Chris Dreyer:
Every personal injury law firm faces the same challenges. They look at complex aspects of their cases, things like healthcare liens, settlement planning, life care plans. They think they've got two choices. Do it all in-house, hire more people, train them up, add to overhead, or you hand it off completely to some faceless vendor and hope for the best. After all, you're too busy actually working cases of running your business. But there is a third way that saves money, gets you better reviews, and helps you grow your firm.
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind, the show where ambitious attorneys come to learn, implement, and get results. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the SEO agency of choice for elite personal injury law firms.
The most successful firms are partnering with specialized experts who become an extension of their firm at no extra cost. These experts are getting better results and they're elevating the level of client care your firm provides. Here's what clients really care about. Did they get their money when they needed it? Was everything handled smoothly? Did the firm take care of all the headaches? Because at the end of the day, that's what shows up in the reviews. If they sing your praises or they light your ass up, and in today's world of Google reviews and referral marketing, that final impression can make or break your firm's growth.
Today we're talking with Jason Lazarus and Brian Adair about this shift towards expert partnerships isn't just about making firms more efficient, it's actually helping them grow faster through better client satisfaction and stronger reviews. Here's Jason Lazarus, the CEO of Synergy Settlement Services. Let's dive in.
Jason Lazarus:
We're an efficiency partner for personal injury law firms. We take on healthcare lien resolution for law firms instead of them spending time and money with their own staff to try and negotiate and resolve these mass torts. There's traditionally been lien resolution programs that are part of mass torts, so outsourcing of that has become very commonplace in mass torts for years.
But in the single event space, there's been a slower evolution of law firms recognizing that. There are companies like Synergy, and we have competitors who do the same thing, that can do these tasks way more efficiently with a better outcome for the client. All the while it doesn't cost the law firm anything because it's a client cost in terms of the way we get compensated, which is a percentage of what we save so we're aligned with what the client wants, which is the least amount possible being paid to that lien holder.
If you do the analysis, and we've done this with some of our clients of what that can save, it could be half a million dollars, it could be a million dollars. It's incredibly meaningful to any law firm because of the inefficiency created with staff, for example, sitting on hold with Medicare. Can you imagine a trial lawyer spending his time doing that or even a paralegal? How expensive is that time to the firm when that time can be spent much better advancing the next client's case, either towards trial or towards settlement.
Chris Dreyer:
Minimizing those operational costs. I mean, you're basically turning a cost center into a profit center. Your biggest expense walks on two legs. It can be your biggest asset. It can also be your biggest expense.
Jason Lazarus:
When you view a law practice as a business and you focus on efficiency and profitability, which every company should do, there are some that are just not viewing their practices through that lens. If you look at how do I make my practice more efficient and profitable and deliver better outcomes for the client, it becomes a very easy decision to outsource.
Our team is made up of people that used to recover on behalf of these plans. A lot of the healthcare lien resolution is knowing the tricks of the trade, and unless you do that day in, day out, unless you call Medicare every day, you don't know the tricks to getting someone on the phone or you don't know that there's a waiver and compromise process where Medicare refunds money back if you make the right arguments under the right statutes to the right parts of Medicare because there's all these different contractors. That's just one sliver of lien resolution.
Then you get into ERISA, which there's a bunch of different recovery contractors who we hire from and what they are paid to do, on the same percentage of savings that we do, they are out there trying to recover money from injury victims on behalf of the plans. When a law firm tries to fight one of these recovery vendors, unless they know the inside baseball and they don't to the most part, they are fighting against very well-capitalized companies, much bigger companies than my company.
Rawlings has thousands of employees in a Kentucky campus that takes up a massive building. I mean, that's who law firms are fighting against, so the idea of taking their own time to fight against a well-funded, well-oiled machine not knowing the tricks of the trade. Ultimately it doesn't benefit the client because most likely we're going to get a better outcome. This is something that makes so much sense for the injured party and for the practice.
Chris Dreyer:
I got to imagine that the client experience, they got another touchpoint. The people working up the case, the actual trial attorney that's not doing this can be focused on law and doing their craft better, and you keep the client informed on that side of the coin. Have you seen you working with a firm where they were maybe doing an in-house and then working with your company have an impact on the client experience and how that maybe impacts reputation or reviews?
Jason Lazarus:
Almost universally, the last thing that holds a disbursement of funds to the injured party is the liens that need to be resolved and the time that it takes and the end result are the last taste in that client's mouth. If that is a bad taste, what is the likelihood that they give you a good review? So much better to be able to tell the client, "Hey, we've hired experts who they do this day in, day out. They're going to fight as hard as they possibly can for you. They're paid based on their results."
My people are bonus based on the results they get because we track it. How many people that we've helped? How many lives have we improved? How many families have we helped? How many law firms have we partnered with? That is how we measure our success, and that's incredibly important for a law firm to understand because that aligns with what they are trying to accomplish. They're trying to help people and they're trying to make sure that they have the most efficient and best experience for that particular client because that's what creates repeat referrals, good Google reviews.
Chris Dreyer:
There's a statement I can't remember who made it about core and context, like when making decision whether or not to outsource. If it's core to you and it's what you're the best in the world at, then you wouldn't want to outsource that. You would want to outsource context because what's context to you as the individual may be core to someone else. So where it's maybe context on the lien resolution and then they work with you as a partner where you're an expert at it, and that's where the symphony comes together of just expertise and specialization.
Jason Lazarus:
For the law firm really to be firing on all cylinders in their core competencies, they can't be distracted by trying to figure out, for example, the nuances of marketing for all the things that you talked about when you were on my podcast. Good grief. I mean, the idea of even trying to find someone with your level of expertise to bring in-house when you're not going to find them too. You're probably not going to get the same kind of results as you would get, and it distracts you from what's important, which is delivering legal services in a manner that is world-class customer experience with our injured parties so that they go out in the world singing your praises because that is what ultimately is going to help bring in more business.
Chris Dreyer:
We just heard from Jason about how specialized expertise in lien resolution can transform what's often the last and most frustrating part of a case into a smooth experience for both firm and the client. But here's what many firms don't realize. While lien resolution comes at the end, there's critical planning work that needs to happen much earlier in the case.
That's where Brian Adair, founder of Adair Financial Group comes in. His team's philosophy is simple. The sooner they get involved, the better outcome for everyone. From day one, they handle everything from medical equipment needs to estate planning, and as Brian explains, waiting until settlement time isn't just leaving money on the table, it's missing opportunities to make your client's life better right now.
Brian Adair:
Because the plaintiff firms, frankly, they don't really want people discussing dollar amounts. A perfect example is we will have social workers get involved early. A lot of these people have medical equipment issues, they have prescription issues, they have bed sores, they have all types of issues where they need assistance. They don't know where to go, and so we bring those people in really as a relationship person. We're not billing them for those services.
The majority of these families have no estate plan. They have no legal documents whatsoever, and you might think, well, why is that important? It's very important. We need to know exactly that things are covered so that God forbid if we have a plaintiff that becomes a decedent or we have certain developments, I would imagine it might be prudent to have medical powers in place for people who have been catastrophically injured.
It doesn't matter what the final dollar amount is. We already know what type of trust, what type of planning we're going to do. Yes, we like to get in very early if possible, and develop a relationship, and frankly, it makes the plaintiff attorneys phone stop ringing. Our guys really like that. They're like, they use us as a resource now so that we can take care of their clients. We're not billing them for any of that.
That's one of the big issues too, Chris, is these families don't have any money currently. They're waiting for the settlement, so they're afraid to bring in any type of talent to have the trust done or to have the estate plan done or the social workers because they don't have any money. Some of these clients are veterans. They may not even be on veteran's benefits because they don't know how to do it.
We address everything from A to Z for them, and in a comprehensive way, and those are the areas we like to get involved in. Also, we really weigh in with the plaintiff attorneys, letting them know what is a reasonable dollar amount the settlement needs to be to support the client. That's why we like to get in early.
Chris Dreyer:
One of the things that many PI attorneys need in order to market themselves is reviews. Local services ads is at the very top, Google Maps. One of the ranking factors is reviews and reviews typically comes down to the client experience, and not only that, it's when the PI attorney gets a big case and if an individual's not treated, they may get buyer's remorse and they may go to another firm.
I would say, have you seen the real impacts of the client experience and just how they're treated as maybe a retention and marketing component for these PI attorneys?
Brian Adair:
Absolutely, and some of them have figured out to use us as an ancillary service to be supportive, which of course drives satisfaction. When their clients are being tended to and we're answering their client's questions. Again, the plaintiff firms don't know the answers to these questions and we handle those things. We become a concierge program for them way before they have settled the case, and of course it makes the plaintiff attorneys look great. I mean, we have plaintiff attorneys now who are saying like, "Wow, it's great to have a social worker on a case. I don't have to hire other people to address these needs, and you guys know what you're doing."
We've done some of the biggest national cases out there. We take all cases that we can show merit on because quite frankly, a $200,000 or $300,000 settlement is more important to that family than the $40 million settlement. If they're only getting that amount of money, we have to make sure that they don't get kicked off Medicaid and things like that.
But what I wanted, so the two areas the plaintiff attorneys really like, two of the areas are exactly what you said, where clients are happy with us and it helps for their reviews and for just their relationship with the attorney.
The other is there are a lot of areas now, this is geared more towards large cases, where they're being done incorrectly. The cases are being designed incorrectly by the structure guys, and there's liability there. There's liability on the plaintiff attorney's side in our opinion, where we will hear about how certain cases were designed, where a structure was just placed and everyone walked away. There's certain areas where it is absolute malpractice, and so we have educated our attorneys, certainly on larger cases where federal estate tax planning is involved, the verdict cases are involved, the punitive cases are involved. Those are the biggest cases in the country every year.
We handle them all the time, and frankly, plaintiff attorneys don't like the thought of any type of liability. I mean, we have a case right now that a very, very good attorney just mistakenly sent a large amount of money to a client directly, not knowing we weren't engaged on the case. Then we got engaged only to find out the client's on Medicaid and he's facing two expensive surgeries. Well, if we don't fix that, his money's gone. I mean, he will be kicked off Medicaid and he will have to self-pay.
We have a lot of attorneys that just call us now and run a case by us. They're like, "Hey, let me ask you a question. I've got this case." I ask them for the fact pattern, and we give them guidance to keep them out of the weeds. I think that's of interest to them as well.
Chris Dreyer:
They are specialized scenarios where there's punitive damages and the double tax trap. How do you help clients navigate scenarios like that?
Brian Adair:
We work with some of the best talent in the country, and so we work with a gentleman named Rob Wood, who is the premier tax attorney in the United States relative to the settlement planning. Rob is able to help mitigate the sum of the taxation on punitives.
It's fair for a punitive damage case for the client to have to pay tax on their portion that they receive. It is not fair for them to also have to pay the attorney 40% and pay tax on the attorney's portion when the attorneys in fact are paying tax as well. That is absolute double taxation. That's a perfect example of where we can solve those problems and none of the other firms get into that type of sophistication.
Chris Dreyer:
Partnerships with trusted vendors are about more than making your firm more efficient. They're about creating the kind of experience that turns clients into raving fans for your firm. At the end of the day, your clients don't care about the complexity behind the scenes. They just know that everything was taken care of, their needs were met, and they got the help they deserve. That's how you build a practice that doesn't just handle cases, it builds legacies, both for your clients and for your firm. I'm Chris Dreyer, and this is Personal Injury Mastermind. Happy Holidays.
