Megan Kiefer:
Client's like, "I need to talk to you. It's important." I'm nervous. It's important? I'm like, "Is it about a case?" She's like, "No." It's like, "Oh my God, what's going on?"
Chris Dreyer:
In the highly competitive world of personal injury, we spend a lot of time talking about how to scale. We talk about hiring, optimizing operations, and acquiring more leads. But what happens when you intentionally pause that growth to focus on the human element?
Megan Kiefer:
And she's like, "I know you're a minister," because, well, I got ordained online to marry a few people. No one's coming to me to counsel their souls. Like, "Why? What do you need?" And she's like, "I have a grandbaby." And I'm like, "Of course," because I've been getting photos of the grandbaby. And she's like, "Can you baptize?"
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Megan Kiefer:
No, I can't baptize that baby.
Chris Dreyer:
You can buy billboards and run digital ads to build visibility and trust at scale, but that kind of profound personal connection has to be earned.
Megan Kiefer:
That I would even be asked to baptize a baby is what this is all about for me, right?
Chris Dreyer:
Today we're going to talk about who does the intake calls and the role of AI in litigation strategies, but we're also going to talk about something that gets overlooked in the legal space, how passion creates purpose and why that's good for your heart and for your business.
Megan Kiefer:
You shouldn't ask me to baptize your baby. I am incompetent to baptize the baby.
Chris Dreyer:
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 we're speaking with Megan Kiefer from Kiefer & Kiefer in New Orleans. We talk about why her attorneys still handle their own intake calls, how staying small but mighty leads to massive trial verdicts, and how discovering your underlying purpose can ultimately transform your practice. Let's get into it. You've collected over a hundred million dollars for your clients, but there's a recent win that's really firing you up, so tell me all about it.
Megan Kiefer:
Yeah. I mean, so recently I think last month I represented a guy who was at the time where at trial was 82 years old. He didn't have any future recommendations for any medical procedures he needed. He was involved in a really tragic work accident and you're probably like, well, how long ago was that work accident? He was 82 years old. But he was a special guy. So he worked at Winn-Dixie. His name was Tony. And at 79 years old, he had retired from working at Winn-Dixie in the meat department for decades. And he got lonely. He stopped working and was like, "If I stop working, I'm going to die. All my friends are at Winn-Dixie. My community's at Winn-Dixie. I want to go back to work." So he did something that most people dream of never doing and he went back to work. And a month later he's involved in this tragic accident where a gate falls on him and he has an emergency, terrible surgery and now he's out of work for the rest of his life.
But naturally have a dispute about a lot of things, who is responsible and the value of the pain and suffering of someone that's 82. And of course, I have a disagreement about what the case is really about a lot of times with defense attorneys. And I think probably that was the centrifuge of a little bit of our disagreement. So my thoughts are like, this case is about what is the value of changing someone's life? What is the value of never being able to work again when that's the thing that was keeping you going? And at the end of the day for me and what I argue to the jury in closing is like, this case was about taking away someone ikigai, which is a concept that people know about that I've thought about, I've read about, but I had never really thought that I'd be talking to a jury about.
And so we had a favorable result. The jury understood that just because you're 82 years old doesn't mean you suffer in any less of a way about the future about your life. And to some extent when you're in the sunset years of your life, every moment is even more valuable than mine. And yeah, I mean, they awarded him multi-millions of dollars and I was just so honored to be able to tell his story.
Chris Dreyer:
You opened the door there, so the ikigai.
Megan Kiefer:
I have a tendency to open the door.
Chris Dreyer:
We got to define that and purpose. I read the Man's Search for Meaning a couple years ago, Victor Frankl, another great book about purpose. I saw this with my dad too. My dad retired, he was a mail carrier, worked his tail off, has that pension, but then he just kind of lost his purpose and like he had that routine of going in and it got kind of unhealthy. He's got him a little dog and that kind of brought him back to life, so to speak, and we're having a lot of fun. But you see this, right? And then the Winn-Dixie individual. So talk to me about ikigai.
Megan Kiefer:
Yeah. So ikigai, I guess is... I hate to be the one talking about it, but what it is really a Japanese concept that could really be distilled down to the purpose for being. They did a study. They went to a bunch of blue zones across the world and a blue zone is basically a place where people are disproportionately living longer, over a hundred years old and they like, "Hey, why? Why are they living longer than everywhere else?" And one of those zones is Okinawa, Japan. And they studied that and what they found, I mean this is of course a nutshell of a very long, complicated study in a book if you want to read it, but that the Okinawans are living a lot longer than people across the world. I mean, they're eating better, full disclosure too. But because they really do have this profound sense of ikigai, which is the reason for being the purpose for getting up every single day and doing whatever you're doing. And that, they've isolated some things they do like organic farming, just something as simple as that.
And then the second thing, which is also, I mean, being from New Orleans, this is my favorite part of the story maybe, is that they have a profound sense of a why, which is essentially means community. And in New Orleans, we're so big on community. I mean, the reason we're not living long in New Orleans is because of our habits. But if you erase those, I think that we would fit squarely within this concept of moai. And for my client, and it doesn't have to be... I mean, I think that everybody struggles in some sense of like, "What is my purpose?" But on the day to day, you don't feel like you're thinking about it. But it doesn't have to be this like, oh, this insanely profound idea that you're affecting the whole world. I mean, affecting a little corner of the world is affecting the whole world.
And that's why I think the whole concept is so beautiful and that's the only way I was able to really explain my client's loss is what he lost was his moai. Whether his moai was at Winn-Dixie or not. It might not be my moai, right? Winn-Dixie, by the way, is a grocery store that's no longer even here. But that's what his ikigai was. And now through no fault or choice of his own, he has to find a new one. And at 82 years old, it's a crushing idea. So it's a unifying concept and I wish we would spend a little more time thinking about it on a day-to-day.
Chris Dreyer:
Megan's story about Tony is a powerful reminder that attorneys are not just fighting for lost wages or medical bills, they're fighting to protect a person's purpose. You know what you're doing in this work? It allows you to make informed decisions about your entire operational strategy. For Megan, she was able to take a hard look at her firm's growth and make some bold choices about how to handle marketing and client service. You've built this brand by staying small but mighty. You won a Vega award for narrative driven design. A lot of your videos talk about big firm results, small firm attention. Talk about the other marketing initiatives and how you're thinking about this approach from a positioning perspective.
Megan Kiefer:
Yeah. So there's a little bit of a dichotomy in your question, right? I'm a consumer of your podcast and I'm a consumer of so many other people and their ideas, and a lot of conversations are always centered around scale. How do we scale? How do we get bigger? How do we get better? How do we get more and more and more? And at some point, I think my wife even asked me like, "Where is your goal here? You're somebody that always moves the target down the field." And she's right. But really what our core value, I suppose, of our firm is client service. And how do you deliver the best results for somebody that came into your office that had a problem that was bigger than they could solve themself? And if you look at them as an item on a spreadsheet, I don't think you can ever really give that service in the way that I want to give it. And quite frankly, as we've scaled, that wasn't necessarily the object of the goal. It was the byproduct of the service.
One of the things that I had to take a step back... Because we've been growing. I mean, we really just started redirecting our efforts to plaintiff litigation in the last five years and we've had a steady 20% or more growth every single year without doing a lot of marketing. And so the conclusion of that is because we're doing a good job, that's why we're getting these referrals. I mean, it's organic referrals, it's attorney referrals, it's client referrals, and it's because we're doing a good job. So my biggest issue though at the end of 2025 was to say, "Okay, how are we going to scale this? What are we going to do next?"
And I said, "Timeout." You know what I want to do? I want to go back to the basics. I want to go back to 2021 when I was the only lawyer doing plaintiff work, where I did every intake call, I did every case, I solved every problem, nothing too small for me to get involved in. I want to see exactly what I did and why people liked it so much. And I want to figure out, can we continue to implement that as we scale? And if we can't, then we won't scale. Because I don't, hate to say it this way, I don't care about the growth. It's not a monetary adventure. It's the value that we get as a family, as a firm, and myself personally from the results we're getting from changing people's lives. So the moment we can't do that anymore, I'm not going to scale.
But back to your question, what's marketing? So what is marketing, right? I don't know. I mean, just in the last year, have I said, "Okay, how are we going to market ourselves?" And when I had a brand meeting with a company that I hired and they said, "What do you see?" I'm like, "Well, you're the brand people. Isn't that your job?" I said, "Well, I would like to market myself to people who hate lawyers, but need them." And she's like, "Oh, interesting concept." I mean, I'm never going to want to or will compete with a Morris Bart or Dudley DeBosier. I'm not going to drop $20 million to have people come in. We're never going to be a settlement mill. We want to care about the client. And so that's what I'm trying to market. And so we do that through our clients. We do that through not cheapening a brand that we've built over decades of period of time. But we also do that, I think, because we're fierce litigators and we get really, really smashing results for our clients in a way that if you went to another law firm, you're just not going to get.
So I know there's this whole idea of like, oh, do you focus on pre-suit or do you focus on litigation? We focus on both, but we just staff up the people and maximize their skillsets to focus on both. And so we actually just sort of implemented in 2026 what I coined as an all gas, no breaks attempt to brand what we do in litigation and just it's like a full bore. We have a case, you don't want to settle it, let's go. And there's a million different steps in that process because it's not complicated about maximizing the value for the client and that's what matters to them.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go.
Megan Kiefer:
Let's go.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go. That pumps me up. Talk to me about that. Do you have the attorney get involved earlier? Is that the same attorney that may go try the case in court? A lot of the mill, so to speak, has the pre-lit, they're just doing the widget right on the assembly line. It's the customer, not the client. And then you have the through and through litigators, but it might get to just the litigation side. How do you think about working up a case?
Megan Kiefer:
Yeah. So I do something that's probably unpopular in the podcast and conference circuit, which is I don't use AI. We don't subcontract out things like intake. We don't heavily rely on offshore employees or we don't digitize everything, and we're attorney heavy. So one thing we do is my attorneys, even my litigation attorneys do intake. I think it's very important when a potential client calls that they are speaking to a lawyer. And I audit the calls still because I'm that type A. And there's so many instances where they say, "Are you a lawyer?" And again, this is not to chastise how anyone does anything, but I think if someone's calling a law firm, I'm going back to this premise, it's because they have a problem that is more difficult than they can solve and they've reached out to a lawyer. So from the beginning of a case, a lawyer's talking to them.
And now a byproduct of that is so that we're not signing up cases that aren't good cases. And the lawyers that are working on those cases have litigated. Some of them don't litigate anymore, but they have all litigated, which I think is important in framing and the evidence that you're gathering. So right at the beginning of the case, we're not going to like, "Oh, well, we'll just sit around and see if it's potentially a soft tissue injury." Or if there's a liability dispute, like fumblerooski, let's go get everything we need. You need photographs, witness statements, get a court reporter in here, take a statement under oath of a salient witness. If it's a trucking case, it immediately gets escalated to me and my litigation team. We hire experts right out the gate. I don't want to wait until we're in litigation and be like, "Oh, I wish we would've had some stuff on this big case." And we file suit early.
This whole idea that attorneys have, "Oh, I don't know if I want to file suit because it's going to cost $1,000 and then I'm going to have to work." Well, it's like, you know what, you know what clients don't like? They don't like their shit sitting around for no reason. We have a 90-day touchpoint and if this case is not going to settle, get it to the litigation attorneys and let's file suit and get it going. That's what I do on my cases and so now that's what we're doing on all of our cases.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go. Let me ask you this. I'm not an attorney. I have no idea. That sounds uncommon, in 90 days filing. That sounds really quick. What's a generic no name firm, is that common, 90 days? Yeah.
Megan Kiefer:
Man. Well, I used to do defense work, right? That was how I was bred, if you will, unknowingly, unwittingly. And I would get lawsuits that were being fax filed the day before the deadline. So in Louisiana, they just changed the deadline, you have two years. But look, there's sometimes where there's a legitimate reason to withhold filing of suit. And I'm not trying to say, oh, we just with blinders on, go storm the Dothraki on every case, whatever. But what can you do without the power of a subpoena? Not a lot. You can ask people for things. And I guess a little bit of a distinguishing factor for us is we handle complicated cases and I don't know if that's somewhere somebody put like, "Oh, if there's something that's complicated as shit, give it to Megan." So when you have complicated cases, you need to get into the case and you need to ask questions, make sure you're targeting the right defendants, make sure you're getting in there and evidence isn't spoliated, make sure if there's video, you're capturing it, hiring experts doing inspections, all of these things.
So if you wait two years, which again, that's the question you asked me, that's the answer. They wait till the last minute. You might lose the ability to prosecute your case, number one. But I'm going back to my whole thing, what is that doing for the client? Because litigation takes a long time. I mean, I'm able to get some of our big cases resolved in a year or so even from nose to tail, but that's if we're in a good jurisdiction that can give me a quick trial date. But clients don't understand litigation. I have calls all the time where they're like, "This case has been going on way too long." It's a year. A year in the life of 365 days is forever. So there's not going to be a situation where, oh, you held a suit for two years, you filed suit, and then somebody's going to give you a million dollars. I mean, if that's what's going on for you, call me, I'd like to get your secret sauce, right? But you're going to have to litigate your way into multi-million dollar results and that takes time. And all the while, what are you going to do? Just have the client be unsatisfied with the pacing of their case? You might as well start those questions early while their medical picture's developing. That's my approach. It's working out for me.
Chris Dreyer:
Making the decision to file lawsuits at 90 days and having trial attorneys answer intake calls is a massive operational commitment. But for Megan, that intense hands-on approach is exactly the point. By prioritizing those deep personal connections from day one, her firm builds fierce client loyalty. That level of dedication leaves a lasting mark on the people they represent. And when those clients leave authentic reviews, it is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business. 732 last I checked five star reviews. I'm going to read this one.
Megan Kiefer:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Chris Dreyer:
And hopefully I don't mess with the words. It says, "I can't say enough about Megan Kiefer and her team. They've gone above and beyond for me while working my case. They worked really hard to get me everything I deserved and some. Their communication was on point. I'm truly grateful for them and going to miss them. If you need legal counsel, they are the team to go to. Thank you so much for everything."
Megan Kiefer:
That's it.
Chris Dreyer:
Doesn't that make you feel good?
Megan Kiefer:
No, I mean, that's it.
Chris Dreyer:
That's the best.
Megan Kiefer:
And I mean, the best part about that was you said her team. Because it's not just me anymore. When it was just me, it was like, hey, I could blame myself for everything. If a client wasn't happy, it was on me. And as we grow, I have to trust everybody else to deliver with the same messaging, the same service. And when I see reviews that talk about my team, I like them even better than the ones that attribute it to me. But I'll tell you this, and it's not bullshit. A lot of these firms, it's bullshit, it's messaging or whatever. We have relationships with our clients. We do. And then obviously some of them, the relationships are why they become our clients. But after, our clients stop by our firm to drop off shrimp. One of our clients stopped by after her case was over because she had bought a cow and wanted to share some of it with us.
And those relationships are so important. I miss them too. We go to their events. I get wedding invites. It's awesome. I'll tell you this, one of my clients' like, "I need to talk to you. It's important." It's like, okay. Former client. She comes in. I'm nervous. It's important? I'm like, "Is it about a case?" She's like, "No." I was like, "Oh my God, what's going on? Are you okay? Is everything okay?" And she's like, "I know you're a minister," because, well, I got ordained online to marry a few people. No one's coming to me to counsel their souls. So I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm a minister of the Universal Life Church of the internet or whatever. Why? What do you need?" And she's like, "Well, my daughter, I have a grandbaby." And I'm like, "Of course," because I've been getting photos of the grandbaby. And she's like, "Can you baptize?"
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Megan Kiefer:
No, I can't baptize that baby. But that's what I'm talking about. That I would even be asked to baptize a baby is what this is all about for me. I mean, you shouldn't ask me to baptize your baby. I'm incompetent to baptize a baby. And there's certainly a lot of people who better shepardize this baby than I. But I think that look, this is something that's been instilled in and maybe it's because we call ourselves a generational firm. I get people that come in that knew my grandfather and they want to talk about him. And I didn't know him because he passed when I was two. Some of their grandkids and kids, those are still our clients. And so these are deep roots. So you talk about marketing, you talk about scale. And to me, we're scaling because families are growing. And I never want to get to a place where I don't know everybody. I mean, maybe I will and it's going to be kind of a sad day. It's kind of oxymoronic in that way, but I like where we're at.
I mean, like at the end of the day, this is my ikigai. It's like there's the question of, "Oh, what case do you have to hit to retire?" And it's like I don't have this case like, "Oh, if I hit this case, I'm going to go on a yacht or something and find Jeff Bezos and become friends." I think I would die. I'd be one of those people that died. Now I have a family, I have a life, I love travel and I love all my free time. But if you're able to get up every day and feel like you're helping people and the byproduct of that is that you can be academically challenged, you could use some of your skills for good, and you can make money, I feel like a lucky asshole. That's a lucky place to be. And so it's a great profession and I hate when lawyers trash it, I do. Because if you're in the arena helping somebody and getting them justice at trial is one of the best feelings. It's like... I'm not a drug person because I don't like the highs and low, which is kind of ironic being a trial attorney.
But we had a case that we tried last year, me and my dad, we try and miss the cases with him. And our client, we tried against the Ritz-Carlton and she was put through the washing machine by that defendant and essentially calling her a liar and the jury saw through it and returned a verdict for me and her that wound up being over $3 million once she factored in all the interest they owed. And my dad texted me the next morning and said, "I feel like we just got someone off for murder. This is the best feeling in the world." And I'll never forget when the judge read that verdict and the first question was, was the Ritz-Carlton negligent basically, and they said yes. I mean, the first question was like, "And you get this much money and they found you to be injured." She sobbed so hard and collapsed into my arms that we did not even hear the rest of the verdict because it wasn't about that. They might have awarded her $0. It was just like, no, they found that the version of the story you said was true after four years of being told you're lying. And there's no... I mean, what better feeling in the world than that? I don't know.
Chris Dreyer:
That's what it's all about. That's what it's all-
Megan Kiefer:
Not for me, not my skillset. I mean, I'm not a singer, I'm not a Lady Gaga or whatever. I mean, there's probably better feelings. I can't... I'm not Drew Brees or Tom Brady. But for what I'm capable of doing, there is no better place that I could be at this point.
Chris Dreyer:
I talked to my buddy James Helm the other day. He's like my business book guy. And he's like, "What are you reading?" I showed him this fantasy novel. I was like, "I haven't read one in 10 years. My team's telling me I need a hobby." And we were laughing about it. And he text me, he's like, "You don't have to do that." He's like, "Your purpose is doing this, is you enjoy the podcast, talking to individuals like yourself." And I was like, "Yeah, I do." And he's like, "You don't need to read the fantasy novel."
Megan Kiefer:
Yeah, but the thing is from what I've gathered just listening to you and the podcast and stuff, you have this beautiful business that you were able to build at a time when there wasn't a roadmap to build it and you sort of locked in and put your teeth in it and grew it and obviously worked like crazy to do it. But when you conversate with people about things that surround that business, it's not just like... It's more like let's go deeper than that. What's some unifying factor? And in that regard, I think we're very similar because it's not... We could talk about, "Oh, okay, this is the way that you put things in Google to maximize your SEO." But I love this idea that let's talk about the bigger things in life and why are they important. Right? Because obviously it can't just be about... Justice does not equal money, even though that's the system that we're in. It has to be bigger than that or I don't know. It's troubling if it's not bigger than that, right?
Chris Dreyer:
This has been amazing. I really enjoyed this conversation. For audience listening that has a case that they want to refer to you, why don't you tell just a little bit about your firm, like your practice areas, and then the best way to get in touch with you?
Megan Kiefer:
Sure. So we're located in New Orleans, but we practice all over the state of Louisiana. We have lawyers that also are licensed in Texas, Florida, we take cases. If you want to get in touch with us, you can call us, call my cell phone. Yeah, 504-430-2159, but text me because everything's spam now so I don't answer my cell phone. If you want to email me, it's Megan, M-E-G-A-N, @kieferlaw.com, K-I-E-F-E-R, law.com. Or if you find yourself in New Orleans and you want to get a cocktail, call me. Let's talk.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Megan, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Megan Kiefer:
Thanks, Chris.
Chris Dreyer:
Megan's approach is an absolute masterclass in building a generational brand. When your clients love you enough to ask you to baptize their grandchild or bring you a cow, you know you're doing something right. That kind of reputation is your firm's absolute most valuable asset. But in a hyper-competitive market, being the best lawyer in town doesn't matter if the injured people in your city can't find you. That's where we step in. If you're ready to dominate search and turn your stellar reputation into a predictable pipeline of high value cases, head it over to Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. We'll catch you next time.
