Chris Dreyer:
Most attorneys think you need hundreds of cases to succeed. A lot of younger attorneys are realizing that you don't need a 1,000 or 2,000, 3,000 cases to be successful. Carlos Dominguez built 305 Injury and hit $1.3 million in settlements in year one with zero staff and zero ad spend.
Carlos Dominguez:
You really don't. I'm way more successful than I ever thought I would be.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm Chris Dreyer and on this episode of Personal Injury Mastermind, Carlos joins me to break down how he did it. We talk strategy, mindset and what it takes to really stand out.
Carlos Dominguez:
You got to break your back to do what you're doing as a solo practitioner, so I would only encourage people to just make a plan and do it.
Chris Dreyer:
We talk strategy, mindset, and what it really takes to stand out in one of the most competitive PI markets in the country. Let's get into it.
Carlos Dominguez:
I have a fledgling boutique law firm, virtual law firm. We do personal injury. I've had my law firm for about a year and two months. We were able to successfully resolve approximately $1.3 million in a year. My first settlement coming in six months. I started off like any attorney with zero knowledge of opening up their own business. For six months I was just trying to figure things out, I'm trying to get cases, I'm trying to build a presence online, and the case that I settled, thankfully we were able to get it resolved pretty quick and it was definitely mind blowing to me because after having six months, this is the first time in my life where I hadn't really earned an income. So for six months, I was just relying on my savings. I'm pretty much the paralegal, receptionist, attorney. We're looking to hire now, but back then I was running the whole game, unfortunately. Well, I think this is a lot of fun-
Chris Dreyer:
I remember the peanut butter and Fluff days were mine and the Ramen noodles back in the day. When I started the agency, I was bootstrapped, so it was tight and I get that. So it's great that you got some momentum now, but how did you originate this case and how are you approaching marketing out of the gate?
Carlos Dominguez:
We're starting to see more of a trend in terms of young attorneys like me that want to start off on their own. In terms of obtaining these cases, at the very beginning, it's all word of mouth. I didn't have the money to utilize SEO and Google Ads and all that sort of jazz, which I'm sure that's a whole other podcast in and of itself, but I didn't have that, so I had to reach out to all my friends, all my family, all my colleagues. I got to harass them, let them know what I'm doing, and one of my friends reached out to me with a case and we ran with it. I had to file a lawsuit and we were able to be pretty successful in that one. It's all about reaching out to your group, reaching out to your circle, shaking hands with a lot of people, letting people know what you're doing. It's truly a humbling experience when you get a phone call, when you get a case. Now we're getting a lot more cases, but at the very beginning, very humbling experience.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I appreciate the hustle, the friends and family and getting belly to belly and doing the things that don't scale. I know we're going to talk about client service in a moment and giving out your personal number. Volume firms can't do that. They can't give the high touch to that degree. I mean they can do the automations and things like that. Just spit balling here, have you tried meeting with the local PI attorneys and maybe they have a case selection threshold and maybe have you had any success? Have you talked to any, without naming firms, just have you had any success there?
Carlos Dominguez:
Yeah, I have. And in fact, I think a large amount of cases that I receive are from other attorneys who don't necessarily want to litigate those cases or they're just not interested in the cases because the damages aren't too high or aren't high enough to justify their involvement, their time, their money invested in those cases. They may have way more volume than I do, so I take advantage of that and get myself involved in a lot of other groups with other PI attorneys who have volume practices. They don't necessarily handle the amount of litigation that I handle. Primarily what I do is litigation, so I take on personal injury cases, either from other attorneys or my own cases that I originate and I just file lawsuits on them. That, to me, is what it means to be an attorney, and naturally you do receive better results on those cases once they are involved in litigation.
But definitely, in the very beginning, I think if you're starting off, you want to create your own brand. So for me, I'm the guy that if your case is getting denied or you're not getting the offers you want and you really want to hammer that down, you want to send it to an attorney, not just me obviously, but other people that do handle litigation that don't have the amount of cases that you do and can dedicate way more time on those cases. You want to invest in those attorneys. So, yeah, I have gotten a lot of cases from other attorneys I met down the road.
Chris Dreyer:
The trial chops that you have and it's a ton of energy and you're very involved in these. So, walk me through that; how you became a trial attorney and why you took this approach and the litigation approach. Because it's a very valuable asset you have because it seems like the pre-lit and everything, the price is being driven down, and as much as people try to do automation attack, it's like you got to hold these insurance companies accountable, otherwise they're just going to low ball you.
Carlos Dominguez:
I think you've be touching upon it this entire podcast; automation. And it's becoming more and more of a reality in today's atmosphere. I use ChatGPT, I use automated systems that allow me to do a task, originally involved an hour, now it takes 10 minutes. I can proofread emails, I can proofread documents, and it's incredible what that does. I haven't really explored AI or automation in terms of litigation. I think litigation, and this is the reason why a lot of volume practices don't necessarily engage in it, it's because it requires more of your time. You have to sit down and you have to speak to the client, you have to prep the clients. You can't have a computer prep a client for a deposition. You can't have a computer take a deposition. You can't have a computer argue in front of a judge. Those are things that require way more involvement on your part. I mean automation is still something that I do incorporate in my litigation practice.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, interesting. You mentioned some communities. Are you talking about, I know Bob Simon has Justice HQ, there's Pilma, there's Fireproof, there's Crisp, there's a lot of these different masterminds, a lot of these communities. What are some of the communities that you've been involved with that you found valuable?
Carlos Dominguez:
I've been involved in young lawyers associations. Because I'm in Miami, I'm in CABA, I'm involved there, so that's Cuban American Bar Association. More so I think the unofficial communities, right? Other smaller attorneys, we all stick by each other. I do rely on a lot of other smaller attorneys like myself to provide advice and help and guidance. Now, there are other communities that are non-legal that I do try to involve myself in, like church communities, communities amongst friends and family.
Chris Dreyer:
You mentioned you're the intake department at the litigator, the pre-suit, the marketing specialist, everything. Let's walk through some of these and just let's discuss how you're approaching it and just what your thoughts are. Like intake, right? It's one thing, we touched on the marketing and getting belly to belly and getting the referrals. How are you thinking about intake? Are you answering the calls? Do you have a third party? What's your thoughts on intake?
Carlos Dominguez:
So because I'm still the sole proprietor of this law firm, I have no receptionist, no paralegal. It's just me. I'm doing the intake, I'm doing everything. And my opinion, I'm never going to give up intake. For me, at least at this level of my practice, I'm always going to be the one to pick up the phone. I'm always going to hand the client over my cell phone and clients, you want a client to be able to look through their contacts and be like, "Oh, that's my attorney." You want clients to get a call from you while they're with a group of friends and like, "Oh, yeah, my attorney's calling." It's a cool thing to say, but I don't think that's something I'll ever delegate.
Chris Dreyer:
I love the mindset there. Intakes is so incredibly important. There's so many leaky buckets, so to speak, and I like your just client-first perspective, the cell phone, all the things. What are the things that you don't want to do? What are your like, "Hey, I'm hiring for this. I want this off my plate?" Or maybe you don't mind doing it. Maybe it's just like, "Hey, I need to spend time in these other areas."
Carlos Dominguez:
I've always been a litigator my entire career. I was in the state attorney's office, I worked at a boutique personal injury law firm, which is what taught me what I know now. But I don't think I'm ever going to give up litigation at least yet. But for now, it's pre-suit. I think litigation is going to require an attorney versus a paralegal, and that's something that I don't think I'm ever going to delegate, at least not to a non-lawyer. And it's because the amount of exposure you have in court, I'm going to stick with delegating pre-suit for now.
Chris Dreyer:
Got it. Got it. So you've built the foundation, you got more consistency with your community, you had some nice settlements and some nice cases. It's created some momentum. What's your vision for the next one, three, five years?
Carlos Dominguez:
Hopefully in the next two to three years, I'll have a team under me where I can definitely focus more on the bigger cases, the six to seven figure cases that I have, the eight figure cases. I want to be able to just invest all my attention on those cases and have paralegals essentially, or legal assistants help me with the pre-suit cases and sort of run those while I'm dealing with the bigger cases.
And also, I mean it helps a lot, the bigger team you have, the more intake you can do, the more cases you could bring in. Realistically, 50 to 60 cases is, for me at least, the ceiling. That's if you're a personal injury firm, you're starting off, you want to know that if you hit 50 or 60 cases, you want to start looking for help because at that point, you can't manage everything, and I'm already exceeding that. So, I'm in a really tight, tight position where in order for me to progress, in order for me to feel more comfortable taking out more cases, I just need to hire a team. So when you reach that 50 and 60 case level, at least for me, that's a rule of thumb. That's like, hey, you got to sit down and look at your numbers and see can I afford to hire somebody?
Chris Dreyer:
I think understanding your bandwidth and also the amount of the values that you're going to get for your cases are going to be much higher on average. And have you thought about, there's different attorneys, whether you're Michael Cowan, David Craig, and you're Joe Fried that specializes in truck, and then there's other individuals, I just talked to Michael McCready who kind of specializes, and I know specializes is one of those words in declarations for advertising, but I mean an expertise in, say, Michael McCready in premises liability and then you got other individuals that do birth injuries or nursing home neglect cases. Have you thought about, like, "Hey, maybe I would approach this?"
Carlos Dominguez:
I would definitely want to specialize in a certain area of law. I haven't really discovered that yet. I am more interested in the premise cases because those cases, the slip and falls, the trip and falls, those cases will typically end up in litigation. So I think when you're starting off, when you're starting a legal practice like I am, you can't really afford to specialize because I think you would be giving up a lot of momentum. I want to build enough capital to where now I can hire a team, I can start working with SEO like Google Ads and all that stuff. You want to build yourself up, get enough capital so that you could start hiring people and focusing more on what you want to specialize.
Chris Dreyer:
I think it's an excellent strategy. I kind of look at it as an hourglass. It's like, hey, start really broad, then discover what you have a purpose and expertise in, and then you can kind of go narrow, and then you start to become known there, and then you can make a decision to go wider because you have the capital to maybe go in some of these super competitive areas like auto or the big truck cases.
Carlos Dominguez:
Right, right.
Chris Dreyer:
So I think that's smart. I hear a lot of these coaches and mentors, they're like, "Hey, you got to niche. You got to specialize out of the gate." And I'm like, there's a time for it, but I don't know that it's out of the gate.
Carlos Dominguez:
I mean, look, there would be a lot of business that I'd be giving up and a lot of opportunity, I think, to get those cases because at the end of the day, how do you get those cases where you're starting off? You want to be known in your community. You want to be known amongst your clients. You want your clients talking about their experiences with you. So, you're not going to be able to get those cases from the get-go I think, unless you've already established yourself at another firm maybe. But I really think you need to create enough of a portfolio, enough of a profile, build enough capital before you can feel comfortable and do that.
Chris Dreyer:
Hey, I agree. And also Florida PI, your market, incredibly saturated, incredibly competitive.
Carlos Dominguez:
Oh, yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
I mean massive, massive firms. Of course, Morgan, and then you got Dan Newlin in Orlando that spends a massive amount on advertising in one market.
Carlos Dominguez:
I like to say that you know you've made it when you see somebody sitting on your face at a bus bench, all these attorneys advertising everywhere, man. It's on buses, bus benches, billboards. It's crazy. You have an oversaturated market and that's why you got to really stand out. I think that's why when I created the name 305 Injury, it stands out. It's not Law Offices of So-and-so, the Law Offices of So-and-so. You see that everywhere. I just wanted to be known as the Miami attorney. Right? So just set yourself apart from that supersaturated realm of law.
Chris Dreyer:
I love it. It's simple. It's memorable. It stands out. It's got the localized feel to it. And Carlos, this has been amazing. One final question for our audience. They got this case, they want to take it to bat, they want to take it to the end, and they want to place it with you. How can they get in touch with you?
Carlos Dominguez:
Oh, absolutely. My law firm is called 305 Injury. My name is Carlos Dominguez. If you Google me, Carlos Dominguez Miami, you'll find me. And yeah, my handle is at @305Injury. That's it. My phone number, you can reach out to our office, that's (305) 615-5282. And Chris, it's been such a pleasure, man.
Chris Dreyer:
Carlos Dominguez is proof that you don't need a massive team, a big ad budget, or years of runway to build a winning firm. You need grit, clarity, and the courage to bet on yourself. If you found value in this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. I'm Chris Dreyer and this is Personal Injury Mastermind. Catch you next time.
