Jeff Solomon:
The real point is setting everybody up for success.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. Each week we examine how the best in the legal industry go from good to goat. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. The legal marketing company the best firms hire when they want the rankings, traffic and cases other law firm marketing agencies can't deliver. At every stage of success, we will get you to the next level. Let's go.
Where most owners go by their gut, Jeff Solomon takes a decidedly different data-driven approach. With over 14 years of experience and over 1,200 5 star reviews, Jeff shares his proven methodology for running an ultra efficient firm that puts client outcomes first. Jeff uses KPI dashboards to promote complete transparency around performance and opportunities, leverages relief centric legal tech to show clients he truly cares...
Jeff uses KPI dashboards to promote complete transparency around performance and opportunities, leverages relief centric legal tech to show clients he truly cares and institutes processes to consistently capture positive reviews, building credibility and trust over time. By adopting Jeff's focus on quantifiable metrics, customer service and reputation management, you'll be primed to transform your PI firm into a client-focused machine. Here's Jeff Solomon, partner at Guardian Law Group on how he first got into law.
Jeff Solomon:
I first became interested in the legal path back in college. It was something that always appealed to me. It was something I wanted to learn and know more about. I can't say that I knew for certain I wanted to own my own law firm, but it was something that I was definitely interested in and the more I learned about the law, the more I wanted to practice.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And you've got a little bit of a different background and I was excited to speak to you because you've got a JD and an MBA with a focus in finance and you've worked at private equity funds specializing in commercial lending. So definitely a different background. First, what insights did the MBA give you about opening and running a law firm from just the finance perspective?
Jeff Solomon:
Sure. Well, it's funny, when I did the MBA, we were asked to follow a small business around and there was all the buzzwords, business plan and things like that. And so of course I was naturally inclined to follow an attorney around, so it was a solo practitioner. And when I asked, "What's your marketing plan? What's your budget?" Things like that, they just laughed at me. We just opened our door and people showed up. And so that was mind-boggling at the time because I had this whole business track that I was on. So for me, when I got into the space, I looked at the law firm like it was a business and in turn, in doing so by running an efficient operation, it really benefits the client. At the end of the day, it's all about the client, but if you don't run a tight operation, then they're the ones who really suffer the most.
Chris Dreyer:
You mentioned briefly before our call that, "Hey, you're not going to see my face on the billboard. It's all about the client." So break down really what you mean by that. How does that impact maybe the things you do from a marketing perspective and also just your internal operations?
Jeff Solomon:
Yeah. I mean from a marketing perspective, it's about the firm. It's not so much about the individual, myself or my partners. This is the second time I've had a law firm and the first time I ran it, I think, like a lot of smaller firms run. And that's, you have a bunch of staff, you're trying to meet deadlines, it's a very defensive posture. As things come to you, you're reacting to it. And you can't necessarily quantify where you are, you can't necessarily quantify each individual that's working in the firm and who's doing most of the work. And then you in turn start to give these subjective bonuses and things and it's a different atmosphere than I was looking for. And so that's when I left that first firm. When I started the second firm that we have now, we set it up where it's, I don't want to say like a conveyor belt, but it's very departmentalized, so everybody knows what they need to do.
And then for everything from intake to case management, to negotiators, to what have you, and then we have a separate lit department. So everything is very compartmentalized throughout the process. But what it's allowed us to do is it's allowed us to then quantify each of those departments and really get granular on the individual as well, so that when we're speaking with our staff, we really know in real time exactly how effective they are at their job. Which can sound a little controlling, but what it actually does is we have a very strong bonus system in place and it allows people to know exactly where they stand and then of course surpass that and ideally if they're so inclined, make more money. So we really run it like a business more so and the client is the benefactor.
Chris Dreyer:
So let's dig into that because how good a person's doing can be objective and subjective. And you have this bonus system and it's like people want to know where they stand because sometimes people have this misguided thoughts of, "Hey, I think I'm really performing," but maybe they're meeting expectations. So tell me a little bit about that. Do you have a few KPIs? Do you have five to 10 KPIs per role? How do you actually quantify that from an objective point of view for those bonuses?
Jeff Solomon:
Sure. It depends on each department. One thing for instance would be an agent report, how many cases you have as an individual case manager for instance and how long have you had those cases? Of course, some cases they're just more serious and the injuries are more grave and they take longer. But for the most part, a lot of these cases, treatment is specifically 60 to 90 days or so. So if you've had a case for 10 months and a demand hasn't been mailed out, why? That's just an easy one to think about. Once it comes into the intake department, their goal is to set up a claim, get them to treat their first treatment, all those fun things, order the police report and kick it over to the case management department. Of course, they can't do that until those things are done. So one of the KPIs is how many cases are still sitting in the intake department that should have already been kicked over.
So all these little things, even as granular as how many phone calls did you make this month? Because if you made 200 phone calls and the person next to you made 600 phone calls and I've only received two complaints this month, but both were yours, they're probably directly tied together. So just some logical stuff like that. But what it does is it allows us to have a more focused conversation. It's a lot less subjective when we have talks with our staff. Which I think is important because otherwise everything's just hearsay and they go back to their desk and they do the same thing. They don't really know what they're doing wrong specifically and we don't know quite honestly. So it's been very effective in that regard.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's extremely important and extremely effective. It allows you to visibly see constraints. Has it impacted your forecasting for hiring? Let's say, we know because we manage the data so closely that our case managers manage 100 to 200, I don't know, cases per month and we need to hire because we're almost at capacity. Have you seen some of those other types of benefits from maybe a capital perspective on where you're going to deploy capital for hiring?
Jeff Solomon:
Absolutely. I'll tell you one mistake we made in the beginning is that we ran too lean. So then when we did lose someone, all of a sudden it was a big constraint on the system itself, especially if you lost two people in the same department. So one thing we've learned is to overstaff a little bit, but then we've also gotten better. Some people are good with 100 cases, some people can handle 200, everybody's different. From our perspective, it's just being efficient with what you can handle. And so it allows us to proportionate the cases around based on capabilities. And like I said, some people can just multitask better and they can get on and off the phone. Other people, they're very relationship driven, so to speak, so they'll sit on the phone for a long time with these clients, which is cool. We're happy with that.
You can't necessarily put a KPI on that, but it helps us to figure out what everybody's capabilities are as well to make them the most effective. The real point is setting everybody up for success and if we don't know what we need from them, it's hard for them to know. And it's also hard for us to know who to reward. If you have 10 people, which is oftentimes the case in a smaller firm, and maybe the attorney's at court all day and you have 10 people and two are doing everything, it's hard to know that those are the two people doing everything other than your Spidey-sense. So here, it helps us not just keep eyes and ears, but also help people to be successful and help them come to that next level.
Chris Dreyer:
I love the transparency. Do you take the transparency to another level? Do you have, say for example, a scorecard that's visible by the entire company? Is it a weekly leading indicator type of situation or is it more a monthly lagging indicator? I'm really digging into this because I think you're running this in a different manner. It's not common, so I'm really trying to dig into this a little bit.
Jeff Solomon:
100%. So yes, at any point in time they can log in and look at everything that's going on. We're an open book. The way that we've set it up is we do monthly meetings and we talk about what those goals are, what our expectations are, but we also take that time to recap the previous month. And we go by department, this department hit the goal, this department didn't hit the goal. But it also gives everybody an opportunity to talk to one another. Because sometimes there's a reason why they didn't hit it and it might be the department before them that just didn't hit their goal so they couldn't hit theirs. When you have to look everybody in the face and then it's an open forum to discuss it, it changes the name of the game, you can't just go hide at your desk. But it makes it a more team environment.
So to answer your question, yes, they can look at it anytime. Yes, we do a monthly review globally with everybody where it's an open discussion. There's no egos. I always tell them, "You can tell me what I'm doing is terrible. That's fine, but you got to have a better idea. You can't just say no for the sake of no." But we all have pretty thick skin. So I find that by showing them this, allowing them to see it, it helps them know where they stand. But then to your other point, weekly is the key. Because what we noticed in the beginning, because we're constantly learning, we noticed that it became the boiler room in the last two days of the month. I was like, "That's not what I'm looking for. I don't want you to just crank stuff out because you're trying to hit this goal."
So then we started to look at things on a weekly level. And then it also helps us have that discussion of time management, which I think is probably the biggest key that we try to help people with. And that's saying, if you have to get, pick a number, 20 demands out this month and you're a case manager or what have you, if there's 20 business days, just do one a day. Don't wait until the end of the week and do 10. Because that also messes up the next step. Then whoever's settling those cases, Olson has this flux of 10 that come in where it could have just been one at a time and had been more natural. So time management's probably the biggest thing that it helps with.
Chris Dreyer:
Fantastic. I love every bit of that. And just understanding where people stand because if you've got a lagger and you do have to make a decision after you've given them every opportunity in the pips and whatever your process is and you let them go, it's not as emotionally draining because they've known they're at the bottom.
Jeff Solomon:
They know. Everybody here knows. And typically speaking, we don't really have to let anybody go, they let themselves go. Because it's a high paced environment, but it's also a very friendly and fun environment too because everybody here wants to be here, knows where they stand and they enjoy it. And if that's not for you, then that's cool and it's not. But it's created a fun working atmosphere for everybody here.
Chris Dreyer:
Fantastic. Business development philosophy and client acquisition strategy is fundamental to sustaining and scaling your practice over time. Jeff is doing something right. He has no shortage of cases. He explains his marketing playbook.
Jeff Solomon:
I've done the billboards and stuff in the past, I never really found them to be a proper direct response. I think it's good from a branding perspective. I think it's good with some of the bigger brands that are out there and have been around for a long time. That's not really our model. Ours is really more digital and online. We actually have a ton of word of mouth and a ton of repeat business. That's not something I thought I'd ever say when I got into personal injury, but I would say 40% is really repeat business, word of mouth and might even be close to half. So a lot of it is just us doing a good job over and over. That was really the core principle that we founded the firm upon was just communicate, communicate, communicate, over-communicate if you need to, and it's paid dividends for us over time.
Chris Dreyer:
So you've got 1,200 reviews. That is an uncommon number. There's a handful of firms across the country that have that. What lends itself to get that many reviews and also on top of that, maintain a high rating as well due to the volume? It's one thing if a firm has a high rating and they've got 20 reviews, it's another one when they have 1,200.
Jeff Solomon:
Well, one thing that we started to learn early on is that typically people only go to do a review when they're pissed. And how do you get rid of a bad review? You can try calling Google and say, "This wasn't us and this is just somebody who didn't understand," and what have you, but Google doesn't care. So what we quickly learned is the only way to offset that bad is to have the good. So go get 20 good reviews and the the one star goes away. So what we do is we said, okay, well when we have clients here and we're closing them out and we're handing them a check, then we say, "Hey, are you happy?" And typically when people are getting money, they're happy. So that's a good time to ask, "Would you be so kind as to give us a review?"
And nine out of 10 times people say, "Absolutely. No problem." And we've trained our staff that throughout the whole closing process for sure is to be asking them, "Would you mind doing a review? Is this a good time? Can I help you to do it?" Help you to do it and show you how, not help you do the review. But that's a good time to ask people for that kind of feedback. And so that's what we figured out early on and it's just because we've been doing it for a long time and it just adds up. You get five a week and you keep doing that, it just adds up and adds up and over years, that's what happens. So no real magic to it other than-
Chris Dreyer:
Got it. Consistency.
Jeff Solomon:
.... you're giving somebody money and asking them nicely and being consistent.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I think that's important for a lot of the attorneys listening is like, look, there's the tactics and the hacks and things like that, but there's also something to be said about just being consistent and doing it over time and the rewards that go into that. I wanted to talk a little bit too about Injury RX and maximizing case value. So maybe you could just explain to me what Injury RX is and how you utilize it at your firm and what advantages it provides.
Jeff Solomon:
So we started using that service, I guess it was about two years ago. And what was appealing from our standpoint is that when clients are hurt and they're injured, typically they can't drive their car. It's going to take a few days to get them into, whether it's chiropractic or physical therapy or what have you. And in the meantime, they're at home and they're in pain and they're upset and rightfully so, especially if they're new to the process. So what this allows us to do is it allows us to get them on the phone that day with a doctor, an MD, and that's very powerful. Just even the mental aspect of being able to speak to a doctor that day. And then that also helps buy us a minute to get them into the chiropractic or PT or what have you, because at least they've spoken to a doctor, they feel like their case is moving along, they don't think it's us holding it up.
Which oftentimes prior to that, they would complain to us that, "You still haven't gotten me into a doctor." If it's Wednesday and the doctor can't see you till Friday, that's in your area, it's tough for me to do anything about that. But you don't want to give them an excuse either. In addition to speaking to a doctor, they also get some medications that's sent to their house. So it's like how easy is that? One of the issues that we noticed with our cases, and we spoke to our physicians about it, is that our clients can't afford the copays. So they would write them a prescription and they would never go fill it. Or if they wrote them a prescription, it was for a narcotic.
And I don't know about you, but I don't love that kind of stuff. So this platform was non-narcotic, it's pain creams and anti-inflammatory tabs. So pretty straightforward stuff. But then it's a lien on their case and if the case settles, they'll pay the bill then. But at least in the meantime, they're getting treatment and they're getting some sort of relief. Because sometimes even if they made it to the chiropractor the same day, they're so inflamed that you can't be manipulated or adjusted. So they feel like we're wasting their time and it can be frustrating. When this service was presented to us, we stepped into the mindset of our clients and said, "This could be a good fit." And over time it's proven to be great. It also adds value to their case as well, which is also a nice offshoot as well.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I think just building that docket of, they're in pain, they've been hurt and just every little thing that you can add to that. So is there a particular process that your intake goes in? It's just automatic every time. Like, "Hey, do you need to speak to a doctor?" And you give them this number. How do you make it seamless? I think always when you introduce another third party and you don't have that control, how do you make it seamless? Because it is providing a lot of value, maximizing case value and helping your prospects that are injured, that are in pain, that maybe can't see a doctor for a few days. How do you make that seamless from an intake perspective?
Jeff Solomon:
That's probably a better question for my intake department. But basically they tee them up right then and there. So they call into the firm and they're getting their information and getting them signed up and then they say, "Hey, we could have you speak with someone today." And then at which point they enter their information into that system and then they're called, generally speaking, within the hour from the time that we speak to them. Now one of the things that we learned over time in using this platform is that by having the doctor then call them back was not a good thing because a lot of times people will not answer the phone and they're being bombarded with calls. So what they did for us is they do a live patch through. So when they're on the phone with them, they immediately have them speaking to a doctor. They patch them right through to a doctor once they do their name, rank and serial number kind of stuff. So that has also made it a very seamless process as well.
Chris Dreyer:
Before opening your firm, you were president of a private equity fund specializing in commercial lending. What do you see as the pros and cons of leasing versus owning a space?
Jeff Solomon:
There's a lot of pieces to that. So we were fortunate that we owned our own buildings, which was nice. So when we were first starting out, we had our own space. Also, rates used to be a lot lower, so it was like free money. Nowadays with rates where they are, I think it's a different discussion. Hopefully rates do come back down a little bit. But we're big believers in real estate. We buy a lot of real estate, we rehab a lot of real estate. It's an important thing for us.
We always are trying to reinvest in our company and companies and so I'm a big believer in buying real estate and holding it. Also, one of the thought processes behind that was that when we saw inflation coming down the pike, I think everybody saw it coming down, we felt that investing in real estate, hard assets, was the best thing to do to shield ourselves from that. So I'm a big proponent of it when you can do it, some can do it day one, some, maybe it's down the road. But tax applications, you can always write off the depreciation and things like that of the building and any investments you make.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And you don't pay taxes on debt. Let's just say that you've got the bur people with the buying these homes and rehabbing them and refinancing it and commercials evaluated based upon their financial performance with cap rates and things like that. Could there be a tactic for attorneys where they get a building that's not leased and it's evaluated at a certain price and they put the firm in there and now it's worth more and maybe go and refi and pull that cash out so then they got no money out of hand? I mean, is that a tactic that a potential firm that's maybe leasing could take on some of these buildings that are not occupied because of the rates and the craziness that's going on?
Jeff Solomon:
I mean, I certainly guess you could do that. I think at the end of the day, if you know you're going to be paying rent anyway, I'd rather be paying it towards a mortgage where I'm paying down principal and interest and eventually going to have the asset at the end of the day. Yeah, if you're going to buy a shell of a building and sign a lease with yourself, I guess as long as you have a couple of the leases there, yeah, you're going to have instant equity in the building, especially if you sign a long-term lease.
At least some may view it that way, some may say you're a self-interested party, so maybe not. But my partner put it best, he said, "Buying real estate's like putting cash in a bank, except you're putting cash in a building." You can go sell it at any point in time you want to, but at least you're being shielded from the inflation and things like that because in theory, it's going to go up in value, especially if you're now leasing it out and you're adding value to that building in any way, shape or form. So we're pro real estate-
Chris Dreyer:
Same.
Jeff Solomon:
... but it's a long-term play.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Jeff, thank you for your thoughts on that. I just have one final question. For those listening that maybe have some questions for you or want to connect, where can they go to connect with you?
Jeff Solomon:
You can call me anytime. I'm an open book, we're an open book. If I can help somebody, I'm happy to do it. We also handle a lot of litigation. So if I can be that backbone for another smaller firm that needs help on the litigation side, by all means reach out to us. We've got a strong group of litigators with a lot of experience. Anybody has any needs in the state of Georgia, we're happy to help or I'm happy to give guidance as well. I'll give our playbook to anybody and if it helps you, great. I think it's a big marketplace, I think there's enough room for everybody to be comfortable and have enough clients and anything we can do to help somebody else, we're happy to do it. So my email would be probably the best way, which is just Jeff@myguardianlaw.com
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks so much to Jeff for sharing his wisdom today. Let's hit the takeaways, time for the pinpoints. Measure up. Setting KPIs for every role in your practice can improve individual time management and boost company-wide workflow. The result is a better bottom line and more satisfied clients. Transparency and accountability make all the difference.
Jeff Solomon:
But what it's allowed us to do is it's allowed us to then quantify each of those departments and really get granular on the individual as well, so that when we're speaking with our staff, we really know in real time exactly how effective they are at their job. Which can sound a little controlling, but what it actually does is we have a very strong bonus system in place and it allows people to know exactly where they stand and then of course, surpass that.
Chris Dreyer:
Anticipate needs. When you alleviate the potential for frustration and demonstrate genuine care, your clients will thank you. Automate same-day doctor consults and med delivery with solutions like Injury RX. This VIP treatment accelerates recovery and boosts case value, a true win-win.
Jeff Solomon:
It can be frustrating. When this service was presented to us, we stepped into the mindset of our clients and said, "This could be a good fit." And over time, it's proven to be great.
Chris Dreyer:
Turn a smile into five stars. Make the review process part of closing a case and help your clients by showing them how to leave a review. Over time, the five star reviews will add up and create trust in your firm.
Jeff Solomon:
So go get 20 good reviews and the one star goes away. So what we do is we said, well, when we have clients here and we're closing them out and we're handing them a check, then we say, "Hey, are you happy?" And typically when people are getting money, they're happy. So that's a good time to ask, "Would you be so kind as to give us a review?" And nine out of 10 times people say, "Absolutely. No problem."
Chris Dreyer:
For more information about Jeff, check out the show notes. While you're there, please hit that follow button so you never miss an episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. All right everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.
