Bart Benton:
When trial is looming is when things get real in a big case.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing company the best firms hire when they want the rankings traffic in cases other law firm marketing agencies can't deliver.
On this show, I've been fortunate enough to learn from some of the best minds in personal injury, and now we're bringing them together in one place at the first-ever PIM Conference. PIMCon is coming to Scottsdale this September. We're laser-focused on one thing, getting more leads. I'm not talking about just any leads, but quality leads that actually turn into cases. That's it. That's our entire focus. It's not just theory. We're talking about actionable strategies that have been tried and tested by the best in the business.
If you're looking to conquer personal injury marketing and go from good to go, PIMCon is where you need to be. We've gathered the top PI marketing experts to share their secrets, and believe me, this is cutting-edge stuff you won't find anywhere else. Don't miss out on another potential client. Grab your ticket to PIMCon now and get ready to supercharge your practice. Your future self will thank you. Go to pimcon.org. All right. Let's dive in.
Success isn't just about winning cases. It's about delivering life-changing results for your clients. Few firms have cracked the code quite like Benton and Benton, founded by the dynamic father-son duo of Bart Benton and his dad, Gene Benton, a former judge with over four decades of legal experience, this Monroe Georgia-based firm has become a forced with a track record of six and seven-figure settlements and a reputation for fearless litigation. Benton and Benton has proven that you don't need to be based in a big city to deliver big results. But what sets this firm apart isn't just a success in the courtroom, it's their unwavering commitment to preparing every single case for trial.
Where most firms aim to settle, Benton and Benton's objective is to litigate. And with a powerhouse team that includes a trial consultant, medical consultant, and trial technology consultant, they have the expertise and the resources to go the distance. In this episode, we dive deep into the three key principles that have become the bedrock of Benton and Benton's success. One, stay battle-ready. While preparing every case for trial, it's the ultimate competitive advantage. Two, mix it up, how to diversify your lead-generation strategy and build a robust referral network. And three, fund the war chest, the pros and cons of cash reserves versus a line of credit and how to make the right financial moves for your firm. Here's Bart Benton on how he got into law.
Bart Benton:
My dad was and still is an attorney, so I've been around it my entire life, and growing up my dad was always someone that was really respected. People would come up to me and say, "Your dad's such a great guy. He did X, Y, and Z for me." So it was kind of like, from a very early age I knew what I wanted to do.
Chris Dreyer:
So your dad, Eugene, was a PI attorney? Tell me about what type of law he did.
Bart Benton:
When I was born up until seventh grade, he was a partner at a law firm in our small town, Monroe, Georgia, and they were a general practice firm, so he did some PI but they did a lot of other stuff too. They represented the city, the bank, the hospital, the local school, everything. But when I was in seventh grade, he got elected as a superior court judge. So then he did that for 16 years before we started our firm together in 2021.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing, amazing. I was leading you with that one. So you started off as a defense attorney for the insurance companies on the other side. So tell me about that experience. What did you learn being on the other side that you take now on the injury side? Tell me about that experience.
Bart Benton:
I would say the main things I learned are how to prepare a case, all the things that go into making sure you have all the information necessary to properly evaluate the case, but also the things that the insurance company and their attorneys are going to be looking at to try to poke holes in your case. As a plaintiff's attorney now, I'm always thinking, "All right, what stuff are they looking at that they're going to try to use against me?" And that helps me better handicap the amount that the case is worth.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. It's like an advanced retrospective type of game you're playing, some game theory.
Bart Benton:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
Your firm, what really stood out to me is in an industry where only 1% of cases go to trial, you guys set it up where every case will go to trial. That's the intention behind how you're working it up. But can you explain the advantages of working up a case in that method as opposed to maybe the other types of practices?
Bart Benton:
Trial is what makes the insurance company finally come to the table and say, "Okay, what would you take to make this case go away?" Because right when you file the case, the insurance company's not worried about it because trial is a year away. So they just paper in their file, figuring out, having conversations with their attorneys about what that attorney thinks about the case. But when trial is looming is when things get real in a big case, and that's when negotiations start. So if you're not ready and you haven't done anything to prepare for trial, they know that they're not going to have to offer you as much money versus someone who is ready to go and is willing to go.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. The one thing I was looking at too for your firm versus others is you've got some unique roles that are different. You've got medical consultants, trial consultants, trial technology consultants. Tell me about some of these unique roles. These are a bit different than your standard case manager and paralegal. Tell me about some of these different positions you have.
Bart Benton:
We have a trial consultant. His name is Saul Gruber. He's a national consultant. He works with attorneys who try cases all over the United States, and what we do is we'll discuss the case, put together a game plan of what needs to be done, and the main thing that we do that really steers us in the right direction is that we conduct focus groups. Saul is a focus group consultant in addition to a trial consultant. So he's very good at conducting focus groups. He's done tons of them at this point. And when you do those focus groups, you figure out what evidence is important, what people actually care about, and you learn a lot about the weaknesses of your case, because the people in the focus groups are just regular people that would be the same type of person that ends up on a jury. So once you get done with that, you really know where you need to start focusing and what evidence you need to develop more and things that may be weaknesses in your case that you need to really figure out how you're going to explain at trial.
Chris Dreyer:
I like that, and it's different, the storylines, the different areas you can go. I had Sean Claggett from Nevada on, and he was talking about his focus groups and how he did a ton of them before his last trial. Do they also contribute to the amounts, like the estimates of what you think you're going to get, and how accurate are those? Is it a good gauge?
Bart Benton:
We did one with a different consultant, a different focus group with a different consultant. Their names were John and Alicia Campbell, great people, because the reason we use them is they use this big data approach to evaluating how much the case is worth, and they have an algorithm that's super technical, it's above my pay grade, but they have research that says our focus group said the case was worth 9.3 million, and the case ended up going to trial, and the plaintiff at trial got 9.1 million. So, therefore we can back up what we say.
And they have a list of cases that they've done that have gone to trial where they compare the focus group, what they said it was worth versus what the jury said it's worth, and they're pretty close. So we used them for a really big case we had to try to figure out how much should we ask for, because we didn't want to shortchange ourselves, and the number that they gave us, we presented to the other side, and they're like, "Whoa, that's too high. We're going to do our own focus group." Now they did their own focus group, basically said the same thing as ours, and that's what got the case settled for such a large amount.
Chris Dreyer:
Marketing is the lifeblood of any successful law firm, but there's no one-size-fits-all approach. I want to know how Bart and his team bounce their efforts between attorney referrals and direct-to-consumer marketing.
Bart Benton:
If you want to keep it steady and be consistent with it, B2B for me is mostly other attorneys. So really, getting lunch with them, calling them, texting them, staying in touch with them, helping them any you can and providing value. If you do that enough, people will send you cases.
Chris Dreyer:
Giving value, reciprocity. You put that out in the ether and it comes back to you.
Bart Benton:
Yeah, but I'd like to expand in the B2C as well, just because that's scalable, predictable, and consistent if you do it right, and I really want to have both B2B and B2C.
Chris Dreyer:
You've got the B2B referrals. Do you have any fear that you get that big settlement and now you pump it into radio or TV or digital and you're now competing against, quote-unquote, the potential referrers. Do you think that they would stop referring? How does that work in this space?
Bart Benton:
That is a potential pitfall, but for me, those aren't my referral sources, so it wouldn't affect me. But someone who does get their business from those types of firms, that is something they need to think about.
Chris Dreyer:
Take me to also intake. And I really love this intake question because trial attorneys look typically when you're going deep and you're getting the numbers that you guys are getting, you're not taking every little case, right? You're more select. So tell me about your intake. If someone calls up the firm, how are you guys doing intake?
Bart Benton:
Yeah. So most calls that come in that aren't referrals are too small for us to take, but they're still cases. So that's an opportunity for what I call easy money. So they call me up, they tell me about their case, and I say, "Sorry, that's not quite the type of case that we handle, but my good friend so-and-so does handle that type of case and he's very good at it. Would you like so-and-so to give you a call?", and they almost always say yes. So then, I send the referral attorney the info via text, and then they call and then they'll text me back like, "Yep, signed up that person that you sent me." And that's been... I got an email today from an attorney who I sent small stuff to and he's like, "Hey, I got five different cases that I've settled. I'm sending you a $20,000 in referral fees." And all I did was just answer the phone and say, "Hey, call so-and-so" and then tell him to call the potential client.
Chris Dreyer:
You can say no that you don't accept the case, but instead of giving them the bar number, you actually provide value and you're helpful. And then that attorney that is your friend, were going to reciprocate. They get a big case, they might pull you on co-counsel.
Bart Benton:
Yeah, exactly. And they love it. I mean they're like, "Please keep sending us these cases. This is very helpful to our practice." It's mutually beneficial, so it works perfectly.
Chris Dreyer:
Your clients are counting on you to bring your A-game, and that includes a solid financial foundation, especially for big cases with lots of expenses. There are two main ways to go about it. Using cash reserves, also known as keeping your powder dry, or leveraging lines of credit. I asked Bart how his firm manages his financial component of their practice, and here's what he had to say.
Bart Benton:
We do the dry powder approach, but I don't know if that's the best way to do it. Some firms do a line of credit, and they have the client reimburse the interest. Obviously, the client's going to reimburse you for whatever expenses are paid, whether you're using your own money or the line of credit money, but some firms, they'll use a line of credit, and then the interest as well has to be reimbursed by the client. So these firms aren't coming out of pocket at all when the case is finally said and done.
That's, to me, something I've looked into. I've just been doing it, paying it, keeping the powder dry as you say, but it's something I'm thinking about experimenting with, just because there's hundreds of thousands just floating out there of your own money. My father-in is my financial advisor, and he was like, that's a big opportunity cost that you're spending on that, versus using a line of credit. I think I would advise personal injury attorneys that are listening to really explore that line of credit option because I think ultimately that's the smartest financial decision, something I need to do as well.
Chris Dreyer:
Thank you for sharing that, because there's just different approaches. And a lot of these, parallel area, the mass tort firms, they're borrowing against their case inventory and then they're literally these zombie firms, they're 19, 20 points on their debt and it's just a terrible situation to be in, and I've seen many of these. So, yeah, I think that free cash flow, the line of credit's the way to go.
Bart Benton:
Maybe Chris, maybe you and I start an investment firm or we'd loan money to mass tort firms.
Chris Dreyer:
But we'd have a lot of competition.
Bart Benton:
Talking about competition, Yeah, we would. There's a lot of money being made in that space.
Chris Dreyer:
You're from Monroe, you're born and raised there. How large is the market? How does the TAM affect your overall strategy? Talk to me about the TAM, the market itself.
Bart Benton:
Yeah, so Monroe is about 20,000 people, and then our county, which is Walton County, is about a hundred thousand people, so it's not a big market. Flip side to that is there's one other firm in Walton County that is a true personal injury firm. Less people but less competition. But a lot of my cases are in Metro Atlanta through the referrals that I get. I used to live and work in Atlanta, and that's where most of the attorneys are in Georgia, Metro Atlanta area, so that's where I spend a lot of my time networking and marketing within the Metro Atlanta. We're just outside the Metro area. We border counties that are in the Metro area.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, you and I are in a... similar, I'm in about a 20,000 right now where I'm at, then 20, 30,000, I'm not sure exactly in Marion, Illinois. But you're right, there's just a few firms here. Competitions different. More word of mouth, I would say, as opposed to a lot of noise, and so there's some advantages there to acquire a case locally, maybe a lot less. But yeah, getting the referrals, it makes sense to get them from the big Metro.
Bart Benton:
I do get some cases from just people around town, like, "Oh, yeah," they know me, but not well. But then they're like, "Oh, yes, I saw on Facebook you're a personal injury lawyer, so I told my cousin to give you a call." So that's why you should keep posting to the organic channels, because people do see you, and then either when they get hurt or a friend gets hurt, they'll refer that person to you.
Chris Dreyer:
Great. Perfect. Tell me about the composition of the firm. You're not a volume, so you don't have a case manager with 200 cases, that's given a minimal client service. When you're working up a case, you obviously got these consultants, these specialized roles to get really a lot of value. Is that you and a couple other... Identifying those top five percents and maybe you have a different team for maybe the lower value that you do keep? Tell me about the composition of working up a case.
Bart Benton:
We're a true boutique firm. So we have myself. I just hired an associate this week actually, because it's just hard to give the level of care that the case needs with just myself as the only attorney working on it. My dad's more of senior counsel type. He's more of a mediator for... That's where he makes his money is mediations. So I hired an associate to help me with the day-to-day nuts and bolts of litigation, just because I felt like I'm the chief marketer, I'm the chief administrator, I'm the chief litigator, I'm the chief, everything. And it's like I don't want to outsource being the chief marketer, and then that needs to be something I'm still paying attention to and working with vendors on, but there's plenty of dudes and women out there that know how to litigate, and that's a much easier thing, in my opinion, to delegate, because when you go to law school, they teach you how to do that.
When you go to law school, they don't teach you how to be a businessman or a marketer or any of those things. We have an associate that's starting soon, a paralegal who came with me when I left my firm in Atlanta, and then we have a legal assistant, so the legal assistant's more of like the front end, getting all the records in, open records requests, police reports, keeping the client updated. Paralegal's more when litigation hits. She does all that stuff. With this associate starting, I'll still have the vision and the strategy, but he'll be more of the person executing it so I can still do the other things that need to be done in the firm.
Chris Dreyer:
So it sounds like kind of dipping the toes into the EOS side of the vision integrator with this kind of setup, the technician. For our audience listening, how can they get in touch with you and learn more?
Bart Benton:
My website is bentonandbentonlaw.com, but the way I connect with a lot of people is through my Instagram, which is Be Smart, Call Bart. That's my slogan. DM me, I respond. I check it every day. You can call me. My cell phone is (770) 365-6414. I respond to that. Every client has my cell phone. I promise, if you call me, I will respond within 24 hours. There's a lot of firms out there that you call and you never hear from them ever again.
Chris Dreyer:
All right, y'all. Let's go over the pinpoints, a recap of the key takeaways from today's episode. Don't get ready, stay ready. You don't want to be caught off guard when it comes time to go to battle, Bart and his crew operate like every single case has ended to trial. Now, we all know that most cases end up settling, but if you put in the work up front, do your due diligence, and build a rock-solid case, you'll be in the driver's seat. You'll max out your case value and be ready to roll if you need to step into the courtroom. Make it crystal clear to the other side that you're locked, loaded, and ready to win big. That's how you get the upper hand in negotiations.
Bart Benton:
When trial is looming is when things get real, and that's when negotiations start. So if you're not ready and you haven't done anything to prepare for trial, they know that they're not going to have to offer you as much money versus someone who is ready to go and willing to.
Chris Dreyer:
Mix it up. If you want a steady flow of cases, you can't put all of your eggs in one basket. You got to diversify your lead gen strategy. Bart knows the power of building a strong relationship with other attorneys. Send referrals their way, share your knowledge, and keep them in the loop on shared cases, but don't stop there. You also need to build your brand directly with potential clients. Get out there, create a multi-channel marketing plan that resonates with your ideal audience.
Bart Benton:
Providing value. If you do that enough, people will send you cases. I'd like to expand into B2C as well, just because that's scalable, predictable, and consistent if you do it right.
Chris Dreyer:
Fund the war chest. Every firm has to figure out how to cover case expenses. Some like to keep it simple and use cash reserves. Others prefer the flexibility of lines of credit. Both have their pros and cons. Cash reserves keep things straightforward, but they tie up your capital. Lines of credit give you more breathing room, but you got to factor in those interest costs. At the end of the day, the right move depends on your specific financial situation and goals. Bart's advice, sit down with a financial pro you trust and run the numbers. Find a sweet spot that keeps your cash flowing and your profits growing.
Bart Benton:
We do the dry powder approach. Some firms do a line of credit.
Chris Dreyer:
For more information about Bart, check out the show notes. Before you go, do me a solid and smash that follow button to subscribe. I'd sincerely appreciate it and you won't want to miss out on the next 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.
