Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Gold Medal Moments on Personal Injury Mastermind. This is a special miniseries that highlights my favorite lessons from former PIM guests. Each of these trailblazers and thought leaders will speak live at the inaugural PIM Con, the Personal Injury Mastermind Conference. Trust me, you don't want to miss them live. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer. Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing can't miss insights and bite-size pieces to help get your firm from good to GOAT.
Morgan and Morgan's story is one of relentless growth and innovation since its founding in 1988. What began as a family run operation has exploded into a nationwide powerhouse with over 1,000 attorneys and a total team of 3000 or more professionals, they've recovered more than $15 billion for clients across 100,000 plus verdicts and settlements. As the largest personal injury firm in the nation, their success story is nothing short of remarkable. In 2022 alone, their call center employed over 500 people, rapidly scaling towards 1,000 plus and filled an astounding two and a half million calls.
These numbers underscore why dialing in marketing and intake go hand in hand. If you're serious about scaling your firm and mastering the art of lead generation, you want to pay close attention to Dan Morgan's lessons. He gives us a look inside the intake department at Morgan and Morgan and walks us through the marketing process to get the leads in the door. Dan is the keynote speaker this year at PIM Con. To hear him live, secure your spot at pimcon.org. Use code P-I-M-D-A-N for $200 off your ticket. That's PIM Dan for $200 off your ticket. Let the gold medal moments begin.
Daniel Morgan:
When I started in the call center back, that was 17 years ago or so, now, it was about half a floor of our downtown office building with probably 45 to 50 agents. Uncle Tim, the Cobra leader, was behind the desk and running it, and we had our floor supervisor say, there's a close call; hey, what's the state? What's the facts? I think it could be silent. I don't think it could. You to the end and make a quick decision, and then it keeps elevated it up. Now, there's so much layered management. We have different teams and different focus areas and practice types where if it's a social security case, you're getting piped right to the Social Security intake department. We do take advantage of some offshore services, especially with Spanish-speaking clients, where if it's a Spanish speaker or call wait time, that's longer than 30 seconds, we can get them over to an outsource that speaks the language and we're not waiting for that hooking and booking.
We have a firm policy that if you're missing that, if there's more than a 30-second to a minute queue and that person hangs up, most likely they're not hanging up and calling back in 30 minutes when the queue times are bad, most likely they're hanging up and going to the next line on Google or the next recommendation they got from their Facebook friends. So the whole hook it and book it philosophy is really one, if you're hanging up on the client or if you're saying, "Hey, I think this might be a case, we'll call you back in 30 minutes and let you know," most likely that client's gone forever. It is all 24/7. Even now, we have call agents that are able to work from home, so they can plug in right there at their laptop and start fielding calls, they might be part-time, "Hey, I got two hours to kill right now."
They can log onto our systems and plug and play, and they have their scripts there. Constantly just trying to improve it from whether it be our referral flow, our non practice areas, improving that experience. So Angie Flury, she's the boss over there. She does an incredible, incredible job of keeping that thing so efficient and running. There's definitely a culture down there of, hey, we strive to be the best. We want to give the best service. They are the front lines. They're the first people that when you call Morgan and Morgan, they're dealing with. So the agents themselves are also, they definitely have pride in it, which goes a long way.
And finding rogue operators. We find people all the time. It could just be someone that's angry that day and they're just pressing call disconnect halfway through a call because they're done doing a signup and it's a qualified case. So having layered management to check why is agent A having an average call time of two minutes and everyone else is at five and a half minutes, let's go pull her calls. Oh, something's going on. There's a manual disconnect going on. Just stuff like that. So always having systems in place to be able to canvas and make sure it's being run efficiently.
Chris Dreyer:
I've heard your dad talk on different podcasts and when we break this down into marketing, you've got paid, owned and earned. You got your paid media. That could be TV, it could be radio, it could be ads, could be whatever. You got your owned, which could be your website and your content. I've heard the Google Firm, I've heard these references and your reviews and you're owned. But the thing that I think isn't talked about enough is the earned media, the viral conversations, the humor, the entertainment. I saw a bus wrap today, Viva Las Vegas. Then I see the shirt off on the beach or the Benjamin. I know a lot of attorneys, they'll poke fun, but guess what they're doing? They're talking about it. The media's talking about it. So what is the approach when it comes to the viral, the earned media to get people talking? How do those conversations go from the marketing perspective?
Daniel Morgan:
So yeah, obviously there's two different types of earned media too, that type of earned media where you get people to talk and there's other type that we do a great job of too, which is just PR around big cases and getting that. We have a whole PR team. That's one aspect of it, but the more stuff you're talking about, my dad calls being sticky, getting in people's brains and just sticking there. We have these sessions every week. It's four of us or five of us actually. Me, my dad, Ruben Moskowitz, who's our COO, Yehuda Applebaum, who's our chief marketing officer, and then Carlos Wiggle, who is our creative director. So it's us five every Tuesday from five to six, but it's really just throwing out these different ideas. People pitch different things and we round table it and we kick it around. It's called the Purple Cow meeting, that marketing term when people see something and it kind of sticks with them.
So yeah, we do every week. We have these ones going on now where you might've seen, but we have these billboards with graffiti on them says, "Ambulance chaser" and "For the money," and everything that people say to us, my dad's like, "Let's just put it on the boards. People are saying it anyway, we'll call ourselves out and people will talk about it." We had a Twitter post that had 3.5 million people talking about it, and then we're the number one page on Reddit for two days. So yeah, there's definitely things like that and now with heavy involvement with the UFC and with NASCAR and really go into these places where we know the eyeballs are, but no one's really been there before. There's different reasons for that. We're obviously a national law firm, so it makes more sense for us to be on a UFC that's broadcast nationally.
Instead of say your number one attorney in Detroit, you're making a killing. You still might not want to make the type of investment because you're only going to want to handle the cases that are in Detroit. You might be able to refer some diamonds out as well. Well, we're able to take all those cases in no matter what's coming and find the homes for them if we're not handling them. We're boots on ground in 20 of the 50 states now, so there's a good chance we can handle it, and if not, we have good referral partners that can. So really taking those chances and doing deals like Barstool Sports and some of these other podcasts, like Theo Vaughn, we've been on him a bunch and these more comedians and podcast styles, and it's mainly the people that'd be like, "Wait, they're here now too?" You can't really turn on TV.
You go on a drive, you turn your radio on, now you're turning podcasts on or UFC or NASCAR or baseball games or hockey games, and these bastards are here too. So that's the thought, be everywhere for everyone. Here in Orlando the common theme around here are just put a guy on a billboard with a big check in our name, and there's five firms that do that same type of advertising down here and it's press and repeat. So yeah, it's really just one, how do we stand away from that? Do a whole campaign about, yeah, they got that, but that was just a settlement. We go to get verdicts and that. That's just getting too far in the weeds with people where they're not going to really understand the difference between a settlement or a verdict. A million bucks is a million bucks to them.
However they get it, they don't care and we don't want to be another, hey, here's the check. Obviously we have our 15 billion recovered. You lead with a big number and it's impressive, but we're not pushing that out like other firms push out the individual ones. So it's more just brand awareness plays, staying above that. Then at the same time, knowing that we have those numbers to back it up and we'll push out verdicts on Instagram and Twitter and social media channels and stuff like that to get it out there so people at least know we're trying cases, but it's not what we lead with. We lead more with what you're talking about. Hey, get people talking, be memorable, get them as a client and then just wow them with service and experience, and there'll be customers for life.
Chris Dreyer:
Advertising with local sports teams is a great way to connect to your community. But college athletes were off limits until recently. Name, image, and likeness, or NIL, offers fair compensation, financial stability and educational opportunities for college athletes, and it's changing the game for local legal advertising. The Morgan and Morgan firm saw an opportunity and did not hesitate.
Daniel Morgan:
So we were actually the first law firm in America that did an NIL deal. I'm a licensed basketball agent. All that time when I was, as my dad says, fucking around in law school pretending to be a sports agent, I actually got licensed and have some overseas clients and stuff like that. It's more of a hobby than a career but it's fun to be around. But in doing so, I knew the path that was coming because you have to do these seminars, NBA PA every year. So I knew the NIL train was coming and I knew, hey, if we're a first mover, back to that earned media thing, even if we just do a deal, we can go... I think our first deal was for $5,000, we got about $800,000 worth of free media from different newspapers writing about, "Hey, this player just signed with Morgan and Morgan. NIL deal happened."
ESPN and podcasts were all picking it up. It was actually a purple cow, one of those creative meetings. I pitched it, the Purple Cow, we're big in Lexington, Kentucky. That's where my dad's from. He's a Kentucky fan. He knows John Calipari well, so it was a layup. Let's go to Kentucky, do a whole team deal. That was on the next evolution of we'll do the team with the whole entire team. Now you have these people in Lexington, they eat, sleep, drink, Kentucky basketball. Now you have the Kentucky people on commercials and billboards with us saying, "Call Morgan and Morgan, they're the best," yada yada. Obviously there's certain things you have to get from by the bar, you can't guarantee wins and say they're the best firm and stuff like that. I'm paraphrasing, but just align yourself with that brand side by side.
And they're like, "Well, if they're with them, then I'm with them too because I love all things Kentucky basketball, and if they're supporting my team, then I'm going to support that law firm." Because if so facto more dollars will then flow to my team and my players. Now what's happened though is I'm not going to say people are copycatting because it was going to be the nature flow, but other people started getting that same space, obviously, and these people are treating him like they're pro players. We were able to go in and do deals for four figures, maybe 3000, 5,000. I think our highest we've ever done is for like 15,000. That was for a top three pick in the draft when he was at Alabama. So we were able to pretty much say, "Hey, take our money or don't take our money. We're paying you for an hour of your time to take pictures with us, a few social media posts, and then we're then going to take you and market you all over Tuscaloosa. You're going to be a college athlete with billboards and on buses."
What college athlete doesn't want that? So a lot of times the agents would get involved and try to play hardball, like, "No, he wants seven figures." And you laughed at them and say, "See you later." And then the client will call you back like, "Hey, can I still get that deal done for the number that you promised? Am I really going to get billboards?" So there's lot of that. But now what does happen is some firms will come in and will pay a guy like a hundred grand, and then it just muddies what the value is because a lot of times too, it could be, hey, this lawyer is a mega booster of Georgia football, so I want to make sure I get a recruit there. So I'll pay this guy $50,000 to be a spokesman for Georgia.
Meanwhile, he goes to Georgia. I have him as a spokesperson, two birds, one stone. Where my dad doesn't care about any of that stuff. He cares about how much does this cost and what are our eyeballs, what's the ROI on this. Big money for some of these players, especially if you average out what they're doing at scale. But no, it's definitely, I think the way that it's helped us is one, it shows the people in the community that were invested with them and with their team. It's aligning us with their team, and then the content we can get around it is just super hyperlocal content. So we did one with Grace McCall at Coastal Carolina that's just super hyper-local, who's watching that? But all of a sudden case spikes go up in that county 25%. There's nothing else to really point to except that one campaign.
So we definitely have proof of concept that it works, and then we've replicated it out now where we're the official law firm of the Yankees and of the Phillies and of the Red Sox. We were like, "Hey, if we put this logo up next to our logo, these diehard fans are going to be all in with us."
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I wonder, does it give you the enemy too?
Daniel Morgan:
It does. We've been very cognizant about that though. In Lexington and with UK we have deals with Louisville now too. So yeah, there's definitely some of that as well, because you'll go to a different city or something. You're on an away game and you just saw Morgan and Morgan with Brock Bowers at Georgia, but now you're driving to Arkansas, and this was a layup though, the Arkansas has a football player named John Morgan. So we obviously had to do a deal with him. So we have a deal with him this year, but all of a sudden you're driving over to Georgia and you see John Morgan, the football player on a Morgan and Morgan billboard and you're like, wait, wait a minute. I thought they were with me? Now they're with them. Now they're with everybody. But we've looked at it and really how we came with the leaning more into the sports marketing is I don't look at the enemy as other law firms when it comes to marketing.
I still look at it as a guy I'm going against the courtroom, and that's Allstate and State Farm and USAA and these firms and where are they spending the money? They're spending it at these ballparks and on these players and on these deals. Patrick Mahomes is I think, representing three insurance companies. The guy is always on TV, but the main thing I took from that was just because Allstate was marketing at Raymond James Stadium, USAA was still marketing there too. Progressive was still marketing there too. So even if another law firm or another team sees it, I think they now know this is just marketing. This is what big companies do. And Morgan and Morgan is a national big company.
Chris Dreyer:
This wraps up the gold medal moment featuring our PIM Con keynote speaker, Dan Morgan. Visit pimcon.org to go from good to GOAT and join me and Dan live in Scottsdale, September 15th through 17th, where we will conquer personal injury marketing, network with industry titans, celebrate excellence and become the greatest of all time in personal injury law. Tickets are limited so secure your all access pass today. Just head to pimcon.org. That's P-I-M-C-O-N.org. I'm Chris Dryer. Thanks for listening to these gold medal moments, and I hope to see you in the winner circle at PIM Con. For $200 off use code PIM Dan, P-I-M-D-A-N.
