Chris Dreyer:
Getting more leads is a major factor in law firm growth, but it's not the only one.
Chris Keller:
A lot of people say, "I want you to make my phone ring. I want more cases." It was all about marketing.
Chris Dreyer:
But Chris Keller didn't have a marketing problem.
Chris Keller:
My phone was ringing. I was bringing in plenty of work. As we added more clients, we got more referrals, and as we added more referral attorneys, we got more ... And so it just all snowballed, which was good.
Chris Dreyer:
So with referrals coming in the door and the phone ringing, it might seem like Chris had everything he needed to keep his firm growing, but like a lot of attorneys, Chris's problem was about how to actually run his business. So how did Chris Keller help get his firm from 60 cases to almost 600 a month in just a few years? You'll just have to keep listening to find out how.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the elite performance marketing agency for law firms. Today, I'm talking with Chris Keller, co-founder of Keller Swan Injury Attorneys. Chris took a firm from 18 employees to over 80 in just three years, and at the time of this recording, was signing nearly 600 cases a month. And guys, just a quick note here, and while after our conversation, Keller Swan was acquired by Top Dog Law, the growth we're talking about happened before the acquisition. Let's get into it.
What actually limits firm growth after early traction is achieved: leadership, not marketing
Chris Keller:
I started a firm back in 2019, and it was me and two of my buddies, and we had one assistant at the time. And every year, we grew, but then by November of '22, we were at 18 people, and that's when things really changed for me. I got involved in a business coaching program and really decided I was going to change my life. I knew that for the firm to grow, I had to grow, and we went from that, again, 18, 19 people in November 2022 to now 80 plus in November of 2025, and '23 and '24 was a real rapid expansions.
Chris Dreyer:
Do you mind sharing the... Was it Vista? Was it a PILMMA? Was it a Vistage, an EO? What kind of coaching?
Chris Keller:
So I first joined Crisp. I went to Michael Mogill's Crisp event. That year was at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. David Goggins spoke that year. Once David Goggins gets done talking, you're like, "Dude, you want me to run through that cement wall? Let's go. I can do it." And so by the end of the event, I was feeling like, "All right, maybe this is the answer to what I'm looking for to continue to grow." We'd actually doubled in size from two and a half million of fees to five million when we joined Crisp. I knew to go to that next level where I really wanted to go, I needed systems, I needed processes. I needed to know how to hire. I didn't even know what KPIs were, never heard of a KPI.
Chris Dreyer:
What is that? Not something at the dinner table.
Chris Keller:
Right. We had never talked about a vision statement or core values or none of that kind of stuff. We signed up for Crisp, joined Crisp, and then some of that stuff started coming together. But then also, I did another coaching program called Fireproof with Mike Morris out of Detroit, Michigan, and that really is where I started focusing now more on the data. Fireproof took it to a different level as it related to personal injury firms and seeing Mike Morris and how he grew a personal injury firm to be what it is today.
Chris Dreyer:
When everybody talks about growth, they typically just think about the leads, but really, it's the leads plus it's the intake, plus it's getting higher fees. So if you could just speak to each of those, just the recipe is of from marketing, like what changed, then the focus on intake and then the focus on getting more value out of your cases?
Why intake breakdowns derail law firm scaling before marketing ever becomes the problem
Chris Keller:
The crazy part about it is I think a lot of people come at it from how do I make my phone ring more? They want the phone to ring more. So when I joined Crisp, I was doing well with cases. I was bringing in plenty of work and it was all through a referral network. When I went to Crisp, I went to Crisp not to ... A lot of people go there and say, "I want you to make my phone ring. I want more cases." It was all about marketing. "Teach me the tricks of marketing. I want to know." And I went and said, "I don't need the phone to ring. Fix my operations. Let's focus on operations. Let's focus on making that better. How do I make my systems better? How do I create a high performing culture? How do I implement accountability? How do I have difficult conversations with my staff? How do I hire, recruit, retain?" I didn't know how to do any of that shit, or at least I didn't know how to do it well.
Then when I said, "Okay, now look, I'm starting to build the systems and the processes and the operational support. All right, now we can handle more cases. Now we're able to expand our reach, so let's invest more into operations." So then I went, and let's invest in intake. So before I make the phone ring, let's make sure we know how to answer the phone calls. How do we answer the phone calls and how are we going to answer them and who's going to answer them, and what does it look like when they answer them? We overstaffed intake. We went into intake headway. We hired an outside consultant to come in and help us really build our scripts and how are we going to grade these people and scorecards, and we did secret callers and all that kind of stuff first before we made the phone ring.
Chris Dreyer:
I want to stop here for a second and really drive this point home. Many firms try to grow by throwing money into marketing with the hopes of generating more leads. Chris grew by spending time on systems. He knew that if he poured additional leads into a broken bucket, he'd just lose money faster. So let's dig into how he partnered with Blake Swan and fixed his firm's operations and plugged those holes.
Chris Keller:
So then I get introduced to Blake, and Blake is all marketing. He came from a different law firm than I did. I came from a traditional firm, been around for 40 plus years, name, reputation, they built everything on name and reputation, and a great firm. Been around for 40 freaking years and big verdicts and very successful firm. Blake came from the high volume marketing side of the firm and just saw it differently, so when he came in, it was like fuel to the fire. We had systems and process, we figured out some of the high level stuff. He knew how to make the phone ring, and next thing you know, we go from signing 60, 70, 80 cases a month, we went before he started to 150. Then we jumped to 200, blew past three and 400 to 500, and so I think last month, we signed 569 cases or something, and this month, I think we'll pass that. I think we're on pace to blow by 600 this month.
So he really brought the know how on the marketing side and we already had the systems figured out, so it was just the perfect blend of, all right, let's do this.
Chris Dreyer:
What I love about the story is you work backwards. A lot of times, the firm is like the opposite. It's like, let's pump the leads in and let the intake and ops explode and then try to fix them, but you worked backwards and that let you maintain the reputation and let you take on more work. I guess let's do the same. Let's work backwards. What levers did you pull on the ops side?
Chris Keller:
Well, so look, it's one thing when you're lean and mean. So we were lean and mean. When we first started, we had one assistant, and then we grew through COVID and added some people, but I was always trying to be forward-thinking. So one thing that I think I always got bogged down is that I left that old firm because they had their way of doing it. "This is the way we do it, this is the way we've always done it." "Well, how about this way?" "Well, we don't want to do it that way. We've always done it this way." I'm like, "Okay, well great. I don't want to do it that way."
And so then I started my own firm and I wasn't really sure how to do things differently, and so it was like whenever a problem would come up, I was like, "Well, that's the way we did it there. Let's do it that way." And then you said that enough times to say, "Well, I thought I left there because of it"
Chris Dreyer:
That's awesome.
Chris Keller:
You're like, "Shit, I'm doing everything the same way they did it. What are we doing this for?" And so I was like, "Look, I got to come at this different." One thing we did, and in some ways was forced because we were growing so fast and we had a small space, is we were remote before remote was cool. We were remote before COVID, and so then COVID happened and all these places are going remote and they're trying to stumble to figure it out and we're already there. We were already a hybrid work schedule and a remote work environment. We had people all across the state, and so we were lean, mean and nimble to make those kind of changes, and so we were able to continue to grow and hire because we had some of that figured out.
And then we went into VAs before I think VAs were really talked about a lot in the law firm space. We were just talking about our first VA that we ever hired is still with us today, four plus years.
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Chris Keller:
So pretty incredible to have a virtual assistant start with you, and she's been here for four years. We added a VA and we were using virtual assistants, and maybe it's just because of who I hang out with and the circles I'm in, but VAs are starting to catch more and more and more and more and more. Firms are starting to talk about it and start to use it, or at least the network I'm in, but for a long time, you didn't really hear about people offshoring law firm talent.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, Attorney Assistant, LegalSoft, there's several now.
Chris Keller:
So we had that in place first. The hardest part about growing and scaling and we've ... Look, I'd love to tell you we got it perfect. I'd love to tell you like, "Hey guys, I crushed it. Made no mistakes. We nailed it." We had our growing challenges and pains, but because we had leveraged VAs, because we had gone heavily in VAs, that did give us a little bit of opportunity to make some mistakes because we weren't overly leveraged, because that's one of your biggest costs obviously and one of the biggest problems in scaling is how do you staff the cases? You're going to sign up these cases, but a lot of times in personal injury, you can't staff the cases as quickly as you can sign them, because we have the delayed revenue. We sign up the case, we may not see revenue for 12 months or 14 months, and meanwhile, as you're adding those cases, the payroll is immediate. You hire that person, you got to start paying them.
So a lot of the times, the trick and the hard part in scaling is how do you maintain the growth and hire? And so there's ways to do it. You can go slow, which is probably the smart way to do it, or you can go really fast, which is the way we did it, which is maybe not the smart way to do it, but we survived. We made it.
Chris Dreyer:
No, that's amazing. Secret shopping, the scorecards, the KPIs, was that when you started listening to the calls on the intake? Were you like, "Oh, that one back there, that one, we should have closed that one." Did you have any of those moments?
How visibility into metrics replaces instinct and creates repeatable growth decisions in PI firms
Chris Keller:
Yeah, no, absolutely, and we still do. Look, it's tough. I say this in all sincerity, but as long as you have people, you're going to have people problems, and it's not a bad thing. It's just, it is what it is. It's in any profession, in any career, as long as you're hiring people, people get sick, people get divorced, people go through illnesses. There's all kinds of stuff that happens, and people don't show up every single day at their best. It's just not going to happen.
Now, in my personal journey, I've figured out ways to be able to show up as my best for my team, and I show up here in a much better way, but there were many years, and especially many years as an employee, that I didn't show up as my best self. I showed up hung over, lack of sleep, just got in a fight with my wife. My kids were mad at the world, whatever's going on, and I came to work and not in the best place and didn't do the best job. And we're not machines, we're humans and humans are going to make mistakes, so as long as we have humans, which there's always going to be human element to what we do, there is AI and different tools now that some tasks and things can be replaced or at least people are made more efficient to do a better job, but as long as you have those human elements, there's going to be times, no matter how well you train or no matter how well you hire, something's going to happen.
So yeah, we still have those moments where you're like, "Ooh, what's going on there?" But one of the things I was going to tell you I think that has made the biggest difference, and it was number one, we implemented EOS. I read Traction. Obviously, Mike Morrison, Fireproof is a EOS firm that's fireproof and his system, so we put together a leadership team, we started operating in the My 90s software. We started tracking our data, and once we started knowing data, wow, that's life changing stuff, because based on my career, based on my experience, I could tell you that I believed my average fee per case to be this. I believe that I handled and settled this many cases. It was all my gut. My gut told me X, Y, and Z. I had to speculate and assume based on my experience, based on everything I knew, this is what it was. But then once we started actually tracking the data and knew the data, wow, now you can be proactive versus reactive and you can make a lot more plans.
So that was really the the life altering moment, is, yeah, we had great systems and processes, we had ways to onboard and train, we had ways to hire, we had retention policies in place, we put good benefits packages, we had remote work, we had done all kinds of great things, but until you really know your data and get to know the data in an intimate way, you still can't be that effective.
Why intake coverage gaps on nights and weekends cause more case loss than insufficient lead volume
Chris Dreyer:
On the data side, look, and I've been 13, 14 years in specifically just legal, it's the fall off rate. It's like I've zeroed in on the fall off rate lately, because everyone talks about their wanted case percentage and they always say, "It's 92 to 5%," which is BS because I just don't believe them. But anyways. 92 to 95. And then they'll talk about the average fees or the CAC, and it's like, "Well, did you count fall off?" And then you start measuring that fallout percentage between... And then it's like, "Oh, it's not 15%. It's 30%." It's like, "Oh, okay. Well, you got a leak there." One of the things that was eye opening to me during the week on your nine to five, your fall off rate, because of course there's a lawyer in the office. You sign the retainer, you connect them to the lawyer, but if you have the intake on a Saturday or at night and they got to wait until Monday to connect to the lawyer, your fall off rate sometimes increases without attention there.
And it's just like some of these crazy things that that wasn't even in my brain, had no awareness that that was even something. Now that I'm running a marketing agency, this is the stuff that I'm looking at, it's like, "Well, what happened here?" It's like it was right there for you.
Chris Keller:
We saw it and we adapted to it. So again, we knew our data, and knowing our data, then you're going to go diagnose the problem. Well, all right, now if you diagnose the problem, now you can go and solve for the problem, but if you don't even know how to diagnose the problem and where the problem exists, then how are you going to fix it? So we were seeing that too, and so we're staffed on the weekends. We have an intake that answers the phone on the weekends. We know what our high volume parts are, so we stagger that and then we back it up with after our call service, but we have our people, our intake agents answer on the weekend. But then also what we did, we put in place our claims certification. Again, we accomplished this through VAs, so now our virtual assistants, we can get them to work Saturdays and Sundays, we can get them to work nights and weekends.
With the time change, they can be on in our hours, work our hours. So in our claims verification department, they work the weekends too because we saw that happen. We would sign up a case at four o'clock on a Friday, nobody would call them until Monday. You'd call them on Monday, they've hired another attorney. You're like, "What the hell happened? We signed the contract." So we were seeing that, and so now we have our claims verification department working Saturdays and Sundays, so now if there's calls on Friday, they're getting a call Saturday morning, and these people are like, "Wow, you guys are open on Saturday." "Yes, absolutely," and now they're getting called on Saturday, they're getting called on Sunday. They're getting set up for treatment on Saturday and Sunday. We're getting them to the doctors and help them find doctors and do the things that they need on Saturdays and Sundays, and now that level of service is just a different level. They're getting a text message, they're getting email, they're getting a phone call, and now they're locked in so now that fall off rate's gone down.
And we still have a high fall off rate because whether it's popular or not, our call center is essentially a one call close. We're signing every case and then weeding them out, so we have a big follow off rate over 30 days because we'll sign it up, there's no coverage, we'll sign it up, the liability's not there, we'll sign it up.
Chris Dreyer:
And I think that's smart. I think that's smart. Hook them, tanner, then drill down. Yeah.
Chris Keller:
Yeah. We have a high fall off rate, but we expect it, but once you know your data, then you know, is it higher this month versus that month and then was something off this month versus that month? Because then you can look back and say, "Okay, well, we are understaffed. That's the problem. We lost more cases because the staff wasn't there to make the phone calls," but you can see the trends and know. But if your fall off rate is always here and you're there, you're okay, but if you're not going too far one way or another, then you can account for it. But if you don't even know what the number is, you don't know if you're doing good or bad. You don't know what's normal.
Even knowing settlements and knowing that June is historically a lower month, so then the following June, if you look and say, "Well, I think June's a historically lower month," but you don't know what your last June was, well, is this month better or worse or how much worse is it? What percentage are we off? And so when you're building all that out, knowing those trends, knowing that data really lets you, "Okay, it's 30%, but we're okay with 30%. Why are we okay with 30%? Because we signed 600 cases in ..."
Chris Dreyer:
That's very eye-opening. And when you joined Fireproof, did they give you like, "Here's what your nationwide average for wanted rate should be. Here's your average fee." I don't know, time on desk. Did they give you some of those numbers?
Chris Keller:
100%. Mike Morris opens up his books and shows you. They're an open book. They show you all their data, so you see a firm that's doing $300 million in gross settlements and you see their headcounts and their staffing models and all that, you get to see how this firm operates. Now obviously, they're in Michigan, I'm in South Florida, and maybe there are some things that are ... I can't hire an attorney in South Florida for what they hire an attorney in Michigan, so maybe we're going to have things off, but I can sit down with John and talk about it. "All right, let's walk through my scenario versus yours." But then they give you the data that you need to track, so they're telling you, "Here's the things that you really need to know. You need to know these data points."
And so then the next step that they just added and it has been eye-opening to me is Mastermind groups. So now, I'm a part of a Mastermind group. It's grown. I think we have 12 law firms from across the country in it, and we're responsible for coming to our Mastermind meetings with our data. And so they gave us a list and I think it's like 150 plus data points. To be in the Mastermind, you have to be able to track that data, and a lot of firms just frankly don't know how to do it and can't do it. And we invested in a data engineer. I have an in-house data engineer. His entire job is Power BI dashboards and collecting data and providing me with data.
Chris Dreyer:
So hold on, we got to dig into that. Okay. Okay. So I have, in the SaaS world, it's RevOps. Your go to market strategy, your integrations, your CRM, your dashboards. You mentioned Power BI. I don't know what the hell Power BI is. Is that the equivalent of a Domo? Is it-
Chris Keller:
Exactly. Same thing.
Chris Dreyer:
Okay.
Chris Keller:
Same thing.
Chris Dreyer:
So just for our audience, because this is unique. We do a lot of these, but you casually ... Tell me, the data engineer, what do they do? Because it's clearly a ton of value.
Chris Keller:
Yeah. So obviously, again, there's value to different organizations. So I knew, hey, I need data. I have to be able to get data. And I knew that, hey, I'm probably not the best person in the firm to go get the data and probably not the best use of my time and I'm probably not the most skilled data. And I looked around, I'm like, "Well, I don't know that I have anybody else that can do this at a high level." So I was like, "We need to go hire somebody that can do this. The only way we're going to get to where we want to go is by knowing our data." So I went to Crisp and I said, "Hey, look, I want to recruit a data engineer." And the cool thing about that was, and I talked to Crisp a few times in the business coaching, was I never hired a data engineer before, so how do I know what to look for? I go, "Who am I even looking for?"
It's like for you to go hire somebody that does social media or SEO, that's easy for you. It's in your realm of what you do. For me to go hire a social media coordinator, I don't know what I'm looking for. So they're like, "Why try to go recruit and hire somebody that you don't even know what you're looking for? " So they did the recruitment of that person for me and they landed me an A plus rockstar who's been with me now for over a year and has just done incredible things for us. We get the final say, we get the final interview, but they did all the heavy lifting and they put him through their hiring funnel, which we also have as well for our staff, but they put them through a hiring funnel. And so once they get through that hiring funnel, you've gotten rid of a lot of the bad, the people who are not going to work. The cream of the crop rise in that funnel, and so this guy came to us and he's been amazing.
So Power BI is just like a Domo. It just has a little bit more flexibility, smaller price point in a lot of ways too. It's cheaper, and again, I talk to my data engineer all the time. I just had my weekly one-on-one with him, and most of the time, he talks above my head. I'm like, "Hey, Alex, remember, talk to me like I'm a third-grader. I have no idea what you just said, man. Sounds great, but let's break it down." So that was a critical hire for us because it gave us access to the data that we had to be able to present and show to the groups.
And obviously, what gets measured gets improved, and then what the Mastermind group does is what gets measured, it gets improved, but what gets measured and made public gets drastically improved. So now all of a sudden, I have to track the data, and I'll never forget, I'm out in Arizona for one of the summits and Mike Morris always goes around and says, "Hey, what are you committing to by our next meeting?" And I said, "I'll tell you what, I'm not going to be the last place." I was like, "We're going to improve this data so that we're not in last place," and so that's what we did. We went to work. We knew what needed to be improved because we knew our data and we went out to work on it.
And for us, the hardest part through growth was profitability, and so we made a concerted effort to dive in, focus on making this a very profitable business. And again, we made a drastic improvement year over year and keep making improvements on that, because again, we're looking at it, we know what it is, and we know the things that we're going to have to do in order to fix it.
Chris Dreyer:
Man, you've got me pumped up after this one. Thank you for sharing that. That's amazing. What a great story. This has been a ton of fun. I got just a couple of final questions. What do you see for the future? What's some things you're excited about, and then just how can people reach you?
Chris Keller:
So look, when we went down this road of growth and building a firm, I knew that the legal market, the legal industry was changing. You just hear about it, you read about it, all those types of things. Non-attorney ownership in Arizona and DC and Colorado, to think and to believe that lawyers are going to be insulated against it and think that somehow, we're better than the doctors and orthodontics and dentists and all these other people who are getting swallowed up. It's coming for this industry in some way or form, through consolidation, through M&As, through PE, through whatever it is. If there's money to be made, they're going to find their way into it.
And so when Blake and I went down this road to grow a firm, the conversation was either, A, we want to build the firm that we can then go and acquire other firms and continue to grow and expand our footprint and be that firm of the future, before we're thinking leverage AI, leverage virtual assistants, do the things to really be an amazing firm, remote work, all those things that are going to separate us, differentiate ourselves to be market leaders and industry leaders, be innovators in the space, or two, put ourselves in a situation that we could be acquired. And we figured on the way to number one, number two would present itself, and so that's what we're working towards.
We're working hard to make sure that we build something that is either, A, that we can go and be those industry leaders and we're taking over the world, or B, somebody's going to come talk to us and present an opportunity to us that gives us the opportunity we're looking for. Now, it has to be the right opportunity, but for people to bury their head in the sand and think this is not happening or this is not coming, it's going to be commonplace before long. Just like virtual assistance wasn't a big thing, it's more commonplace. AI has been around forever. People forget, it's been around since like, what, 1970? It's just not something that ... So all this stuff is happening and either you're out front or you're being left behind, and we always want to be out front.
So we're looking at all that stuff. We're talking about, we're having those conversations. We're in the rooms where the people have those conversations so that we're hopefully industry leaders in the space and we're the trendsetter. So if people want to connect, I have callchrisskeller.com, which is my personal branded website. I have a blog there. I have a podcast as well called the First Lab Podcast I was blessed to have you and grateful to have you as a guest on.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I had a lot of fun.
Chris Keller:
And then the book. So callchriskeller.com. Chris@kellerswan.com is my email. I can talk about this stuff all day, every day. I love it more than anything in the world and it's what really excites me, gets me going, so please reach out. I'd love to have a conversation.
Chris Dreyer:
When you fix the operation bucket, the marketing can fill up without worry of leakage. This is how we approach partnerships at Rankings. We don't just turn on the faucet. We make sure you capture every drop. If you patch the holes and you're ready to fill up the bucket, find us at rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind.
