Chris Dreyer:
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Greg Sobo:
I think despite all the technology, it's all driven byhumans, and humans are by nature imperfect. And as long as humans are behindthe technology, there's always going to be a place for the personal injurylawyers.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm your host,Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing company thebest firms hire when they want the rankings traffic in cases other law firmmarketing agencies can't deliver.
On this show I've been fortunate enough to learn from someof the best minds in the personal injury space. Now we're bringing themtogether in one place at the first ever PIM Conference. PIMCon is coming toScottsdale this September. We're laser-focused on one thing, getting moreleads. I'm not talking about just any leads, the quality leads that actuallyturn into cases. That's it. That's our entire focus. It's not just theory.We're talking about actual strategies been tried and tested by the best in thebusiness.
If you're looking to conquer personal injury marketing andgo from good to GOAT, PIMCon is where you need to be. We gather the top PImarketing experts to share their secrets. And believe me, this is cutting-edgestuff you won't find anywhere else.
Don't miss out on another potential client. Grab yourticket to PIMCon now and get ready to supercharge your practice. Your futureself will thank you. Go to pimcon.org. All right, let's dive in.
In an ocean of law firm websites boasting their latest andlargest wins, Greg Sobo stands out as a living example of how quiet marketingcan speak loudly in a crowded market. Last week we took a deep dive into thepower of quiet marketing with Gary Yordon, and today we're seeing it inpractice. So be sure to check out that episode when you're done here.
Our guest today, Greg Sobo, is the managing partner atSobo & Sobo. He's the mastermind who turned a small family practice into athree-state legal powerhouse with over 60 attorneys. Greg's going to explainwhy avoiding the numbers game might be your best bet, how lean in-housemarketing teams can help you achieve your goals, and strategies forfuture-proofing your firm.
Whether you're a solo practitioner or managing a growinglaw firm, Greg's insights are about to become your new secret weapon. So let'sdive in and learn from Greg Sobo, managing partner at Sobo & Sobo.
Greg Sobo:
My father is an attorney, and to me, an attorney meantbeing in the courtroom and making the arguments, winning the big case, havingthe crowd cheer. Turned out as I got older, I realized that's not the kind ofattorney my dad was. He's a real estate lawyer. That's all he's ever done isreal estate closings for homes all 30 years. He put me through law school doingthat.
I liked the lifestyle that he had. He always came to allof my athletic events, he never missed a dinner. And so I knew I wanted thatlifestyle, which I always associate with being an attorney, but I think it wasmore the entrepreneur part of being an attorney that attracted to me about theway he lived.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, so the entrepreneurial side, the real estate, Imean, did he... Just digging in, because I'm a real estate guy. You listen tothe pod, I do a lot of single family, multifamily, I got about 60 units rightnow. Did he also dabble in on that side, not only the law side, but actuallybeing an investor too?
Greg Sobo:
No, my father has only done real estate closings forresidences, period, and that is it. He's never dabbled out of anything. Hefound his niche, he liked it, he's good at it, and he stayed in that one areafor my whole life.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Amazing. I love the focus. So how did you decide,"I'm going into personal injury law"? What made you pivot away frompassing the baton on the real estate side?
Greg Sobo:
Yeah. Well, I always wanted to be a litigator. That's beenthe case since high school, since college. I did the moot court tracks, I didthe national trial teams. So I knew I wanted to be in court. And then I hadfortunately worked very hard in law school, did very well, graduated top of myclass from Syracuse University, got recruited from some of the top Wall Streetfirms.
It started there, and a litigator at those firms, as youmay know, you never see the courtroom. So it didn't last very long before Idecided to leave there to a place where I could litigate cases, which was backhome for me. So I left from New York City, which is just an hour north of thecity to a suburb in Orange County, and I worked for a personal injury firmthere so I could be in the courtroom and loved it right from the jump.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible. And I also, I got to back up a littlebit, you've got the competitive side. So you're a competitive swimmer. You werethe NCAA Division I finalist twice. You had the East Coast Athletic ConferenceDiving Championship four times. Did that competitive side just naturally takeyou to the litigator side? Was that your natural progression, to compete?
Greg Sobo:
Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, I just love competition,period. I mean, the accolades you mentioned before, that was in diving, and Icertainly had a passion for diving too, but just about any sport I love toplay. And that's what I love about being a litigator. There's winners, there'slosers, there's strategy and the game of it, the preparation. And it is truethat for me, really win or lose, I do enjoy the process.
Chris Dreyer:
The discipline and the consistency that it takes tocompete from an athletic side and now to be a litigator, what are some of thesame type of principles and preparation you take on the litigating side to be atop litigator?
Greg Sobo:
For me in particular, diving at the level that I got to isreally down to extreme fine points, meaning that the difference between 1stplace and 12th place can be just a toe point that was missed or letting out ofa somersault a 1/2 a 1/10 of a second too early. The details really matter atthat level.
And I think that's certainly one thing I brought intolitigating, very detail-oriented, you know the case backwards and forwards andevery detail involved. So that's certainly one part of it. And then two, reallywas actually never a very talented diver. I think love the sport to the pointwhere I outworked a lot of people, and whatever success I'd had in that sportwas from that.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. I love the outworking, the discipline, thegrit. I want to transition over to Sobo & Sobo has just really blown upover the years. You've got over 60 attorneys, 15 locations, New York, NewJersey, Illinois.
And the first thing, just digging in your marketing andlooking at a website, and we talked briefly about this, is you do something alittle bit different, is most attorneys are throwing every result they have upon the website, they're throwing up their testimonials, and I go to the caseresults and you describe some cases you're involved in, but you don't give thenumbers. And why don't you list the numbers? What's your thoughts on that?
Greg Sobo:
Yeah, I appreciate you noticing that, and it's something Ireally feel passionately about. No one in a closing argument in a personalinjury trial would stand up and say, "Please award my client half amillion dollars because they broke their wrist." Because there's nocontext. When you ask for big numbers like that and you don't give context, itlooks like the system is broken and out of control. And I think that's onething that feeds right into the insurance company's tort reform arguments. Imean, we're helping them.
The other thing that is a problem with those numbers isyou have a client with the same injury that you've advertised and they look onyour website and say, "Your advertisement said 5 million for a brokenwrist, I have a broken wrist. Why are you telling me I only need to take$15,000?" So it can also affect client relations too.
And so from day one when I started Sobo & Sobo, I madea decision we were never going to advertise how much we've won. And we've hadthose verdicts, we've had the multi-million results. But again, without theproper context, it makes the system look bad and, most importantly, like itneeds fixing. And we've always been able to get the same results with ourmarketing by describing our results, "Large award or significantresult," without saying $20 million or whatever the actual number was.
Chris Dreyer:
And it probably puts this thought in their head of theydon't know what's possible. When you say significant or large, the differentadjectives you use to describe these cases can put this thought in their headof size, right? Everyone has different ideas of the size of the case.
And yeah, I agree on the tort reform and the caps andeverything. So yeah, I'm with you. I think many could take a page out of thatbook.
So there's other ways to do social proof on your site.You've got news, you've got the testimonials, things like that, so I think it'scovered. Your advertising shifted over the years, right? How has the marketingevolved and what's your philosophy in how you think about acquiring cases atthe firm?
Greg Sobo:
Having started with nothing as a personal injury firm,when I joined my father it was just a real estate firm, you have to learn toadvertise without any funds. So you do the things what I call like guerrillamarketing where you're pounding the pavement, you're marketing yourself withoutspending any money.
And of course now we're a much different animal, a muchlarger firm with a marketing budget and a in-house marketing team, and we lookwhere and how to best spend those dollars. I have a philosophy that's differentthan most. I think most attorneys want to project their image, they want to beon a billboard, they want to be on TV, top of mind type advertising. And ofcourse that's important. But I'd rather be, as you mentioned, I'd rather bedigital. I want to be where injured people are, and that's really where ourfocus has been.
Chris Dreyer:
You said you had an in-house team, so I like to kind ofget a mix. I'll be transparent, I was creeping on Morris Bart, a buddy's site thismorning and on LinkedIn, I was like, "Let me see how many marketingpersonnel they have on LinkedIn." And there was a couple, right? I thinktheir director looks like to be a beast, heavy media buys. What's kind of thein-house marketing mix look like on that side of things?
Greg Sobo:
So one reason I decided to do it in-house, because Ihaven't had much success outsourcing marketing. How you present yourself andyour image, to me, is of the utmost importance, and hopefully it is for youraudience as well. And I never felt that they got it right. I felt like I wasdoing a lot of it myself anyway. I didn't like the commercials they werewriting, I didn't like the scripts they were producing. So since I was doing itmyself, we decided to take it in-house.
I have a very small team of three right now, threefull-time people and a marketing director who I have the utmost confidence in,gets me, gets the mission of the firm. And that just takes a lot of burden offof me because when they're bought in and you have that person marketing foryou, it's such a relief because they get you and they know the message you'retrying to espouse. It just makes everything so much easier.
Chris Dreyer:
I think the control and getting immersed by you, gettinglunch together, being in the office and what you stand for from a valuesperspective, so I totally understand that. And then it allowed managingattorney, the managing partner to do what you do best on the trial side.
So talk to me about that side, about how you got 60-plusattorneys, how you're nurturing talent, how you divvy out the cases, the reallyhigh dollar to low dollar. Talk to me just on the working up the cases side.
Greg Sobo:
First of all with me, even though I do spend 98% of mytime managing other attorneys, I do keep a few cases for myself. I do thinkit's important to do that, to be seen in court and to remain sharp as alitigator. But a lot of times it's clients that were my first clients that havecome back or referred somebody else, and I just have so much appreciation forthem and want to continue to represent them since they're the ones who gave memy start.
So that's a small amount of my time. And then as far asthe cases as they come in, yeah, we have our office broken into teams, and eachteam has a certain level of experience and different personalities. And weliterally size up every client based on personality and type of case and weassign it to the team that seems to make the best fit for those two factors.
Chris Dreyer:
Did you notice from your father's side, the real estateside, did you pick up any PI specific referrals from his history and hisexperience working with clients?
Greg Sobo:
Yeah, that was the business model. I thought I would joinmy father. I'd let all of my father's clients know that Sobo & Sobo is nowinto personal injury, and then it was just Gary Sobo. And we would get allthose referrals.
But honestly, Chris, it was actually a detriment, becausethe name Sobo at that time was synonymous with real estate. And I found inspeaking with real estate clients that went elsewhere for personal injury, whenI asked them, "How come you didn't come to us?" They said,"Well, you're a real estate firm. I don't want a real estate firm."
So actually had to rebrand the firm, this is 22 years ago,as a personal injury firm. And that, I know you've done it successfully manytimes, it's very difficult to do. So my business plan failed miserably to startin that way. I got no clients from my dad. In fact, thought I would be doingreal estate with my dad for the rest of my career and just have a personalinjury case or two on the side for fun. Yeah, it was a tough start.
Chris Dreyer:
There's often a divide between firms that cherry-pick onlythe biggest cases and those that cast a wider net, but how do you balance caseselection with effective marketing and firm utilization? I asked Greg about hisapproach to handling cases of all sizes.
Greg Sobo:
To me, it doesn't matter if it's a big case or a smallcase, I love the challenge and the game of playing. So from the very beginningof the firm, I was happy to take a large case just as much as I was happy toaccept a small case.
I used to call us the Statue of Liberty of personalinjury, give me your tired, your poor, hungry, I'm happy to take the challenge.Even difficult cases with 50% chance of losing, we take those cases. I likethat challenge.
But yes, to get more specific, certainly if it's alow-level case, which you would say, maybe a low-impact car accident case forexample, we will assign that to a team that maybe has not as much experience assome of the more complicated injuries and complicated accidents.
Car accident cases for us at this point are very routine,I feel like we're built to do them, and we have the equipment and thelitigation and the know-how to do those all day every day. But when you startto get to, for example, a labor law case or a traumatic brain injury case,those need experience, those need someone who's been around the block, and wehave teams to handle those as well.
Chris Dreyer:
Incredible, incredible. Yeah, I've always been curiousbecause there's such differences in how firms handle those types of scenariosand that there's this extreme points of view there, so I appreciate you sharingthat.
Greg Sobo:
Yeah, I don't mind it. And I think too I'll even go a stepfurther. I think you have to be flexible, because that case that came in thatyou didn't think was such a big case could turn into one, and that big case youthought that came in could actually not pan out.
And so for example, the case that came in as a small case,I think it's important to pivot and maybe assign that case once it becomes alarger case to someone else in the firm. And depending on the unique bond thatclient has with the attorney that started the case, maybe you keep theminvolved, maybe you don't.
We try not to draw too hard lines on issues like that. Wedraw our lines around what the client wants, because our job is to make theclient happy. So every case is different. I'm giving you general guidelines,but that's really what runs the firm rather than just hard line rules.
Chris Dreyer:
And that speaks to the client, right? They're uniqueversus the widget on the assembly line, right? Another question I had for youis just your expansion, right? So New York, New Jersey, Illinois, you're goingEast Coast now, you're in the Midwest.
So when you're thinking about different markets'jurisdictions, and first why? New York, you could do your entire practice fromNew York, right? It's a huge market, huge TAM. So what's just your thoughts onwhy you expand and just that type of scenario?
Greg Sobo:
Yeah, so for one, I think as a firm and leading the firm,it is hard to tread water and just stay in one place. I think you've heard itfrom other guests who either growing or dying. And that's certainly one mindsetof mine.
So I'm always looking for new opportunities to grow. Andwhen we look at other markets, we look at a whole variety of factors fromdemographics, to what the law is, to what the weather is, and we consider allof those things in where to open, and certainly what the network is. And thenwe can make a choice and jump in with both feet, we unleash our marketing teamthere, and it's been a great success so far.
Chris Dreyer:
Incredible. Incredible. Yeah, I got a few final questionshere, Greg. One question I'd just like to toss out there, just to get a sense,and it's like the predictive, right? If you look at our 2023 predictions or2022, there's a lot wrong, but the state of PI on tort reform and collisiondetection and just all these types of things, where do you think the PI spaceis heading in regards to risks and things of that nature?
Greg Sobo:
So I think it was a few years ago, I really thought thatthe self-driving vehicle was going to be the end of personal injury. They weretalking like these self-driving cars were going to be all over the place andtaking over, no accidents anywhere anytime, within a short time span. And forthat reason, I actually even opened a different division at the firm, a masstort division, thinking that we might want to try something different becausecar accidents aren't going to be around.
Obviously self-driving cars hasn't really come to pass andthey're not close. I'm very interested in that space, I've been following itfor a while, and I wonder if it's ever going to happen at this point based onwhat I know.
So I'm actually more optimistic than most in the personalinjury space. I think despite all the technology, it's all driven by humans,and humans are by nature imperfect. And as long as humans are behind thetechnology, there's always going to be a place for the personal injury lawyer.So I'm very optimistic about the future, and while technology has made itsafer, I don't see a major change coming anytime soon.
Chris Dreyer:
Great. And then what do you think about, just on the tortreform side, do you think we saw what happened in Florida and there's differentstates, and any thoughts around that side of the coin?
Greg Sobo:
Like any good trial lawyer, I try to look at itobjectively, and I really don't see the system as a broken system. And I thinkthe states where tort reform hasn't passed understand that.
I don't see major changes coming. I mean, before Floridathere really wasn't a major tort reform change like that for quite a while. SoI think tort reform has petered out. I think people are believers in the systemthe way it is now for the most part. Once again, call me the optimist. I thinkwe're going to be okay there. Certainly going to have to beat back someinsurance industry fights, but I think we're going to be good.
Chris Dreyer:
That's exactly what my business do and a lot of personalinjury marketing wants to hear, so I appreciate that.
Greg Sobo:
I believe it.
Chris Dreyer:
Greg, this has been amazing. I really like digging intothe details on how you're nurturing the attorneys, how you're growing your firmand just your philosophy. I like the positive, the half glass full mindset.
One final question here. For our audience that maybe hassome questions for yourself, how can they connect with you and how can theylearn more about the firm?
Greg Sobo:
Sure. So the firm, you can learn a lot from our website,www.sobolaw.com. And I can be emailed at gregsobo@sobolaw.com.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks so much to Greg for an amazing conversation. Let'shit the takeaways. Bring it in-house. An in-house marketing team is not justabout cost efficiency, it's about message control and brand authenticity. Asimple, lean, high-caliber marketing team that's deeply aligned with yourfirm's ethos. Look for professionals who can translate complex legal conceptsinto compelling narratives. Your content should demonstrate both your legalexpertise and your understanding of clients' emotional journeys.
Greg Sobo:
I have a very small team of three right now, threefull-time people and a marketing director who I have the utmost confidence in,gets me, gets the mission of the firm. And that just takes a lot of burden offof me, because when they're bought in and you have that person marketing foryou, it's such a relief because they get you and they know the message you'retrying to espouse. It just makes everything so much easier.
Chris Dreyer:
Differentiated marketing approach. Throwing big numbersaround without context can be counterproductive. It might make the legal systemappear broken or set unrealistic expectations for clients with similarinjuries, but different circumstances. Instead of leading with dollar amounts,focus on communicating your firm's value through more meaningful metrics.
Greg Sobo:
No one in a closing argument in a personal injury trialwould stand up and say, "Please award my client half a million dollarsbecause they broke their wrist," because there's no context.
Chris Dreyer:
Play offense. Stay on top of emerging trends in tech, themarkets and law. Consider diversifying your practice areas strategically. Thisdoesn't mean becoming a jack of all trades, but rather identifyingcomplementary areas that align with your firm's strengths and the evolvingneeds of your client base.
Greg Sobo:
So I'm always looking for new opportunities to grow. Andwhen we look at other markets, we look at a whole variety of factors fromdemographics to what the law is, to what the weather is, and we consider all ofthose things in where to open.
Chris Dreyer:
Huge thank you to Greg for coming on the show. For moreinformation about Greg, check out the show notes.
Before you go, do me a solid and smash that follow buttonto subscribe. I'd sincerely appreciate it and you won't want to miss out on thenext episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder andCEO of Rankings.io.
All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out. See you nexttime. I'm out.
