Daniel Callahan:
They came out on a Tuesday afternoon at 3:00. Some newspaper guy would write up a story, throw it out there half-baked, and then it's yesterday's news. This way it blew up. It was huge.
Chris Dreyer:
The difference between good and legendary isn't as simple as being a better lawyer. It's about being more creative or strategic, and frankly, more bold in how you position yourself and your firm. We're talking about engineering your own media events, creating authority through strategic relationships and the kind of innovative thinking that turns good cases into record-breaking verdicts. Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind, the show where ambitious attorneys come to learn, implement, and get results. We break down the proven tactics that separate the best firms from the rest each week.
I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the SEO agency of choice for elite personal injury law firms. Daniel Callahan is a name that's become synonymous with creativity and litigation. Daniel was voted Trial Lawyer of the Year three times by Orange County for personal injury cases that earned top-ten trial attorney in the United States by the National Law Journal. As the founder of Callahan Consulting Group, he now advises solo practitioners and small firms on trial strategy and case development. Early on, Daniel broke away from the pack by understanding something fundamental, how to earn your media presence. He engineered his own media frenzy and positioned himself as an expert through some really smart moves that any firm owner can adopt today. Pay close attention as he shares exactly how he does it.
Daniel Callahan:
If you want to generate business, I can tell you how you do it. First, you have to do a good job so you have something to talk about. But once you actually do a good job, you should let the world know. I had this case, Beckman Coulter versus Flextronics. It was a three-month jury trial. Initially it was a two-million-dollar breach of contract case. They offered me $300,000. I took the case over from an attorney and I was going to go to trial. Then they offered a million. We started trial and I demanded three and they offered one. Then I demanded five and they offered three. Then I demanded eight and they offered five. And it went on like that until eventually I offered 16 and they were stuck at 10.
We went to the jury and what I had is the first cause of action for a two-million-dollar breach of contract, the second cause of action for $300,000 fraud that I discovered during discovery. And then seven weeks into the trial, I amended the complaint to add two more causes of action for economic duress, which is basically a subspecies of fraud. The jury came back unanimous and they gave me the 2 million for the breach of contract, the 300,000 for the fraud, plus a million and a quarter punitives. And I don't remember what the compensatory damages were on the last two, but they gave me 180 million in punitive damages on the third cause and 750 million in punitive damages on the fourth cause. It was good.
Then the judge brings us back and says, "Well, we have this verdict." I said, "Your Honor, rather than read that verdict today here at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, why don't we..." We had 16 jurors and we never lost a one. You pick the four officer's names out of a hat at the end and they were visibly disappointed. "Why don't we call them all, let them come back for the reading of the verdict, let them be part of it? At the same time, it'll give us an opportunity to talk about settlement one last time." Judge said, "That's a good idea. We'll read the verdict in the morning."
I went to the office, I did a press release. I notified everybody we were going to have a huge verdict in the morning. The courtroom was packed, not just with my attorneys and my clients, but the courtroom was packed with the press. When they released a verdict at nine in the morning, I had all the time I needed to educate everybody about the case was about, because if I didn't do that, if it came out on a Tuesday afternoon at 3:00, some newspaper guy would write up a story, throw it out there half-baked, and then it's yesterday's news. And I thought maybe the brick was going to come in somewhere between 25 and 75 million, but it came in a bit higher, 934 million. It blew up. It was huge.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm a digital marketer, so when I hear press release, I'm thinking fired off the PRWeb or Newswire or Cision or somebody like that. Is it actually you write it from the firm, you go submit it to manually to the news, the local news? Is that what you did? What went into creating that press release?
Daniel Callahan:
It was done by me manually. It's not that much of the dark ages. This was in 2004, so we had email. And I know that the right people to contact, they will get it out. I sent it out to the local newspapers, television, and also the couple people that were just the first step to everywhere, so it worked very, very well.
Chris Dreyer:
Why did you pursue a career in law and particularly in personal injury and business litigation?
Daniel Callahan:
My mother told me early on that I'd make a good lawyer, probably because I was arguing with her about different things. But then as it turned out, I did not really excel in high school and I went to work in construction for a few years. And one day I'm working construction and I'm chopping down a tree and I'm throwing the wood into a wood chipper, and I'm thinking, "What am I doing here?" And I see my buddy who got me the job and he's standing next to his father, so okay, I know why he's here. But I remember my mom told me I'd be a good lawyer, so I decided to go to school.
As it turns out, when I graduated from high school, I graduated fifth in my class, fifth from the bottom. So I was like number 168 out of 172. Not really promising. But after a few years of working construction, I had a different attitude and I graduated from Western Illinois University with straight A's. In fact, when I got there I wanted to be a lawyer, but they didn't have a pre-law society, so I formed one, and I invited judges from Chicago and from all over, I invited law school administrators to come and speak. I was on my way. And then I went to UC Davis for law school, had a great time, was the editor of the Law Review, and really enjoyed the educational process much more than I did in high school.
But you asked me why did I go into PI. Initially I was after the money. Big law firms are chasing me down, so I accepted a position to the largest and oldest law firm in the state of Hawaii. And then after that, I was there for a couple of years, can't really get a tan, didn't speak Japanese, so I left and I went to a large law firm in Newport Beach. Again, business litigation, real estate, construction and whatnot. I formed my own firm on St. Patrick's Day 1984. And I did the same kind of practice, but then I started taking a few personal injury cases. And when I represented somebody in need, a personal injury plaintiff, it just made me feel good inside being able to help them. And also, often the defendants were ruthless. But I found that the lawyers for the insurance companies just really didn't care about my client at all, and they'd be happy, if they could send my injured disabled client packing with nothing. My choice for PI was just because it made me feel good.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk about what separates good litigators from the truly elite. In personal injury law, we often hear about that first seven-figure verdict as a milestone, but there's a whole other level, those attorneys consistently landing eight and nine figure verdicts. Daniel breaks down what it really takes to play in the top tier, because understanding this mindset is crucial for any firm looking to level up their practice.
Daniel Callahan:
Well, two things, preparation and creativity. You have to think outside the box in order to get better results. So I represented a MESBIC, Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company. They make loans to minority enterprises. They made one in the city of Irvine, was defaulting, it was not paying. My client wanted me to go to court and try to get an order seizing the collateral. However, if I did that, the likelihood was that the client would close up his factory and his warehouse, take all his stuff and go somewhere else possibly across the border.
So I thought, "Okay, I know what I'll do. Self-help repossession." It's called self-help, which means you can just go in and take it yourself so long as you don't breach the piece. No prior notice, no nothing. So what I did is I did up a document called Notice of Repossession, and I put it on legal size paper, so now it was more official, and I made it look like a form and I filled in the blanks. And then I signed it and I had my signature notarized. Well, there you go. That makes it look pretty official.
Then I went to the police department and I said, "Look, I'm going to do a self-help repossession of all this SBA equipment. And I need you to come along to make sure they don't breach the peace." First of all, he says, "What are you doing? Okay, wait, I'll come along to make sure you don't breach the peace." Now, this is done in the early '80s, so not everybody had a video on their cell phone. So I hired a guy from LA to come down with a video camera. And I put on my three-piece suit. I got a flatbed truck and a forklift. And we pull up to the back with the forklift on the back of the flatbed truck. And now we get out, we walk like an arrow, like an inverted V coming at them.
And I'm in the middle, Officer Cluck's on my left and the videographer is on my right. I'm coming right at him. "My name is J. Kelly and I represent the SBA. We're here to foreclose on blah, blah, blah. And I know you can tell me where all the equipment is that is collateral for the SBA. And if you tell me, you will not go down like Mr. Swartoff, the CEO that's going to go down, if you cooperate." People were looking over here and looking over there.
Chris Dreyer:
Here's the stuff.
Daniel Callahan:
And I get the video guy, "Get that guy. Get that guy." Anyway, so the guy goes around and points out all this collateral that was belonging to the SBA. My forklift guy goes in, he's picking this stuff up and picking it up, putting on the flatbed, until my forklift ran out of gas. I guess they didn't think they ought to put gas in the damn forklift. They had pointed out a forklift. So okay, I used their forklift, picked up my forklift, put it on the truck, loaded everything else up and off we went. I got everything without having to go to court just with a little bit of creativity. Then I get a phone call that afternoon and guy goes, "Wait, I'm the attorney for XYZ Corporation, and is this true? You came in and you took all that?" "Yes, I did." "Wait, is it true all they had to do is say no." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Congratulations on your sting."
Chris Dreyer:
That's amazing. That's amazing. I think for our audience, you form Callahan Consulting Group, so tell me about Callahan Consulting and what you do.
Daniel Callahan:
I was a managing partner for Callahan & Blaine, and I've subsequently moved to Puerto Rico. From Puerto Rico, I have Callahan Consulting Group. Callahan Consulting Group does two things. One, I advise attorneys on trial practices and strategy. Most of my clients in that regard are solo practitioners or members of a small firm. They tell me the facts and I look at it all and I give them a creative way to approach the case and introduce the evidence into trial.
Part two of what I do is clients reach out to me and they would like to have an attorney in their community who is very good and respected in a particular specialty. What I do then is I just do some homework and I find out, "Are you really the ones who pursued this case, who obtained that result, who did this? And how are you now for manpower? Are you just overloaded? Can you devote your own time to this or would this be passed off to an associate?" When I ask them these questions, they say, "Oh no, I'll do it. I'll do it." Or usually they're able to take the case.
So then after I interview two or three of these attorneys, I then call the client, I tell them what my thoughts are about my interview with the attorneys. And then we get on a phone call, the client, myself and the attorney, and I lead the call, but I let the client ask the questions. And after that call, we'll call another, usually two, rarely do we go all the way to three. And then the client will make the decision on what attorney they would like to have represent them. That's the second thing that I do for Callahan Consulting Group. I do quite a bit of that actually, and since I'm basically retired, otherwise I would say I do that about three or four clients a week.
Chris Dreyer:
That's a solid amount. I'm sure those cases tend to be more the bigger cases.
Daniel Callahan:
Yeah, often. If it's a personal injury case, I get compensated with a referral fee. I keep myself in the game and I like what I'm doing, so I'm still active. And when I'm not doing Callahan Consulting Group work, I'm consulting with the attorneys at Callahan & Blaine. Why do I do this? I like it. This is what I'm supposed to do. Some people pick a profession and then may regret it, or maybe it's not for them. It's a square peg and a round hole. Well, it turns out I was a perfect fit. I really, really like what I do. I like solving clients' problems. I like creativity, just it's what I do.
Chris Dreyer:
It was a master class in what I call authority by association. Instead of waiting for years to be recognized as an expert, he engineered his own path to thought leadership. He didn't just attend events with legal heavyweights, he created them, putting himself on the same stage as Supreme Court justices and top trial lawyers. Pay attention to how he manufactured these opportunities, because this is how you accelerate your journey from just another lawyer becoming a recognized authority in your space.
Daniel Callahan:
What I wanted to get out there, at first, when I first opened Callahan & Blaine, I started writing an article called It's the Law for the Orange County Business Journal. There's my name now, people are seeing the name. I got a hold of the Orange County Bar Association, "I want to do seminars." So I had contacted all the biggest trial lawyers in California and beyond, and they all wanted to speak. I would do a day and a half seminar, a morning session, afternoon, and next time a morning and you'd have a Supreme Court justice for lunch. And guess what? I put myself on one of those panels. So the audience goes, "Big shot, big shot, big shot, big shot, got to be a big shot." But then I would get referrals from doing that.
Chris Dreyer:
We see Lanier Trial Academy, you've got NTMP, you got a lot of these in the space. So this was something that you put on yourself, you did the panels?
Daniel Callahan:
Yes.
Chris Dreyer:
When people are considering this approach, what goes into putting something like that on, just the specifics of something like that?
Daniel Callahan:
Well, the local bar association, like the Orange County Bar or the LA Bar or whatever, they want to provide benefit to their members. Who's going to do the heavy lifting? Who's going to contact all the speakers? Who's going to arrange the panels? Who's going to get the Supreme Court justices to commit to speak? So I would take on that burden. And I'd also be on different panels for different things. See my practice, first it was business litigation, then it was insurance bad faith when the insurance company would not pay the cost to defend my business clients, and I sued them. I had a patent infringement case. I hit farmers for $58 million in insurance bad faith because they didn't defend my client.
So we also did personal injury. You know about the NEREA case where my client was jogging down PCH and was hit by an uninsured drunk motorist, a hit-and-run in fact. Other people looked at that case and they thought, "There's no case here. He got hit by an uninsured drunk motorist." And the bicycle lane is supposed to be four and a half feet wide, but this was actually 11 feet wide, the same width as a driving lane, so the driver, the uninsured motorist, he testified that he was behind a truck and he pulled into the right lane, look, there's nobody coming up in the right lane, so he pulls in just at the wrong time and clipped these two gals and rendered them quadriplegic.
I sued the City of Dana Point for road design, and I was able to go back in time and see that before there's this avalanche blocking off the road that had to be cleaned up, it was actually a four and a half foot wide bike lane. They would've had immunity had they just done it the way they were advised to do by their engineer. But since they deviated from the engineer's plans, they lost their immunity. On top of that, coincidentally, I had represented somebody who got hit across the street about 30 yards down. And I told the city of Dana Point, "You have liability." My expert said, "Somebody's going to get severely hurt or killed here if you don't fix this," and then lo and behold, a couple years later, this happens.
Now, that case was settled, the earlier one, so maybe a lot of other lawyers didn't know about it, but when I heard about this case and I had the one a couple years earlier, I knew they were liable. And I told them all they had to do is get a bucket of paint and a stencil and mark bike lane, bike lane, bike lane. They offered me $30 million and I said, "No, my demand is 50. Your policy limit is for 50." On the Friday before the Monday start, they gave me the 50.
Chris Dreyer:
You mentioned at the very beginning you had the business side that gave you some upfront cashflow, your cost plus your hourly billing. Case like that, when you're getting expert witnesses and it's so big, how much money gets tied up in a case like that?
Daniel Callahan:
It's a couple million dollars. But I tell my lawyers, because they say, "Can we afford this?" I say, "I got broad shoulders." And I know if we run our line of credit and we surpass it, we can go to Bank of Callahan, I got this, because I believe in my case, that's what happens. Yeah, sometimes your cases cost you a couple million dollars in expert fees and out-of-pocket costs for this, that and the other thing, travel expenses. But you have to believe in your case, which means also at the beginning you should try to pay attention to your case, to what is it really about?
So sometimes, I found the hard way, that I've had a client who is not being totally honest with me. We had a client who had a gas station and the gas tank under the ground leaked. If it just is wear and tear, it's not covered. If it's sudden and accidental, it's covered. This guy tells me, "Oh, I hired this Irishman who was drunk." Wait, you're telling me you hired an Irishman, a drunk Irishman. "And he was out there and he took this lead pipe and he jammed it down into the container and pierced it, and that's where the leak came from." I said, "Okay," and I tell this story to the insurance company. And then they dig it up, and turns out if a pipe was going to go straight in, it's not going to make a left turn and go out the side where the hole was.
Turns out you got to really try to do some homework before you take cases. I didn't settle that case. I settled it for like a few hundred thousand dollars. I don't think I broke even. You have to be careful to do your homework before when you first get the case so you're not left holding the bag.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's face it, being a great lawyer isn't enough. To succeed, you need to generate consistent leads. Personal injury is the most saturated niche. Competition is fierce and differentiation is everything. When the deck is stacked against you, you need a comprehensive resource to beat the competition. My latest book, Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing, is your roadmap to consistent leads and exponential growth. It is a masterclass on marketing for personal injury firms. It's packed with actionable strategies on where to invest your marketing dollars for maximum impact. No more guesswork, no more wasted ad spend, just clear proven methods to transform your firm from good to go. Grab your copy of Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing on Amazon. Link is in the show notes.
You have a talent of recruiting competent litigators you either observe in court or opposing litigation. Just wondered if you could speak to that, because there's so many practices that they really need great litigators, they need great attorneys. There's a shortage on that side.
Daniel Callahan:
We are blessed because our firm is known as the premier litigation firm in Orange County, maybe even Southern California, for what we have achieved. So good trial lawyers that want to go with a winning team come to me, but sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes we interview people and you just have to assess whether this person really has the creativity and the willingness to work really hard and to work cooperatively with you. And also when you're in court, you're like number 10 on the calendar, I think the best way to do it is to watch the other people in court approach anybody that you think is good and invite them out to lunch or coffee or something, get to know them. At a minimum, you expand your network, but maybe you just brought in a new associate or partner.
Chris Dreyer:
There were a lot of solid insights in today's episode. Let's review the takeaways. It's time for the PIM Points. PIM Point number one, own the news cycle. Instead of just firing off a press release to PRWeb or Newswire, he actually engineered a media event. He delayed the verdict reading, hacked the courtroom with the press, and controlled the narrative completely. For law firm owners listening, this is huge. It's not just about getting coverage, it's about creating moments that build your authority. We're talking about the difference between being in the news versus owning the news cycle.
Daniel Callahan:
I notified everybody, "We are going to have a huge verdict in the morning." The courtroom was packed.
Chris Dreyer:
PIM Point number two, establish your authority. Daniel created his opportunities. You can too. Writing that It's the Law column, organizing these massive seminars with Supreme Court justices and top trial lawyers, and then putting himself on those same panels. For our audience to think about their own authority building, this is such a powerful blueprint. Whether you're doing webinars, podcasts or speaking events, it's about creating platforms where your shoulder to shoulder with the biggest names in your space.
Daniel Callahan:
Guess what? I put myself on one of those panels. The audience goes, "Big shot, big shot, big shot, big shot, got to be a big shot." But then I would get referrals from doing that.
Chris Dreyer:
PIM Point number three, problems are opportunities if you're creative enough. Let's talk about that repossession story because it's just amazing. Most attorneys would've gone straight to court, standard procedure. But Daniel thinks totally outside the box. He got the result faster, cheaper, and more effectively than the traditional approach. That's the kind of creative thinking that separates premier litigators from the pack. Find those unique angles that nobody else is seeing.
Daniel Callahan:
Guy goes, "Wait, I'm the attorney for XYZ Corporation, and is this true? You came in, you took all that?" "Yes, I did." "Wait, is it true all they had to do is say no?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Congratulations on your sting."
Chris Dreyer:
That wraps up this episode of PIM with Daniel Callahan. You can learn more about him, grab his contact info and the resources mentioned today in the show notes. While you're there, pick up a copy of my new book Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing: From Good to GOAT. And if you like what you hear, leave me a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. All right everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.
