Michael McCready:
Traditional mass market advertisers pay a lot of money upfront to originate cases with the expectation that they sign up cases and 12 to 24 months later, they get a return on their investment. The difference with what I do is ...
Chris Dreyer:
Here's the thing, incremental improvements and utilization are what really tipped the scale towards increased case value and profit. Most firms chase growth through more leads, but that's not where the real profit lives. I'm Chris Dreyer and I've helped hundreds of PI firms rise to the top, but this approach flipped even my thinking. Michael McCready scaled six offices, doubled his caseload, and became the go to firm for referrals without a massive ad budget.
Michael McCready:
Most of my clients have never hired a lawyer before, and they're used to customer service that they get from Amazon, Domino's Pizza, or Starbucks, and then they come to a law firm and lawyers don't return phone calls.
Chris Dreyer:
Michael's B2B model thrives because the little tweaks have massive impact. From 200 plus automated touchpoints to custom GPTs, this is what modern PI operations actually look like. You're listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, powered by Rankings.io. Michael, you've built what many would consider the go to PI firm for referrals in the Midwest. You've scaled 6 plus locations, 100 plus staff, you doubled your caseload in the last 18 months. Let's kick it off. Share some of the wins. What's going on with the firm?
Michael McCready:
I've noticed over the last couple of years that there's been a seismic shift in where personal injury lawyers get their cases from. And where we historically have been successful in getting cases is not going to work anymore. And so I focused all my energy on building relationships with law firms around the country because that's the way of the world. It's consolidation and a lot of money coming in and large marketers and they need somebody to do the legal cases. And so that's kind of what I've focused on. And so far, my strategy has proved wise.
Chris Dreyer:
What are some of the key principles behind this style of running a B2B firm? How is it different than a traditional firm, so to speak?
Michael McCready:
Yeah, sure. So traditional mass market advertisers pay a lot of money upfront to originate cases and build their brand with the expectation that they sign up cases and 12 to 24 months later, they get a return on their investment. But it does. It requires a large expenditure upfront. And I don't care if it's mass marketing or even digital. You're paying for those cases now and you won't get a return for 12 to 24 months when the cases settle. The difference with what I do is I'm still spending money, but my spend is on the referral fee, which is on the back end. It costs money to originate cases one way or another. No cases are free. You got to spend money. And with me, people are amazed. My marketing budget is about 7.5 to 8% of my revenue compared to 25 to 35% for heavy advertisers. So I still spend the money, but I spend it on the back end of referral fees.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I think that's something really interesting. I remember Michael Masterson's book, Ready, Fire, Aim, it talked about this disproportionate front end spend, which is what you see on the advertisers, but you have a disproportionate on the back end of being able to litigate and pay for the expert witnesses and take a case all the way to the mats, so to speak. Talk to me about that, about working up the case and being the firm that the advertisers want to refer cases to because you do get the values.
Michael McCready:
I mean, listen, it's a lot to do with process. Over the years, we've developed amazing processes. One of our firm values is technology, and we have leveraged technology for a long time. We use SmartAdvocate. I've built it out like very few firms in the entire country. Now, for the last two years, we've been all in on AI. For a contingency fee practice, anything that we can do to create efficiencies and allow us to expend our man-hours, so to speak, the less time we have to put into a case. Now, I'm not minimizing what we do, but the less amount of time we have to spend on a case increases our profit and increases our ability to handle more cases. So all of these things that I've put into my firm over the last 25 years, at the end of the day, are all for the benefit of the client. All these things end up getting our clients better results, and that's the be all and end all of why we do what we do.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk about the GPT specifically. When you're thinking about creating your own GPT, how do you approach that? What goes into making it?
Michael McCready:
So first you have to come up with what you want your custom GPT to do. Let's do something fairly simple as you want to create a custom GPT that will summarize depositions. Very simple. You upload a deposition and you want a summary. Well, in the configuration of that custom GPT, that's where you give it the guidance that you want it to apply to every single chat. And you can go into another GPT and say, "Hey, I'm creating a custom GPT. What would you recommend for the configuration?" And I forget how many characters it is, but they'll give you a recommendation. Then you go back and edit that to what you want. So for example, every lawyer in my firm has got a different style, the way they like their depositions. Some people like it very detailed. Some people like it page or line number.
So you put those customizations into the configuration and say, "Anytime Michael requests a deposition summary, this is the format that we want you to use. Anytime that Jess asks for a deposition, this is the way that he likes it." And oftentimes we will upload deposition summaries that we have done ourselves manually over the years, and that gives the GPT a framework of how to respond.
Chris Dreyer:
You've automated over 200 client touchpoints, scaled marketing and intake in tandem with software like SmartAdvocate and their automated process. Maybe you can just, on that side, kind of shifting from the LLM, maybe how are you utilizing SmartAdvocate, maybe some of these processes to maintain consistency and growth across your six locations?
Michael McCready:
Of course. One of our touchstones is client service. We are a customer service business. Now our services are legal services, but most of my clients have never hired a lawyer before. And they're used to customer service that they get from Amazon, Domino's Pizza, or Starbucks. And then they come to a law firm and lawyers don't return phone calls. What do you mean? I mean, they don't understand that historically lawyers have been very poor at customer service. And so we looked at every aspect from our marketing all the way to the time, well, past the time of disbursement. I mean, we're marketing to our clients after the fact. So we looked at the entire lifespan, the entire client life cycle, and tried to figure out where the touch points were, how we could provide superior customer service. And one of the things that people feel customer service entails is communication and communication takes time.
So how can we create automations that clients can feel like they are informed about their case, they can feel like their lawyer is working on their case without people manually picking up the phone. And so every phase, every stage, every status of our client experience has certain touchpoints that are all triggered automatically. Here's how we started with this. You settle a case, you tell the client, the check's going to be there in 30 days, one week later, "Is my check there? Is my check there?" And when you settle enough cases, that's a lot of phone calls, a lot of inbound phone calls.
So what we did is there's a trigger, as soon as the release goes to the insurance company, a text goes out and says, "Hey, we sent the release. It can be up to 30 days." And then one week later, "Hey, it's been a week." And then we text that client every three days, a different text. "Hey, your check didn't come in today, or the mail just came and it wasn't there. It's been two weeks. It's not overdue. We called the adjuster and left a voicemail. It's been three weeks. It's still not overdue or it will call you." Guess what? Our inbound calls went down dramatically because we are proactively communicating with the client.
So take that concept and then apply it everywhere in the case. I don't want my case managers calling the client, "We're still waiting for medical records." No, we can send a text out. I don't need a case manager to call a client, say," Hey, can you send us a copy of your Medicare card?" That's a waste of a phone call. So if we have in our system that the client is a Medicare recipient, a text automatically goes out. And if the text doesn't come back, then another one goes out. So all of these things that don't need human interaction and human involvement, and frankly, when it's done automatically, it's done the right way at the right time every time. No room for someone to make a mistake, no room for someone to be on a vacation. No, it's done. It's done.
So what that idea, that concept has allowed me to be able to do is have my team focus on those conversations which need to be had over the phone. For example, "You missed your physical therapy appointment today."
"Oh, I was busy."
"Well, physical therapy is a very important part of your case, and if you continue to miss medical treatment, it can impact the value of your case."
"Ooh, I didn't know that."
"Well, yeah, so please make every effort to follow the doctor's instructions." That is a phone call. I don't want it as a text. I don't want it as a video. I want that case manager to have that conversation. When we get an offer on a case, the lawyer talks to the client. I don't want a text. "Oh, I got an offer of 25,000. "No, you call the client, explain all of that. So that's kind of how we've built our firm and been able to scale and handle a lot of cases.
Chris Dreyer:
So many attorneys think about, "I need more leads to grow my practice." But it's like the incremental improvements in maybe the leads, maybe your sales intake, but then also the utilization. You get more profitability because your attorneys, your staff, they can handle more bandwidth because you've got the text automations. And then the other thing that comes to mind is, and I hear this all the time is, "Hey, I referred a case to this firm," and then that firm has to go check up on it, like, "What's the status of it all the time?" And the receiving firm doesn't keep the referral firm and they don't communicate with them and it's cumbersome. So talk to me about that. We had a brief conversation about that. So talk to me about communicating with your referral partners.
Michael McCready:
We have a referring attorney portal that the referring attorneys can go on anytime and see the exact status of their case. We send out quarterly updates by email about the status of their case. Some of our larger partners, the ones that do the mass market advertising, we have a direct connection between our case management systems in real time, and they can check in real time exactly what's going on. I'm very data-driven. And so we have our projected, what we expect the minimum settlement value to be and the timeframe, what the referral fee is. And some of my referral partners use this because they can then forecast what their revenue is going to be and they can forecast based on how much more money they want to put in the market. So all of this data feeds into each other. And when I work with these firms that are very data-driven, it's a breath of fresh air when they see what I'm able to provide them and then word gets out, that's how the referral business is forged.
Chris Dreyer:
I would love that transparency, the communication if I was the one sending you a case and being able to see just all the visibility. Michael, this has been a lot of fun. I love your approach to being the B2B law firm and how you handle working with your referral partners. If one of our audience members have a case that they want to submit to you or get in touch with you, how can they connect with you?
Michael McCready:
Well, we do SEO as well. So I hope that if you search up McCready Law is going to show up, it better. But yeah, I mean, my URL is mccreadylaw.com. We've got an intake team that talks to everyone. We could have a whole nother conversation about the importance of intake because a lot of our people call us, they're not cases that we can handle. When I did intake, lawyers are terrible at it. "Oh, you were in a car accident. Okay, well, when can you come in?"
"Well, no, I don't care about your broken laptop." I need people who've got compassion and empathy who can listen and say, "Oh, I'm so sorry about that. And we can take care of that." And even if it's not a case, just be very, very cordial and give them information because every lead that comes in, although we may decline it, is a potential case in the future, and we're always remarketing to those people, whether it's newsletters or blasts or things like that, never underestimate the power of spending a few minutes talking to someone, even if you're declining the case because those people have come back time and time again. Well, thanks for having me, Chris. Good to see you.
Chris Dreyer:
Like what you heard, hit subscribe and get more of the no fluff, no BS conversations with the top minds in personal injury. I'm Chris Dreyer. This is PIM. Catch you next time.
