Blake Swan:
Data tells stories.
Chris Dreyer:
Many firms settle fast, speed up cash flow, but what if that's exactly what's holding you back?
Blake Swan:
Data shows me that insurance companies don't like to pay you pre-suit and they don't like to do right by your client's pre-suit.
Why a ‘litigate everything’ strategy leads to higher settlement value in personal injury cases
Chris Dreyer:
Blake Swan litigates 80% of his caseload.
Blake Swan:
If you set a precedent as a firm that you're going to take the 80-90 when they're offering when there's a hundred-K policy pre-suit, good luck.
Chris Dreyer:
This is Personal Injury Mastermind powered by Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer and in this episode, discover how a ruthless intake process, POD-based profit models and 24 service helps scale his firm to six states without losing control.
Blake Swan:
Fine. When you know your numbers, is this going to cause you to make shifts in the business?
Chris Dreyer:
Let's get into it. Blake Swan, welcome to the show.
Blake Swan:
I appreciate it, man. Thank you for having me.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I'm pumped. I like to kick things off with some wins.
Blake Swan:
Within the past year, I think we've added about 37 new staff. We're growing tremendously. As you know, we have expanded geographically as well. We're in Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, we'll be licensed in Mississippi, for expanding geographically, expanding people, so there's been a lot of amazing wins. I'm lucky, I got a strong team. We've had some good hits and trials and some good settlements lately as well. Life is good, man. The firm's doing really well, just growing man. Like many firms that are growing at our rate, adapting and some people call it growing pains, I call it... I think when you grow you see all the little cracks in your business and it gives you the ability to jump in and put the putty in and make sure you're fixing things as you're moving forward. So it's been exciting.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that's awesome man, and to add 37 staff in that short amount of time, so we're definitely going to have to circle back to that and talk about hiring and finding the talent, but the thing the audience wants to know out of the gate is how you get in the leads, right? As much as you want to share.
Blake Swan:
Yeah, it's interesting the evolution of how I've gotten business. I worked for a fairly large firm for a long time running their division of their multi-state division, if you will, and when I left on my own, luckily I did a good enough job for enough people where I had some referral sources, say almost all my business out of the gate was referral sources. I'll tell you the truth, I don't know if I would've jumped had I not had that and believe it or not, Chris, not to blow up your head, but I actually started watching your podcast and some other podcasts and listened to people that are doing SEO analysis and pay-per-click and different avenues for generating business.
I've handled cases and litigated cases in so many states that I thought I had a unique opportunity. Being so geographically spread and being comfortable being so geographically spread as far as the laws and how to manage cases and all that, I decided to start getting into some digital advertising, LSAs, PPCs, I was broke, my man, I'm a new guy on the street in comparison to some of these other big boys out there, was just trying to figure out how am I going to find my way through this.
So really learned a lot of stuff on my own, self-taught a ton of stuff, watching guys like you, watching some other guys on YouTube and really learning my way through and somehow, some way it became effective and before I knew it I was generating a lot of direct business to the point where some of my lower end referral cases coming in, I actually had the ability to say no for the first time, which was somewhat liberating when it's somebody sending me a case with a very, very low value. I'm like, yeah, "No problem, I'll litigate it." That was my attitude and we're still very liberal on what we're willing to put into litigation. I think that's really important in the business showing that you're willing to fight on the small ones too. I've found that to be highly effective in our business.
It's nice now having a balance where you go from a hundred percent referrals and then all of a sudden it goes to, okay, I'm generating 30% of my own cases to 40 to 50. It's been a nice shift. My referral sources changed from getting cases just for litigation until you start building your trust and then people are giving you the cases right from the jump and we find that if we can handle cases from the jump, build the relationship from the jump, we're data driven and we find that the average settlements on those cases that we handle from the jump are substantially larger than cases that are referred to us just for litigation purposes or very litigation heavy. We're litigating about 80% of our files.
How the 2-minute intake rule helps personal injury firms reduce lost leads and build client trust from the first call
Chris Dreyer:
Why do you think that is on you getting more value from the start? Is it because of your intake, kind of coaching them up to get the treatment? What goes into that?
Blake Swan:
Yeah, there's a lot that goes into it. It's interesting when you get cases by referral, you can see certain things that maybe need to be tweaked on the front end. This is an infinite game. We're constantly tweaking stuff internally within our business to make things more effective and to increase values and provide better service for our clients. Starts at intake. I take intake incredibly seriously. We are very data-driven in intake, looking at when leads are coming in, how many staff we need depending on when leads are coming in. We're using AI technology in intake so our intake staff can get real-time feedback on how they're doing on any particular call. We use Lead Docket as well through the Zoom platform, through Lead Docket. We're really making sure that we're on top of everything coming in the door. My mantra is no missed calls. I don't ever want to see a missed call.
The KPIs, my intake are no missed calls and if they have missed calls, ultimately their bonus, everything, their structure changes as opposed to if they answer all calls, hopefully within the first five seconds, I want people answering right away, responding right away. If a new lead comes in, I want them responding within two minutes and we've actually got that lead time down to two minutes. But it's being, I think one of the most underestimated places in a firm is intake. We invest heavily in intake. We have a third party vendor that comes in that trains our intake on empathy training, all that, and then it starts from there and then we shift into, we have a claims verification department. I don't want to act like this is my invention. I'm smart enough to know that there's really smart people out there and I love looking at what other people are doing and then if I think they're doing something that could be a game changer for our business, figuring out ways to implement it within our business.
So Mike Morse up in Detroit, he runs the fireproof coaching, great guy, great firm. He runs a claims verification department, heard about it, thought it was amazing, and it was like "We're now doing that." The purpose of the claims verification department is we want to know within the first 30 days, one, is the client following up with treatment, getting the medical care that they ultimately need for the case, and two, is there insurance? Is there a liability that we can go after and is the case viable? And really within that first 30-day period, being able to tell a client, "Yes, you 100% have a case, we're moving forward." Or "No." Because it's something that we're able to find out as far as defendant not being recoverable or whatever it might be, that the case is ultimately a turn down and that department is very, very conversational focused.
It's following up with a client once within the first 24 hours, once every 48 hours after that and once every seven days for the first 30 days out of the case. So you're over communicating in the beginning. We find that to be incredibly important. I think there's a stat, that it was clients that are communicated with at least once every 30 days, that they find that case values go up by 30%. It's because they're invested in the process and they're invested in understanding the work that you're putting into the case. Because unfortunately, as you know Chris, this is a business where a lot of times it requires the work of your client as well, whether it be showing up to depositions, sometimes trial, whatever it might be. So showing the client that you're invested in their case, I think it reciprocates and what you find is much better results in the end. So those are the little things that we've done that we found to certainly move the needle in a big way.
Chris Dreyer:
I got a million comments on what you just said put together there. You're a great referral partner, just purely one of big components is the intake, the client service, the lit component and the data component. Well, not one reason, so multiple reasons. You mentioned a third party that helps. Is that Yani Smith, Legal Intake Pros or is it?
Blake Swan:
So we're using Chris Mullins, she does a lot of empathy training with the intake staff. She spends a ton of time with them. She's constantly identifying things that aren't working. If there's my head of intake, if there's a missed call during the day, at the end of the day I get a full list of any calls that are missed and what was the resolution of that missed call, and then we're looking how quickly were they responded to. If there is for some reason a missed call, but the goal is zero missed calls. What I find is when we have a missed call, it's a bot or something like that that's calling and hanging up, but right away.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. The less than three second on the call.
Blake Swan:
Or it's, or it's some sort of scam call or telemarketer or something like that. But because of what we've implemented internally within intake, we have very, very few missed calls. The goal is to ultimately get to where our intake is 24/7. We're not quite there, so if we do have a missed call, it's because it's going to our after hour service at two o'clock in the morning or something like that. But that's something in the very near future that we're looking to bridge that gap. I think it's really important intake to provide 24/7 service. I heard John Morgan one time said that he's essentially creating a Google law firm. I thought that it's incredibly smart. I think what we're building is a 24 hour, seven day a week service where people can contact you at any point in time and they can get instant service in that moment.
We're a firm that leads heavily into technology. I mean, we're using all the fun AI gadgets that you can possibly think of. We find that to be highly effective and efficient and being able to move cases in a much more streamlined manner, and I think the leaders in the industry understand that. And so that's one of the next things that we're working on hopefully here in the next, truthfully, in the next month or two, is to be able to do 24 hour, seven day a week intake service. I think it's going to be extremely important for us.
How pod-based compensation models make personal injury attorneys act like owners and stay invested in case outcomes & How law firm dashboards and KPIs create radical accountability and discipline across a personal injury practice
Chris Dreyer:
On the data side, are you guys using Domo? You using a big query dashboard? How are you kind of synthesizing the data? Because that's one of the issues, I love Lead Docket, but I think the data side's a little bit harder, more difficult to collect than say the Salesforce.
Blake Swan:
Yeah, I agree. So right now we use Power BI. So we have Power BI dashboards, so again, it's something I stole from Mike Morse. We run on a POD profitability model. Our attorneys are paid based on the profit of their POD. We've bringing in technology right down even to that aspect of the business. They have what we call a KS calculator where they can put in how many cases they settle, what are their average fees. It spits out what they're going to make at the bottom. I'm building out that calculator, so that calculator will also have a dashboard on the calculator and the dashboard is going to show how many clients have they spoken with in the past 30 days. All the key metrics that I want to know that I think are indicative of how they're treating the clients and the ultimate performance of the case.
So our Power BI dashboards track everything we have individualized for each POD as far as what is your average settlement, what are your fees, everything, and we have it for, I mean everything you could possibly imagine within the firm. We have data for our data, I joke about. We really made a conscious effort within the past year to really know our numbers and know our numbers in a big way. And what you're going to find when you know your numbers is this going to cause you to make shifts in the business. When you start realizing, "Hey, data tells stories." You start looking at, "Okay, what's our average fee over here?" And then you see the percentage of lit, oh, well wait in this state, our percentage of lit is here, our average fee is here. You can really see stories within the data that are extremely important.
And if your wash rate too, if you understand what your wash rate is in your business, meaning how many cases you're signing up and then how many cases ultimately make it to the end of the funnel, you can make adjustments. We find that if clients are contacted same day after sign up, unnecessary wash rate becomes very minimal and we have data that shows it versus if they're contacted 24 hours later versus if they're contacted 48 hours later versus 72 hours, your wash rate will increase. I promise you and I can show you the numbers will prove it.
So what we've done is we're gone down to 24 hours and now we're actually moving to same day contact. We want claims verification on the day the case is signed up to be in touch with the client, making sure they understand the process, making sure that everything's squared away as far as medical treatment and all that because our data shows us it reduces our wash rate and we have a very low wash rate and we believe that's one of the reasons for it and we don't just believe it, we know it because we've seen it in the data as we've made adjustments.
So little things like are going to allow you to make really important changes within your firm. And when you make changes like that, I mean I don't know what the listeners, what their average fee is, but you could start figuring out, "Okay, if I save one, two, three cases..." And as your volume increases, all of a sudden it becomes a very large number that you're talking about. Little tweaks within your business. We talk about 30% increase in value. Talking to a client once every 30 days, depending on how many cases you have, that could be a game changer in your business. That could actually go from not making money to very good profitability based on that little dynamic. We find that data tells a lot of really important stories and the key is adjusting to it, right? It's easy to get the data. Well, not that easy. We have a data engineer in-house.
Full disclosure, it's not me in the back room crunching numbers. I got a guy that, he's unbelievable and he's built out a lot of really cool stuff including Power BI, believe it or not. He's built out a lot of AI tools for us, conversational AI tools that we use as backup to the backup, AI texting tools. I mean we're really leaning into technology. It's important. All these things are really important. It gives you visibility within your firm. I think the hardest thing when you scale is that visibility aspect. So I always say that my data engineer is my glasses into the firm.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's incredible. It gives you visibility to make decisions. There's a saying, it's something like "Bad data, bad decisions, good data, easy decisions." Or something like that.
Blake Swan:
The hardest part is cleaning up your old data because garbage in, garbage out. The biggest issue we had was going back and truthfully auditing old files that because of the way we were pulling the data, certain things weren't pulling through correctly. There's changes in file volume, there's changes in whatever case management system you use. Sometimes it can make it difficult to pull old data, but luckily I got a guy that's a lot smarter than me, that's our data engineer that figures all this stuff out for us.
Why Keller Swan expanded into six states — and how to choose the right markets when scaling a personal injury firm
Chris Dreyer:
You're the one pushing though. You're getting the right people in the right seat. And from a visionary perspective, one of the things I wanted to touch on, Keller Swan's crushing. Eight figure firm, growing, you have the story of why no missed calls and how it affected LSA, and we could talk about that, but one of the things I want to talk about is your decision to move Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, et cetera. A lot of firms it's like, "Hey, I'm going to hit this DMA and that's my life forever, right?"
Blake Swan:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
What made you make that decision for the expansion?
Blake Swan:
Yeah, look, I dream big. I mean, I don't do anything halfway. I was lucky enough to work for a firm for a long time that decided to expand into the Tennessee market. So I took the Tennessee bar a couple years out of law school and then I took the Arkansas bar and then before I knew it, through being able to wave in and stuff like that, now I'm licensed in six states. I've had the opportunity to actively handle cases in those states. I don't just, it's not like, oh, Tennessee, I understand Tennessee law, right? I've handled thousands of Tennessee cases and I was lucky enough to have that experience as a young lawyer. I also was lucky enough to really start to understand marketing as a young lawyer. I started my own firm with the knowledge of, "Okay, what is the case acquisition cost in Tennessee versus maybe a more competitive market like Palm Beach County and what is the case acquisition cost of Palm Beach County versus maybe even parts of Georgia?"
Georgia, Fulton County is extremely competitive. However, we have an office in Savannah. I find that to be much more doable for a firm that's entering a market. So I was very strategic about where am I going to put my capital? I saved up money knowing that eventually one day I really wanted to do this on my own. I wanted to build my own dream, build my own firm, and I had to be strategic. I knew my dollars would only go so far in the market where I'm sitting right now, which is Jupiter, Florida, right? Palm Beach County is a very competitive market, and I knew what average fees were across these various markets because I had experience. And so me being a numbers guy, I put pad to paper and it made sense for me to expand into Tennessee almost off the jump, believe it or not, Chris, most firms, they're like, wait a minute, I'm one guy in a paralegal and I'm in Florida, I'm in Tennessee.
Right off the jump, clients would be on the phone with me and they'd say, "Hey, I want to meet attorney in person." I'd hop on a flight that day and I'd meet with them. Obviously we have a really big infrastructure up there with attorneys and staff on the ground now, but that's where I was at one point and I was willing to do it, willing to travel for depositions, whatever it took, and it was because I understood that I could compete at a much higher level in that market than I could in the Palm Beach County market, but I had a good reputation in Palm Beach County. I mean, I've litigated cases here for, I don't know, I don't want to say, is it 14 years, 15 years, whatever it is. So I had a good reputation here as well. So I naturally had people referring me cases and people I know within the community that would send me family members and stuff like that.
So my Florida firms started growing. Also, I had a good referral source in the Georgia market that asked me to help out with some litigation in the Georgia market, and that's what eventually caused me to fall into the Georgia market and then found that similar to Tennessee, that I could compete, that I could get cases, and then truthfully, I kind of challenged that limiting belief that I couldn't compete in the Florida market and put some dollars into the Florida market and did pretty well in Florida too.
Certainly my CAC was higher as anticipated, but I was able to compete. So I think a lot of people, especially a lot of young lawyers or new attorneys that are better are venturing out, everybody, at least I was at a firm where there was a big fear of advertising and stuff like that. Highly referral based firm, and they tell themselves that they can't compete, so they never try, which opens the door for others to be able to step into the market and look, it's scary and it's risky, and there was a lot of money I could have lost, and I did lose money in certain marketing ventures.
I mean, I put money into Spanish radio in Nashville, Tennessee. I mean, if I got a case out of it, Chris, that might be saying a lot. So I ventured into some branding campaigns maybe too early and learned my lesson the hard way, but I also did a lot of things right, and that's always important to remember in business. It's easy to focus on all the things you did wrong, but I did a lot of things right and was able to grow pretty quickly because of it.
Chris Dreyer:
And you grew. Guys are growing like crazy, and I only imagine with the infrastructure you have, it's kind of compounding now in the data, the viewpoints to make decisions. One of the stats, and I have no idea, this is the first time, I've done 300 episodes, and this is the first time where you're like, "Hey, 80% of our files go in the lit." I have never got that stat. That's uncommon. Most people, it's like the complete opposite. What made you go that decision? What gave you the information and the knowledge to say like, "Hey, putting more in lit is the better direction." Maybe your time on desk is longer. Maybe your cash acceleration is longer, but ultimately it's better. I don't know. Maybe you can expound on that.
Blake Swan:
Yeah, no, so I actually did a CLE somewhat recently. I thought it was cool. I did it like the Miami Heat game. I got a suite, and invited some young lawyers and the purpose of the CLE was to talk about that, was talk about the importance of putting cases into litigation. There are, a lot of firms are very, very heavy pre-suit because usually time on desk is a lot shorter, but data shows me that insurance companies don't like to pay you pre-suit and they don't like to do right by your client's pre-suit, and that if you put the case into litigation, yeah, time on desk increases, but the overall return to the client, to everybody involved will work on a contingency fee is better when the case goes into litigation. Data is unmistakable. I kind of thought this was going to be true, Chris, I'll be honest, I give a lot of credit to the firm that kind of brought me up.
They were a very litigation heavy firm because that's what they did. They were referred cases for litigation. They got a lot of their cases from one referral source that referred them cases for litigation, and I knew what their average fee was, and I talked to other firms that were more pre-suit oriented and understood what their average settlement, what their average fee was. And so I always had an inclination that was the way to go, but then data really showed it to me, and it's funny, it's, data pushes me to say that we need to file on more cases. If we were 90%, I wouldn't be opposed to it. It's really important that your client gets the compensation they deserve, and unfortunately what we're finding is that insurance companies are emboldened pre-suit and they're pounding their chest and they're just not doing right by pre-suit. So you have to push it to that next level and the data supports it all the way around. It's better for the client, it's better for the firm, it's better for everybody involved.
Chris Dreyer:
Blake, I'm going to sound like a real jackass here for a question. With 80% in lit, let's say, and this is me just, I'm not an attorney, right? Let's say the person had a hundred thousand dollar insurance policy and the insurance company gives you 90 or a hundred. Are you still filing?
Blake Swan:
You're still filing in those circumstances, because you're setting up precedent, right? If you take 80, 90 pre-suit on a case that's worth a hundred, look, you have ethical duties to your client. Your client tells you, "Take the money." You've got to take the money. Most of our pre-suit settlements are tender situations, meaning that the insurance company tender the full extent of the available insurance policy, so that's where you get your 20%. The rest are going into litigation. So if they're offering $80,000, my recommendation to the client is there's another $10,000, let's move and let's push it. And if you set a precedent as a firm that you're going to take the 80, 90 when there's a hundred K policy pre-suit, good luck. I mean, I'm data oriented and we're a fast-growing. I don't know. I've called myself a small firm for so long that we're no longer a small firm, mid-sized firm.
Chris Dreyer:
Definitely not the truth anymore.
Blake Swan:
Yeah, exactly. But if I have all this data, if I have all this data, the insurance companies have even more data. I mean, these are some of the biggest corporations in the country, and if I'm taking 80 or 90 pre-suit on a case, it's worth a hundred, and I'm to believe that they're not remembering that, but that's not somewhere in their system. I think that's very naive. We're litigating that case.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, so you're getting the better values that allows you to pay more to acquire the case than maybe the pre-lit mills can just because they have to get a super low cost per case to be profitable, where hey, you can get some exponential returns occasionally to balance things out. I kind of wanted to go to the hiring question. You've had a lot of staff, a lot of staff. Quickly, what does the team look like? Do you have a head of talent? Do you use third-party recruiters? What's your just thought process on getting those A players to join the team, so to speak?
Blake Swan:
Yeah, we're extremely lucky, so I still have no idea how we got him, but we have Steven Hurwitz, who, he's our fractional HR guy. He might as well be full-time, he's here all the time. He's so heavily invested in the firm, tons of experience, HR for Starbucks, I mean you name it. So he comes highly, highly credentialed, really knows what he's doing and understands how to bring in high-level people. So what he does is he does a whole hiring funnel. We joke that if you can get through the funnel, you're most likely qualified, right? There's a ton of steps you got to go through. It's not just, "Hey, submit your application." We want to know if somebody's willing to do the work necessary to get through the funnel, and if they make it to the end of the funnel, we find that the candidates are highly qualified.
We're also using Kolbe, which is a test ultimately to figure out how people look at work, if you will. And if we're hiring for a particular position, we want to know what the Kolbe score is and does it match up with the position we're hiring them for? We take that very seriously. We're actually using it to implement how we communicate with each other internally in-house. If you have a certain personality that you're more of a quick start versus somebody that's a heavy fact-finder, wants all the information, is it somebody that wants bullet points or do they want paragraphs? How are we communicating with each other internally becomes extremely important and we find Kolbe to be a good test. We were using print at 1.2 right now, we've been primarily using the Kolbe test. Print is more on what motivates you on what you do, and then onboarding, Chris is the guy, my partner is like, he is just unbelievable.
He is. There's no bigger factor for the culture of who we are. And my business partner, I think as you know, he's the guy that gave up drinking, lost 70 pounds, he is training for Ironman right now. He ran a marathon, he got me to run a marathon, and he spends a lot of time focusing on culture. Our onboarding process is everybody gets a box of all the swag from the firm. The day that they come on, they get a personalized message from Chris, welcome them to the firm and how excited we are, whatever. It's really, really impressive. We're very, very intentional about who we're bringing in as far as personality fits, as far as a fit personality-wise for that particular position. And then our head of HR is really good at vetting people out through the interview process, and we have a very, very low attrition rate.
Usually when we lose people, it's because unfortunately they didn't work out and we have to let them go. So people are happy at the firm and we also work on... Some people we do allow to work remote, and then we have some people that are hybrid and we find that you can recruit better talent under that model than a more traditional model that requires people in-house every day. It requires a ton of structure, which I again give credit to Chris for of meetings, making sure you're checking in, tracking all those things that are really important. A culture of accountability. We hold ourselves accountable. I love the Jocko book on accountability. Extreme Ownership is one of my favorite, and we embody that, right? It's always our fault.
Chris Dreyer:
Good.
Blake Swan:
Yes, exactly. And I'm not quite there, Chris, but I'm going to get there. I usually get there the next day in my defense, in the moment I'm not there, but the next day I'm like, I'm glad that happened, right? Because it's a lesson. There's a lesson, all of it, and we really embody that and it trickles down to your team. If they own everything, if they own all their mistakes, if they own all that, and if we as owners own that, we really do find it makes a massive difference throughout the organization.
There's not a day that goes by that I don't make a mistake and there probably won't be a day moving forward that I don't, and I learn from all of them and get better every single day. I think it's really important and embody us to our entire team. They're all like that. It's a, the culture is unbelievable, is one of the reasons Chris and I merged together. Two firms merged about two years ago, and we have a very, very similar mentality and a very similar vision on what we're trying to build, and I saw that in Chris, that he has that ability to really instill and inspire people, which is important. We're all driving for one mission and everybody's got to be on board, so I give him him a ton of credit for that truthfully.
Chris Dreyer:
All run in the same direction and that momentum, and you guys are killing it. This has been a ton of fun. For our audience listening, maybe they have a case in one of the six states, the Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, et cetera. How can they get in touch with you?
Blake Swan:
Feel free to call me. My cell phone is (561) 896-7926. You can also email me. It's blake, B-L-A-K-E @ kellerswan.com, which is K-E-L-L-E-R-S-W-A, N.com. We're happy to assist on any cases. I even enjoy helping shoot people in the right direction if it's a case I can't handle. We have enough connections now because we've been litigating in all these states for so long that if we can't handle the case ourselves, we likely know somebody in the jurisdiction that can. I get people that call me on cases all over the country because when you've been doing multi-state litigation long enough, you really do start to meet a lot of good people and always happy to point people in the right direction.
Chris Dreyer:
Blake Swan shows what happens when you lead with data, go heavy on litigation and build an intake machine that never misses a call. For more industry insights, follow Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time. I'm out.
