Samuel Pond:
You could be a great neurosurgeon, but if you have no patience, it really doesn't matter.
Chris Dreyer::
A lot of PI firms are just running on hope, but with private equity, knocking, and ad costs, skyrocketing, if you aren't adapting, you'll be left behind.
Samuel Pond:
Hope is not the answer and putting your head in the sand is not the answer.
Chris Dreyer:
Today is all about the business of law right now and I brought the perfect guest to make sense of it.
Samuel Pond:
I've been doing this for 40 years. I think the last 10 years and especially last couple years, things have just accelerated.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm pumped to welcome another PIMCON 2026 speaker to the show, Sam Pond, managing partner at Pond Lehocky. With a staff of over 200 across 14 cities, they operate at massive scale. They've also built a B2B pipeline that refers out 7,000 cases a month. That's right, 7,000 cases a month. You don't hit numbers like that without treating people right.
Samuel Pond:
You have to make sure your referral partners are protected. I have actually taken the attitude of referral partners first.
Chris Dreyer:
Those referrals get Sam 20,000 cases a year. You don't get that kind of referral engine by being greedy. You do it by protecting your partners and making excellence the standard. 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, Sam and I are breaking down the threat of private equity, the velocity of capital, and how operational excellence lets his firm pull seven figures a year from cases other firms straight up reject. We touch on the sheer scale and economics of his referral program today, but if you want the exact strategies on how to maximize your own B2B engine, you need to be in the room. Come to Scottsdale, Arizona from October 4th through 6th and get it straight from Sam himself. Commit to growth and reserve your space at pimcon.org. All right, let's get into it.
I want to start with the marketing. The landscape, it's getting tougher, right? Especially on the injury side. You're positioning you, first I noticed on the homepage it says, "For all your legal needs." Some pages it just says, "Nevada attorneys." It doesn't drill down. Talk to me about positioning today and how it's changed a little bit over the years?
Samuel Pond:
Oh gosh. I've been doing this for 40 years and I think the last 10 years, and especially the last couple years, things have just accelerated. So many things going on. I think now with private equity coming in and the ABS is in Arizona and the MSOs and management services organizations with private equity money coming in. Capital markets are coming in. It's the last bastion, really, of where you can put capital and get a great return on margins. But we see all that and they've approached us, but Pond Lehocky's, we feel that we're very well positioned. We have a very, very strong balance sheet. We're thinking long term. Jerry Lehocky and Sam Pond are not going anywhere so we're not worried about liquidating. But it all goes back to the client. And I really think that that's sometimes we get all caught up in the business of law and we forget about... I still try cases, so we signed up to represent clients.
But the marketing, we decided, Jerry and I, that we were going to go big into marketing because we felt like we had no other choice. And we've clearly immersed ourself in marketing. We have a very, very dynamic, vibrant marketing team with a great CMO and we understand branding, we understand client case acquisition, we understand ROI. We have big data pool and we understand what's going on with artificial intelligence and how that is coming into this space and what it's going to do and the client experience. So Chris, there's a lot going on. We feel that we have to grow in order to just continue to be relevant, yet we're in the process of taking over a couple smaller shops. And I have to tell you, it's amazing. Even when I speak at conferences and I say, "How many people look at their balance sheet every month?"
I think some people don't even know what a balance sheet is. There's practicing lawyers out there that are very successful, don't have operating systems. It's fascinating. They're there and I think a lot of attorneys are in our space that are... Generally it's a two person attorney shop. That's the average, for the 30,000 practitioners doing this. I think they're just hoping and praying that the whole thing will go by them and good times will come back. And hope is not the answer and putting your head in the sand is not the answer. You've got to really face reality as to what's going on and things will start to consolidate. We're starting to see it happen and we think we're well positioned to do that and represent clients and with the technology to create a lot more.
Going back to your question about Nevada, Pond Lehocky sends out about 7,000 cases per month to other law firms throughout the country and the United States territories. So we have a very large referral practice. I don't know if it's as big as my good friend John Morgan's, but it's significant and we send to every state and we keep track of that. We have created a piece of technology called, Case Exchange, that now allows us to keep that and make sure the client gets serviced and the signups are there and is it in litigation? Is it not litigation? And that'll have the ability, finally, to have IOLTA accounts exchange monies.
So we understand about being efficient, about being productive and everything that's swirling around us that we just have to stay ahead of it.
Chris Dreyer:
I only have about a million questions after that opener there, Sam. I guess just to start, you mentioned the consolidation, the MSOs, the ABSs, and we saw a couple of the big announcements and at least on my side, on the agency side, even the agency side, there's a lot of the agencies getting bought up and they're getting the multiples and we're seeing it, now law firms in the past two and a half to four were the multiples and I've saw a seven, a seven and a half. So I think that supply and demand's going to keep increasing costs. Are you seeing those multiples rising? I mean, they're getting to the point where it's no longer those four Xs.
Samuel Pond:
And as they should.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah.
Samuel Pond:
Because the margins are so... You have to understand that this is a practice area, a business area that really has no, you can say our brother, sister profession being medicine, that it really doesn't have any macroeconomic risk. What's the macroeconomic risk? We get busier in downturns. So when the credit markets and the investors come in and look at this market and they finally get an understanding that, "What's the risk?" The economic risk isn't there. There's no macroeconomic risk. If you're a bank and a lender, you're not lending to a used car salesman in their inventory that if the economy goes down, they're not going to be able to sell cars and their debt, your loan is going to be worthless. We're talking about that we have 40 years, 50 years, 60 years of data in the personal injury field that shows our inventory will return X no matter what.
Now the only other risk that you have is legislative political risk, but if you're diversified in different areas of law and diversified in a number of different states, then that risk doesn't really exist. So unless the world blows up, this profession is a really... Or unless we didn't have the rule of law and we decide that we don't have a constitutional republic anymore and people under state constitutions and the federal constitutions can't bring an action for tort, there's no risk and the margins are incredible.
The multiple at two, three, or even seven to me, I mean, I'm not talking about this being a tech company where you're getting a multiple on the top line. These are multiples on EBITDA, but it doesn't make any sense. These numbers don't make any sense. They really don't. They're not valuing these firms. Some firms have to go away. They're looking for a liquidation, they want to get out of it and they're biting. But I think that's a problem. I think the other problem that exists with these practices, there's no succession plan. And by the way, when you buy it, and we know some of the firms, I know the same people that you know, that when you buy this as a private equity, are you going to lose some of the legal talent because you can't keep them? There's no non-competes. There's no non-competes and some people jump and ship because they don't like the PE model.
They don't like the PE, how they're telling them what to do in regard to how they should be operating, even though they're not supposed to be doing that. But with staff, they control the staff. They control your paralegal and how much your paralegal should be getting and that all creates a cultural difference. So they're going to have to work this out. Pond Lehocky's, we're in our own lane. We're not worried about that. If we have access to what we need to have access to. We are long-term free cash flow back into the business. And by the way, your listeners should understand, why would you take money assuming you have your bills are being paid. Why would you take excess profit, free cash flow out of your law firm and get taxes, 60%, when you could put it back into your law firm when you know you're going to get a multiple of X. Doesn't make any sense.
Chris Dreyer:
I agree with everything you're saying. In the past, the banks, you'd go through your underwriting process and they'll rule against the hard asset of a house, but now like, "Hey, here's case inventory that has a historical, these are the fees, here's what they're worth." A lot safer. I mean, I agree with everything you're saying. I guess for our audience listening, they want to build pipeline, they want to get referrals, they want to stay interested in not selling and they want to think about how to build pipeline themselves. You've got the B2B play with your history and the labor unions, your history in the space with your peers, right, getting legal referrals. How do you think you approach marketing and generating case acquisition if you're not wanting to sell? Obviously that's a loaded question, but just how do you think about it?
Samuel Pond:
Yeah, there's a lot of verticals. It depends on where you're at and what do you want. I always talked to groups. It's, know thyself, know what you want. Are you ambitious? Are you hungry? Do you have vision? I'm using John Morgan's terms, which we all have heard, but do we all have it? Do we really want to be Morgan & Morgan? Do we really want to be Pond Lehocky or do you want to find your niche somewhere? We have a lot of firms that have no interest in advertising, great trial lawyers, don't want to necessarily come with us. And we have very fair deals with them. They take good care of our clients. We have really good operating. So the problem sometimes, and to answer your question, if you're a really good trial lawyer, you've got to get cases. You could be a great neurosurgeon, but if you have no patients, it really doesn't matter.
So how do you do it? Yeah, you have to really get involved. I think relationships don't cost you anything except for lunch. So you really have to do that and then you have to bring something to the table. What do you bring to the table? Are you a really good premises person that has a history of getting really great results? And by the way, people want to say, "Well, what about billboards?" The only way that I would suggest to anyone go into billboards, and we have a rule in certain places where we go, "We're going to have three or four billboards in a row." That's Pond Lehocky's statement. Don't put up one billboard or two billboards or three billboards and then take them down in 12 months. Billboards are like being part of the mafia. Once you put them up, you can't take them down because people are wondering where you went.
Why did their billboards come down? And then clearly one of the places is to look, if you can have some social media, if you can do an Instagram, if you can clearly go and do digital, there's brand, there's acquisition. And what do you want? Are you just worried about acquisition or yourself? Brand is a totally different play. To have a big brand in a crowded market such as Philadelphia, you're going to have to really understand that's going to really cost a lot of time and money. And do you want to do that? For what reason? Or do you want to have a niche where you're just acquiring cases because you're a really good lawyer, good operator? The problem is people don't understand how to operate. They need to be really good operators because operations is number one service to the client. You do want to deliver better service to the client.
You're going to deliver better service. We demand on our referral partners that they know how to operate and we'll teach you how to operate. And some of the firms that you talked about that had private equity take them over, they were also going out and teaching other people how to operate. That's the other thing. So you have to be a good operator and you can't be just not understanding that you've got to be efficient, you've got to service, you have to have checklists in place. So there's so much that goes into this, but to answer your question, I think first start to see if you have relationships and find out who the feeder is. Who are the advertisers? I'm a good lawyer. Let me contact the advertiser. What kind of cases do you have that you don't want to handle or you're not satisfied with your... Or give me a try. I'll give you a better deal, different referral mechanism just to get my foot in the door.
And I'm talking about some of the younger folks. And by the way, we're not really seeing a lot of young people come in into this space at least to start because it's very difficult to hang your shingle.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, I was just going to say, I mean, you mentioned the balance sheet and the cash acceleration cycle. First of all, a lot of these firms are EOS based and they don't even teach cash based strategies, right? That's scaling up. So yeah, the capital required intensive, the labor's more costly because everybody's competing over the talent. So I agree, networking belly to belly, being an expert in an area. The operational excellence will have vendors come on, different marketers and somebody will say lead gen works just like your walkers, your whatever. But then it's like, "Well, if you don't have operational excellence and your fall off rate's terrible and you don't have good fees, then it doesn't work."
Samuel Pond:
I couldn't agree with you more. Very, very important point because, really, where the rubber meets the road is if you're going to go out and contact a lead company and start getting leads, if you don't get that call immediately and service that client, you are paying for a lead that doesn't convert and that is a death sentence. That's a death sentence. The other thing that folks, and you've just really got onto something in regard to, you have to understand that our costs of goods sold don't get a return for a period of time. So when you get a case, find out the duration before it turns into money. So can you get a premises case or an NVA case or a pre-lit case that you're actually going to have the... So what's the velocity of the return? Is the velocity return six months, 14 months, 18 months, like a malpractice case, 40 months?
Can you have a mix? What do I need to have cash flow? And by the way, cash flow is your oxygen because if you don't have cash flow, you're going to be insolvent if you don't have availability cash.
Chris Dreyer:
Sam just laid it out perfectly. If your operations are sloppy and you aren't contacting leads immediately, it's a death sentence for your marketing ROI. And if you don't understand the velocity of your capital, you're going to run out of oxygen. But Sam's team doesn't just operate efficiently on the cases they keep. They monetize the ones they don't. Pond Lehocky has built an infrastructure to refer out roughly 7,000 cases a month. They even built their own technology case exchange to track it all and make sure the client actually gets serviced. That is what it looks like when you stop thinking like a practicing lawyer and start acting like an owner. Let's get into the sheer power of the B2B engine and how they find revenue where other firms just see dead leads.
So we got so many of our audience listening and their auto, auto, auto, auto truck. I've always, being on the non-attorney side, I'm like, you take a case like a MISO. I understand that it's not 4,000 or 3,000 to acquire a case. It's maybe 70 to 90,000, but the time on desk is shorter. They accelerate the trials, right? Same for nursing neglect cases. I just don't understand why, it's all relative, right? If you acquire a case for this and then it's worth X if you get that ratio, how come nursing and say MISO aren't more prominent? Is it just that front end CAC? Is that the main deterrent?
Samuel Pond:
Could be, could be, or people aren't thinking thoroughly through everything the way you are. So if you look at actually, if you went in and said, "Okay, I'm going to get this mix of cases and I'm going to see what the return is over 10 years." With the understanding that whatever fee I get from that particular case, I'm going to put back into those areas of cases. For example, I've got this much out of a million dollars. I'm going to put $200,000 on workers' comp cases. In this state, give me the return over 10 years. I've got a MISO case, I've got a nursing home case. And if you're 35 years old, 10 years is nothing. 45 years, 10 years is nothing. So what's the return, if in fact, I am then putting the money back? What's the velocity? Because I'm going to tell you, you'd be surprised what happens.
With nursing home cases, you're going to see that that's probably one of the really good spots in regard to the return you're going to get and the velocity of return. So do that exercise and you can do it with Claude because here's what you need to understand. We just did this exercise on a retreat. We went on a retreat down in Jamaica with almost 50 people and one of the main topics on the retreat was capital allocation. So the 10-year horizon for our capital allocation based on X dollars in these buckets was really, really fascinating.
Chris Dreyer:
It's very interesting. Not many people are thinking about this like you are and just is like a teaser. So I'm really excited that you're going to be speaking at PIMCON this year and you have a massive B2B, referral engine, right? You said, I believe seven or 8,000 a month, a network of more than 2,000, maybe 3,000 firms since I researched it. Obviously intake is not, you've mentioned data. To handle that volume, I think I've researched in previous Litify, but like talk to me about capturing the wanted lead and just what to do if this case isn't right for you and how you've developed this referral strategy. Obviously our team listening, there's levels to this and they're not going to go from whatever they're doing to this. But I would say, "Hey, maybe they get the occasional SSDI or work comp that they don't take." How do you think about intake?
Samuel Pond:
Well, we clearly think about intake in regard to responsiveness first and foremost, in regard to that bedside. We also train our people to have bedside manner. So that's very, very important. And also sale, you have to have confidence and have them sell and give them peace of mind, just a whole script. And you then understand that if it's a case I have to refer out, it's rejected, you're going to make sure your immediate service, if it's rejected. We've had third looks... I'll give you an example. Our third looks generate seven figures a year. So in other words, it was rejected by two other firms and we now have a third look at it because there's tiers of trial lawyers and third looks generate quite a bit of money. We look at every aspect of a possible type of legal matter that can come out of Chris Dreyer's case that he got injured at work.
Is there a third party? Clearly the social security disability stuff is so overlooked. And by the way, you get client money very quickly. They're very happy. That's often overlooked. Is there an employment action? So you really have to look holistically in regard to all the possible cases, not only because it's generating fees, but that's what the client deserves. It's like going to a doctor, right? So you go to a doctor, you have to pay something, but when someone comes to a lawyer, you don't pay a contingency fee, doesn't cost you anything and you get a legal diagnosis. You should be able to get a legal diagnosis and then you should get a course of action or a course of treatment that a doctor would give you.
And then you get a prognosis or the outcome that I'm trying to get you as to what you can do based on the law and facts. That's the experience that starts at intake. But I'm going to tell you, when you increase your intake sign up. When you increase the contact to the client and it has to be extremely... The studies are all out there, look them up and they'll tell you how fast you have to get on. Now look, it's a different story. Here's what you want. When my brother sends me his neighbor's case, I may not have to get on the phone within the next minute, but I clearly have to get on the phone with an internet lead in the next minute. And by the way, when you clean that up and make it as tight as possible, it's where the rubber meets the road and it goes back to what you said. Yeah, I can get a lead from a lead company. Well, if I don't contact them, they're gone and I had to pay for the lead. You're losing money.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, also I like how the holistic service model you're approaching, right? It's like the different nuances. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I think we just had somebody on the property damage that gets overlooked and just the different circumstances and then that expands your network and then maybe you send a good employment case to somebody and next thing you know, now they're sending you some injury cases.
Samuel Pond:
Yep, yep.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's say you got a good litigator listening. They have an expertise of some type of law. How do you get involved with your exchange, your program? How does this work? How does somebody listening wants to be a part of this?
Samuel Pond:
Sure. They can just reach out to the team. I'd suggest that the best person is my son who runs our national referral network, Dylan Pond, dpond@pondlehocky.com. And Dylan will have a Zoom call with you or a phone call with you and he will pick your brain and look at your qualifications and see what kind of relationship can be then. And then we will talk about being operating and reporting and going through case exchange and that'll be all done by our tech people. We'll set that all up and then we're off to the races to see how the relationship works. One thing that we do is we're very, very fair. We want to make sure that... Relationships do not last, Chris, as you know. I've been married 43 years and you've got to make relationships as symbiotic as they can, as fair as they can to understand. When anybody in my office comes to me and say, "I just got a great deal with someone." And I said, "Great deal for who?" "Well, great deal for us."
I said, "Well, not sure that'll last because if it's too good for us and it's bad for them, then if I was them, I'm not want to be in this deal." You have to make sure your referral partners are protected. I have actually taken the attitude of referral partners first and then especially when you're in a position of giving, right? I'm in a position of giving and sometimes you get burnt, but I think that that kind of reputation, fair dealing and honesty, first of all, we're lawyers. We should be bound by professional responsibility and ethical. I'm not even going to get into any spiritual or anything else about being a good person, but I think that kind of reputation that you're a fair dealer, you're worried about the client, you're worried about your partner. I just left a meeting, on an admin meeting and we talk about teams and we talk about teams.
The great thing about teams, in other words, teams within the organization, is that you have that camaraderie, you have that bond, you have that, "I got your back." The same thing with referral partners. I got your back. Just be honest, be ethical, concerned about the client.
Chris Dreyer:
Speaking of teams and you opened up my next talking track here is, we're a couple hundred people, right? You're 200 plus and one of the things I've noticed, and I'm asking you just how you guys solve this is like the bigger the boats, it starts to sway. You got this big barge. When I was lean and mean, you get a couple people on a Zoom meeting or in person and boom, you got to make this change happen and it's communication requirements expands significantly. The amount of case types that you guys are handling, that's complex. So how are you managing the different complexities, the different practice areas? It's not just, "Hey, we got our case manager pre-lit, paralegal, and then it goes to trial, then it moves over to this other auto assembly line." I mean, you're handling a lot of case types.
Samuel Pond:
You really want, and I heard Jamie Diamond talk about this and I've always been very big on, I've never been in the military, I wanted it one day to go into the military, but there's a number of things, you're talking about leadership and everything starts at the top, but you really, when you talk about teams, if you have litigation teams of five or six or seven, we demand that those teams meet at least every other week for at least an hour to share conversations about cases and clients and even about, "How's your day?" And what don't you know about this piece of law? And you're the newbie. When I have people come out of law school, I said, "You're like a first lieutenant out of West Point. You don't know a thing. So you better go talk to the non-commissioner officer and that's the paralegals." But we demand, sometimes you get into trouble here because you assume that a litigation handler is a good manager and a good leader.
You have to teach them how to manage and lead. And if you have those teams, Chris, as you grow, they just become solid blocks and you have all these solid blocks. It's like a squad of 12 in the army and then you have the platoon and then you have the company and then you have the battalion and you have these blocks and you've got to really make sure that they all lead and they're all carrying out the mission and they have the value system. One thing you don't want to be as a leader, there's a lot of things, look, people say to me, "What's about leadership?" And I said, "Well, not real complicated, is it?" Your duty is to those you lead. It's almost like the public servants we have. The politicians forget sometimes that they're public servants. They're here to lead us as citizens.
You're the leader of the flock. That's your obligation to protect the flock, do what's best interest of the flock. And if you lead, then you'll get the results and the performance will come. That's your duty. Don't confuse it. Don't get caught up in this. Your duty is to lead the people that are under you and have their back and they'll have your back and you will earn their respect, but you have to understand that sometimes you're going to have to make hard decisions because you're leading the team, the ship. That's your goal. It's like the great movie of Master and Commander, his majesty ship and Russell Crow gave a great illustration of being a leader.
He had his friend who was a surgeon, who was empathetic, but he had to say, "I had to make hard decisions." My son works for us. I said in a meeting the other day, in fact, I said at the retreat about leadership, my son doesn't perform, he's going overboard. He's getting off the ship. I'll still see my grandkids. My obligations to this firm, first and foremost, to the collective so we can carry out the mission for the clients. And by the way, no one gets a pat in the back for doing what they were supposed to do.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, the standard is the standard.
Samuel Pond:
There's too much of that. "Oh, you did what you did here. You're so great." No, I just did what I said I was going to do.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's a great lesson. I think that when people see that you, like you said, it's leading from the top and you're, hey, if someone doesn't hit the KPI, they don't hit there and they're out and you're willing to do it, certainly the rest of the team, your VPs, your supervising attorneys, managing attorneys, what have you, I'd imagine if that passes down and they have the same standards.
Samuel Pond:
Yeah, it becomes part of your DNA. There's a lot of things that become part of your culture. I had, yesterday, in a meeting, we were hiring on probably taking this practice over and my chief operator said, "Well, he wants a two-year guarantee of whatever." And I said, "I'll tell you what, you tell him I'll guarantee that if he gets his out of bed early in the morning and works really hard, he'll be fine. That's my guarantee. You get at it, you work hard, you represent our clients better than anybody else, you won't have a darn thing to worry about." And our space is so great. People don't realize in Wall Street firms, they make a lot of money but they're dissatisfied. All the studies show that. Public service, they're satisfied because it's altruistic, et cetera. We blend both in the personal injury field because we blend helping people being their champion and making a very, very good living. It's a very satisfying place to be.
Chris Dreyer:
I agree and you're fighting for them for the wrong that's been done to them and it is a good feeling. I also like the one thing on my side, at least on the injury side, not talking about the billable hourly rate, I actually like that a lot of people, your pricing model's all the same. It's contingency. It's like on the agency side, I constantly have to think, "Well, am I going to price by hour capacity, retainer, tiers, all these different models that go into it." And it's like one of the things that you don't even have to think about. And now it's like, "Okay, well now I need to think about my positioning and how I'm going to serve the client and who I'm going to help." I think that's one of the great things about the industry as well.
Samuel Pond:
It's a great perspective, which I haven't heard, but sometimes we have to step back and understand that. That's a real That's a great perspective. You're right.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I got to constantly think, like, "Am I overcharging, undercharging? How many hours am I going to put into this? Well, this, it's like, hey, I'm going to do contingency work and I'm going to get the maximum result I can. So it's like one of those things that you have to think about. Super excited to have you speak at PIMCON, Sam. For our audience that's listening that has questions, that wants to connect with you, wants to be a part of the case exchange, just what's the best way to get in touch?
Samuel Pond:
They can drop me an email, that's pond@pondleehocky.com. That's my personal email. If they reach out to me, I will get back to them. We're more than happy, in your audience, to talk to anyone and see if we can help.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Sam, thanks for coming on the show.
Samuel Pond:
Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it, Chris. Nice talking to you.
Chris Dreyer:
Let that sink in. Seven figures a year from looking at cases to other firms completely rejected, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, Sam showed us exactly what it takes to treat your law firm like a highly sophisticated business. Whether it's defending against the rising threat of private equity, understanding the exact velocity of your capital, or building a B2B engine that monetizes 7,00 cases a month, it all comes down to operational excellence. You build the right infrastructure, you track the data, and suddenly you're building a fortress around your firm that outlasts any market shift. If you want to surround yourself with top tier operators like Sam and get the exact strategies they're using at scale, you need to be in the room at PIMCON 2026. It's October four through six in Scottsdale, Arizona. Commit to growth and get your tickets at pimcon.org. I'm Chris Dreyer. I'll see you in Scottsdale.
