Ed Ciarimboli:
The offer on the case going into trial was $45,000, and the jury's verdict was four million.
Chris Dreyer:
Do you hear about a massive verdict and you think it's about luck or finding the perfect case? It's not. It's about being proactive. The resources to win seven- or eight-figure cases are out there, but you have to build the infrastructure before the case comes in.
Ed Ciarimboli:
Sometimes I'm like, I get called in six months after they've been up and running. I'm like, "All right, did you do the download of the cell phone? Did we have the download of the cameras, driver-facing and forward-facing? Where's all the ECM data?" And they're looking at me like, "Yeah, we kinda didn't do any of that," because it's expensive.
Chris Dreyer:
If you're waiting six months to hire experts because you're worried about the cost, the evidence is already gone. To play at the highest level, you need systems in place and ready to deploy at the moment you get the call.
Ed Ciarimboli:
We have a team now in the trucking world. We got a cell phone expert. We got a reconstructionist. We got a human factors expert. We got an investigator.
Chris Dreyer:
Ed Ciarimboli didn't start out with an endless war chest or team of elite experts on speed dial. A decade ago, he broke into a highly competitive trucking niche by simply putting his head down and outworking the defense. He had to earn his way to the top, case by case, but the resources you need to land big cases are available to attorneys who know where to look. Today, we're going to look under the hood.
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. Today, I'm speaking with Ed Ciarimboli, a founding partner at Fellerman & Ciarimboli in Pennsylvania. We talk about shifting your operations into high gear, avoiding the blind spots of cheap intake, and building a firm equipped for the long haul. The first tip Ed shares is how he keeps his new clients engaged in the process. Let's get into it.
Ed Ciarimboli:
I will tell you, one of the things that has been a game changer, I mean, we text our clients all the time, and we're telling them. We're giving them updates, "Hey, we had a great deposition today." Or, "Look, this didn't go so well, but here's how we're going to attack it next time." And so the clients never really feel like they're in the dark. The things that are really moving the needle in the cases, we're making sure that they know about them along the way, so that when we walk into a mediation or we walk into a settlement conference with the judge, they're prepared. And I think that they need to be prepared all along the way so that they have confidence in us, and even more so, we have confidence in them that they're going to want to take this forward.
Chris Dreyer:
A lot of the audience listening is like, "Well, how do you get the big cases?" And a lot of PI firms try to be everything to everyone, but you've really carved a serious name in trucking, auto collisions, med mal. And one of the things that caught me was not just trucking, but truck drivers hit by other truck drivers. So that is a really, truly unique niche, so talk to me about that.
Ed Ciarimboli:
This kinda came from being well respected and doing this from the other side. And I would say the first truck driver that I represented was probably a decade ago, and it was as a result of a company that we had sued, and they saw what we did in working that case up. They saw that we were respectful but aggressive. We were representing our clients in a very responsible way and really pushing where we needed to push, and making sure that we were leaving no stone unturned. And so that case resolved, and then about six months later, I get a call from the owner of that company. She says, "Look, one of my drivers was just killed in a wreck. I can't think of anybody that I would rather see try to help this family than you. Obviously, I've seen the work that you've done."
And so that started, God, I don't even know how many over the course of the last decade or so, truck drivers and their families that we've helped, where they've been catastrophically injured or killed. I would say, unfortunately, the majority of those cases involve truck drivers that are killed, because when they're hit by another truck, it is an explosion. I mean, it's a catastrophic incident, and not a lot of those men and women walk away from those unscathed. So that was how that started, and then along the way, doing battle with some of the biggest insurance companies in trucking litigation and gaining their respect. Always making sure that the I's are dotted, the Ts are crossed, and doing the hard work and, I mean, really digging.
And so we've gotten a lot of referrals from trucking companies. We've gotten referrals from insurance companies that insure truck drivers now. It's truly been something that we are very proud of, because those men and women that are out there on the roads every day, they're working hard to provide food for their families, and they need other truck drivers and other truck companies to follow the rules just as much as you and I do, Chris, if we're out on the roadway.
Chris Dreyer:
One of the things I saw is you've got this livestream series called Under the Hood where you answer questions, and it seems like livestream is really picking up traction. Talk to me about that decision, what it means from a marketing perspective.
Ed Ciarimboli:
Yeah. So we have a great marketing team here at the firm. Jake and Kyle run our marketing, and they do a phenomenal job. And so we were talking about all the different ways that we want to touch people, and one of the things that we have is information to share. And so how do you impart that information that we have to your audience, whomever it is, potential client, whatever it may be? You got Instagram, you got Facebook, you got TikTok, you got all these different platforms, and you can't just pigeonhole yourself into one or the other. And so this idea, the long form, if you will, livestream, we've been kicking it around. I said, "God, this would be great if we could do this and we could start to have a conversation online in real time." We had a ton of people on it. For the first one that we did, it was really awesome.
And now it's been viewed so many times and we're getting people that are emailing, people that are asking questions. And that's awesome, because now the more informed people are, especially in the trucking industry. Now, for example, the truck driver can go to his or her boss and say, "Hey, look, it's winter. Where's the equipment for me to be able to get the snow and ice off my roof? Why don't I have that? That's dangerous, that I'm going to be driving down the road with snow and ice on my roof. It's dangerous for me. It's dangerous for the people behind me. You're the employer, you're supposed to be providing this." And so now some of that information starts to spark a conversation, that conversation can turn into safety, and that really, I think, has been a really cool aspect of it. Look, the days of just being in one medium are just long gone. I mean, they really are. They're just long gone.
Chris Dreyer:
I agree a thousand percent, and I think you are way ahead of the ... I mean, I don't know of really anyone that has a successful livestream, and it's going to let you clip all the little moments and supply the short clips and all the reels and all those things too, so well done. I think that's a phenomenal idea. Anyone listening, I think livestream is just a fantastic idea.
Ed is out there building a community with his livestream. The attention only matters if you can convert it, and it is much harder to land big cases by being a generalist. To pull the biggest cases in your market, you have to dominate a hyperspecific niche. Let's hear how Ed carved out a name for himself in a truly unique space.
Let's talk just a couple other things. The audience listening, there's so much consolidation, so much competition. The cost to acquire an auto accident, across the country, it's 3,000-plus. California might be five or six, Florida, maybe 4,500. It's not 2,000 anymore, especially these new firms. Maybe you're a legacy firm that's been doing TV for 20 years and you're getting that thousand, two-thousand-dollar case. How do you think about the approach of the niching up and going narrow?
Ed Ciarimboli:
For us, it happened more organically. So, God, it's 12 or 13 years ago. Yeah, I'm trying to think. It was our first big trucking case, and honestly, we didn't really know what the hell we were doing in that area. We were just working hard. The offer on the case going into trial was $45,000, and the jury's verdict was four million. And so after that, we started to get some traction. People were calling us about tractor-trailer cases, and so from there. It wasn't this conscious decision like, "Oh, my God, we're going to move into this area." It just happened because we were doing good work.
I mean, we were doing good work in medical malpractice and getting results, and then all of a sudden. So that good work led to more work, if that makes any sense. And so it allowed us along the way to make very purposeful decisions about the work that we wanted to take on. So we've been really fortunate that we've never really been chasing that volume that a lot of firms are, which again, you hit it right on the head, that cost per case just keeps going up and up and up. So doing good work and taking on hard cases and being successful in them has allowed us to really grow those practices.
And then, Chris, the other thing is we're very fortunate that we've been successful and we have the financial resources to put behind these cases. And I will tell you, I get called in to co-counsel on a lot of cases, and sometimes I'm like, I get called in six months after they've been up and running. I'm like, "All right, did you do the download of the cell phone? Did you do the download? Did we have the download of the cameras, driver-facing and forward-facing? Where's all the ECM data?" And they're looking at me like, "Yeah, we kinda didn't do any of that," and because it's expensive, right? I mean, we have a team now in the trucking world. We have a team that we got a cell phone expert. We got a reconstructionist. We got a human factors expert. We got a trucking expert. We got an investigator. I mean, these people are like, we get called on a case, they're mobilizing. I mean, they're out there immediately.
In the med mal world, we have two nurses. We have lawyers that are doing nothing but medical malpractice. We have one lawyer that she's a former labor and delivery nurse, and we have a team that is dedicated to that. And I think in order to be successful and not just be out there kind of chasing the next red car versus blue car case, in this day and age, you gotta do that, and so that's been our journey. It just happened because we were getting great results, and great results started to get more great results and more people looking at us to say, "Can you help on our cases?" And that's one of the things that ... I co-counsel with people all over the country, and right now we have cases in, I think, 12 different states, and it is a pure joy to be able to work with outstanding lawyers all over the country, and I love it. I absolutely, absolutely love it. It has been just a terrific experience.
Chris Dreyer:
When the trucking company you just sued hires you, that is proof over promises. But getting those results requires proactive operations. Having world-class experts on speed dial doesn't matter if your intake team doesn't know when to call them. To steer these massive cases to the finish line, your firm has to mobilize its resources the exact second the phone rings.
Let me ask you some follow-ups, like particularly I think the intake side on trucking and the auto, there's similarities. Now, once you get the case, obviously the investigation and what you gotta do to maximize the value. Med mal is so broad, right? And I heard you said delivery, so birth injury, you got cerebral palsy, HIE, Erb's palsy. Is that the main niche, or you're like, "Hey, if they deviate from the medical procedure, hey, let's rock and roll"? How do you approach that on the intake side for people to even have the awareness that, "Hey, here's a good case"?
Ed Ciarimboli:
One of the things that we've invested a ton of money into is our intake team. And so our intake team that does medical malpractice, basically a medical malpractice call comes in, it's not just a lawyer or an intake person that has no experience. We have a very specialized intake process for medical malpractice. We also have a very specialized process for tractor-trailer cases. And so obviously they're very different in terms of what happened, but they're very similar in process, which is get the people involved that are the specialists in this particular area.
So if it's a stroke case, we're on the phone with our stroke expert, "What do you think?" If it's a birth injury case, our team is vetting it and then we're on the phone with the people that are top in the field. "What do you think of this?" And you could go down the list in terms of medical malpractice areas. That's a misdiagnosis of cancer, same thing. So we're immediately going to those resources to tell us. We're not guessing. We're not thinking. It's one of those things like we want to know immediately, because we're going to put our resources fully behind this if it's something that is worth going after.
Chris Dreyer:
Beautiful. Love it. A lot of complexity, but you've got your processes, you got your experts to help, and surround yourself with people that understand it and you've got the resources, so that's phenomenal. Talk to me about the talent. Getting the talent, keeping the talent, nurturing the talent, all the things.
Ed Ciarimboli:
Yeah. So let me kind of go in reverse.
Chris Dreyer:
Okay.
Ed Ciarimboli:
How do you keep your talent? I think that, one, you gotta give them a good quality of life, right, you gotta pay them well, and then I think you gotta give them some autonomy to be able to grow and develop within the firm their own little how they're going to practice. And that's one of the things that I think we've done really well with our people, is giving them that opportunity. We also invest in our talent. So I do a ton of teaching all over the country, depositions and trial skills for TLU, AHA, ATAA, a whole bunch of different organizations, and we're always sending our people to help develop their skills, whether it's a trial college or a deposition college or whatever it may be. We rarely ever say no, in terms of like if somebody wants to go and it's something that's going to improve their skills, like, "Yeah, absolutely, do it."
So I think that's one of the things, investing in your talent, and then also giving them the freedom and flexibility. "Look, go try cases. You may lose a case. That's okay, because the ball's always not going to bounce your way in a trial, for whatever reason it may be. It may be a judge, it may be a jury, something may go wrong, but know that we're standing behind you and we want you to do that." So I think giving them those opportunities is really, really, really important.
How do we get the talent? That is something that we try to grow that within. I would say actually most of the lawyers here started as a law clerk and they went from during law school, some even college, and then law school and then first-year associates. And so when they become a first-year associate, they become part of the trucking team, part of the malpractice team, and so they start to see how that all fits together and works, and so then they come up through the ranks.
But that's how we develop a lot of the talent that's here at the firm, and we got some outstanding, outstanding lawyers. I mean, really, just really outstanding lawyers. And we keep not only invest, but reinvest in them. We market them as well, so that they can start to develop their own book of business within our book of business, because that helps everybody. Helps the firm grow, helps them grow financially, professionally. So that's really the cornerstone of what we do with our talent recruitment and retention.
Chris Dreyer:
Ed, this has been phenomenal. For our audience listening that wants to get in touch with you and learn more, maybe they have a case, a trucking case, a med mal case that maybe they want some extra eyeballs on, or maybe they want to talk shop, they want to talk about trials and strategy, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Ed Ciarimboli:
Yeah. So it's always funny. I always give people my cell phone. I'm like, "My cell phone's (570) 510-9941. Call anytime." I mean, it's the easiest way to get ahold of me. I'm out on the road a lot, whether it's in trials, depositions, speaking, so that's the easiest way to get ahold of me. Email as well, ejc@fclawpc.com. Those are the two easiest ways to get ahold of me. And gosh, we got a whole bunch of offices in Pennsylvania now. I'm trying to remember, because we're opening a new one. We got Philly, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton. We're in Berwick, Pennsylvania. We share some space with a buddy of mine out in Pittsburgh, and we're opening an office in East Stroudsburg down in Monroe County as well. But as I said, we have cases all over the place. We have medical malpractice cases in other states. We have trucking cases in other states. So for the right case, we will co-counsel with good people and good lawyers.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Amazing. Ed, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Ed Ciarimboli:
Yeah, this has been a blast. Thank you very much, Chris.
Chris Dreyer:
Absolutely. Ed's story proves that elite results aren't an accident. When you have the right operational systems in place, your reputation can start to do the heavy lifting. For Ed, getting hired by the people you beat in court is just the ultimate byproduct of doing the work. If you're ready to dominate your market and want a marketing partner who holds the same standard for excellence, head on over to Rankings.io. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. We'll catch you next time.
