, and charming, but also still humble enough to take advice because it's a changing world. Litigation is a little bit, you can be more stringent and rigid there. But you cannot. Have to be very fluid, have a good personality when it comes to... Be an extrovert. 16 types is one of my favorite. It helps me determine whether or not a person is trying to trick me when they're taking DiSC and they're taking the OCEAN 5 along with the 16 types because I can tell whether or not a person's truly an introvert based off of what I'm seeing from the different exams. So I really like OCEAN 5 because it tells me whether a person has stable emotional stability, if they're good with change. On the sliding scale, where are they with their introvert, extrovert, and the communication? I like to see how people like to receive and how they get information. So a lot of those exams will tell me if a person has a problem with understanding written or visual communication. If this person is... if they pick up on subtlety, on cues, if they can read the room, that is something that I need to know on the front end. So, that's why I always do personality tests first.
Chris Dreyer:
I love the different personality assessments. They're amazing in hiring and-
Stephanie Forbes:
16 types are good. Did you try 16 types?
Chris Dreyer:
I haven't. I'm going to check that out. I'm going to check that out next. Stephanie, this has been fantastic. One final question for those listening, where can they go to get in touch with you, and what's next for your consulting business?
Stephanie Forbes:
Thank you. So, you guys can definitely reach out to me. My email is stephanie@forbesconsult.com. My one 800 number 8-6-6-7-3-8-0-3-4-4. You can reach me pretty much any time. I'm also on Instagram as Forbes Consult and on Facebook at Stephanie Forbes. For upcoming next...
Chris Dreyer:
With so much info covered today, here are the key takeaways. Learn from everyone around you. If you see someone excelling at what they do, ask them to teach you. Pick apart and evaluate the front end. From intake to lean letters, identifying problems early so they don't disrupt or hurt your cash flow. Connect with your clients like there's someone in your family that you love. Explain the legal and medical side with patience and care. Good communication leads to trust and better understanding of the case that could result in the higher case value. Stay open and curious. Even one-star reviews are an opportunity to learn and improve. Stephanie shared so much with us today and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of her knowledge. To tap into her insights, reach out to her and let her grow your firm. I'd like to thank Stephanie from Forbes Consult for sharing her story with us, and I hope you gained some valuable insights from the conversation. You've been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We love to hear from our listeners. I'll catch you on next week's PIM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury marketing.
