Chris Dreyer:
Speed without technology is unsustainable. Technology without a speed-focused strategy is wasteful. Where speed and tech overlap, that's where the magic happens. Transforming a steadily growing firm into an explosive force. This is Personal Injury Mastermind, your guide to building better law firms faster. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of RankX.io, the marketing agency of choice for elite law firms.
To harness velocity, you must hold the reins on both tech and speed. My guest today has built a firm that's doing it better than most. Brian Riley and Austin Kurtz launched Kurtz Riley just a year ago. I don't care how long you've been in the game, these young stars are knocking it out of the park and everyone can learn from them.
I had Austin on the show just a few weeks ago, so when you're done here, look for that episode in the show notes. In just 12 months, Brian's firm has found a way to turn speed into a competitive advantage. These guys grind and hustle, but that's not the only factor in their success. It's not about working harder or longer hours, it's about building systems where technology and velocity reinforce each other.
Brian Riley:
We've really implemented as many AI and tech tools as we possibly can to make our processes extremely, extremely efficient. I mean, filing a complaint in our office? Three clicks of a button, boom, boom, boom, you have all your documents prepared. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to submit it to TurboCourt online and get it filed or not and really move it forward. But we really do make it that easy for ourselves and our staff to generate the documents so that if we're on the phone with the insurance company and they're really giving us a hard time, within 10 minutes. We put our money where our mouths are, right? "You said this, we said that, we did this. Now it's your turn to step up and do something."
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible. And just your willingness to go and litigate. And like, "Hey, we're going to do this, we're going to fight you. This isn't the correct offer." The other thing you mentioned is the time on desk. So this is one of those that like... I'm approaching that 300th episode, it's about to go live, but this is something that's just not talked about. I think I had one episode where James Farron from over in North Carolina talked a lot about it. About the time on desk and velocity and how that impacts cash flow. Just what are some of the things that slow it down or create bottlenecks? And what are some of the actions you can take to speed it up?
Brian Riley:
Obviously, it's our goal to convert that client as quickly as possible. The number one thing that would help drive the time on desk lower would be converting the intake at the time of the call, getting them set up with the proper medical treatment. It's like issue spotting, right? As soon as you find out the insurance company is giving you a hard time or they're not taking your case seriously, then you just got to make a decision on it. Whether it's a liability issue or a mechanism of injury issue or a causation issue. Zero in on the issue, figure out if you can win that issue, and then get aggressive and do something about it.
Chris Dreyer:
You had a personal experience with your dad, growing up, through the legal system as a plaintiff. How did that light your fire in the life of law?
Brian Riley:
Yeah, big time. My dad was, yeah, he was a plaintiff for an incident that he discovered in about 2005, 2006. My uncle was stealing money from the family. I just remember back in the day coming home after football practice, my dad would have just a shitload of papers out on the dining room table. I was standing around the table with him, trying to figure it out with him for years. Probably didn't officially wrap up and settle and finalized until like 2020. I think I went through two or three different phases of trial.
I remember coming back from college and going to the Arizona Supreme Court and watching my dad's attorneys argue the motion that was ahead of them. And that was when I really, you know, just getting out of school and was kind of like, what am I going to do with my life? I said, I could probably do this attorney thing. That's when I decided to apply to law school and got started.
Chris Dreyer:
That's awesome. And man, what a long case. What was that? 14 years? Geez.
Brian Riley:
Oh yeah, and the expense was just insane. Terrible.
Chris Dreyer:
Unreal. Unreal. Before you started the firm, Kurtz Riley, you're already on a path to success. Can you walk me through how you got to Morgan & Morgan and just that experience?
Brian Riley:
Yeah, so I started practicing in 2016. I've gone personal injury my entire career. So even when I was in law school, I got a job as a case manager, a paralegal intake type. Worked at a firm for four or five years. Went to trial, got some great results in my first few years, and then eventually got recruited over to Morgan & Morgan, where I was there for three years and ran their Arizona office. Which, by the way, was an awesome experience. I kind of equate that to starting a firm in Arizona with the support of the biggest law firm in the nation and then being able to do it again, but on my own dime, with Austin. And just really, in our first year right now, building those foundation blocks, trying to do everything that I did three or four years ago for them and then create something new and different for us.
Chris Dreyer:
I had Bill Umansky on the podcast earlier and he was talking about like, "Hey, when you lose an employee, staying in touch and just not always villainizing the scenario." And that was cool of you to say, like "Hey, this was a great experience."
Brian Riley:
For anybody who's going through that, and it can be rough on some situations. Always trying to do the right thing. Stay above board, be honest, be transparent. Usually it'll work out in the right way.
Chris Dreyer:
I really appreciate that. Thanks for sharing that. I talked to Austin too, and he mentioned that... I was asking him, how do you divide the roles? Because you have a startup firm that's not just growing, it's like exponential growth, like significant growth, quickly. You do a lot with the pre-lit. Of course, you guys both love going and litigating cases and you've got that experience and that's a differentiator. Because most people don't like to litigate. So I guess in that role, working with the pre-lit and the litigators, what kind of KPIs are you looking at? How do you oversee that department? Talk to me about that role.
Brian Riley:
Yeah, so primarily right now I'm working the pre-lit files that we have here at the firm. We've been very fortunate to partner with many referral partners in the state and outside of the state, helping us get cases and obviously helping clients. And then as those cases advance, if we are not able to get them resolved for the right dollar amount in pre-litigation, they go to litigation, which Austin kind of takes over.
So for me, I mean, one of my favorite KPIs is you're either sending out a demand per day, or you're resolving a case every single day. And soon enough, as the firm grows and the caseload starts to mature, I think we'll get to a point where myself and the other two pre-litigation attorneys that work for me will be hitting that mark every single day. You're getting a case resolved. And then you're finding another case and you're getting a demand out. And that's a simple KPI, but it does take a mature enough caseload and enough cases that are ripe to actually be able to achieve that goal.
And I think that's really what we're looking for right now. If I can have my attorneys get out 10 to 15 new demands a month, I'm very happy with that. And then of course, they all have banking goals, right? Average fee is a goal that we're looking at right now in our first 10 months or so of being in business. And that's a super important goal for me. I think that's like the most reflective goal of, how good of an attorney are you on an average case?
And then another KPI that I'm always looking at is time on desk. If the case has been on your desk for a year and a half, are we moving this case to litigation or not? What's the hold up? Right? So we're probably too young to really have a good idea of that KPI, but it is something that we're looking at. And I probably have another 10 other KPIs I look at every single day, but those are the ones that we're trying to hit on the most. If you're getting a bad offer on a case and we're willing to litigate it, let's get it to Austin, let's get it into litigation, let's get aggressive.
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 road map to consistent leads and exponential growth. It is a masterclass of 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.
Well, that's incredible that you're collecting these KPIs out of the gate. I can only imagine what three and four years looks like in terms of optimizing for those numbers. I don't know Arizona average fees. I think I had Chad Dudley on and he made a comment that was just a general nationwide, and I don't know how true this is because there's states like Maryland where the numbers are really low on average. He said something like, if your attorney fees are less than 10,000, you've got room to improve. 10 to 15 is okay. 15 to 20 is really good. Above 20K is great. Is that kind of fair? Like an assessment of just overall?
Brian Riley:
Yeah. I mean, that's exactly right in line of what I would say for Arizona. So in Arizona, the minimum state policy is 25,000. So if you have a case and it's a real case with real insurance, it's a real liability, and you're helping your client out as best as you possibly can, ideally you're getting them the full case value of the policy limits of 25,000. So that would equal an $8,000 fee for a 33 and 1/3% contingency. So that's kind of like the marker of where I would say average to good is. And then anything above that is great.
I know for me and doing this, repeating this, starting a firm three years ago with Morgan & Morgan and then doing it again now. I know for a fact that the average fee in the first year is usually a little bit lower. And then as more cases advance, mature and get into litigation, the fees start to go up. And I think litigation is actually the real catalyst to moving the average fee up. Not only are you going to get better pre-litigation results, but when there is a bigger policy and your client's hurt and deserves it, you got to litigate to get the real number. And of course that ends up impacting your average fee.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and I'm sure that the insurance companies probably challenge newer firms, just to see if they are going to litigate, maybe do things a little bit different than a firm that's been in business for 20 years or so. I'd imagine there's some aspect of that. So talking about your logo, how it combines the wolf and the lightning bolt, and then the story to tell about your firm's identity, "Let Justice Roll." So tell me the story. How did the branding and the logo kind of emerge?
Brian Riley:
Well, Austin is so creative. I think one of the best things that I do at this firm is I just let him kind of run free and do whatever he wants and come up with these crazy ideas and things like that. And we have a lot of really good conversations over lunch, over drinks, and then literally in that conversation we're like, yes, yes, yes. We'll write it down. Let's implement this. Let's do this. And that's exactly what this... I mean, when we were trying to come up with our firm name and trying to figure out what to do. I mean, we started off with the Super Crash Bros, which we thought was obviously a play on Super Smash Bros, and we liked that. We were really in love with it. We were talking to people about it. We were like, we're the Super Crash Bros, like, two young attorneys, ready to fight. We just loved that whole thing.
And then we started talking some more and what I think him and I really bring to the table, along with the attorneys that we have here, is we have a lot of energy. And the lightning bolt, and you see it on the little emojis and stuff like that, sending back and forth between text messages. It's kind of a spark, and that's what we want to bring to our cases. That's what we want to bring to litigation or pre-lit or whatever it is. Even our marketing, we want to bring that spark. We're going to bring something different.
And then the wolf was such a... That that's like me just saying something and that he just couldn't tell me no for some reason. I think I was like, "Yeah, let's get a mascot. Let's get a wolf." And he was like, "How does that have anything to do with us?" And I was like, "I don't know. It's kind of like outdoor, deserty, foresty. It's cool." And then he did it and we made a cool design. And now the wolf's been part of our website since the inception.
Chris Dreyer:
Talk to me a little bit about the finances side. I'm really interested. It's not super exciting to talk about finances and the bean counter stuff, but how do you think about... For an agency perspective, when I'm selling retainers, it's very simple. Not very many transactions. They're the same fee. Predictable. How do you approach for the financial engineering and management of a firm? Especially with you guys doing so much volume so quickly.
Brian Riley:
We do a lot of forecasting with our cases. So putting together a hit list, if you want to call it that, coming up with a list of, here are the cases we expect to resolve in the next 60, 90 days. And here's what the expected settlements are. That's really helpful for our cashflow. Being that we are reasonably new and signing up a good amount of cases, we want to make sure the cases are staffed right. So if I know month over month we're signing up more cases, well, we need to make sure we're getting attorneys in who can handle those cases.
And we also need to make sure that the cases that we have are getting the proper attention. They're getting the medical records ordered, they're getting the experts hired, whatever it might be. Because we know in the next 9 months, 18 months, what have you, those cases will be resolving, and if we don't do something now, we're going to be in trouble later. So finances is probably not my strong suit. We actually hired a director of operations who, I'll pop in to her office at least once a week and I'll say, "Hey, are we good?" "Yep, we're good." "All right, great."
Chris Dreyer:
What small change has had the biggest positive impact on your firm?
Brian Riley:
The first thing that popped in my head was using AI and tech and things like that. And we are using actually this new app, it's called Quilia. We're starting with that, starting tomorrow. Where it's integrated with our Filevine system. It's essentially an app where clients can click around on it and then someone like myself or Austin can pop on the screen and say, "Hey, you clicked the lost wages button. This is what they are. This is what they mean. If you have them, please upload directly into the app or email directly to your case manager." It'll get plugged into the file, and then we know that's a damage, right?
Or there's another section where you can just record notes regarding all of your medical appointments, the providers you've been to, upload your bills, and it all gets integrated directly into the system. And I think it's pretty affordable for what we get. So that's a huge thing, right? Making the client experience what we would want and what we would expect if we were going through something like that.
Chris Dreyer:
Speed and technology separately, they're just tools. But when you combine them with strategic intent, they become a competitive advantage that can transform your firm's trajectory. Brian and the team at Kurt Riley has shown us exactly what's possible in just 12 months when you get this formula right.
If you're ready to accelerate your firm's growth, don't forget to grab your copy of my latest book, Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing, From Good To Go. It's packed with strategies to help build systems of scale. You can find the link in the show notes. And if you found value in today's episode, make sure you check out my recent conversation with Brian's partner, Austin Kurtz. It's the perfect companion piece to understand how they built such a dynamic firm so quickly. This is Chris Dreyer and you've been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind.
