Chris Dreyer:
The law offices of James Scott Farrin is a massive vessel. VP of Marketing and Operations, David Chamberlin helped steer ship that has represented over 73,000 clients and fields a team of nearly 300.
David Chamberlin:
Even though we're 300 plus, we still want to work like we've only got like 25 employees so that we can make changes quickly when we need to.
Chris Dreyer:
But that level of scale usually brings a crushing amount of bureaucracy. Leadership cannot simply point where they want to go and expect the ship to turn on a dime. Every time they try to turn the wheel, it's a fight.
David Chamberlin:
When you've got nearly 300 employees like we do, it's a lot more challenging when you want to launch a new initiative or make a change. There's a lot more communication that goes into it.
Chris Dreyer:
As your team grows, how do you avoid becoming the Titanic? Big, powerful but nearly impossible to turn.
David Chamberlin:
There's a lot more getting people to understand the why and then just getting the change to actually happen. Just like any business dealing with a lot of employees, you got to be real careful, try to not get trapped into any kind of bureaucracy.
Chris Dreyer:
The answer isn't the bigger rudder, it's a better engine room.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. In today's episode, David Chamberlin reveals how he redesigned his internal workflows to ensure that adding weight doesn't mean losing speed.
Let's kick it off with a win. So off the top of the dome, what's something you're excited about now, something the firm's involved in?
David Chamberlin:
We're launching a couple big initiatives this year that I'm really excited about that are really focused on enhancing the client experience. I think it's going to be transformative for us and just really excited about what that's going to look like five years from now.
Chris Dreyer:
So can I dig into this a little bit? I've went down this rabbit hole. On the agency side for client service, you have an account manager, your main point of contact, but then typically who talks to delivery is the project manager. And on the firm side, if I'm trying to equate those in the same manner, I guess would the project manager be the case manager?
David Chamberlin:
Yeah. So our paralegals are going to be the primary contact for our clients. Obviously the attorneys are heavily involved, but the day-to-day contact is really the paralegals getting with the clients. Yep.
Chris Dreyer:
I guess the reason why I ask, and look, you guys have thousands of Google reviews and amazing, very high rating, so you guys are taking this very serious. I guess in the legal space, I don't see that account manager client service only role. The paralegals are doing it. Do you see a distinction, a separation, or how do you think about that?
David Chamberlin:
We have somebody that serves time in a client service role to ensure that they handle any issues that may get elevated to them. So we do have that. It's not many thankfully, but again, the paralegal is the one that has the primary relationship with the client and they're really in charge of keeping the client informed, letting them know what's going on with their case, and also just providing the excellent service that we do.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks for that. I mean, you know better than anyone how important the reviews are to the LLMs, to the LSA, to the maps, and so I think that's super smart that you guys are taking it to that top, top 1%, however you want to say it.
How do you think about building a marketing plan where you're going to deploy capital in terms of distribution? How do you think about that for your firm?
David Chamberlin:
Well, I mean we think about it all the time. Marketing has changed dramatically from when I first started. TV's still an important part of our mix, but it's certainly changed a lot. It used to be just broadcast TV. Now it's really fragmented with streaming and over-the-top advertising, OTT, very fragmented. Obviously LSA wasn't around 15 years ago. That has become a critical part of our mix. So just paid digital is much more important than it ever has been to us.
So trying to find that right balance between TV and paid digital is really where we focus and trying to find. And we do outdoor advertising as well, billboards, which is a decent part of our mix, but trying to get that right mix between paid digital and TV is where I think we are constantly tweaking, just like a lot of law firms.
Chris Dreyer:
It's so evolving and I think there's a place for it all. I think, at least from my experience, the firms that I see that struggle, when you think of it like a funnel, and maybe that's a little antiquated, but you've got your top of funnel like awareness where you're marketing to everyone, like the brand, and then you have your, let's say, let's eliminate the middle. That's like your reviews, social proof definitely plays a part. But if you go to the bottom, I think of like GEO, SEO, LSA, PPC, like the capture. I see firms really struggle when they don't do the awareness side. They're not doing radio or Facebook ads or over the top.
David Chamberlin:
As you know, it's all name recognition. I mean, so you want to build that brand so that when people need you and they go and do these searches, that they recognize your brand, they recognize your name, and that at least is a first step to hopefully getting the client to contact you.
Chris Dreyer:
And you mentioned LSA. So you said, hey, this is one of the critically important channels. And to me there's not a ton of levers. So you guys are just, you're all in on LSA. As much as you want to share, how does it compare as a channel to maybe some of the other channels and just in terms of a firm's marketing mix?
David Chamberlin:
So it's a big part of our mix whether we like it or not. Google is the 800-pound gorilla. So it's definitely a big part of our mix. We are in a unique situation in that we are, North Carolina is a contributory negligence state. So as your listeners will know, basically if one of our clients can be found to be 1% at fault, it is possible they could be barred from any recovery or one of I think three or four states in the country that follow that antiquated law.
So that makes it very difficult for us. And the value of a typical PI case for us in North Carolina is much smaller than it would be in California, for example. We run a volume firm, and we have to because of the reduced case values that we have to deal with.
Chris Dreyer:
I got one other question on the marketing. And the reason I ask is 'cause you guys have done heavy TV, the celebrity endorsements, you've done heavy broadcast television and I believe you've even had a big print operation. I'm not sure the legal standings on that right now. But how do you think about social? Where does social fit in the mix? We talked to Morris Bart. Morris Bart's like, "Ah, not a big fan," but where do you think about it?
David Chamberlin:
So we pivoted. I would say really up until a couple years ago, social was a minor part of our mix. We did it just because it's there. But a couple of years ago we made the decision to invest heavily in it and really tackle it. So it is a huge part of our marketing mix now, and the reason why is go where the eyeballs are. I mean, everybody is on social. So if you're not, you're missing a lot of eyeballs. So we have fully embraced social.
Chris Dreyer:
Well said.
And then, we got to touch on the reviews. So you got over a thousand reviews in four locations. Now you advertise a ton, so you got a lot of swings at the plate, but can you provide any guidance or suggestions on how a firm listening could go about in capturing reviews and just how you think about the review acquisition and its importance?
Why personal injury firms should treat online reviews as a primary growth lever instead of passive reputation management.
David Chamberlin:
So reviews is critical. It's an important thing that we push constantly in our firm. I'm stating the obvious, but if a client is looking for a law firm and they see a list of options, they're probably going to contact, at least contact one of the ones that has the most reviews with the best rating.
People believe in social proof. We all shop on Amazon. We all buy this stuff with the best rating. Same thing applies to law firms. So it's a major focus for us. It has been for years, and I think the advice I would give is make it an important metric in your firm. Make it everybody's responsibility that's client facing. You might even want to designate a person or team that helps to generate these reviews that don't deal with clients. We have done that.
And then just build it into the culture that it's an expectation that, hey, it's okay to ask for reviews. It's not dirty or scammy or anything like that. I think sometimes a lot of professionals feel like it's too salesy to ask for a review. And it's not. It's completely appropriate and everybody's used to it nowadays.
Chris Dreyer:
And I agree. I mean it's also just how discovery is changing. And ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude, one of the first, if you ask practically any variation of an input, a prompt, and you ask who's the best lawyer, it almost always will say, one of the listings will say they have X amount of reviews or they're X rated. So clearly the LLMs are putting an emphasis on it. We know the impact from LSA and local SEO just from a rankings perspective, not to mention the conversion social proof aspect that you mentioned.
David just dropped a masterclass on reputation management, but there's always a catch. Reviews drive calls, and if you have a thousand plus five star reviews, the phone is going to ring, a lot. That is where many firms crumble. They spend a fortune getting the phone to ring, but they treat intake like a reception desk instead of a sales floor.
When you're processing the volume that David is with over 73,000 clients served, you can't just answer the phone. You have to engineer a system that converts those calls into cases.
Let's kick it over to sales. So intake, I mean, I'm going to do some terrible math here. So you had 73,000 cases since 1997. You're looking at 3,800 cases a year, roughly 10 cases signed per day, something like that. I might be way off. So you're processing a lot of volume. So how is the intake team evolved? We'll talk about growth path too, but talk to me about intake and kind of how your firm thinks about it.
What a 20-person intake team with dedicated attorneys does to convert higher-value cases at scale.
David Chamberlin:
Oh, well, I mean if you're ranking in importance, it goes marketing and then intake. Intake is everything. So you got to be able to capture. When the client calls, you want to make sure they feel good about the call they just made, that they feel confident, they feel heard and they feel safe that they've contacted the right law firm. And that's what our intake does. They are phenomenal.
It's evolved a lot since when I first started the firm. When I first started, our intake department was like, I don't know, three or four people. Now it's near 20. We don't run a 24/7 intake like some firms do, but it's pretty close. We have intake staff that are all over the country to help with that. And it's a hard job, but we have rock stars in our intake department. They're just amazing.
Chris Dreyer:
So you have an escalation. If someone wants to talk to an attorney, do you have a dedicated intake attorney? That's a big question that many, hey, how involved should the attorneys be on intake?
David Chamberlin:
Yeah, we have dedicated intake attorneys. They work exclusively in intake. For us, we have found that to be a best practice. We certainly have other attorneys in the firm will also participate in intake when necessary, but for the most part, we have an escalation process where a client calls in, and if it meets a certain threshold, they're always going to talk with an intake attorney, or if there's just something going on with their potential legal need where we feel they need to speak with an attorney first. So it can depend on case type or case details.
Chris Dreyer:
I can imagine that really impacts the conversions too. When somebody's on the fence, they actually got to speak to an attorney as opposed to maybe another firm they just talked to, an intake specialist.
David Chamberlin:
For sure.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk about the chase, right? Talk to me about the form comes in and you don't get in touch with the person. Are you chasing 30 days? Are you chasing 14 days? Are you texting? Are you? How do you think about double dials? Do you do double dial? Talk to me about all that.
How intake teams pursue unresponsive leads across phone, text, and email to prevent signed cases from slipping away.
David Chamberlin:
Yeah, so that's another area we've played with a lot over the years. Right now we're chasing for a couple of weeks. We have found that to be the sweet spot for us. I know other firms will go longer than that. We're pretty aggressive. We utilize phone, text, email, and have a chase sequence. We try to use the right language in all of those communications to get the person to contact us back, and we've experimented with that a lot over the years. So yeah, we're utilizing all resources and all necessary tactics to get the client to call us back when they seem to have gone MIA.
Chris Dreyer:
Just another question on, are you guys doing a power dialer comes in, it goes to the next available rep, or are you manually, I mean with staffing 20 plus, I mean you certainly have the bodies. Maybe you don't need a power dialer. Talk to me about the tech stack and how you think about tech as it relates to intake.
David Chamberlin:
So tech just generally in our firm, it's one of our major things that we focus on everywhere. So we are tech adopters. We want to make sure that we have the latest and greatest that makes everything flow better and whether it's better for systems or clients. When a call comes in, it's rolling over, so it's finding the next available person instantly.
We have a safety net of a third party answering service. We don't want any calls ever going to the third party answering service. That is a worst case scenario kind of thing, 'cause they're always going to convert worse and it's just a worse experience for our potential clients.
Chris Dreyer:
I have one other big question on the intake, and this is another one that I get. Some people are like, "Hey, use a script. These are the exact words that you say." And then other people are more on the framework like, "Here's your opening." And it lends itself to a little bit. It gives the intake specialist, it requires more training of course, but it gives them more flexibility to try to close the call.
How do you think about the script versus the framework style on the intake?
David Chamberlin:
Great question, yeah. We used to be much more scripted than we are now, but we have found now is best to bridge provide the framework. We want the conversation to flow naturally, and if you're too scripted, it can come across that way. We've all been on calls where you contact some business and you can tell they are just scripted 'cause either they're not answering your question or they say ... It's a bad experience. So we've gone much more on the framework side and really embraced training our staff to do and say the right things.
Chris Dreyer:
Fantastic, fantastic. Definitely much more complicated, but has those advantages. Probably lends itself to more review opportunities too 'cause they know when they can insert that ask when they're being helpful.
Talk to me about the talent. Clearly a firm as successful as yours has high standards, you're looking for top talent. How do you think about recruiting top talent, keeping top talent, nurturing them, all the above?
David Chamberlin:
Yeah. Well, I think we've embraced the Netflix model I would say, which is that, or Bezos and Amazon, Apple, all say the same thing. A players want to work with A players. And that's our goal, is to get A players across the board. And also A players are just going to produce more than B or C players. So we've embraced that model and that's our goal from a recruiting standpoint, is that if we come across somebody that we think is going to be an A player player, even if we don't have a place for them right then and there, we may still hire them and say, "Okay, listen, we'll find something for you to do because we recognize that you can be a major contributor to the firm." And so constantly trying to up our game and up our talent is something we're constantly focused on.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's excellent. Yeah, I read that Netflix book and finished the book and I'm like, "Oh boy," 'cause it got me fired up. Like, "Ah." We get in those scenarios where you got to maybe a B player hanging around. And by the way, they might've been an A at some point, and then you grow and then your ceiling raises, your standards raise, and I think it's the most challenging part of running a business.
David Chamberlin:
I think it's also, I think managers and leaders just sometimes forget that when you keep somebody who's not a high performer around, the damage it can do to the rest of a high performing team. I mean, I can't tell you how many times unfortunately I've had to let somebody go, and then the team's like, "What took so long? Why'd you do that?" And it just wears on them and their morale and it drags them down. And there's countless studies that come out nowadays that show how one poor performer can drag the team down 15, 20%, that kind of thing.
One of the other things we loved from the Netflix book, I read it as well, was the whole keeper test. If someone's not familiar, the keeper test, Netflix said that you need to routinely evaluate your staff and implement the keeper test, which says if the person came into your office today and said they were quitting, how hard would you fight to keep them? If the answer is you wouldn't fight to keep them, then why are you keeping them now? If the answer is you would fight to keep them, well then make sure that's an A player and make sure you're keeping them happy and keeping them engaged.
Chris Dreyer:
I love that. There's another mental model that I use as it relates to even vendors and agencies. So here's one of the things that I do. I'll say if I have an employee that's in-house, I'm like, "Would I pay a vendor?" And you think of it like that fixed fee to do this thing if it was a vendor. And sometimes you're like, "No, I wouldn't," based upon the output of the employee. And then sometimes you're like, "Oh, heck yeah, I would pay that."
David Chamberlin:
That's a great idea. I love that. I love that.
Chris Dreyer:
David's right. A players want to work with A players, and when you tolerate B players, you aren't just hurting the bottom line. You're telling your best people that good enough is acceptable. But here's the other side of that coin. You can hire a team of absolute rock stars, but if you put them in a broken system and they fell, and if you don't fix it, they'll leave.
David realized to keep 300 employees moving fast, he couldn't just rely on good people. He needed a better process. He didn't look to other law firms for the answer. He looked to the assembly line.
David Chamberlin:
Years ago, we implemented Lean, if you're familiar with that, the Toyota production system, Lean. So our goal is to remove unnecessary waste at every step of the process. So going back to the way you look at vendors, we look at the same way. We look at our systems and say, "Would a client pay for this?" And some things are necessary. Client doesn't want to pay for following certain regulations, but you have no choice. But there are things in your system where it can be unnecessary, and you got to evaluate those things and say, "Why am I doing this?" Or, "Why are we doing it this way? It doesn't make sense anymore."
Chris Dreyer:
You opened up a can of worms for me. I'm speaking to the integrator now. So you threw out Lean. So Jack Welch is peeking over your shoulder from the grave. Are you putting people, your paralegals through Six Sigma stuff? Look, I read the Toyota production system, the book back in the day. Are you doing these? I believe they have quality circles. How are you actually approaching the Lean methodology of eliminating waste?
Why annual department reviews eliminate waste before bureaucracy slows firm expansion.
David Chamberlin:
So when we first started, nothing was Six Sigma, but when we first rolled out the initiative for well over a year, maybe even more than that, we met with every single department, painstakingly went through every step of the process and questioned everything, and then we refined the processes. That's something we still do. On an annual basis, we will go in and review processes and see where we can get more efficient.
So we don't have the testing groups at this point in time, but it's becoming ingrained in the culture where we just want people looking for waste and suggesting better ways to do things. And I think we've done a good job of that. It can always be better, of course. But the ultimate goal is to get your people on the front lines that are suggesting all of these things. And that's where I think we've made some good strides.
Chris Dreyer:
I think it's so hard to do. One of the things when you get bigger, and look, we're not at 300, but we're about, I think we're about 180 people now, is the more roles you create, it just creates more silos. So you're like, "Hey, I want accounts enablement because it'll enable the," and then it's like, "Okay, now I just put another kind of layer in there," and it's like. So is that kind of part of this Lean, eliminating some of the bureaucracy and making them closer in terms of communication? Or are you thinking about it just pure from process expenses, things like that?
David Chamberlin:
Oh, it's both. It's both, yeah. I mean, we don't want unnecessary positions. We also don't want a lot of silos where it's not necessary or where it hurts the systems or the clients. So it's all. We want to achieve continuous flow as best as we can. So that's the goal. Eliminate waste to continuous flow. Right?
Chris Dreyer:
Love it, throughput. David, this has been amazing. For our audience listening that maybe has some questions about what we discussed or they want to get in touch with you or maybe have a case to refer the firm, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
David Chamberlin:
Oh yeah, we'd love it. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm there. You can always just email me as well or call me, but happy talk and answer any questions and help out where I can.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Thanks for coming on the show.
David Chamberlin:
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Chris Dreyer:
Scale is often the enemy of speed. Most firms grow until they become the Titanic, too big to turn, too slow to react to the icebergs ahead. But David proved that with the right engine room, you can have the power of a giant and the agility of a startup. And if you're looking to build a massive vessel of your own, you need the right fuel to keep that engine running.
That's where we come in. At Rankings.io, we help elite firms dominate the search results and capture the cases that fuel major growth. If you're yearning to scale without slowing down, visit us at Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind.
