Chris Dreyer:
When you go toe to toe with global automotive manufacturers, the barrier to entry is serious capital.
Brian Chase:
It costs a million dollars to try a case. Okay, so it's very expensive. When you win, you win big.
Chris Dreyer:
If your firm treats every collision like a routine fender bender, you're walking right past eight figure recoveries.
Brian Chase:
Here's the rule of thumb. Car crash, catastrophic injury, look for an auto defect case.
Chris Dreyer:
Taking the quick policy limit covers overhead, but building a dominant practice means uncovering severe product failures that other lawyers completely miss.
Brian Chase:
One of them I got a $25 million verdict on, a case that was missed by a very well-known lawyer.
Chris Dreyer:
All the way back on episode six of the show, Brian Chase joined us to talk about dominating high stakes litigation niche. Today, the senior partner at Bisnar Chase is back. With over three decades in the courtroom, more than a billion dollars in recoveries, landmark appellate victories, and a firm voted on Southern California's best places to work for seven straight years, Brian proves that sustained courtroom power requires business discipline and a team culture where top talent stays for decades. Today we cover scrubbing catastrophic injury files for auto defects, autonomous vehicle failures as the next litigation frontier, and building a 30-year firm culture that fuels client and peer referrals. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankins.io, a marketing agency specializing in personal injury law firms. We help PI firms dominate search, attract more high value auto accident, truck accident, and catastrophic injury cases and build market leading practices. Let's get into it. Hey guys, I'm so excited for those listening back in the day, one of my early guests, number six in fact, Brian Chase, welcome back to the show.
Brian Chase:
Wow, number six. That was a long time ago. Thanks for having me back on. I really appreciate it.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I'm so excited to catch up. You've been doing big things and I want to start with a recent win of yours. So August 2025, LA Times recognize you as the top executive in Orange County for your contributions in the legal field. Also, just this month, June 2026, Bisnar Chase took the number two spot in best places to work in Southern California. And you've received this honor for the last seven years. So I know a lot of firms don't focus on culture, but it is obviously working for you. So I guess just speak to me about culture and how you're treating your team and just all of the above.
Brian Chase:
No, culture is key and I think we've actually had that the last 10 or 12 years. It's amazing.
Chris Dreyer:
Wow.
Brian Chase:
And it's not like some of those things that you can buy, you buy and pay for and put a plaque up. They actually, they do an independent vote on people in-house. It's blind. No one knows what people are going to say. And so it's a pretty legitimate thing. But culture's key and we've always really cared about that here at the law firm. I want to come to work. I don't like yelling, I don't like screaming. We've all been at those places. My COO, Shannon, I've got to give her credit for really coming up with firm activities, team building activities. We did a safe house, we do a lot of different parties and all kinds of different things, to go to the racetrack races. We do a lot of fun stuff to make it a fun place to work. And it's just can't say enough about it. Most lawyers don't even focus on the business enough, but then if they do focus on the business, they miss the culture piece and that's all got to go hand in hand.
Chris Dreyer:
I got to be honest here. Early on in my career, it's like the first few years I would hear these speakers get on stage and talk about culture and core values and I kind of roll my eyes, but it's literally everything. It's everything. It drives the ship.
Brian Chase:
No, it does. And earlier on in my career, been doing it 33 years. So when Bisnar was around, he's retired now, but he was always very big into that. And I was just the workhorse out trying cases. And I wasn't anti-culture, but I was kind of like you a little bit like, "Hey man, I got stuff to do. I got a depo. I got to go get the court. I don't have time for this 90-minute lunch or whatever it is." And then over the years, I mean, I've always wanted to be a fun and nice place to work, but I also was more grinded out.
And the older I get, the longer I do it. He passed that on to my COO who now really takes care of the staff. And it's like probably monthly we're doing something. There's a book club for some of the paralegals and they meet once a month, I think, in the conference room and talk about books. There's like a sewing club. There's all kinds of things that we do to keep everybody engaged on things other than just law. And I appreciate it more and more now. So yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible. And I guess I just was at a retreat and I was speaking to a prominent attorney. I'll keep his name private, but he was talking about they need paralegals, there's a shortage. And look, this individual's very likable and I'm not saying, but it's like I imagine having these awards, you got people applying when you don't even have positions and maybe the paralegals have a friend and then they want to bring them in when you have that type of culture.
Brian Chase:
Yeah. I mean, sometimes that does happen. It does seem since COVID there has been a shortage in general in a lot of people because everybody wants to work remote full-time and we can talk about that or not later today. But yeah, I've got employees been here for over 30 years. Plenty have been here over 20 years. I don't think anybody's here less than 10. So we do have a good culture, people do like to work here. And yes, we do have people recommending friends or family members that, "Hey, do we have an opening? If we do, can they come in and interview?" So that's accurate.
Chris Dreyer:
That's great. One of the things that we touched on in episode six was that bestattorney.com domain. I mean, such a smart move getting that early on. And I just wanted to see, have you seen an impact from the discovery side on AI because of the name? You have an amazing track record, amazing results. So maybe that alone carries a ton of weight, especially in the auto defect cases and product liability. But do you think maybe because it has that word best in there and seems like it's emphasizing that more?
Brian Chase:
Yeah. I mean, a majority of my cases are attorney referred because of my auto defect stuff and that's the primary thing that drives the income. But I think probably did say back on our first interview a long time ago, I've got to give Bisnar credit for that. Because I was against it. I though it was cheesy. "Why isn't it bisnarchase.com?" And he's going, "No, it's got to be Best Attorney for the reasons that you already know about." So kudos to him. The SEO person that monitors all the traffic and all the things that they do, I meet with them, but it's above my pay grade, but I do want to track with them on what we're doing. It does help because of those words that are in there. And one of the things that I'm really proud of is because, or I think objectively, I'm a trial lawyer.
I mean, I do market. I market all the time, but I don't deal with the SEO my team does. But I do know that when Bisnar was doing it 20 years ago or whenever we got best attorney, it was the wild, wild west. One, no AI. Google wasn't punishing anybody. You can lie, cheat and steal on the internet when it first came out for attorney marketing and get X cases. It is, I think in the last 20 years, how competitive it's got. I mean, everything going on. And we bring in as many cases on average 20 years later as we did then in the Wild Wild West days. Now on one hand, that may sound bad, weren't you bringing in more that way? We're bringing in more cases for other reasons. But when I think about Best Attorney on our website, it's getting as much as it did when there was no sheriff in town. So I think it's got to be because of Best Attorney and the work that my team's doing.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more because the competition, I mean, it's a bloodbath now. There's so much competition. I think you have in your niche within a niche, like the sub-niche of PI, the auto defect and the products. Are you seeing this is kind of emerging and are you seeing their autonomous driving or the Waymos or are you seeing those opportunities there or are we still a little early there?
Brian Chase:
No, we are seeing that. I mean, I think back 30 years ago when I was doing this, cars are so much safer. I mean, people like me and the shoulders I stood on and the people standing on my shoulders, our cars are a lot better, but people still like to make a profit. They will cut corners and put profit over safety. And so we are still seeing different defects like the autonomous driving or the automatic emergency braking, collision avoidance technology, things like that. I'm screening those cases weekly, I mean, if not daily. So that new technology that is designed allegedly to help us, and maybe it will, I don't want to sound like Fred Flintstone and just keep us back in the stone ages, but I also know how the business can work and how the industry can work. And I see this new technology that they claim, "Well, it's better than human error."
Okay, so you say so, let's find out. I've got cars mowing down, people mowing down motorcycles. I have a case right now against Mercedes where the collision avoidance technology and automatic emergency braking, which is what Tesla has and others, completely fail. An elderly woman had a medical event and her car just drove through the front of a store. If the technology worked, it would've stopped. Instead, it killed four people and catastrophically injured somebody else. So this technology still has its problems. I always like to say it's not ready for prime time. We're not guinea pigs and our roads aren't a test track.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, I've heard some just awful stories and I've seen the tragic and then I've seen the funny side of just where no one's been hurt and just the Waymos have done wacky stuff where they're just clogging up streets. And I always thought that it would be, like we're doing a podcast here, what if a personal injury attorney did a podcast in the Waymo, this is regular. And then if the Waymo just did something messed up, it would lead to these... Obviously you don't want to get hurt or get an accident, but it would lead to these weird scenarios where you could talk about it.
Brian Chase:
It'd be funny. Well, I think, if I'm not mistaken, you could refresh my memory, is I think in San Francisco they had some kind of electrical outage or some power outage and there was dozens, a hundred, a bunch of Waymos on the street that just stopped and they're in the middle of the road. It was like out of a horror movie.
Chris Dreyer:
Geez.
Brian Chase:
So yeah, it's crazy. But yeah, it'd be funny to be doing a podcast then and everything goes dark and you and I are trying to talk in the black.
Chris Dreyer:
Most personal injury firms build their entire caseload on standard motor vehicle wrecks. Process the file, collect the $15,000 or $1,000 policy limit and move on. But when a crash results in catastrophic injury or wrongful death, stopping at the driver policy limits leaves massive recovery on the table. Back in episode 386, Brian Beckham said, "Each auto accident needs to be scrubbed for parts." That means looking past driver fault to investigate whether structural roof crash, defective seat backs, or failed collision avoidance systems caused a devastating outcome. Brian Chase agrees and regularly runs trainings for high volume firms across the country to keep these eight figure cases from slipping through the cracks, starting with a core rule of thumb.
Brian Chase:
I've got an hour presentation that I do for high volume law firms so they don't miss these cases, the auto defect cases. You've got somebody catastrophically injured and the car's got $100,000 policy or a $15,000 policy and it's a multimillion dollar case. So one thing, and I'm going to answer your question because it circles right back to that. I'll spend an hour, hour and 20 minutes going through roof crush cases, rollover cases, fire cases, tire cases. And I realize it can get kind of dense when people are just sitting there listening to it and I go, "You know what? Here's the rule of thumb, forget everything I just said. Car crash, catastrophic injury, look for an auto defect case." And so that'd be the same thing. Scrub it for an auto defect case. If you have a serious injury, you always in any car, you want to look for it.
I've got so many stories where people miss these cases and clients have come to me and, "Hey, I was told I didn't have a case." And by well-intentioned attorneys, they just missed it. And I mean, one of them I got a $25 million verdict on, a case that was missed by a very well-known lawyer. So it's one of the reasons I wrote my first book, I think in 2009, was to educate people on don't miss this stuff.
I've got a case right now where a car was going down the road and they had a GoPro in the window and there was a motorcyclist in front of him having a problem on the motorcycle and trying to get off. Car just ran him over and killed him. And the attorney that had that case before me settled it for I think a $250,000 policy that was on the car or $100,000 policy and then said, "No case." And I'm going, "This is on video. The collision avoidance technology should have kicked in and stopped." They test for that. They actually do tests where they drive cars behind pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and cars will stop. I mean, it's really new advanced technology that's been getting better and better in the late 20 teens. And this person just totally missed that case. So that's one reason I want to get on my soapbox and I don't want people missing these cases. If a car's involved and there's a bad injury or death, you've got to investigate the auto defect case.
Chris Dreyer:
I'll tell you from the driver's side, obviously I'm not an attorney, but my wife has a, I think it's an X5 BMW, like an SUV, and we always turn off the, maybe this is really bad, the correction, bad one. So sometimes when you cross the line, it will jerk you back into the lane. And sometimes I turn it off because if a semi were big truck, if they're crossing a lane, I don't want to be over there. So I like having the ability to correct myself and it's like that one just drives me nuts. And I just think about, man, there's got to be something there.
Brian Chase:
I totally hear you. I hear you. I think a lot of people do feel that way. I can't even come up with a great analogy. I think I'm a lot older than you. When I was a kid, some cars didn't even have seat belts. No one even wanted to wear a seatbelt. You didn't want to wrinkle your clothes, it's uncomfortable. Now, if you don't wear a seatbelt, I think everybody does. So I appreciate the frustration, but it is lifesaving technology and I think we'll just all get used to it over time.
Chris Dreyer:
Let me change on the product side. Let me ask you another question. So I've had Jay Kelley out in Ohio talk about med mal cases, how expensive they are, the expert witnesses and stuff. I mean, you're going up against Tesla and GM and Ford and you got to have some dry powder in this space. So what does a pre-lit auto case, people say, "Hey, nine, 12 months." Some of them are clouting eight and a half. What's the time on desk on a products case? Maybe it's all over. It depends, but...
Brian Chase:
Well, it depends on the people handling it too. I can tell you, I've been doing it so it costs a million dollars to try a case, so it's very expensive. You lose a few of those, it hurts. When you win, you win big. So earlier in my career, 25 years ago, I'd have to take 30 depositions and they'd drag it out for two or three years till I got a trial date. After trying a lot of these, having a lot of success at it, losing some too and having them see me lose that million dollars. So now I'm in a position, fortunately, to where I can file the lawsuit. I know the attorneys for all the auto manufacturers, they know me. We don't play a lot of games. There's an exception to that obviously. And so many of the cases we can resolve in the first eight to 12 months without spending several hundred thousand dollars, and that's a benefit to the client because ultimately that comes out of their recovery.
So most cases we agree on, if it's a great case, it has a higher settlement value. If it's not a great case, a lower settlement value. And we can resolve them fairly early on without a lot of expense. Now, sometimes reasonable people can disagree and we tee it high and let it fly and that'll take a couple of years.
Chris Dreyer:
The thing that I like about what you do is you can create a real impact. You can make the cars safer to drive. And you've had at least four crucial precedent setting appellate opinions, but you guys are known for finding the needle in the haystack and all these scenarios. So can you speak to me about just... And you mentioned it like, "Hey, scrub it for products on..." How does that impact how you do things maybe on the front end, like on intake and what cases you're selecting?
Brian Chase:
Yeah. Well, at intake, I know what to look for now. I've been doing it so long. So now I could typically, if someone says, "Hey, Brian, I've got this case, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I'll say, "Send me the police report, send me pictures of the car and describe the injuries." I could usually go, "Oh, that's probably a roof crush case. That's an airbag case. That's a seat back case." So I can identify them upfront pretty early on at the intake. And so even though I've got several people that are on the intake team and screen all the other auto cases that come into the office, on the auto defects, I screen all of those personally, and I spend a lot of time every day doing that. But to touch on something that you mentioned on the appellate stuff, one of the things that...
I went to law school because I was envious of doctors. They get to save a life. And I though, "Man, if your life can save a life, how great would that be?" But I didn't want to be a lawyer. I mean, I didn't want to be a doctor, but I though if I'm a lawyer, my life's work can matter on certain cases. And so that really drove me. And when it just popped in my head when you talked about the appellate opinions, I got a good verdict a number of years ago on an auto defect case. So very happy for the client, set her up to buy a house, put ramps in it. She was paralyzed so she can widen the door so she could have a great life. But I got a published opinion, and this was in 2012 case, 2014 published opinions.
That's 12 years ago. So for 12 years, I have clarified and partially changed the law in California to make it easier for a plaintiff or a consumer to sue the auto industry or any products manufacturer. I mean, I get goosebumps when I talk about that because there are presumably dozens, hundreds, I don't know how long that opinion's going to be around, where lawyers are going to be able to help people. And that's one of the published opinions I'm almost more proud of than an individual case because you're helping people way beyond your reach.
Chris Dreyer:
You've got the awards, you get a billion dollars plus in recoveries, 99% success rate, and you've written two books. You've written Still Unsafe at Any Speed and The Second Collision. Looking ahead, what do you think separates the great PI firms for the next five years. What do we got to look at? Do you think everybody's afraid of collision detection and less accidents? But I mean, that's a good thing. It's a good thing if there's less accidents.
Brian Chase:
Oh no, it is. Whenever I speak at conferences, I've been telling people for well over 10 years. I mean, 10, 12 years, I've been telling the people that are just doing the, I don't say just, but the auto accident cases, the rear-enders, the fender benders, those people get hurt, someone's negligent, they deserve compensation. But I've always preached to people or tried to speak, "Hey, those cases are going to be fewer and fewer in the future. This technology does work." Now it fails and then you get a catastrophic injury and then I come in, but the bread and butter cookie cutter auto accident cases, are they going to be gone in five years? I don't think they're going to be gone, but the technology has been pretty good from the late 20 teens.
So a lot of people will drive a car for 10 years. Okay, that takes you to 2029. Some people will drive a car for 15 or 20 years, but there's going to be a time where all the cars have it. And as a matter of fact, I think it's in 2029, I believe the federal government is requiring it. There's a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard mandating it on all cars and where you can't disable it. You're not going to like that, but you will like it because it doesn't apply to the lane change, that you can disable. Nobody likes that. I've had rental cars with it. It's annoying, but the braking to stop from hitting a pedestrian, to stop from hitting another car, to stop from driving through a building and killing four people, that case I just signed up this week or filed it this week, those cases are going to go away.
So people need to be looking at... I mean, everybody wants trucking cases, everybody wants TBI cases, get all that, and we all want those cases. But if I were doing auto soft tissue rear-ender cases or back surgery cases from auto accidents, I would want to be branching out on what I'm marketing. And I don't know, you would know better than I on clients you're working with if they're looking at that down the road. I wouldn't stop marketing for them, but I wouldn't have that be my target 10 years from now or five years from now, just in case.
Chris Dreyer:
Relying solely on routine auto accidents is a ticking clock. As safety tech advances and emergency braking systems becomes federally mandated, standard collision volume will inevitably decline. Resilient firms insulate their downside by diversifying, hedging against market shares with specialized litigation while using everyday cases to fuel a compounding referral engine.
Brian Chase:
And even I have diversified my practice. I mean, I've got teams that do those small auto accident cases, not per se for money, but those clients become future referral sources. I mean, let's say we do a few hundred of those a year. Over 10 years, that's 3,000 people and a good referral source for us is former clients. So we do those cases, but to answer your question more directly or what we're talking about now, I've even diversified my practice. I mean, my niche is still auto defects and that's always going to be around. It's just going to be different auto defects. But I've got an employment law department. I've got an employment class action department. I'm in leadership on talcum powder mass tort cases. I don't do a lot of mass torts. I usually will be involved in three at a time, but I always hold my hands in a few other things just in case we get tort reformed out or whatever happens.
You don't know. I encourage everybody to... I mean, I think you should have your specialty, but you got to run your law firm like a business. I know they tell you in law school it's not. They told me in law school, "Don't ever call it a business. It's a profession." No, bullshit. It's a business and you got to run it like one.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's a great piece of advice, especially for some of the younger attorneys. I think I look at this like this in hourglass, at least from my perspective, I'd like to hear your opinion. In the beginning, you can't be too selective because you got to make money. That case comes in, you can't be too selective. And then you can kind of narrow and get a specialty, but then once you got capital, then maybe you can expand out, maybe do some torts, maybe hire an attorney that has a different specialty. I feel like it's that hourglass.
Brian Chase:
Well, it's totally true. I mean, it's like when you first start practicing law, we used to call it door law. You take anything that comes in the door and you do. And man, I wanted to be a trial lawyer and I went to law school to be a personal injury lawyer. So six weeks after passing the bar, I was in my first jury trial. The stuff that Bisnar had me trying right when I got out of law school, the slip and falls and the crazy fact patterns, yeah. Some of those cases we wouldn't take now. But as you say-
Chris Dreyer:
You think he'd give you the, "Oh shit, you won that one."
Brian Chase:
Yeah. Yeah. I heard a great story. I think I heard it from Mark Lanier on a podcast. I hope I'm not misquoting and if I am, it's not derogatory anyway, but he would have associates come in and he'll have a... It's either a case or a summary judgment motion that nobody could win, and he gives it to the newer person that wants experience and is like, "Okay, go do that. I'm not going to give you a slam dunk winner right out of the gate." And it was good experience. I mean, I was trying some tough cases. But to your hourglass thing, yeah, then you can get more selective and that's great. Then you can hopefully develop a niche. If you're getting verdicts, I mean, there's no silver bullet, but if there is a more silver bullet than others, if you get a bunch of verdicts, you're going to get attorney referrals.
The non-Q public might not know who you are unless you're on TV, but the attorney referrals, which is a big market for me, but we market everywhere. Then you can get to be more selective, then as you say, then all of a sudden you've got more capital and then I'm thinking like, "Okay, well, here's these mass torts. Maybe I'll get involved in them." And you spend a ton of money to bring those cases in. So I like your hourglass analogy. It's spot on.
Chris Dreyer:
Brian, this has been fantastic. And for our audience that has questions for you about products, about auto defect, or maybe they have that wrongful death that they want a second pair of eyes on, what's the best way to get in touch?
Brian Chase:
Yeah, probably the best way, I'll give you... The website is bestattorney.com, so that's an easy one. So you can go in and find us through there, but I'll spit out my office number here anyway, which is 949-752-2999.
Chris Dreyer:
Well, this has been amazing. I'm glad we did a second run. And guys, go check out episode six too, and you can see kind of the progression and what's changed. We touched on some different things, and Brian, it's been such a pleasure.
Brian Chase:
Hey, Chris, I appreciate you, and thank you so much. This was really a lot of fun.
Chris Dreyer:
Brian Chase has helped build Bisnar Chase into a billion dollar practice by treating litigation as an uncompromising business. He doesn't settle for quick policy limits on catastrophic wrecks. He commits the capital to take on global auto manufacturers, systematically scrubs crashes for product failure, and actively adapts his practice to the next wave of autonomous driving defects. And by backing that courtroom aggression with an internal culture where top talent stays for decades, he's built an operation that consistently compounds through peer trust and organic client referrals. This is exactly how you dominate high stakes niches and build a lasting legacy in this industry. 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. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
