Joe Volta:
I brought in a million dollars to the organization, and Ionly took home 400K.
Chris Dreyer:
That moment, the gap between what he made and what hekept, was the start of everything. That's the question every successfulassociate eventually faces. Today's conversation is for the rainmakers, for thelisteners who have mastered getting cases, but want to know what really happenswhen you apply the talent to building something on your own.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, host,founder, and CEO of Rankings.io, an Inc 500 Company, for the past seven yearsin a row. Joe Volta made the leap where he went from employee to empirebuilder, from asking permissions to giving direction, to creating opportunitiesfor 20 team members who now work on his terms. He did it without sacrificinghis family, without the 4:00 AM wake ups and midnight emails. What did he knowthat most rainmakers don't? This conversation might be the reason you finallystop hesitating. Let's begin.
Joe Volta:
I was being told, "Look, man, you're valuable, youcould bring in your own business." That's the hardest part. Getting cases,getting people to know you. But there are a lot of things that go into startinga firm that you don't really realize the benefit of being at another firm. Youdon't automatically have a website and they just put a picture up with you onit. You automatically have email, or maybe they've been using it for five yearsbecause it's a new firm, but they still have form documents that you don'thave.
Chris Dreyer:
A lot of people have different area of strengths. You'vebeen able to bring it in. Lead gen, social media. Let's talk about, inparticular, social. I get a lot of heat for social because I see so many PIattorneys doing social and it's like a check the box item. It's not a leadgeneration strategy. I think they're approaching it incorrectly. I guess let'sjust briefly talk about lead gen, how you're thinking about social things likethat.
Joe Volta:
I've pulled back from creating a lot of content becausejust trying to find that time. Now, that's such a relative word. We make timefor things that are important. But on my side of things, things that areimportant are my family, spending time with them. I'm not going to do the wholeAlex Hormozi, working 20 hours a day and sleeping four. There is a place forthat, but I'm not 20-years-old with no girlfriend, no wife, no family, no otherinterests. I didn't even get a law license until I was 30. I had zero socialmedia presence, just even friends on a Facebook account, until 2020.
I use social media as a strategy to meet other attorneys,and basically was shopping myself as I can help you, and you do nothing, andyou make money. That's been a great source of helping me get cases. Back thethe lead gen side of things, people that use an SEO company like yourself, theymight be getting personal injury cases for 1500 to 3K a case. I'm gettingpersonal injury cases for much higher. If you're sending me a case that we getsettled for 100K, I paid 11-grand for that case. But I didn't pay for itupfront, so I'm not using marketing money on March 5th and not getting thatmarketing money back until December 5th, because that eight-month lifecycle ofa case, sometimes longer. But I'm paying a substantially higher premium for thecase.
Chris Dreyer:
I hear that a lot, about the trial, the litigators and,"Hey, we don't pay for marketing," but you do through your split,your referral commission because you're paying that piece for them to originateversus yourself. But again, the upfront cashflow you don't have, so there'ssome advantages there. Yeah, I think you're going about it right. I think thewebsite looks good. I was looking, I was checking out your rankings. You'restarting to rank in Charlotte.
I think all of it compounds and works together. Theindividuals that I see that have, at least who I work with, that have the mostissues is they'll pick one channel and that channel goes down, and they werejust reliant on it. I think the omnipresence has continued to expand. But notdiluting too much, there's that balancing act of becoming good and doing thesocial right.
Joe Volta:
Yeah. I would say, social media is strange to me. I'vegotten to a place now with it, and I've gotten a lot more comfortable in my ownskin. I won't say that I'm fake on social media, because I do post a lot ofreal stuff where I go on there and make a funny complaint about something thatI find is stupid. But because I'm so reliant on a lot of the relationships Ihave and trying to manage different people, it prevents me from being 100%authentic with some things. I'd probably say I'm about 90%, and then I keep 10to myself. Which maybe isn't necessarily a bad thing, because at the end of theday, social media is just a highlight reel.
I need to buy that book, Fireproof. I don't even knowMike, it's not even me about trying to rep that book. Someone just told methat's exactly what he went through apparently. I don't want that to happen tome because we've grown the organization, from 2023 when we started, it was fourof us, and now we're at just under 20. I think we're at 16 or 17 team membersnow. We have four virtual assistants, six case managers, two intake people, anoffice manager, two litigation folks, three attorneys. Whoever's listening cando all the math on that because I can't do it.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I don't know that I got to 20 people for maybe thefirst three or four years, so it's at 20 people quickly. Are you and Michaelbasically recruiting yourselves, are you using a third party recruitingcompany? Do you have HR helping you? How did you staff up so quick? That'spretty fast.
Joe Volta:
Yeah. We have over 700 cases in our inventory right now. Iprobably say about 400 of them are in the middle of treatment, and then weprobably have about 10% of our cases in litigation. We listened to our team.Obviously, I read and look into a lot of ways of maximize operations. We'veused a recruiter who I'm kind of friends with. He helped me get a job when Ifirst moved to Carolina, so I'm friendly with him. Obviously, we pay him forhis services. But I've used a recruiter, given that I give him stringentguidelines on what it is I'm looking for. Then we interview folks and we'vemade them offers.
Our lead case manager, my wife found her on one of thosemom websites on Facebook. She was helping people answer legal questions andeven saying all the right stuff. I've gotten people off listservs before, isanother good place. You just see random posts like, "Hey, so-and-so's firm'sclosing, has staff looking for a job. They're qualified with XYZqualifications." Found somebody that way. Then the virtual assistants, Ijust know a couple of people that I've reached out to that I know own remotestaffing companies.
Chris Dreyer:
Last time we talked on the previous podcast, I'd reallyencourage everyone to listen, because we really go into details about socialmedia, and your strategy, and everything you're doing there. You areoriginating some cases through referrals, through digital.
How did you think about and approach intake? Because Iknow at some point, you were managing your own DMs and doing that thing, andmaybe you do a portion of that still. How do you think about intake at thefirm?
Joe Volta:
If you send me a DM on my Instagram @highvoltagelaw, it'sonly me that responds. It's only me to blame if you don't get a response back.
But anyways, the intake part. When we really startedramping up in 2023, it was too much for me to handle. When I first started, Idid the intake calls. I called leads, I vetted leads. I set clients up formedical treatment. I did all of that myself. If you're young or you're new, youdo need to do all that, and you should want to know how to do all of thatbecause then you can't run your company if you don't. But we transitioned to Ihave two women that, all they do all day is call leads.
We use Lead Docket is the platform that we use. We useCASEpeer as our client management system. They don't link up perfectly becauseLead Docket is a Filevine property. But they link up okay enough. To be honest,I don't have it in me and I don't think my team has it in me for me to changecase management systems. I'll probably be CASEpeer until I die, or until myfirm closes, or until I sell my firm. I don't think I have it in my for thechange.
We have it set up where they are the ones on the phone. Weuse Teams for interoffice communication because we have a hybrid model firm. Wehave people in the office, people in different states, and that's how we runall the leads. Looking at reports daily, checking on our metrics. Lead Docket'sgreat because it puts things in different buckets of the actual intakelifecycle. Because you have a full case lifecycle, but intake is its own can ofworms.
You have the initial lead, then you contact the lead. Theymight not answer, so then it goes into another bucket that we call chase. Thenyou're trying to call that lead. You can mark how many times you've chased thelead. Then you can move it to whether it's been signed up, you can move it to ahold status. If you need to get more information, if you're not understandingwhat the client's saying and you're like, "I need to see a crash report, Ineed to see some photos," you can put the case on hold and not necessarilysign it right away. There's a whole bunch of different things that you can doto break out the lifecycle of an intake case before it actually hits the casemanagement system and you're helping clients get into treatment, openingclaims, et cetera.
It's been a game-changer for us, but it's just trying torun it through CASEpeer, it just wasn't the best for what our firm needed. I'mnot saying it doesn't work for some other firms that I know use CASEpeer foreverything.
Chris Dreyer:
A lot of times, we get guests on here and they'll saytheir CRM, but they don't talk about the utilization, the phases, the chases,so I appreciate the breakdown. I think that'd be helpful for the audience.
A lot of times, it's getting those average fees up.There's one part, it's originating the lead in the case for a cheap price, butthen the next is getting your average fees up. I saw, I believe on social, youmentioned securing a $3 million settlement on a case where the initial offerwas 750K. You guys are willing to litigate and go to the final hour. Tell meabout that decision, you're hiring another dedicated trial attorney now, andhow you're approaching maximizing the case values.
Joe Volta:
I have to give all the credit to my partner on that case.We bounced ideas off of. It was his case, I buy no means want to take creditaway from him. He did a killer job on that case. Yeah, Michael Chandler. Yeah,he's my law partner. He was my mentor when I was working for him. That was acase he originated.
But to your other point of how are we maximizing value,yes, we do take cases to trial. We do put cases into litigation. A lot of that,when you're setting up a firm, you have to decide on what kind of firm you wantto have. Do you want to be pre-lit focused? Do you want to do exclusively trialwork? You have to make the decisions based on that. Pre-lit focused, you havemore cashflow quickly. You typically also have a lot of lower-end cases. I'mnot saying that people's injuries aren't legitimate, and I'm not saying thattheir lives or their cases don't matter. It's just someone that doesn't have awhole lot of treatment and they're back to, quote-unquote, "feelingnormal" after two months, that case obviously is not worth what a disputedliability death case is worth. What type of firm is it and what type of life doyou want to have?
Litigation obviously takes much longer to do. High endlitigation, even longer to do than just your regular soft tissue case. We havecertain criteria that we've set out within our firm, whether we're going tolitigate the case. Or if it's a case that we don't feel good recommending thepre-lit offer to the client, referring that case out to other firms that arenewer, or that they've had more success litigating lower value soft tissuescases, to just keep the time on desk moving along.
Then with respect to managing the cases, we have aprotocol of how to help guide clients when they ask what they should do formedical treatment, whether or not they have their own doctors or where to go,that help build the case value. Because at the end of the day, as a plaintiff'sattorney, it's our burden to prove our injuries to an insurance carrier. Mostof the ways that you do that is through the medical documentation. Because ifnot, how would ... I don't really want to be defending insurance companies, buthow would they guard against fraud? If anyone could just say, "Oh, I havea broken back," well, how do they know that?
Chris Dreyer:
Pre-lit does have the cashflow, the cash accelerationadvantages. I know a lot of pre-lit only shops think they're getting thosemaximum values for cases, but they're really not. You've probably seen it withyour data, the closer you go to trial, those numbers just keep going up. But itchanges the operation to keep a good trial lawyer. Now you got to think aboutprofit share or equity if they have a unique skillset, and all those differentcomponents like paying them really well for their value.
For those that maybe get an out of jurisdiction case andthey get into the Carolinas, and they want to refer out, tell me about yourfirm, tell me about the Carolinas, why you're a good option for thoseindividuals.
Joe Volta:
I'm licensed in both states. North Carolina and SouthCarolina, they are very different in how they go about things. Right now, there'sa torte reform bill that's going on in South Carolina. Hopefully we can keepfighting that and not have that go through. Then in North Carolina, tortereform hit in 2011. I was not licensed there then. They're very differentstates.
I guess the two biggest things that are different aboutthem is, in North Carolina, they have contributory negligence. 1% at fault, yourecover nothing. I always find it funny. Sometimes you'll see crazy trialverdicts across the country with famous trial lawyers that handled the case.They're like, "Only 30% liability on my client. My client's going torecover 70 million out of this $100 million verdict." I chuckle to myselfbecause I don't think that they're any worse trial lawyers, but I'm like,"They wouldn't even take that case in North Carolina because they wouldget zero," with how contributory negligence works. It's 1% at fault, youget nothing. South Carolina has comparative fault, so it's a little bit easierand it has better, more plaintiff-friendly laws. At least, for the time being.
I'd say you choose us in the Carolinas because, I alwaystell my clients ... Well, referral partners I always tell the same thing. Youdon't have to do any work, and I'm essentially sending you mailbox money, andyou're able to monetize a case you otherwise could potentially mess up.
Chris Dreyer:
Whether you're thinking about making a leap or looking torefine your existing practice, Joe's experience offers valuable wisdom. Startwith your strengths, build infrastructure intentionally, and never lose sightof what you wanted, independence, in the first place. If Joe's insights havesparked your curiosity about starting your own firm or improving your intakesystems, you can reach him directly at jvolta@lawyercarolina.com. That's J-V-O-L-T-A@lawyercarolina.com.
This has been Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm ChrisDreyer. Until next time, remember the talent that makes it rain for others cancreate an ocean of your own.
