Lee Rudin:
"We want to limit what you can bring in and we want to change the financial structure of the deal." And I said, "I can't do either of those things. It was your deal. I just saw the opportunity and took it."
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. Let's get into it. Stand your ground, think big, move faster. Build a law firm that refuses to be ignored. In other words, get rude. At Rudin Law, polite gets you nowhere.
Today on Personal Injury Mastermind, Lee shares how creativity, systems and grit, can help you outpace even the biggest players without burning cash. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. If you're ready to grow smarter, louder, and on your own terms, this episode is for you. Let's go.
Lee Rudin:
We had our best month in terms of generating new files in March of 2025.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go.
Lee Rudin:
Yeah, we're not an old firm, just about two years, but man, if we can keep the pacing that we're on, we're going to have different kinds of problems and need to staff up pretty quickly, but I'm really happy about it.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's pumped, that's pumped. So, I got to dig just a little bit on that before we take a step back. Was it a marketing change, a positioning change, or was this kind of compound and doing what works?
Lee Rudin:
Well, I think what I've come to learn in my short time being exclusively devoted to PI work is that unless you're a behemoth and you've got so many marketing channels going with such volume of money pumped in, you kind of have to diversify because you don't know what's going to work.
So, at the moment, we have some Meta ads running that are unique to us. We've got SEO and more traditional digital lead gen through LSA and PPC. We've got some partnerships with some national groups. So, amongst those, plus the organic referral network that we have, I think that's what leads to a better month. And if you keep plugging at those, let's say, four avenues, well, you don't need to accumulate that many in each of them to continue at the same pace.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's take a step back. You were at a defense firm for over a decade before starting Rudin Law in 2023. What finally pushed you to make the leap? What did those first early days look like when you opened the doors?
Lee Rudin:
Yeah. So, I mean, this business grew organically, right? Started with just helping someone I knew, get her out of a jam and then she said, "How can I repay you?" I said, "Tell your friends if they get in little fender benders, I want to help them." And referral begets referral and it snowballs. And I'm at a defense firm and they had said, "Hey, we'll take on some plaintiff work." I don't think they ever envisioned that it would be what I did, which was create a whole basic sub-practice in a defense firm doing plaintiff PI work and not suing their clients, but suing the cousins of their clients or the equivalents of their clients.
And it got to the point where they said, "It's not that there's a direct conflict, but there's a spiritual conflict here and we want to limit what you can bring in. Only take the big stuff. And we want to change the financial structure of the deal." And I said, "I can't do either of those things. It was your deal. I just saw the opportunity and took it." So, I said sayonara and spent the next 60 days figuring out what it took to start a firm. Talked to a lot of local PI lawyers that were very kind with their time, with their resources, offering me office space, "Do I want to partner on cases?" Just to keep me afloat.
And luckily I had a book, so I had a book of plaintiff PI work. I was doing some hourly work on the defense side and then kind of plaintiff hourly work in more of a commercial lit type setting. And I've told folks, "I think if you can get through 90 to 120 days, that's when those cases will start to close or your hourly billing will start to come through being paid. You can survive that storm. Then now you're in the cycle of having cash flow."
Chris Dreyer:
Love it. Cash flow helps. You're not in the same, just doing the PI in that 12 to 18-month window, the standard auto stuff could be different on jurisdictions, but that's awesome. I appreciate your integrity. It's like, "Hey, this doesn't match with my values, the way I want to do things. I'm going to go out and do it on my own." So, that's awesome.
We got to talk about the Get Rude brand. It's unique, right? It aligns with your name. So, there's cohesion, right? A lot of times people have a last name that's hard to say, hard to remember, but it kind of ties back to you. So, you're wearing the Rude Boy shirt, I saw a different interview. You're always rocking the Rude brand, but tell me about maybe some of the fun things that you've done with it and just that part of the brand.
Lee Rudin:
So, to me, Chris, it all should be fun, right? We're in a serious business and we do serious work, but I tell folks I don't take myself seriously and what's important to me is that I don't want anybody else embarrassing me or destroying my reputation, but I will certainly do it, right? I'll be the clown. I just don't want you to make me look like the clown. And I tell that to my team. I'm like, "Let me be the dancing bear, but we do good work and we believe in what we do. We are taking care of our clients and we put them first. That is first and foremost."
So, I joke to them, I'm like, "It's not be rude, it's get rude." Meaning, I don't need to tell an insurance adjuster all the nasties if that's not going to be the best for my client. But if the opportunity presents itself, and I think that being tough with an insurance company, being tough with opposing counsel is what it takes to get us to the point that we want to get to, then you absolutely need to be able to stand up, stand on your principles and say, "Look, I'm not going to just take your word for it because A, I don't think you're right. And B, there's another way to go about it." So, it may be telling the insurance adjuster, "Hey, I'm going to file this lawsuit because that means it's off of your desk. It's either on a lawyer's desk or on a lit adjuster's desk who may be more sophisticated. So, you can punch the numbers into your system and spit out whatever offer it's going to be, but if we don't think it's acceptable, we'll move on to the next. Period."
Chris Dreyer:
That's awesome.
Lee Rudin:
Right? So, that works. And then obviously I'm lucky, right? My name fits with some of the attitude I have. It fits with something that would work in this space. My friends and family joke, my little kids, I have a five-and-a-half year old, soon to be six, and a two-and-a-half year old, soon to be three, little girls, and they're all wearing my Get Rude gear and the shirts that say stop being polite. And one of my oldest, her school, their motto is be kind. And I said, "I will sponsor any event and I will make all the gear as long as I can write, 'Be kind, get rude.' And it works for me."
Chris Dreyer:
That's fantastic.
Lee Rudin:
Yeah. So, the branding is fun. I give out all sorts of free gear. I hope that people like it, they think it's clever and it's funny. I sponsored the local pro wrestling promotion. So this, we had the Dudley Boyz from the WWE at one of our events, and so, I made a knockoff and gave out shirts in purple and red to the fans.
I've got a over the shoulder ... You can't see right now. I did a Rudimania like knock on Hulk Hogan. I've got all sorts of stuff. A rude world order for the NWO. But all of it is to say if somebody will wear my gear because they think it's cool and they think it's interesting and that gets people talking. It's all about recognition. And so, Get Rude works because it's sticky, it's hard to forget and you can't screw it up. You can spell my name wrong. You shouldn't be able to spell rude wrong. So, you can find my website, getrude.com, it's easy.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's amazing. The strategy there is so smart. The other thing too is from the grassroots perspective, if the firm name is kind of boring or the brand is kind of boring, I know you're giving out a free T-shirt and some people will wear it, they'll rock it, maybe before they're going to sleep, they're putting on the T-shirt. But we want it out in public and we want people to ... It's a conversation starter. They're going to ask questions about it. I can see, for the audio, I can see the shirt looks high quality, the letters are really clear.
So, have you noticed that too, like, "Oh, my shirt's being worn." Like, you're out in public and you see individuals wearing it?
Lee Rudin:
So, we sponsor the wrestling group and I have a table at all the events, and I'll see folks that I've given a shirt to from the first event, one of our standard shirts that say, "Stop being polite," on the front, nothing else, and the back says, "Get rude," with some of our contact info. People love that shirt. I get comments on the airplane, in the airport, in the mall. They're like, "Oh, what's the back say? What's the back say?" So, when I see people wearing those kinds of shirts, of course they're going to wear the thematic wrestling shirts to the events, but when I see them wearing the other ones, I'm like, okay, they must just really like that and think it's cool.
And I try to be intelligent about what I'm creating. So, here I created four different Mardi Gras colored shirts because everybody's wearing them during Mardi Gras season. Here, here's a free shirt, go wear it on the parade route. I have a ton of stuff in black and gold for Saints season, because that's a religion down in New Orleans and in Louisiana, purple and gold for LSU. So, I'll make it to what I think you're going to want. We have LSU, we had Tulane, we had Louisiana, Lafayette, all in the same shirt, different color schemes depending upon where I was giving them out, because I figured, hey, you might actually wear this to the game. And then someone says, "Hey, where'd you get that Get Rude shirt?" You're like, "Oh, some lawyer gave it to me." Maybe they're following me on Instagram. Maybe they're popping me a note. I had a guy at a Tulane game that loved my shirt. He was a cop from a neighboring parish. I was like, "Hey, give me your phone number." Sent him one on Monday. Got his address, sent him one on Monday.
Chris Dreyer:
Social media, what you're doing, it's with the costumes, to produce commercials, it's definitely outside the norm. I think of legal being stuffy, and it's definitely fun, right? So, tell us about this approach of generating unique content and just that channel in general.
Lee Rudin:
Social for a lot of lawyers can be a bear because you have to do it. That's a place that people go to find information and to see if you're credible, right? Know, like, and trust. Well, some of that comes out of not just your website, but they're going to go look at all your social channels and who are you? If they Google your name, they're going to see your Instagram. So, you better have stuff there. It can't be empty.
And my thought process and what I said to my social media vendor is I'm never going to put out a happy Easter or a merry Christmas. I'm just not going to put out that static post that's boring and every other lawyer's doing it, but I will get dressed up like the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, or I mean, you name it, and I've put on the costume and I've got a list a mile long of different ideas to do because in the end you're just trying to stop the scroll. So, we had a really good, what I thought was a great video that got a lot of traction, and the way I knew it got traction was I saw all the likes and shares and follows that came from folks that I had no idea who they were, and that told me that the algorithm was pushing it.
What I did was I got dressed like Bobby Boucher from The Waterboy, and I was Rudi Boucher, his cousin, because I said the Super Bowl's coming in town. This is about a Louisiana football guy. I can do my version of the accent. And I think between the timing and the topic and I thought it was funny, it got out to the people. I said, "Okay, that's what works." You just don't know what's going to hit. So, you got to keep trying different things to see what's going to hopefully catch fire.
Chris Dreyer:
Did you have the team mention Sandler and some of the other celebrities on?
Lee Rudin:
No, we should have done that though. It's a good idea.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he might, right?
Lee Rudin:
Well, he's going to come back. He'll be back for the start of football season, so I'm going to take you up on that and I'm going to give it a try.
Chris Dreyer:
Nice. Nice. So, tell me about the team. Tell me what's the team composition look like? Let's say an attorney wants to do some social in-house and wants to commit to doing it fun, engaging, to get that earned media that you're talking about. Obviously, you play in this too. You're willing to put the suit on and play this part, and I'd say a lot of people aren't, but some are willing. What's it look like to build this out?
Lee Rudin:
Yeah. So, the vendor I use, they've got a global team that does the editing. They'll generate scripts for me, but for the most part there's ideas and then I will come up and actually write the verbiage. So, we'll come up with, let's say, six to eight videos we want to do. I've now gotten to the point where I know if they're too long, it's going to be a problem. So, I try to get them between 30 seconds and a minute. Sometimes they run over and those are more long form, but there's nearly no way to cut it down given the length. I do a, Who Wants to Sue an Insurance Company? Like a knockoff of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You just can't get it in 30 seconds. It's not going to work.
I try to keep them short. I like to be clever with my words, and then if I come up with an idea of a graphic or a pop-up, I'll put that in the queue to go back to the editor. I will order different costumes that I want to wear. I have a gigantic green screen and then a smaller one. I've got, right now I have this ring light. It's the first time I'm ever using it, but I have it if I want to film stuff on my own. We have a local videographer that'll come in and he'll capture the video and then he'll just send it out either with a Dropbox or a Google Drive link, and then the editors have it.
We talk about a cadence. They kind of know, hey, this has to get edited first because maybe it's the Spring Break video that comes earlier in the month versus a festival video that comes later, or a holiday. I try to understand the calendar to know, "Hey, you got to make these edits quick. You can hold this one till later," and make sure they know the same.
Chris Dreyer:
Like the Bobby Boucher, are you then like, hey, my audience resonated with this, and then you go put ads behind it? Or are you just like, hey, focusing on the earned media, that's the biggest signal. Are you doing a boosting combo? Have you experimented with that?
Lee Rudin:
Yeah, I will boost the stuff that I think is going to resonate with people or be interesting, or maybe be a little shocking. So, I did a video dressed like Moses for Passover. I did one dressed like Jesus for Good Friday, and I was like, "I could get in trouble for these, but you know what? Let's see." I didn't get the reaction. I don't think it got the groundswell.
But I boost everything to the extent that I can just because you don't know what's going to hit. And some of it you're posting it and there's only a short time domain where it's really relevant. Boosting an Easter video this week is largely irrelevant, so what's the point? So, boost it for the time that it makes sense. We boosted stuff during Final Four. We'll do stuff during Mardi Gras that'll last for a longer burn. But again, you're just trying to get those impressions. It's not a lead gen campaign. But in the last couple months, we went from like 500 followers, we're almost at 850. That's a pretty big percentage growth. You keep at that pace, you're going to start to be in the thousands. And as a PI lawyer, a new, small PI lawyer, it's not a bad number for followers.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And it's natural, they're engaged, they're going to comment, they're your raving fans versus the fake followers that just aren't engaged or the comments are really thin.
I kind of want to move over to tech, staffing. You're doing it all, right? You're running the firm, you're practicing law. Talk to me about the virtual staffing component, some of that that you've utilized to help you scale more quickly because you're growing at a faster pace than I would say most startups. Tell me about that component.
Lee Rudin:
Yeah. So, what do they say? Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So, when I came out, I was a brand new startup and we were talking about what kind of money you needed to survive. I said, "I can't go bring on a local admin, a local paralegal, pay them benefits. I just don't have the bandwidth for that."
So, we started small with virtual staffing to explore what the process was like, and honestly, I think everybody should explore it. It takes training because that person's no different than a new hire you're bringing into your firm locally. The only difference is you can't just lean over their computer desk and show them something. But with the way the virtual world is now, I mean, you can, right? You can create the Loom, you can screen share, you can do all those things to educate.
So, understand, you have responsibility to train your team members, whether they're local or international, but in terms of cost-effectiveness and honestly quality of work, I've been so impressed with the team members I've had because they're just great workers. They're great people. They just happen to be across the globe as opposed to across the hall. You asked about scale. It's an amazing way to scale because of the cost-effectiveness.
Chris Dreyer:
I couldn't agree more. I don't know what it is, it's still even today a little taboo. It's like, "Oh, you have nearshore hires?" Of course I do. You communicate. We've got tech to support it. The knowledge is there, the experience is there. So, absolutely.
One of the things just to share on our side, you mentioned Loom for the video, so I'm not a guy that's going to document the process to the T, and now with ChatGPT it's like, "Here's the video, make me a process. Oh, by the way, also create me a curriculum that I can incorporate into my LMS." It's like it makes it so much easier.
Lee Rudin:
Yeah. I think that you asked about tech, right? AI is all the rage. I've talked about AI and some of this stuff. If you can figure out which of the tools you're comfortable harnessing or maybe you have an implementer that'll help you do all those things, it just adds such an efficiency.
So, like the demand writing has been around for a bit. They're not perfect, but if they save you several hours, just think about on scale what you can do because you didn't have to comb through all the medical records because they were already summarized and somebody at least put them in a paragraph. Whether you love it or hate it, at least it's there and now you can massage it to your liking, but in the end, a lot of the legwork that a human might've had to do at a much higher cost can get done either virtually, internationally, or through tech. And the dinosaurs that are ignoring it, it's going to pass you by and other firms are going to pass you by because they're just going to be able to move at a pace that you cannot.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm glad you brought this up. I've talked to a few firms lately, and it's like their margins on their cases are getting hit over the head, right? With consolidation and things like this, and it's like, okay, so what can we do? It's not all about just more leads, more leads, because those costs are increasing too. It's like, how can I increase our case values, increase the velocity?
So, I'm with you. Decreasing the cost, it's pricing arbitrage, right? With the virtual staff, the nearshore, and then the tech. Utilizing an Evenup or company like that for the demand letter. So, I think that's fantastic. Overall, do you mind sharing some of the software, some of the tech stack that you're using?
Lee Rudin:
Sure. So, there's a variety of things. I actually have a call coming up with a friend of mine who just got brought on to Evenup, because he was telling me that the product that I'd seen in the past, their larger demand, which I told him, I was like, "Some of this is just too clunky for me." He's like, "No, we have kind of a skinnier version now for smaller value cases." And I said, "That is enticing." Because that's really what you want. I think that the price point for a low value case, kind of be with 100 to maybe 250, 300 bucks for that demand to make sense for the client and make sense for the firm. When you're talking about six, $700 of demand for a case that might only be a $15,000 fee. When you start chopping that fee up to the client, to the doctors, to the lawyers, that case expense doesn't make a lot of sense. I've used that tool.
LegalSoft has a demand writing tool. I thought that tool was really nifty. I also had seen a current iteration that was a lot better than the first version I'd seen months ago. So, I'm optimistic that a lot of these vendors are figuring it out and the tools are getting better, they're getting more cost-effective. So, you can use them in a variety of ways.
The medical AI tool that I'm using right now is called LawPro.ai. It's a guy I know that has a firm out of Baltimore, and the tool is pretty neat. It will identify red flags, it'll tag certain documents, you tell it what the injuries are. If it sees something in the past, "Hey, you should be alert to this." It comes in a nice, clean portal. So, I found that to be really useful. Again, just finding ways to be efficient. I use this tool that I learned from, I don't know if you know Ernie The Attorney?
Chris Dreyer:
I don't. I don't.
Lee Rudin:
Ernie, yeah, he's a local attorney. He's got a pretty sizable podcast and following all about law firm efficiency and tech. His podcast is called The 80/20 Principle, but he turned me onto this probably a year and a half ago. It's called TextExpander. You can drop a block of text with a one word code or phrase, so you're kind of creating these mini forms or just mini text blocks. So, I have my entire letter of representation, my entire letter of protection, and all I'm typing in is, ";letter rep, ;letter protection," and it just drops the entire document anywhere my cursor is. So, rather than having to go cut and paste from a Word document, you can just be in an email type, "Letter rep MVA," and it'll pop up a form. I'll type in the name of the adjuster, the name of the client, the name of the insurance company, and it all populates.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible.
Lee Rudin:
It's really cool. So, if you're somebody that is constantly writing the same email over and over and over, or maybe you do a litigation and you have all of your discovery objections, like, all right, ;relevance, ;vague, and then it just pops in your objection.
Chris Dreyer:
Your staff, especially your attorneys, the hourly rate and cutting that down so they're spending more time, they're cranking out the low-value tasks and they can go do the high value. That's a big tip. By the way, you got my wheels spinning.
We've always had a CRM for the sales side, but now we're trying to incorporate our account managers more into HubSpot and it's got the different sequences and things like that. But I think that sometimes those aren't as personable when you feel like you're in a sequence. I think the TextExpander could still serve a similar purpose but more a custom feel. So, you got the wheels spinning there.
Lee Rudin:
It's super cheap, Chris. I want to say it's three bucks a month.
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Lee Rudin:
And again, it's all customizable to you. I mean it seems silly, but my email address, I just type in ;email. Am I saving a couple keystrokes? Yeah. But I type that email address all the time, and so every time I log into something, it's like ;email, boom, it's there. So, it's those little efficiencies that it adds up over time.
Chris Dreyer:
That's an amazing tip. I'm going to check out the pod too. So, that's a great recommendation. What about communication, Slack, Teams, Discord, you doing any of those?
Lee Rudin:
I think I watched one of your podcast guests talking about Discord and how he uses that to communicate with his team. So, we have Filevine as our case management system. We are a Google team, so I'll use Google Chat for kind of that Slack-type communication. We have different Google groups for my different pods, and then we have RingCentral as our Voice over IP. So, I like its video chat because it has transcription services, it's got AI built in. So, whether I'm on a call with a client, on a call with my team, I can get the full transcript, like if I'm on the road and I can't take any notes, it's accessible for me when I get back to a computer to download, upload into the system, or if someone's got to call information of it, they can. So far, that's kind of what we're doing.
But I just recorded some customer journey videos, so I'm exploring a bunch of different client portal-type tools to pump those out and improve client communication. Filevine has one they just launched, so I'm toying with that and a couple of different vendors like Hona and some of their competitors just to kind see what fits. And the key is implementing. So, it's all well and good to have it, but if you're not going to use it to its full effect, then what's the point? And that's kind of where we are. It's trying to figure the system out and then make sure it can be implemented the right way before we start piling on tech costs and things like that, that just end up being money lit on fire.
Chris Dreyer:
The other thing too, I'll tell you one of the things that I'm playing around with, just like to get your take on this, is we're uploading the entire podcast, every episode into Notebook, and then it's like you have your own essential LLM for the guests like yourself. So, anything that you've talked about here, it's like, okay, I can put it in there. And it's like, "Hey, let me ask Lee this question, see how he would approach it." It kind of isolates it instead of pulling from everything on the web.
Lee Rudin:
I think it's brilliant. I was just talking to Ernie about Google Notebook, because I'm kind of in that space. I lean towards using Google Gemini if I'm going to use one of the ChatGPT ask AI tools, just because it's what I'm familiar with. I figure it's got the Google universe behind it. I love that idea.
I think that Bob Simon talked about it a long time ago. He was creating the Bob Bot, where he was taking all of his publications and dumping it in there. I have a friend of mine who's doing the same thing, a local guy who's brilliant, Brian Hong, he's got a company called Infintech Designs, and he was doing the same thing. And I'm like, yeah, if I had the time to just ... Or knew how to scrape all of my emails, dump them in, all of my writings, my videos, and then let it just, let's see what it does. Let's see how it thinks. I love it.
Chris Dreyer:
That's a great idea. It's a lot of fun. The wheels are turning on ideas on what we could do. This has been amazing. I got a couple final questions. And the first one, this one's specifically for my chief of staff. He's going to love this question.
Lee Rudin:
Sure.
Chris Dreyer:
So, I found out you're a huge Bruce Springsteen fan.
Lee Rudin:
That's him right there.
Chris Dreyer:
Yep. Right behind you on the wall. Any stories? Tell me about how you become a fan, anything that just stands out that you want to share.
Lee Rudin:
Sure. So, I grew up in New Jersey, so I feel like it's blasphemy if you don't love Bruce Springsteen and you're from New Jersey. He grew up minutes away from my cousins and my grandmother. So, I saw him most recently at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park on the beach. He played in front of it had to be 100,000 people. It was awesome. My whole extended family was there.
I saw him, gosh, his birthday show, we were at MetLife Stadium. It got rain delayed for like four hours. The show didn't probably start till 11 o'clock at night and it went till 2:00 in the morning or some craziness. I've been a fan forever. I can't even count the amount of times I've seen him. And I'm going on Friday night, it's Jazz Fest here in New Orleans, so I'm going to see a local, the Honey Island Swamp Band covering Bruce. They're calling it Swamp Boss and they're doing a whole show of all Bruce covers, so can't get enough of it.
Chris Dreyer:
Fantastic. Fantastic. Final question. Where could people go to connect with you if they have questions about anything we chatted about and learn more?
Lee Rudin:
Sure. I try to make this as easy for everyone as I can. I'm slowly acquiring all the touch points, right? Getrude.com. We now have a toll-free number, 833-GET-RUDE. So, you can call us from anywhere in the world, 833-GET-RUDE. Our Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all are getrudelaw. Come check us out if you have any questions. If you need a connection to somebody that's not in the Louisiana, Texas area, I know people all across the country, I'm happy to help whomever with whether it's a personal injury case, anything else, or just to talk about the practice of law and the building a business. I'm loving it and I'm happy you had me on, Chris. Thank you
Chris Dreyer:
Guys, get in contact with Lee. Lee, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Lee Rudin:
Thank you so much, Chris. Bye, everybody.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. If you got value from today's episode, do me a favor, share it with a friend and make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep building smarter, louder, and on your own terms.
