Chris Dreyer:
Most law firms cast a wide net. Today's guest decided to build a firm so niche, it's literally in the name.
Kelley Simoneaux:
It's called The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm. And unless you've met me or you've seen me, that may not make total sense why a lawyer would want to brand themselves in that way. I have a spinal cord injury myself, like I am the spinal cord injury lawyer.
Chris Dreyer:
Kelly Simoneaux took a tragic life-altering event and used it to build an incredibly focused and deeply impactful practice.
Kelley Simoneaux:
We all have a story. All of us have some type of background, some type of experience in our life that has very much shaped who we are today. And that, in many respects, can make each of us a better professional, a better business owner, a better lawyer.
Chris Dreyer:
We all have a story and today we're learning how to use yours to build a firm that changes lives.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firm, specializing in personal injury. Today, I'm joined by Kelly Simoneaux, founder of The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm. By using her own lived experience, Kelly has built a highly specialized practice that ensures her clients get the exact support they need. We discuss the massive advantages of niching down, what unique value drivers to look for during a specialized intake, and how to use your experience and expertise to impact your community. Let's get into it.
Hey guys, got another amazing guest. Kelly Simoneaux, welcome to the show.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Thanks. Great to be here today. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, excited to chat. And you're the founder and owner of The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm. I want to dig into your story, of course, but before we do, I like starting with a win. What's something current that comes to mind that you'd like to share?
Kelley Simoneaux:
Well, luckily our firm gets to be in the place where we get to celebrate a lot of wins beside our clients. One that really is meaningful to me is a recent win we've had on behalf of a young boy who became paralyzed. During the path of him becoming paralyzed, to us resolving the case, his mom had been carrying him up and down a flight of stairs so that he could go to the bathroom and bathe. And their house was just not set up for a wheelchair. And we've fought this case for years and years. And as soon as we were able to have a very positive resolution for the family, that family was able to get into a wheelchair accessible home. There is a bathroom where he can roll in his shower. His mom is not lifting him at all. He was able to get a wheelchair accessible vehicle, meaning he can roll in his wheelchair directly into his vehicle. His mom's not picking him up and lifting him in and out of the car.
And this was a teenage boy by this point. His mom, the days of her just using that physical, emotional, all the things that parents do, but eliminating that physical haul, has been a major, major win for my client and we're just so thrilled.
Chris Dreyer:
That's a really touching story, first of all. I immediately think of my mom and of course, my mom would do anything and do that. But gosh, just the physical toll and then the emotional on the young man, like he's 18, having to be carried by his mom. So that's an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah, yeah. It's the parts where life looks very different, but if we can put into place a situation where things are a little bit easier, in this case, it's a major win for them.
Chris Dreyer:
So I wanted to, of course I have my team that preps and I've had the fortune to read your story and everything that you've shared. At least I watched your video and I read your bio. But I would love it, before we just start talking marketing and intake and just if you could open about your background and basically the trajectory and the change, everything and I'll just kind of open it up to you.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah. People see my law firm, it's called The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm. It's a trade name law firm. And unless you've met me or you've seen me, that may not make total sense why a lawyer would want to brand themselves in that way. But when I was 16 years old, I was in the back middle seat of a very old vehicle, it only had the lap belt, it didn't have the three point restraints that you see every day now. And the car I was in was in a wreck and it held my stomach, my torso in, and the rest of my body flew forward, causing me to break my back, stretch my spinal cord and become paralyzed in literally a second. I was awake during that whole time, and so I also had a lot of trauma to, my face was shattered from my upper palate up as a result of that. I had to remove part of my intestines because of all the trauma in my torso.
But I immediately knew that I could no longer feel my legs. I didn't really know what that meant. At the time I was 16 years old and luckily, through the support of my parents and a whole wide range of doctors and PTs and OTs, I was able to get in a very solid path for rehabilitation. But the reality is, is that 25 years later, I'm still rolling around. So I have a spinal cord injury, I've lived with a spinal cord injury for 25 years. And now I founded a law firm called The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm to help exactly the people I know the best, which are people who have also experienced a spinal cord injury.
Chris Dreyer:
Kelly's injury is undeniably traumatic, but she's used her experience to build a deeply impactful and highly specialized practice. When you have a profound personal connection to your practice area, you're offering your clients not just unmatched expertise, you're also offering them authentic empathy. In return, they provide you with trust. Let's look at how Kelly transforms her story into her firm's greatest marketing asset.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Well, I think the reality is, is we all have a story. All of us have some type of background, some type of experience in our life that has very much shaped who we are today. And that, in many respects, can make each of us a better professional, a better business owner, a better lawyer, a better whatever role it is in our life. For me, I, for many years saw my disability as a very negative thing because I think society kind of puts that as a negative tilt. And for many years it was me thinking of, "Well, if only I was walking, then I would be able to access something easier." Where at some point my focus shifted and like, "The problem really isn't me, the problem is the world around me."
And so every time I have a call, and I even had a call today just before this recording, was of a family who has a very significant need, they need legal help. And I've been there. I've been a plaintiff myself. Because of my wreck and my injury, I had a product liability case in my own injury. And so I can approach that very first call, that very first touchpoint as a person who understands, because I was on the other side of that call so many years ago. But what I've learned as I've decided to start my own law firm and to build a brand around what many people would say was a really traumatic event, is that we all have a story. And using your story to connect with people, to connect with potential clients, to connect with your clients, to connect with your community, I think that's where we have really started to put a lot of focus and seen success in that.
Chris Dreyer:
There's things that you've done here is like, first of all, the name of the firm, the trade name. I mean, that's not common. And then I would say even the domain name. I mean, it's spinalcordinjurylawyers.com. I don't know if you had to go through a broker to get that domain, because today that domain would cost thousands of dollars, it wouldn't be just readily available. At least I wouldn't expect it to be available on like a GoDaddy. So when you started thinking about starting your own practice, the trade name, the domain, how you're going to get your first clients, what are all these thoughts that you had and how did you think about them?
Kelley Simoneaux:
The approach I took is definitely not for everyone, because when I decided on my name, I decided very specifically on the scope of my practice. I wasn't going to be handling cases that were super outside of that realm of helping people with spinal cord injuries or spinal injuries. And certainly, some of my cases are catastrophic in nature, maybe it's a wrongful death case, maybe there's a traumatic brain injury plus a spinal cord injury. There's some variations, but I kind of had to know when I decided to go on that path that I was setting myself on somewhat of a niche. And so for me, that has served me well because there's also, on the flip side, no question really what I'm doing and who I'm out to help. And because I have a spinal cord injury myself, I am the spinal cord injury lawyer.
And I've been able to work off of, when I started my firm in 2019 and created The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm, now I have other kind of tentacles I like to speak, that really flow from that. I also have a personal brand called The Pushy Lawyer. I started that really as a result of something I encountered in my own life that got me really upset and I started this advocacy campaign. And it was supposed to be kind of punny, funny, I'm pushing my wheelchair, but I'm pushing for change and I'm the pushy lawyer because lawyers are pushy. But then it's also a way that people identify me when they see me individually and then they can connect me to my law firm.
And then we've also started other campaigns, again, kind of in that very specific umbrella, people with spinal cord injuries, but we've started campaigns helping legal cases where people have pressure injuries after their spinal cord injuries. So we have another domain that we've picked up, called SCI Pressure Sores. We've created a whole SCI Pressure Sores campaign and separate accounts through social media. And we're running those along the same line, but kind of as a separate set of marketing for particular cases we want in the firm.
Chris Dreyer:
Getting hyper niche with targeted domains like SCI Pressure Sores creates a sharp focus brand. But a hyper niche also means you need massive geographic footprint to find enough cases to sustain a firm. You can't just rely on local traffic. I wanted to know what it was like building a network with her peers in the early days and how she navigated finding those first few cases for this highly specialized engine.
Did you go to the other attorneys? I know you're headquartered in D.C., I know you practice outside of D.C. as well, but did you go to local attorneys, your peers? The early days, what was it like for those first few cases?
Kelley Simoneaux:
I think it takes a lot of time to people to have ownership of what they're doing. And for me to be able to recognize that I could come in on cases where literally no one else in the US could. I'm the first woman with a spinal cord injury to start my own law firm. And so I knew I was entering a space that I could have that identity if I was up to the challenge and it's taken me a while and I'm still working on that. Then what it's evolved into, is I brought into a law partner, he's a quadriplegic. He's a C4-5 quadriplegic, so meaning he can't move below his shoulders because of his own spinal cord injury. And so we can kind of further brand ourselves. We brought in another lawyer with a spinal cord injury to help us in estates and trusts for people with spinal cord injuries.
And so we're kind of building out, really, a network and working with other lawyers who may have significant disabilities or spinal cord injuries so that we have other touch points really around the country. Because to your point, if I was the spinal cord injury lawyer in D.C., I could do that, but I wouldn't be, I don't think, super successful. So building relationships, especially in the community, places where I really already belong because I have a spinal cord injury myself, I've been able to do those outreach efforts and get into places where, really, most other lawyers can't get.
Chris Dreyer:
That makes complete sense. And I guess probably through that, there's this awareness component in those different communities, that many people probably don't even realize they have a case. Maybe they have an attorney, maybe they don't realize it's a product liability case too. There's probably all these scenarios, that like when you get a case, you look at it from all angles and not just one vantage.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah. And part of the way I've built out my business is, I connect with lawyers. One, because I need a network of lawyers that I can work with if I have a case in Minnesota or in Vermont or wherever it may be. But also because sometimes they may encounter a potential client, it may not fit the mold of the cases they take. And I'm thinking specifically about these pressure injury cases that we do. Some lawyers don't want to handle that, but I do. And so what I've done is also try to do that outreach to other lawyers saying, "Look, you're going to encounter these types of people. Maybe you're going to handle the car wreck aspect, but if they also have encountered this issue and you don't want to have that as part of something you're handling, send it to me. I can handle that part."
Chris Dreyer:
Could you expound on the pressure injuries in those types of cases maybe for the PI attorneys just to bring an awareness to those? And I'm not an attorney, so.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah. So sometimes you think, we talk a lot about it in nursing home cases where a person's just laying in a bed surface, the bony parts of their bodies are not turned often enough and they get these really bad, really nasty wounds and sores, and that leads to a ton of secondary complications that can really build out fairly large damage models. So after a spinal cord injury, a person is immobilized because of their paralysis, they're laying in the bed, they're in ICU or a hospital, and then they're not turned. They're supposed to be turned every two hours. I read turn charts all day every day and it's 18 hours, it's 10 hours. And over time, that very quickly causes a very bad skin breakdown that can cause infection, can cause amputations, can cause sepsis.
And quite frankly, the main thing is, affects a person's ability to go to rehab to have their... After my spinal cord injury, I was sent directly to a rehab where I learned to live life in a wheelchair, to get up, to roll around, to get into bed. And when you have big holes in your body, you can't do that. And so they miss the opportunity for rehab, which is such a precious time in the life cycle of an injury. So those are some of the cases we're doing.
I represent people after how they became injured, which could be, from medical negligence, to product liability, premise liability, and a bunch of other, honestly, kind of wild and crazy ways people become injured. But in the community, I could see things happening over and over and over again and then saying, "Well, maybe I could do something about it." And that's sometimes where my cases, my case flows are coming from, is I see problems happening and then say, "Well, it seems like there's more we can do on the legal side."
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And speaking of that, I've heard Michael Cowen, David Craig, these trucking attorneys, they talk about their investigators, their experts, and they have these different experts. I'd imagine because of your focus, you probably have spinal cord experts and specialists and all those different components. How does that impact your ability to go to trial to handle these cases that maybe a PI attorney that doesn't handle these very often just doesn't have the same resources and access?
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah. I mean, for me, one thing I think I know maybe more than any other lawyer out there is life care plans because I've had one made for myself. There is a Kelly Simoneaux life care plan out there that was created for me when I was a teenager after my injury. And so now, really in all my cases, I spend a lot of time trying to develop, obviously focusing on liability, because without proving up the liability, I don't get to go to the damage portion. But understanding from day one that we want to set up this case for people to understand exactly the monetary consequences of these very catastrophic, very serious spinal cord injury cases.
Chris Dreyer:
I believe Angel Reyes talk about his life care plans and a lot of situations, those are prepared, but you having the expertise and you have experience with this, so you can review it and provide advice differently.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah. And not all life care planners are really meant to serve every single person that comes in front of them. So getting the right life care planner, I have multiple different life care planners, even within the umbrella of spinal cord injuries. And I might say for this person, this is a pediatric case, this life care planner really needs to be helping me address, because the adolescent needs growing into adult needs is going to be very different than if I have a person who is 60 years old. Or if it's someone who's 45 years old, having a life care planner that can really collaborate well with an economist, with a vocational expert. Because then there's those other layers of like, this person is not only spinal cord injured, but they also are unable to return to their job they previously had. And so you want to have perhaps a really good team built together, that when you get in front of a jury, it's so clear how devastating it is, how life-changing it is, and how that translates into a monetary figure.
Chris Dreyer:
The other thing I noticed too, and I'm just looking for things that are different and stand out, is on your practice areas tab, you have your wheelchair damage, a delay by airlines, choosing a rehab hospital and all these different areas related to this practice. So speak to me about some of the different nuances that I haven't touched on, the different things that come with your experience that you've noticed around these cases.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's what I would want your listeners to know, is, again, go back to your own story. Oftentimes our own life experience could open us to opening parts of your business that you might not otherwise thought about. And my example to that is, you mentioned the wheelchair damage by airlines. I fly a lot, I'm on an airplane every week, every other week-ish. And at the end of the day, my wheelchair is my legs, it's my mobility. It is not a suitcase. When it comes to me damaged, it is devastating. And so I have had my wheelchair damaged multiple times by airlines, and not just me, but people all over the US, really all over the world. But this is happening so frequently. You'll see videos pop up all over the place on social media, where people are like, "Look, airline, I just arrived, my wheelchair is crumbled. I can't even roll in it now."
And I was like, "Maybe there's... We should advocate. We should advocate for change. We should advocate to change the laws." The Air Carrier Access Act is the legislation that controls airlines and anti-discrimination. It's different from the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it actually predates it. But it doesn't allow a private right of action, so if you are harmed by an airline in this way, you can file a DOT complaint, but that's it. So we started thinking about it in different ways. What about the consumer protection layer? What other ways can we tackle this from a legal side? And that really stemmed from my own story, my own frustrations, seeing it replicated over and over by many, many people and then turning it into a legal action.
Chris Dreyer:
Love to see that. Love to see that. Kelly, this has been amazing. For our audience that has questions for you, that has a spinal cord injury case that they want a second look, they want an expert to take a look at, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Kelley Simoneaux:
So I can be reached on social media, I'm The Pushy Lawyer on all platforms. I'm on LinkedIn. You can reach out to me by email, kelly@spinalcordinjurylawyers.com. If you have a case with a spinal cord injury, you want to talk about it, you want the experts that I use, I'm happy to help. Please reach out, because we're all stronger in this together.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Kelly, thanks for coming on the show.
Kelley Simoneaux:
Thanks.
Chris Dreyer:
Niching down creates an undeniably competitive advantage. Kelly built The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm, not just on legal expertise, but on the lived experience allowing her to connect with clients on a level most attorneys never could. By dominating a hyper-specific niche, she's become the go-to authority nationwide, taking on cases where literally no one else in the US could.
That's it for today's episode. Personal Injury Mastermind is powered by Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury law. We've made the Inc. 5000 nine years running. We're founder-owned and led, so our only job is your growth. We handle the full marketing engine so you don't even have to think about it.
If you want to be the firm injured people call first for auto and product liability cases, book a complimentary growth audit at Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
