Jon Walner:
Harvey L. Walner was a fricking household name.
Chris Dreyer:
It wasn't just like a soft rebrand. You did a legit rebrand.
Jon Walner:
All our stationary was changed. Our logos were changed. Our signs were changed. Our billboards were changed. Everything, scary.
Chris Dreyer:
You're very involved on the intake side. It's unique.
Jon Walner:
Everything was picked out by an interior decorator to bring a smoothing, calming, sense to them. So when they're dealing with the raw intensity of a client just being crushed in a car accident, they're peaceful and calm.
Chris Dreyer:
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. PIM is powered by Rankings.io, the only founder-led performance marketing legal agency. And if you're new here, I am the founder. I'm Chris Dreyer. Welcome. Today's guest is special.
Jon Walner:
Hey, I'm Jon Walner.
Chris Dreyer:
He's doing something never done on this podcast before.
Jon Walner:
I'm a personal injury lawyer in Chicago.
Chris Dreyer:
This is the first time we've had a PI attorney with four decades of hands-on experience speak this directly about what's breaking in the legal industry, and what has to change to fix it.
Jon Walner:
When you're spending millions in advertising, you have a lot of calls, let's be honest. These people are watching 700 Instagram videos on their phone while they're talking to you. Think about technology, oh, easy. Get hired, DocuSigned by another firm within seconds. No, I'm just saying, the technology also gets you fired fast.
Chris Dreyer:
This episode is twice as long, because Jon says the quiet part out loud, and we weren't going to stop recording while you did it.
Jon Walner:
I've never seen this much money in the game, never. Never have seen millions and millions of dollars spent per month. There's only X amount of accidents, and 12 million a month, 15 million a month of money spent. There's 456 accidents and people go, "Oh, Walner, you're setting all these millions of cases. Here, billboard." What's reality is it's costing more to get these cases.
Chris Dreyer:
If you care about the future of personal injury, listen all the way to the end and tell me what you think.
Jon Walner:
I've been practicing here for 37 years, when I took over the firm called Walner Law about 26 years ago. We have about 50 employees, around 2,500 clients, and we've represented over 15,000 clients. We've had about a little over a billion dollars in gross settlements. We settled in last year, $175 million in settlements, but it doesn't matter the size of the case, you always attack the case the same way, with kindness, respect to their family, with loving care in severe injuries. You're meeting the family where they are, whether they're in the ICU, rehab, home, the funeral home, on your big cases. I may bring even my wife because when a husband is down and the wife is going to be in the ICU with the client, my wife, will bring her to hold her hand because you will lose a case 100% of the time in the first day or two days if you are not kind, and respectful, and loving towards the client's family.
Chris Dreyer:
That's amazing. Marketing's changed, sales intakes have changed, your attorney and operations have changed, but let's start with a win.
Jon Walner:
Yeah, the word win is a interesting question. What is a win? First of all, a win at Walner lies when we all work together in a common goal. We treasure or our staff, we tell them how good of a job they're doing, we say how proud of them we are. The best day to me, Chris, is that they're celebrated because when you celebrate an employee, it brings the energy to the employees, and then it gathers steam and it's just a better day. It's a better day for me and it makes me happy. I'll tell you another big win we have at Walner Law. We give away 1,000 coats, 600 turkeys, mittens, gloves at Thanksgiving. And like Lurie Children's Hospital, we gave them 3,000 toys.
So, we work with the community to find out what neighborhood's the best for us using CAPS in Chicago, community organizers, in my podcast, Words with Walner, Tio Hardiman, Carl West, Captain Zimmerman of the Salvation Army, different people to let me know what communities are hurting and what they need. We also give scholarships to fifth graders, eighth graders, high schoolers, in funky neighborhoods in Chicago that don't have the resources other neighborhoods get. We give back, and that's a big W. And my kids loved it, that was something that made me feel good.
Rebranding from a household-name TV firm to Walner Law: new name, number, colors, 100+ billboards, and the real risk of starting over.
Chris Dreyer:
That's special, that's amazing. You mentioned your father, Harvey, and you went through a rebrand. And you didn't just change the name, I don't know how many billboards you did, a ton of billboards, and you went all out. So talk to me through that process.
Jon Walner:
That was [inaudible 00:04:34]. Chris, thanks for picking that up. I didn't know anything about this. So that was one of the most nervous things that ever happened in my life. So my dad starts Harvey Walner Associates Limited in 1961. And he came from a very poor neighborhood, it's called the West Side. When he was a lawyer, he went back to his roots and got all these people to be his clients. Huge turnaround, Chris. Biggest, we're going to get into what you just said. 1979, I think you were allowed to advertise on TV. So he went and he cut all these TV commercials with network affiliates out in Denver, Norton Frickey, Harlan Schillinger. And he was on TV and the firm went from 10 lawyers to 50 plus lawyers. I mean, it went crazy with TV. TV, of course, isn't that effective anymore.
So go from Harvey L. Walner and Associates, dial (312) JUSTICE, so dial (312) 782-8550. Harvey L. Walner and Associates, gray, it changed to gold lettering, but they first had gray and bluish, kind of a serious tone, serious logo. Now, my dad has a stroke 28 years ago. So I don't want it to be Harvey L. Walner and Associates, dial (312) JUSTICE, dial (312) 782-8550 because you have Yellow Pages. I don't know if the attorneys out there ever remember Yellow Pages.
Chris Dreyer:
The double trunk.
Jon Walner:
You have this double trunk ads, two pages. What does it cost you? 200,000 a year. I forgot. 250, whatever to have the double trunk in Chicago. And so the numbers in the double trunk, and on TV, all the TV ads had Walner Associates and a certain phone number and a certain color and a look. Okay, billboards weren't big in this for lawyers in 1970s, early '80s. In fact, I don't even know if there was any. So you're bound by the yellow pages in your TV ads. They see your ad on TV, they go to the yellow pages, they call you up. That's how it worked back then. So I'm taking this huge leap of faith to rebrand it to Walner. So we hired a company called Fortress Consulting in Chicago. We went over through tests, the name Walner Law, the colors, the logo, and then a whole marketing scheme to get the world know that Harvey L. Walner in the African American community was a household name.
It was a fricking household name. It just was. And it's a fact. Okay? So when I changed it to Walner Law new colors, they don't know Jon Walner, Walner. Who's Walner Law? And so you got to go this website. Back then, what do I know about website SEO, SCF? These were foreign to me, man. I didn't know anything about this. Clicks. So now we're using technology, knew nothing about. Ways to market, knew nothing about. Complete neophyte. I will admit, not technologically savvy. Learned a lot from Pete. Obviously, you're the best person I ever dealt with at Rankings. We had a chance meeting through a person we both know, and I'm lucky to have met you. And you also taught me a lot. And this is just in the last two or three years that I've been with you, you've taught me a lot too about what goes on online marketing.
But yes, all our stationary was changed. Our logos were changed. Our signs were changed. Our billboards were changed. Everything, scary. Phone number changed to 3128 million. Text or call Walner. I also own short codes. I own the twos, the fives, the sixes. I own lawyer, injury. So texts WIN to the twos to five twos. All these things, Chris, we change. Scary, lose a lot of money? Yes. You have to get into the market as a new person. It's no longer Harvey L. Walner and Associates. Absolutely lose a tremendous amount of money because you have costs going up. Marketing costs. It's one thing, you have a lot of consultants and what the color should be, the font should be, the height of the letters. But you got to introduce yourself in the market as a brand new firm.
Chris Dreyer:
You hired the consultants. You got the 100 plus billboards, whatever you invest in. So it wasn't just like a soft rebrand, you did a legit rebrand.
Jon Walner:
Does it all work? I can't tell you.
Building a low-stress intake floor that protects focus, speeds up sign-ups, and turns more calls into contracts
Chris Dreyer:
So I also want to talk about this. You're very involved on the intake side. You move the intake to a different floor. What was the thought process behind this? And there's a lot of ways to do intake. Some people do the nearshore thing. Some people do the third party. Talk to me about your intake set up because it's a bit unique.
Jon Walner:
Chris, through a lot of trial and error and a lot of lost money, a lot of lost clients. We finally hit a solution for intake. One is moving them away from... They're on another floor in our building. Don't give them distractions of lawyers running around, screaming about deps, court hearings, give me the motion. We need a response to a [inaudible 00:09:07]. They were completely in a room all by themselves that has soft coloring. We hired an interior decorator to make it soft to lower the stress level. They're only in intake and they have a script and a way to do things. And we put from having a call answering service, whether all the different lip and all the different answering services out there, which too scary having the eight people in my office. And Chris, I don't know if it's the right answer, but it sure destresses me, because they're all over intake.
And we do use some people in Columbia for that also, but they're by themselves in their own world in a stress-free environment with soft colors. And all the appliances were like where they use the microwave, their water faucets, their toaster. Everything was picked out by an interior decorator to bring a smoothing, calming sense to them. The carpet was changed, their desks were done ergonomically, so when they're dealing with the raw intensity of a client just being crushed in a car accident, they're peaceful and calm. Let the client talk.
Chris Dreyer:
We had David Haskins on he has a tool that listens to calls and flags and different scenarios. And one of them is the empathy. And sometimes you're distracted so you're not really listening because somebody else is talking to this or that. And then it's like, maybe miss an opportunity or maybe it's the case and you got to recover it. And I think it's smart. Yeah.
Jon Walner:
The hardest thing is the first phone call. We put a lot of money behind it.
Chris Dreyer:
So often it's like you invest so much money, the hundred billboards, the TV, the digital, the everything. And it's like a lot of times it's the biggest hole isn't the leads, it's the intake. It's like, "Hey, it was right there. All you had to do was accept it and maybe hear them out." So I think that's super smart. Talk to me about the space, how it's changing, collision detection, the robo taxis, the Waymos, all these types of things. Like you're taking on these cases where the guy falls through the floor and how do I shut down a factory? Is a different type of lawyer versus just the ones that are just looking for auto. So what's your thoughts about just the injury space in general?
How private equity is changing auto PI economics, and why it’s costing more to get these cases even as volume looks strong
Jon Walner:
I want to be honest with you, it's very sad what has gone on right now with big money, with private equity. We go from a, we're only a family. I'm a sole practitioner. We're a family centered law firm, because I want the clients to be treated like family. Of course, it's depressing to go to work. It's sad. Has my life changed dramatically in terms of how I look at the personal injury business? Of course. I'm fighting against these conglomerates in Chicago, Lauren Roe, the postman, the top dog. And of course they don't have offices in Chicago. Of course, they haven't been in the community. They haven't donated to Thanksgiving Day drives, scholarship drives, Grandmas for Grandchildren, peace, violence interrupters. Everything Walner Law gives to. Lurie Children's Hospital, hot meals for communities, grocery shopping bags at Jewel, always giving back to school supplies. These people aren't here.
They're never going to be here. They're not from Chicago. They don't know where the Croatians live, the Russians live, the Eastern Europeans, Polish live, your African American, your Hispanic communities. They have not been in the community. They don't know the aldermen, the state reps, the state senators. I know all these people. I've been in the community, so is it depressing to go to work? I go, "Why did you go to Top Dog?" "I don't know. I saw signs all over." Listen, my career is coming to an end, 63 years old. Is it changed for the worse? Of course it has. It's horrible. It's horrible. I don't have billions of dollars. These private equity firms, I'm just guessing they're spending four mil a month in Chicago. I don't have that kind of money, nor do I want to spend it. What kind of ROI am I getting on that? I'd rather just mine my own database, my own clients. Is the world change in personal injury? I would say I'd advise no one to go into it. Class action, that's something different. Mass torts, great area. You're helping people, that's a fact.
Chris Dreyer:
It's [inaudible 00:13:01] thing. There is so much more money in this space. The cost to acquire cases through the roof now.
Jon Walner:
Yes, I'm telling you, man. The cost to acquire the case is flying. How you make money in this business with the cost of acquiring cases? Say you advertise in the middle of the month and you get 100 cases. It's a lot of money. If you suspend per case, you're going to make money. Let's talk about we're a for-profit business. First of all, everyone work here has a grandchild, children, aunts, uncles that they're supporting. Listen, how much money am I supposed to spend to help our family of people that have dedicated their lives to work at Walner Law? So Chris, the field has dramatically changed. Should it shift to class action for me or mass torts? Maybe. Should I go... I don't know the answer. How much money do I have to spend? Limited.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, it's an interesting conversation. A lot of PE money came in during the torts because it's a little bit ... But then there was so much fraud, especially around Lejeune and then people got accustomed to this space and they're like, "Well, let me look at auto. So let me deploy money to auto." And then it's like, "Okay, well then that raises everybody's..." Well, so then auto is going to be tough and now people are going to go to this other area and then it's going to get... So it's kind of the cycle.
Jon Walner:
There's like only 400 accidents a week. I'm just telling you, there's only X amount of accidents. And there's, I don't know, 12 million a month, 50 million a month of money spent. There's 456 accidents. I don't know who's injured, who's at fault, the insurance on them. Think about how your ROI is so low. It is just so low. And people go, "Oh, Walner, you're sending all these millions of cases, your billboard." What's reality is it's costing more to get these cases.
Chris Dreyer:
Hey all, Chris Dreyer here with a quick note. We had to cut this interview short. Jon came back a few weeks later and I'm so glad he did. It's no secret that private equity or PE has changed the legal landscape for law firms. Even agencies like mine that serve law firms are seeing it. Guys, I won't bore you with the details, but Rankings is the only player left in the game that is founder owned and led. A lot of my competitors have chosen to exit. I'm so happy for them that they got reward that payoff, but things change after you sell. You don't have as much control. Typically, PE, when they buy a business and agency, they'll want to flip it again for a higher multiple. What they're doing is consolidating bottom line profits so that they have a higher EBITDA. The higher the EBITDA, the higher the multiple.
That's how they pay for the debt. They use this to fund the growth. But a lot of times after the money's paid out, you lose control. Expenses is the only thing that's talked about. The signal that you can see that this is occurring is when the agency starts talking about the platform. We're building the platform. When you're no longer a client and you're the platform, you're basically the widget that they're going to retrade. So just know that that's out there. I love what I do. I'll tell you this, I live in Southern Illinois in the middle of nowhere and I can't stand a four-day weekend. I love a Monday morning. Up at 4:45 every morning. Love getting into work and just the community that I serve and what they do. They give access to individuals that are hurt. I think it's an amazing cause and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.
And quite frankly, business is my hobby. I love what I do. We want to continue to get better, but just wanted to set the tone and share where I'm at in regards to PE and the agency space. In the legal space, it's a little bit different. There are pros and cons. There are pros where maybe you get access to capital to maybe you don't have the interest in the advertising and marketing and you can join some firms that have pipelines so that you can actually be a good attorney and do what you love to do. And we've seen other businesses in other industries like dental be very successful with that. Just be aware that that's out there. I think it's more important than ever to have a differentiator, a way to stand out because it's so saturated. And if you love what you do, that's the name of the game. Jon and probably you are feeling this industry-wide impact. Here's how he's approaching this massive change.
Expanding into comp, probate, and matrimonial to monetize existing demand and stabilize cash flow
Jon Walner:
As it appears now, I'd be wise to make my office not only PI, this is just my feeling, like I don't have the personal money to fight private equity firms or firms that are buying out across the nation with private equity money, all the little firms to go against Morgan & Morgan or Top Dog who's completely private equity or other national brands. So because I don't have the money to buy out other firms, I may have money to buy out other firms in Chicago, but not nationally. It seems to me, and probably to other sole practitioners who do a lot of personal injury cases like myself, to start offering matrimonial advice or doing probate, because we're already doing wrongful death in disabled people's estates. And obviously in the matrimonial law with crypto and the stock market going out of control, these families have huge money to separate from themselves.
And it's a good opportunity for the lawyers who done personal injury. We're already doing discovery and trials and we're already experts in this really. Let's branch out and say you already advertise, you already have billboards, just throw in there. We're here for your matrimonial needs and we're here for your probate matters because once a client settles a case for 10 million, you got to distribute to the heirs, you got to put on notice any unknown heirs. We're already doing that. So we might as well get paid. We don't charge for our probate services.
Chris Dreyer:
I've always wondered these other practice areas like the matrimony, the probate, especially then you can do in the will contest later if that happens and maybe some opportunities there, but it just seems that like maybe you could get a customer base and get some upfront cash flow to then kind of feed the beast as opposed to the cycle of that 12 to 18 months.
Jon Walner:
Workers' comp, if they weren't so busy in Chicago, you get paid right away. But there's a huge backup because of COVID. They weren't doing anything. But obviously in all personal injury law firms in the country, workers' comp is your number one cash flow. They're uncontested claims. You're the only claimant. You get injured at work, they got to pay or they're going to be punished. Even though we've been around since 1973 or our firm was really started in a partnership in 1961, I've never seen this much money in the game. Never, never have seen millions and millions of dollars spent per month against the firms. We just had a new firm that came into Chicago. So you got to be spending, just based on my knowledge of marketing and advertising, got to be spending two million a month, I'm guessing, or a million. And you have all these other firms spending that kind of money against you.
What's up to the sole practitioner? Costing you more money per lead. You have to spend more money in advertising, you have to spend more money in the community. It's tough. So because the more you advertise, the more people you get. We don't want any paralegal to have more than 100 cases. So this is what's going on now. We're spending more money to cost me more money to get the case because private equity firms are crushing it all over the country, putting up huge investor monies, gobbling up other law firms and doing these kind of pretend names of the firm.
Chris Dreyer:
Is that one of the... So you're through and through Chicago and you've said, "Hey, I know Chicago block by block." You've got this hyper local knowledge. There's a goodwill component. And I know you, Jon, and I know you're not doing everything just to advertise. But there's also like the grassroots component that does lend itself the cases too.
Jon Walner:
No, I'm with you. Oh, 100%. So we do the senior [inaudible 00:20:54] side. We do the holiday basketball. We use the Chicago Police CAPS program to give back. Obviously we're giving back at Christmas, like last year with the 1,500 toys Lurie Children's Hospital. First of all, my wife is with Impact100. She is on a mission to give away like 200,000 of her money every year to Women's Reproductive Health. And she sits on a couple boards where she has her charitable goals. Walner Law's charitable goals and Jon Walner, but it does go hand in hand.
When we go into the communities and we do things where there's food deserts and lack of education, recidivism, getting people that were locked up back from the community, getting the kids off the street with the afterschool bowling leagues or basketball leagues or studying. We are helping a community because I believe that, my wife believes that it is her mission to provide grants to people that are doing things, unique people that are doing better ways to educate or maybe in the music or the arts, to lift yourself up, to have mentorship, to grow you and your community with it. So we are committed to that.
Chris Dreyer:
Another aspect, and this kind of just even drilling down tactical, and each market has different communities. How do you think about that? Because like in Chicago, there's a big Polish community, and then in Arizona, you got Navajo. It's like each DMA has their own communities. So how do you think about that aspect?
Jon Walner:
Okay. So in the Hispanic community, whether it's called [inaudible 00:22:19] in the Cicero area, there's over a million Hispanic. Every community obviously is different. The Hispanics love to do things together, the whole community. So we go into their community, do something that benefits more of everyone at a time. And we back it up with our billboards in Spanish. Maybe 80% of our staff speak Spanish. We of course cannot, just being honest with you, how can I be in the Polish community? I don't have any Polish speakers. So we aren't in the Polish community. We've never tried to get in it. We just went on radio. We just won an ESPN radio, Chicago Bears Radio. Never done that before. We sponsored one of the most famous sports shows in Chicago.
That we've never tried before. We've tried radio before, never good, but we used to, we were on an all African American radio, dieharded it for a while, but right now, so we switched from African American radio to straight blue collar Bears audience. Never tried really hard because it's a union town. We don't have any relationship with the Teamsters in Chicago. So we thought Bears would be a good option for us in ESPN radio. So we're trying that. You're talking about go to Polish or Hispanic or Russian. So this is straight at the blue collar workers, straight at them.
Chris Dreyer:
I like the experiments and I know as soon as one hits, you're going to plow into it. It's like, look, it seems like the, at least from what I've heard, the urban stations get really hit, oversaturated. Of course, TV is just crazy with the amount of saturation. So it's like you're snipering in these different areas, the grassroots and trying some things. So that's awesome. That's smart. The other thing that I was thinking about is just like your case costs and things like that. So across the nation, it seems like it's 2,500 bucks, might be in an average. What's like a case cost?
Jon Walner:
Chris, I'm agreeing with you on that. You don't want your cost per lead going near 2,500. It's a crusher, and that's the reality of what's going on. So those figures you have are true.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And what's a minimum policy in Illinois?
Jon Walner:
25.
Chris Dreyer:
Okay. So it's going to squeeze on that. Have you seen any of the positives on the tech side though, like maybe reducing your costs or maybe speeding up time on desk? There's some great tech like EvenUp for these.
Jon Walner:
Okay. We did a trial with EvenUp for three months. But yes, that technology is helping us. Medichronology software, demand software, making sure your parameters are there because the demand software is great if you make sure the parameters you're throwing in there are good. Does it eliminate some people's jobs? For sure. If the demand letter is better, 100% or your medichronology's awesome. Yeah, because they could do a keyword search on all the medicals you put into your computer. The demands come out faster, better, grammatically correct with more substance when you have the medical charts attached thereto. So yes, I agree with you. It is expensive. You are talking a quarter of a million or more per year. So does it get rid of at least two employees? If you're paying two paralegals 75Gs each, you're still not really. You're hoping your settlements will be more higher value to, you got to make a percentage on your buy of the software that we're discussing.
Chris Dreyer:
And since we're talking on this, I've seen companies like, I think there's like Torticity, CaseWorks, Finch, and some of these that will like try to handle the pre-lit and I don't know is-
Jon Walner:
Now I'm old school, so I'm 63. Pre-lit to me, I'm not talking about ordering records. There's many companies that do retrieval for you. We already have record retrieval services and there's so many competitors. It's all good for plaintiff's lawyers. Because one thing that could hold you back is not getting the medical records to forward to the insurance company to see if there's a possible resolution pre-suit. You're just requesting your records online through your retrieval service and they're putting in a portal and you're pulling back from the portal. Did you get the records? You just go to your portal with your username and password, see if it's not in and tell them it's not there. That's great. I agree with you. Oh my God, that saves tremendous amount of hours per employee, per day, more productive. But let's talk about clients not have any money. They're not financially secure.
They're not working. They're not supporting their rent, their family, they're depressed. They cannot fend for themselves. They have a lower stature. They're depressed and they're constantly calling. Texting, emailing me, pressure on the pre-lit, pressure on the lawyer. And when you have pressure on our own employees, you get an angry work staff. I just wrote a letter today about empathy because when you have a client that's financial insecure, they're not on good footing, maybe they're worried about including food. Although there's litigation loans, let's stop that. They're still calling. They're still calling. They're calling constantly and texting, that puts a lot of pressure because we have 2,600 clients and that puts a lot of pressure on the paralegal who then may take it out on the client who could get fired. So I don't care how much you have your Filevine or Litify, all your EvenUp, all your gazillions of software, Arctrieval, this trieval, that trieval.
Someone's got to talk to people and say, "I got you. I got your back guy. How's Jimmy, your two-year-old?" You still got to memorize a little bit about their families and you got to put notes of their family in your little computer system. When you talk to them, you have to say, "Oh yeah, I remember your aunt, you just put in a nursing home or someone has cancer." I'm telling you, you don't have that little knowledge and you pull up their case, you could get fired. Think about technology, how easy. Get hired with DocuSign by another firm within seconds.
Chris Dreyer:
Wild. So competitive.
Jon Walner:
No, I'm just saying. The technology also gets you fired fast. You can hire a client. You don't have to go to their house anymore, just DocuSign them. They call up from a commercial, web form, TikTok, Instagram. They reach us. Boom, they're DocuSigned within 15 minutes. We have a rule. You got to talk to the client within 15 minutes when they call you or they're going to go to the next lawyer. Less than a half hour is key. Longer, the client has too many options these days.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, that speed the lead. It's so interesting because we work with some other practice areas and I hear these other practice areas and I see their intake and I'm like, "Oh my God." You can't do that in the PI side because there's just, like you said, literally, if they're on hold for too long-
Jon Walner:
They go crazy.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah.
Jon Walner:
So we teach phone, we do a webinar on phones. We teach how to talk on the phones. We teach you how to get to the point, get it to a contract. We have a whole, downstairs on the 21st floor of our building, we have our intake team. And of course, we have an intake team in Columbia. You have too many phone calls. When you're spending millions in advertising, you have a lot of calls. So we do have the intake team in Philippines, Columbia, and they are taught and we record all the phone calls at Walner. It says it on a whisper. If you call us, please be advised your case is being recorded. And we do go over the recorded calls.
They are instructed how to be better, more to the point on the call. "We're trying to achieve greatness for you. Thank you for calling. Let us send you a contract because this is what we can do for you. Can you sign this now?" You have like five minutes. Let's be honest, these people are watching 700 Instagram videos on their phone while they're talking to you. They're on TikTok while they're talking to you so they could do anything. They could sign a contract.
Chris Dreyer:
True. Have you thought about dispatching them with the iPads like, "Hey, we'll meet you at your house." Type of deal. I'm not saying to chase, but after they've engaged, I've heard some firms where the older individuals may struggle with the tech or-
Jon Walner:
Okay. We'll send someone. We always, right when we see there's a struggle, right when we see you can't sign in your phone, we see, right to their house, right away. Yes, we do. We go with the iPad right away. That's a fact. We have a signer, whether they're in Indiana, South Side, West Side of Chicago, North Side of Chicago, they go. And if they're in the hospital, Loyola, Mount Sinai, Chicago, Northwestern, Christ, we have signers that they can't work it out on the phone, we meet them where they're at.
Chris Dreyer:
I really love the transparency, kind of how you're thinking about advertising differently, extracted more value, thinking about labor. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to share with the audience? Anything that we didn't touch on?
Jon Walner:
I'm going to share the most important thing that we didn't talk about.
Chris Dreyer:
Okay.
Jon Walner:
Being kind and respectful to each other in the office, lifting each other up, promoting each other, giving help on your technology when an employee is confused, showing them kindness, respect, and patience to each other. And we don't do enough of it and we're going to lose employees over it. And that's the biggest thing facing me right now. Besides, I'm always going to get cases. Our name's very powerful in Chicago.
Chris Dreyer:
The Golden Rule.
Jon Walner:
But now you have the employees. That's a whole other ball of wax with the flipping of the attorney. Go to Glassdoor right now. "Oh, that person's paying more money." There's so many ways that your employees could go against you, but why not have them go for you by treating with them with kindness, respect, dignity, and empathy?
Chris Dreyer:
Most legal marketing agencies in this space answer to investors. We answer to results. If you want a strategic partner who cares about the impact the way Jon does, that's Rankings. Find us at Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer and we'll be waiting for you.
