Patrick Salvi II:
That's kind of old school mentality, and I firmly believe in it.
Chris Dreyer:
Getting maximum value in trial is great for the client, great for the firm, and great for business development.
Patrick Salvi II:
If you excel at trying cases, everything kind of flows from there.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the preeminent personal injury marketing agency. Before we get started, if you like what you hear, head on over to Apple or Spotify and pound that five star review button. And if you don't like what you hear, tell me about it in a one star review. I got a big hug for all my haters too. I recently spoke to Patrick Salvi, Sr. the managing equity partner at Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard. In episode 178, he shared why going to trial is a great way to increase revenue and develop a strong reputation. Now, this is important because some of the biggest cases can come from word of mouth referrals. But how do you gain trust of the public and other attorneys outside of an existing network? To break down the how, I reached out to his son, Patrick Salvi II. Patrick explains the firm's approach to business development, why a foundation of excellence is great for business development and how to market success in a way that is in alignment with his firm's values. Here's Patrick, partner at Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard on his early years surrounded by the law.
Patrick Salvi II:
Really, ever since I was a little kid, I would be at my dad's office on the weekend or if he was travelling for a deposition, sometimes, he would take me. Very fond memories of going to Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Salt Lake City where we would catch a game, stuff like that. And so, I was always kind of around it. And I'll never forget a conversation I had in college with my dad where I was at University of Colorado. And I said to him. I said, ""Look, I understand why you want to get decent grades in high schools. You can go to a good college. What's the point of grades in college?"" And he said, ""Well, do you want to go to a good law school?"" And it was weird because I guess until that point, I hadn't seriously contemplated what my next move would be, but something kind of clicked, and it actually motivated me to work pretty hard at the University of Colorado. And that's when I kind of set my path to go to law school, and I ended up going to Notre Dame Law School. I hadn't yet figured out exactly what I wanted to do. Obviously, personal injury was in the mix, but I think that was kind of the way it went.
Chris Dreyer:
You have now transitioned. And your managing partner at the Chicago office, you have had some just record setting verdicts, right? You're absolutely crushing it as a trial attorney, two verdicts in the nine figures. How do you develop your skills over the years to be this elite trial attorney? And I'll dig into that. But just big picture, what comes to mind?
Patrick Salvi II:
Sure. So I've been practising for 15, coming up on 16 years. And about halfway through my career, about six, seven years in, I had probably tried a case a year roughly. And I look back on that timeframe and I frankly have some regrets that I wasn't more aggressive, more willing, that I didn't go to trial more often because you don't get good at something by not doing it. You got to do it. And doing anything and getting good at anything sometimes requires you to fail. And that's a scary thing when you're representing clients as we do who have been catastrophically injured. As a trial lawyer, it's what you got to do. And about that time, six or seven roughly years into my career, I would say I started to get very much involved in the American Association for Justice. My eyes were kind of open to some things across the country, whether it be seminars or learning about various trial books. And I just started to immerse myself in kind of studying all of that. I started studying psychology a lot more carefully, human memory and decision making, things of that nature. And I really wanted to put it into practise. And I had this case way downstate in a very conservative jurisdiction, a tough case, but we won, and we got a nice verdict. It was a seven-figure verdict and a place where houses cost $25,000. So it was a good verdict. And it gave me a lot of confidence. And I feel like from there, I was kind of shot out of a cannon. I kind of wish it had happened earlier. But at the same time, that was the first case. And then some cases thereafter, I've been able to build on that and continued to get better, and I want to get better still going forward.
Chris Dreyer:
So like Alex Hormozi says that quality comes from quantities to getting the reps in and being a trial attorney and then taking cases to court. And then, the other thing that you said was this intentional learning. So did you find yourself that, ""Hey, I noticed this part of the trial. Oh, I'm going to tune up my rapport building."" Was it intentionally like, ""Hey, I noticed this. I'm going to dive into it,"" when you're picking these books out?
Patrick Salvi II:
Yeah. One book that really stood out and continues to be kind of an overarching theme and how I look at trial preparation and execution, in any case, I mean it's when you approach any case from the beginning when you're deciding whether to even take the case and then how you approach discovery, and then ultimately trial, book called Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. And I'm not the only one that's read that through the lens of a trial lawyer, but the decision making system one versus system two, and tapping into the primacy of how people think and feel about the world and matching your case with their worldview. I think young lawyers are inexperienced lawyers think they can just use logic to get to the end and win the day. But human responses to stimulus, to evidence, to visual evidence, to evidence that they hear verbally, you have to understand how that's going to be absorbed. And if you don't, you're not representing your client as well as perhaps you could. So that was a book that definitely stood out that wasn't kind of within the confines of trial work. And then Twelve Heroes, One Voice is another one by Carl Bettinger. Rules of the Road, a very famous one by Rick Friedman. Those are two that come to mind. And so, those things really got me excited to put them into practise. And then even as you start to do it, you're not doing it perfectly, you kind of learn as you go. And it's skills that I've worked on over the last few years, for sure.
Chris Dreyer:
Thinking, Fast and Slow, I just heard that reference just recently in the book, Snow Leopard. And it was talking about its own category that, that book's going to exist for many, many years versus these that kind of just in the moment books that are passed by the wayside. So I'll have to check that out. And then the other thing that I was thinking is confidence comes from confidence. So you won that big seven figure, so you get more confident. Then, you maybe try things differently, and you've got that momentum going for you. What about the technology side? So we have other trial attorneys on that do really well with technologies and mediums to present to the jury. Is there anything in particular on the tech side that you like to use that you feel is a benefit?
Patrick Salvi II:
Sure. I mean, we do a lot of medical malpractice and even if it's not medical malpractice, a personal injury case involves medicine in some form. So I typically always have something to help the jury understand the granular details of injuries. I'm a firm believer that if you're talking about an injury, you're really going to get a lot out of it in terms of doing your discovery and then presenting a trial by getting as granular as you can. A comminuted fracture, what does that mean? Getting the doctor to say, ""Well, that means they're literally shards of bone,"" things like that, that allow the jury to better understand the details of the injuries. So you have to present that, I think, technologically and give the jury a visual picture. So that's something that I always do. And then, also, as it relates to your exhibits, as it relates to all your witness examinations, open, closed, you want to have a seamless presentation. And so, I am very fortunate. I'm going to give a shout-out to Cesar Salinas at our office. He's our IT guy. We do it in-house. He's been at every trial that I've had going all the way back to that downstate one. And he is unbelievable. We're like two peas in a pod at trial because we've got a rhythm both in our preparation and in our execution. And so, I'm very fortunate to have Cesar on the team. But at the same time, I don't like it to just be technology overload. I think you might see that sometimes with big law firms that think they have to show off how many resources they have and show the jury how they wear the white shoes. Technology is good, no doubt about it. You got to use it. But I love flip charts, especially if you're going to have a trial that lasts any length, if it's going to go two, three weeks or more. My most recent case was six weeks. I was terrified that the jury would forget about our evidence. And so, what I love to do is have flip charts, which are easy. You got to think it through in advance, of course. And you got to have a solid plan as to how you're going to do it. But creating these flip charts that are living, breathing documents that the jury sees, it helps them remember it so that the way it works is with witness number one, they see you creating this flip chart. You're building this evidence. And then, witness four, you add to it a little bit more, or you bring it back and show it to witness four. And then, you show it again to witness seven, the defence expert. And that way, they see it over and over again, and you're reinforcing that good evidence in a way that's very memorable because I'm always concerned that six weeks later, they're going to be like, ""What..."" We think our first witness is one of the most important ones. But then, the jury's not even deliberating for six weeks. They got to remember the good stuff. So I love technology, but I don't want to overdo it. I love mixing in kind of the low tech visual stuff. And then Cesar, can't do... I won't go to trial without Cesar.
Chris Dreyer:
We got to talk about the record setting $363 million toxic tort jury verdict. Those are unnatural. What's different about this case? How do you land a case like that? Is it a referral? Are you sourcing it yourself? And then, how do you extend the value and create that story and that narrative to get to that extreme of a nine-figure type verdict? Tell me big picture just a little bit on that trial.
Patrick Salvi II:
Sue Kamuda, the plaintiff who is a hero in her own right, what she put herself through in the preparation for that trial and being kind of the lead plaintiff throughout, I mean she was the name of the litigation. It was Kamuda et al versus Sterigenics. And at the end of it, there were over 870 other plaintiffs behind her. So she was the first trial. Her discovery was first and all that. She just came to our firm, word of mouth. So we were very fortunate that she did. And then, we knew that she had a good case. And so, ultimately, we got to trial. And over the course of the four or so years between when we filed and when it went to trial, of course, significant discovery was done, but that discovery applied to all cases. And so, it wasn't just me and our team handling discovery on behalf of Sue. We did the plaintiff specific stuff, but we had seven firms that were part of the plaintiff's executive committee. And ultimately, two of those firms, I asked to co-counsel with us on the case. And so, I led a trial team of six lawyers that actually ultimately presented witnesses, at least one witness in front of the jury and, really, nine or so lawyers in total in terms of what we had going on behind the scenes. And so learning to lead not just your own team when it's your own firm, which is a little more natural, but also folks from other firms was very important and that there was a steep learning curve for me. But I think it all came together in really a beautiful way the way we kind of started out, feeling out one another and figuring out how to work with each other to the end where it was seamless, and decisions were being made and agreed upon. And everybody was really rowing in the same direction. But then in terms of the development of the evidence, really as we went through discovery, it became pretty evident that if presented the right way, we could really show some of the serious misdeeds of these defendant corporations. And we showed that at trial, things going back to the early '80s when there were efforts to obfuscate some of the governmental investigations into the dangerousness of ethylene oxide. And then, in addition to that, we learned that there were many pollution controls available to these folks. They knew it was a carcinogen, but they didn't put the pollution controls in. Meanwhile, while they're not spending, say, a half a million dollars in Willowbrook putting in pollution controls over in Charlotte for $5 million, they can open up a new plant. And why would they do that? Well, that type of capital investment is going to bring in revenue. Pollution controls is just a cost that doesn't increase revenue. And so, we showed those types of classic profit over people decisions that the corporation had made over the years. And I thought that was very effective. And then, ultimately, I mean at the end of the day, anybody that tries a case knows that you can have the best evidence in the world. You've got to communicate it the right way. You've got to bring it through the witness. And frequently, they are adverse witnesses. And you've got to bring it out of those witnesses in the right way because a very nice sounding and smooth talking credible person on the other side, even with terrible evidence, can totally put cold water on it. So you got to bring it out in the right way and make it hurt like it should, which is to me where the fun is as a trial lawyer. So I think the result showed that we did that. I think the jury, ultimately, the $363 million verdict was in response to a $346 million ask. They went above what I had asked for in closing argument, and I think it's because they were mad.
Chris Dreyer:
You can be the best litigator in the world, but if no one knows about your success, even the highest verdicts won't drive business development.
Patrick Salvi II:
I'm certainly a firm believer that if you excel at trying cases, that everything kind of flows from there. If you're a great trial lawyer and you can try cases with success, then, that is going to drive settlement value in your other cases. That is going to bring referrals to you because people will see that this is the firm or this is the lawyer that is going to get the highest amount of damages for a particular injury or in a particular type of case. And so, that's kind of old school mentality, and I firmly believe in it. And I want people to come to me, not because I've wined and dined them, and I'd rather get the referral because the referral lawyer knows that we're going to do best for the client. But then, to your point, in this world, that's not quite enough. If people don't know about what you're doing, then, it's not going to bring cases to the door. And so first of all, I'll drop a few more names from our firm, but TJ Saye and Marcie Mangan, they are unbelievable. Marcie's our PR person. And so, I rely so heavily on her because, on a daily basis, she's doing an incredible job of pumping out social media, publicising our results whenever we can. Sometimes, settlements have some confidentiality attached to them. But whenever we can, putting articles in the lay press or the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, which is a very popular local legal publication and getting information out there, and then being present in the legal community. I'm very active with the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. I'm the current president. I still am for a couple more months until my term is up. And just being out there and developing those relationships in addition to people seeing your results. So we don't really do regular radio spots or TV spots in terms of advertisement. Marcie has some very good relationships with local news networks. So our lawyers are frequently on the news whether we're talking about our cases or new laws being enacted, or some legal question that's being asked. So I think we do a good job of being in the public sphere, both with just appearances that may not be attached to a result, but then also a result so that people know that Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard are legit trial lawyers.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And it makes you the choice for a referral when individual's looking to get maximum value. And I think the difference in there is the type of firm and whether you're marketing B2C versus B2B to your peers to be known. I wanted to ask you about just general, your day-to-day responsibilities as the managing partner of the office. You've been at the firm for many years now. You've had different roles. What's high impact role of the managing partner?
Patrick Salvi II:
You're catching me at a very interesting time in my career because for my entire career, it's been about handling whatever the number might have been at any time, 25, 30, 35, usually not more than that cases. And typically, many of them complex to a year ago, when we were getting heavy into expert discovery on the Kamuda case, and I just said, ""Look, I can't handle any other cases. This is all consuming."" Plus I'm becoming the Illinois Trial Lawyers president in June. And so, about a year ago, so it's almost April, about a year ago, that's what I did. And so, I've been working only on Sterigenics and only on Illinois Trial Lawyers stuff ever since. And one thing that's allowed me to do I think better is be the managing partner, because something that I've really enjoyed, because I've been the managing partner for a few years, but more recently, I've tried to focus more on the team building within our firm. And that goes for staff and lawyers alike. But for example, last night, we had a dinner with the lawyers. We had a dinner. And then, we walked down the street and actually went to this bar that had karaoke. And we just had a great time. And I think it's emblematic of what we've built at this firm. We're a young firm. We work very hard. We rely on each other. One thing that we do that I don't think other firms do as much is we spread it out. And what I mean by that is if a case is going to be better served by three lawyers as opposed to two, it's going to get three. If four will be better than three, it's going to get four. I'd rather every task be done excellently, if that's even a word, than spread people too thin and just have them check in boxes and oh, maybe our firm could handle more cases if we did that. That's not what we're interested in. We're interested in making sure every single one of our clients gets excellence in terms of their legal representation. And that requires time. If you got to write a motion, you want to do that with excellence. If you're going to take a deposition, it's not just line them up and knock them down. It's no. You have to go in there totally prepared and do it with excellence. And so, that's the culture we've tried to foster. And with the young lawyers, we're kind of growing up together. And so, I've really enjoyed more recently trying to better get into each of the lawyer's worlds and help them thrive individually and then ultimately help the team thrive even more. We got to play together. We got to play like a fist because think about if you're punching somebody. If you're punching somebody and you got one finger out or two fingers out and you're not playing together, you're not going to be able to hit very hard. But if we come together and we're like a fist, and all five of us are together, then, we can land a huge punch.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks so much to Patrick for sharing his insights today. If you want to get ahold of him, email him directly, psalvi2, that's P-S-A-L-V-I, the number two @salvilaw.com, or you can give him a call at 312- 372-1227.
Patrick Salvi II:
Even if it's outside the state of Illinois, we have contacts all over the nation that can serve as local counsel and assist us with any local rules while we do our thing as the trial lawyers that we are.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's cover the main takeaways, time for the PIM Points. Here we go. PIM Point number one, technology has become a part of our daily lives. Even in trial, a jury expects to see a certain amount of technology, but this doesn't mean getting rid of traditional tools entirely. Some still pack a punch. Patrick believes an old-fashioned flip chart is a great way to illustrate a story.
Patrick Salvi II:
And that way, they see it over and over again, and you're reinforcing that good evidence in a way that's very memorable. They got to remember the good stuff.
Chris Dreyer:
Next up, PIM Point number two, don't leave your reputation up to chance. Your success in trial might not reach as far as you want. Word of mouth is great for referrals. To tap into new networks, you'll need a marketing boost, PR, earned media, social, your website. Pick a way that works with your values and your firm and speak up.
Patrick Salvi II:
So our lawyers are frequently on the news whether we're talking about our cases or new laws being enacted or some legal question that's being asked. So I think we do a good job of being in the public sphere, both with appearances that may not be attached to a result, but then also a result so that people know that Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard are legit trial lawyers.
Chris Dreyer:
And PIM Point number three, fostering a culture of excellence requires consistency, may take time, effort, and resources, but will pay off in the long run.
Patrick Salvi II:
It's not just line them up and knock them down. It's no. You have to go in there totally prepared and do it with excellence. And so, that's the culture we've tried to foster. And with the young lawyers, we're kind of growing up together.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. Join me each week for insights from the best in the legal industry. Click the follow button so you never miss an episode, and leave a review. All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out. Next week, I talk with an attorney who got so many clients from social media, he landed as a partner at the firm. Like I said, click the follow button so you don't miss out. Catch you right here on Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm out.
