Chris Dreyer:
When a case looks dead on arrival, he finds a path forward.
Devin Janosov:
A lot of lawyers don’t know that. You have like 30 days to get them unnoticed and then the case is lost forever.
Chris Dreyer:
Today’s guest thrives because he runs towards the cases other lawyers won’t touch. Premises liability, municipal negligence, catastrophic injuries where the facts are messy and the law is unforgiving. And over 90% of his firm’s clients come from referrals. When no one else wants the case, he’s the one they call.
Devin Janosov:
I hope you never have to call me again, but 20 years of doing this has shown me that if you get hit by a car once, if you get arrested once, there’s a good chance that those two things are going to overlap.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind powered by Rankings.io. I’m Chris Dreyer. Devin Janosov built a firm that owns a narrow lane. Let’s get into it.
Devin Janosov:
A lot of defense attorneys don’t think a plaintiff’s lawyer is going to actually try a case. Worst case, I will take it in front of a jury and I will do my absolute best to get a verdict on it. And I think a lot of times that’s more important than any of the facts or anything else is the attorney’s willingness to take it all the way to the end. There’s a lot of lawyers who will take plaintiff’s cases, but there’s not a lot of lawyers who will actually go and try the case no holds barred. My firm tends to get cases where other lawyers think that there’s probably not much of a chance of recovering. We get a lot of referrals from other attorneys and they tend to send us some of their harder cases.
So we had a case with a girl who’s like 22 years old. She was out drinking with a friend, a guy, having dinner. They went back to his apartment and he wanted to have a cigarette. So in his apartment where they would go have cigarettes was up on the roof. So it’s in Stanford, Connecticut. They went up to the roof. It was like the fifth floor. It was a four-story apartment, but then with the roof, it was the fifth. And it had those bollards that archers used to hide behind on castles. So they’re up there and they’re talking and she goes over to one of them and kind of leans onto it and it just disconnected from the roof. And she went over the top of the roof, fell five stories, landed on her back and burst her heart in her chest. And ambulances came, they had to take her to the hospital. They managed to save her.
Obviously the defense was taking the position that she had been drinking. She went and leaned on the bollard. She was too close to the edge. It was her own negligence. The kid wasn’t allowed to go out on the roof. He wasn’t supposed to go out there. You’re not allowed to smoke at the building. They went through his lease. It went on for forever. I was literally prepping for trial. We had done like 20 something depositions and then in the end we managed to get her a really good result thanks to a judge at a pretrial who had said the number that they had versus the number that I had, my number was a lot more realistic. And she said, “I think a jury’s going to give Attorney Janosov closer to what he’s asking for than what you’re offering.” And we were just glad to be able to put it aside for her and get a result for her because most of the lawyers I talked to didn’t think it was going to be a recoverable case, but we got a good recovery for her.
Chris Dreyer:
Your skill, it’s so unique and so high value today with all the consolidation, all the technology. It’s kind of commoditizing the just standard cases. And the more complex cases, it’s a different type of skillset. Talk to me, maybe is it premises cases? Do you get any scenarios that like different weird, maybe a dog bite case that’s super hard to prove? Or talk to me about some of these other scenarios where just people might overlook a case.
Devin Janosov:
So the hardest case we’ve had, one of the only ones I’ve ever actually lost on a summary judgment, and then I appealed it to the Connecticut Appellate Court. I appealed it to the Connecticut Supreme Court, and they upheld the summary judgment both ways, was the Sandy Hook shooting. I had some of the victims in the Sandy Hook shooting against the school itself for not calling for the lockdown when they heard the shooter come in. And there was also an issue with where the keys were. So that case was very difficult on the facts and on the law because municipal liability is something we do a lot of because that’s an area where a lot of lawyers don’t feel comfortable with because they obviously have qualified immunity. Getting through that is very difficult, it’s very limited exceptions. That’s probably where we have our most complicated stuff is when we’re doing municipal liability. I have a couple of those going right now.
Why failing notice requirements destroys otherwise strong personal injury cases
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. Talk to me about that. The buses and the garbage truck type of stuff, cases, they’re protected a little bit differently.
Devin Janosov:
So one of the first ones we had was an eighth grade boy who was leaving for school. He was walking across a crosswalk. His mom was running out after him with his lunch in her hand and a DPW truck towing a two ton wood chipper that the driver wasn’t supposed to be driving, was coming down the road, didn’t really know how to use the air brakes. And he killed the kid in the crosswalk in front of his mom. And that was actually a case that we were referred from a New York lawyer who looked at it and said, “He’s in eighth grade. What’s the value for the life of an eighth grader? How much is this case really worth?” He didn’t think it was really worth that much. He sent it to us and we got a fairly decent seven figure verdict or seven figures.
It was a mediation actually that we mediated with somebody on the case after years of working it up and working it down. But we had to sue the town. In order to get to town, you have to prove that either they violated what’s called a ministerial duty, which means there’s a law or an internal policy that says you have to do this this way. So regular negligence isn’t going to cut it. So the driver not being licensed or not being properly trained to drive the truck under normal circumstances would be fine. But without a statute or an internal policy that said he needs to be trained, he needs to have this license. So on that case, it was much easier because obviously their hiring policy, they need to hire somebody who knows how to drive the truck. So a lot of lawyers, when they get those cases, it’s difficult.
There’s a notice requirement. You have like 30 days to get them on notice. You have to put very specific things in the letter. The notice letter is actually an element that you have to prove at trial. You have to introduce the letter at trial in front of the jury and get it into evidence in order to meet your burden at trial. So a lot of lawyers don’t know that. So they take these cases, they start looking into it, and then the 30 days or 60, 90 days, depending on the notice requirement goes, and then the case is lost forever.
Chris Dreyer:
When you operate in a narrow lane like this, your entire case acquisition strategy changes. For Devon, referrals are a major source of cases, but to be successful, the referral engine needs to be supported by digital marketing.
How taking personal injury cases through trial readiness drives lawyer referrals
Devin Janosov:
Our firm’s always been very, very focused on just litigation and literally just personal injury, plaintiff’s litigation, and criminal litigation. Our clients are our best resource for referrals. We have our clients in criminal court and we have our clients in PI in civil court, and we try to do the best job we can for our clients. And a lot of our business is just repeat customers. I always say to people, “I hope you never have to call me,” when I give them my card because I say, “If you’re calling me, you’re definitely not having a good day. You’re having a very, very bad day. So I hope you never have to call me again.” And even when I’m done with a client’s case, happy or not, I’ll say to them, “It was really nice getting to know you if you want to call me and talk, go out, get a drink. Anything like that, that’s fine. I hope you never have to call me again.”
But 20 years of doing this has shown me that if you get hit by a car once, if you get arrested once, there’s a good chance that those two things are going to overlap and that you’re going to be back again. Connecticut’s not a large legal jurisdiction. The other lawyers know us. We’re very personable with the defense attorneys. We try to be as personable with the judges and the courts. Now a lot of lawyers I know are becoming judges. So really just keeping yourself at the top of your game is the best way to make sure that you get referrals. Obviously the digital marketing and all that stuff helps immensely and staying in touch with your clients. I mean, in law school, they tell you the number one way to get grieved is to not call your clients back and not be in touch with your clients. That is absolutely true.
Chris Dreyer:
I had Nick Raleigh on yesterday and he’s similar philosophy like, “Hey, doing good work, putting the big case result numbers up, take the cases that people aren’t willing to take because you feel like they were wronged,” right? You’re trying to get justice and being willing to get in the game on the court and do that. It’s admirable and it’s rare. And because of that, you’re going to get referrals. So you set yourself up for success and doing right by the client. Talk to me briefly the intake. For your skillset, it’s different. If an auto accident attorney that just does auto accidents, it’s like, “Here’s the criteria, case out the window,” right? But you’re going to get a mix, a range of cases that come in. Does that necessitate an attorney reviews all the cases that come in? Some people just have the intake specialist or the paralegal. Talk to me about how you handle intake because it’s so complex for you.
What a trial-focused intake system looks like when every case is complex
Devin Janosov:
Yeah. So that’s actually a very good question because that’s a problem that we had in the beginning at the firm when we first started to get a little bigger and started to get bigger cases is you’ll see damages will be great in the case. And I’m not saying great because obviously the bigger damages, the worst the case is for the person. But the damages will be locked in. So you’ll say, “Oh, this is a good case on damages.” But sometimes a lawyer who’s referring the case in will look at it and say, “Well, we can make up liability because the damages are so good.” And no, you can’t make up liability. So you need to really look at all the elements of the case when you’re doing it. So here we have a paralegal who’s kind of like our office manager. She’s been with us forever.
She’ll review everything first. Then it’ll go to my partner and he’ll review it for kind of pre-suit stuff and make sure that all this stuff’s there. There’s insurance coverage. There’s adequate insurance coverage. All that stuff is there. Then lastly, it’ll come to me and I’ll review it for if it gets into lit, is it something that can be maintained? I’m not going to say that we don’t take cases where I say, “I don’t think I can win this,” because a lot of them, they don’t really go to trial. I’ve kind of over the years taken the philosophy of nobody really wins at a trial. I mean, everybody kind of loses. There’s a few cases where a big verdict will roll in and it’s like, “We really pulled that one off,” but most trials, juries are very unpredictable and it’s better to manage risk.
Chris Dreyer:
The cases Devin takes on require judgment, pattern recognition, and a team trained to see the details most firms overlook. And that skillset carries all the way through litigation because once the case is headed towards trial, the goal shifts. It’s about positioning, valuation, and building a narrative that the jury can feel. So I asked Devin how he approaches maximizing case value and how he prepares when a case is headed into court.
How PI trial lawyers use focus groups and deep discovery to uncover defense blind spots
Devin Janosov:
A big proponent of getting all of your discovery to the absolute max, I mean, jury focus groups are great. It’s always good to put your case on to somebody ahead of time and see what are people going to think about this because as the attorney who’s inside of it, and by the time it gets to trial, you’ve been with the case for so long. It’s good to have other lawyers that you can call, but it’s also good to have outside resources like jury focus groups and people that you can put the case in front of and put it on and put on your evidence and say, “What’s going to work? What’s not going to work?” Because no matter how long you’ve been doing this, it’s not difficult to get so up to your head in the facts of the case that you don’t see your own blind spots. And the defense is always looking for your blind spots.
And then there’s the flip side where you can be so concerned with what the defense is going to do that you start thinking about things that they’re not even thinking about and you start undercutting your own case for the defense because you’re thinking of things that the defense isn’t seeing. So it’s very difficult to know what to put in and what not to put in, and, “Should this witness go on the stand? Their testimony might be questionable. They’ve got some reasons to potentially not be trustworthy, but their testimony is really important to the facts. Do I put them up? Don’t I put them up?” Those questions, it can be very difficult to try and answer that on your own, especially when you’ve been living inside of the bubble for years.
Chris Dreyer:
Right. I’ve heard, not from the trial side, I know everyone wants to do these advanced retrospectives to where you run different scenarios and then they’re like, “Hey, the defense didn’t take a tactic that they had there and you were more prepared.” And then I’ve heard even on the intake side, these like settlement committees, like if something doesn’t hit a policy limit and you get multiple people say, “Well, review it before you,”… But different type of structure versus you going right to trial and having that trial first mentality. What do you see for the future of the practice? What’s some of the goals you’re trying to accomplish?
Devin Janosov:
We just want to keep doing what we’re doing. We want to keep helping people. We want to keep doing the best work we can. We’re not looking to really grow. We’ve tried to bring in other lawyers before. Every time we’ve brought in another lawyer, it’s been a mess. So a couple years ago, we just literally kept it at the three partners and our support staff and we have a really good team here. And as long as we can keep going and I’ll be completely content to just keep doing what I’m doing and just keep growing the firm, keep getting bigger cases, keep getting results.
Chris Dreyer:
This has been a ton of fun. For our audience listening that has a complex case, they want to get in touch with you. They have questions about the pod. What’s the best way to get in touch with you?
Devin Janosov:
That’s Info@MyInjuryFirm.com.
Chris Dreyer:
If you want a marketing partner that brings the same level of care and clarity for your growth, that’s where Rankings.io steps in. We help personal injury firms build demand, earn trust, and sign more cases in competitive markets. If you’re ready to strengthen the engine behind your firm, visit Rankings.io. I’m Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening.
