Seth Bader, Bader Scott – Creating an Amazing Experience for Your Clients & Continuous Improvement by Investing in Yourself
Seth Bader is the Founder and Managing Attorney of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers. He and his associates have represented over 10,000 people who have suffered injuries as a result of another’s negligence or a work-related accident. Seth has personally been responsible for over 30 million in settlements for clients throughout the state of Georgia. He is, to put it mildly, an elite personal injury attorney.
What’s in This Episode:
- Who is Seth Bader
- How Bader Scott Injury Lawyers started and why he focused on worker compensation
- Seth talks about the firm’s turning point and what he learned from running a blog
- Seth’s mentors and how they helped him overcome different challenges at each level of his firm’s growth
- How does Seth Bader hire great talent?
- How Seth is positioning his firm for continuous growth
- High-value activities that brings the most impact for Bader Scott Injury Lawyers
- Seth’s advice for lawyers who are trying to grow a large thriving practice
Episode 16:
Prologue
Welcome to The Rankings Podcast, where we feature top founders, entrepreneurs and elite personal injury attorneys and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.
Chris Dreyer
Chris Dreyer here, President and Founder of Rankings.io, where we help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings. You’re listening to the Rankings Podcast where I feature innovative business owners and of course, elite personal injury attorneys. I’m excited to have
Seth Bader
on the show today. He is the founder of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, and he and his associates have represented over 10 to 10,000 people who have suffered injuries as a result of another’s negligence, or a work related accident. He has personally been responsible for over 30 million and settlements for clients throughout the state of Georgia. He is to put it mildly, an elite personal injury attorney Seth, welcome to the show.
Seth Bader
Thank you, Chris. I’m glad to be here and really appreciate you having me on today.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, I’m excited to speak to you. So take me back to 2008. When you founded Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, how did you get started? Where did the idea come from?
Seth Bader
Sure. Well, first in 2008, I started the firm and founded the firm is Bader Law Firm. It was not until 2018 that my partner Louis Scott joined me. And we changed the name to beta Scott injury lawyers. But in 2008, after five years of working for insurance, defense firms, I finally took the leap of faith that I feel like was my destiny and open my law firm, because I wanted to help people and so in 2008, I went out on my own opened up a Bader Law Firm, it was really exclusively a workers compensation law firm, which I opened up here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chris Dreyer
Well, that’s great, and I want to really, you know, jump In here, so you have a perspective of being on the other side. So it really helps you, you know, get the most value with your, with your customers now.
Seth Bader
Absolutely, I think it’s my while it was not, you know, the most exciting time and certainly not the most exciting citing time as a lawyer or in my professional career, it was some of the, probably the most valuable experience I had in terms of learning the substance of the law, so that I could take that and use that really now to benefit my clients who are in cases, you know, adverse to the insurance companies. So, yeah, so for the first five years from 2003 until 2008, like I said, I represented insurance companies, both in car accident cases, and in workers compensation cases, again, primarily in terms of workers comp, and and as a result, I learned, you know, really all of the tricks and the secrets on how they manage their accounts. And how they try to reduce the value of claims. And I think that that’s been invaluable in in terms of my ability to give my clients the best result.
Chris Dreyer
Absolutely. So your firm, it’s really grown. You know, what were some of the biggest turning points in your company? What kind of took it to that next level?
Seth Bader
Well, you know, throughout the last 12 years, I what I found is that, it that I’ve had many turning points, and I’ve reached many plateaus, and then I’ve kind of blasted through those plateaus to get to another level. You know, when I think back, probably
the first big turning point was,
well, first, initially, I put a lot of time and effort into trying to figure out ways to market the firm. And so I don’t know that this is a turning point, but I guess it was in 2009. I was approached by a law firm that But I’d never heard of that was doing a lot of advertising. And they asked me if I would be interested in taking referrals, which of course I was because at the time I had about 25 cases they didn’t know that. what’s what’s interesting. And what I learned as a result of that relationship in that connection is that a lot of times if you if you really go for it and you put your your, you know, your energy and your passion behind something that you believe will work for you. Sometimes it doesn’t often it doesn’t work the way you expect, but it ultimately ends up working. And so specifically in 2008, I had very little money, I didn’t have a marketing budget and so all I could afford was a was a $200 I don’t even know if I’d call it a website. There’s a company you may be familiar with called Lex blog. And so I think it was like 200 $250. They basically built out what appeared to be a website, but I was is responsible for 100% of the content and I literally day and night just put a ton of content that the website is gone now it was Atlantaworkerscompblog.com. And then there was a tagline that they told me I needed and it was dedicated to helping you get the maximum compensation and medical treatment that you deserve something, something to that effect. And so I literally day and night, I mean, I must have put in 10 to 12 hours a day. putting content on that site when I wasn’t working on my the few cases that I had hoping that the community the consumer would find me. And like no joke. I never had one client find me from that website. But I did have two lawyers, the first in 2009 and a second two years later in 2011. They found me and both of them sent me hundreds of cases. So that was one I think turning point was when I got that first referral from from a from a large law firm and then in 2013 when I, you know, when I realized that I did not want to be dependent upon one or two lawyers to generate my business, I started to invest a lot of time in, in finding mentors and mastermind groups that that I could learn from. And so, in 2013, I joined some groups and was able to learn a lot about marketing and managing a firm. And then from there, you know, putting a lot of time money and effort into the marketing of the practice.
Chris Dreyer
That’s great. It seems like you know, all that content that you wrote, maybe it didn’t, it didn’t attract the end consumer. But attorneys when they needed to refer out a case, they want to see who the expert is, and I’m sure your content showed your expertise, and that’s how you establish those first relationships.
Seth Bader
Yeah, no question about it. Not only not only was it the content, but I also spent a lot of time using Google Translate, which I think has since been radically improved, but at the time It was good enough just to put some Spanish content. I spoke Spanish I speak. I’m conversing in Spanish, but not fluent. Certainly not enough to write. But I using Google Translate, I was able to take everything that I put in English and put it into Spanish. And I think as a result, I was one of the few lawyers that had any Spanish content. And so both of those firms reset in part because of that. So yeah,
Chris Dreyer
that’s awesome. Yeah, there’s a lot less competition, even in AdWords, you know, it’s less per click. And so there’s some big opportunities there. And you mentioned some mentors and masterminds. Who are some of those mentors. I know on Facebook, we fought you know, I follow you on Facebook and and you’re commenting on with on Cameron Herold stuff, big fan of Cameron Herold, you know, who are some of those mentors that really helped, you know, help you get past those plateaus that you’re referring to?
Seth Bader
Yeah. So I’ve worked with and one way, one shape or another I’ve worked with with several mentors, a lot of a lot of big mentors in the industry. You know, first was Ken Hardison who I think is amazing. And I joined his mastermind group and went to his conferences. The first one, I think, was 2013 in Chicago, and it really just opened my eyes to a completely different world. Before then, marketing and advertising was just a huge mystery. And what I learned from a lot of other attorneys and law firms around the country is that while it still is a risk, there are ways to be a little bit more scientific about it. And there are ways to measure things. And so you can take calculated risks and so so I joined Ken’s group. I worked here locally with Alvaro Arauz. I
Chris Dreyer
Shout out to Alvaro and he’s great.
Seth Bader
So I worked with Alvaro I was actually my first consultant. So I worked with algebra. I’ve worked with Ken, with it, you know, through Ken. I’ve met a lot of folks, including Harlan Schillinger. I don’t know that I would call him a mentor, but surely a friend and a counselor, Paul Faust, who is in the phone number business, I’ve worked with, again, I’ve met so many people in the SEO space, like yourself that have been really helpful. Now, of course, I’m a member of the CrispX’s mastermind with Michael Mogill. And so he’s a friend and also mentor as well. And, and most recently, we started to work with Cameron Herold, who I think is really been helpful in terms of the operations
Chris Dreyer
that said the COO Alliance. Yeah,
Seth Bader
so we’re working with him. And then we also, we do also work with How to Manage a Small Law Firm. So I think, you know, I think we just, I think, at each plateau or at each level of the business, you know, you encounter new challenges. And the reality is I didn’t go to school to get an MBA and even if I did, you know, to grow a business from zero employees to 150 is Is you naturally you’re going to encounter all kinds of new challenges. And so you don’t know what you don’t know. And so as a result, I find that investing in education and mentorship and masterminds has been probably the sort of the secret sauce, you know, for me, because through it, I’ve been able to expedite my learning curve and, and avoid making a lot of the very expensive mistakes that people often make when they don’t know what they’re doing.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, and that makes sense. And when you talk to these individuals, it just elevates you. So you start congregating and hanging out with people like minded people you brainstorm you get ideas. You know, you mentioned you’re at you said 150 plus employees around there.
Seth Bader
You know, you’re honest, I’ve lost track, but I was about 140 hundred gotcha. So,
Chris Dreyer
yeah, that was gonna be my, my, my next question. So, you know, when you’re hiring that amount of employees I know at one time you’re gonna hire 35 plus employees. You know, how do you source great talent? What are some of the processes that you utilize to make that process smoother and more effective?
Seth Bader
Sure. So I’ll have to leave the details to my HR team, but we’ve implemented a hiring funnel in many respects, based on what we’ve learned from Michael over at Crisp and CrispX’s a mastermind group, so they introduced a hiring funnel to us and so we use that as sort of the foundation to to weed out people and really to, I guess, to, to filter in the people that we want, you know, we’re really big on culture. And by culture, I just mean, you know, connecting with our core values and people that really believe in what our vision is and, and that are willing to kind of embody either all of our core values or many of them and so, I think that that’s really the objective we the hiring process is almost as quick obligated, but there are different levels. And so, you know, in addition to being able to demonstrate your subject matter expertise, whether you’re a lawyer or a receptionist, whatever it is, you know, being able to actually do the work, we also want to make sure that the person is a good culture fit in terms of their values. And so they go through an interview process not only with like the HR team but with members of our firm and members of our leadership team, just to make sure that they’re a good fit both for them and for us.
Chris Dreyer
And see, we got some specialized individuals that really just have harness best practices, and it’s really, really been effective for your for your firm. So you’ve hit these plateaus, you’ve grown, you’ve got some mentors, you know, how are you positioning your firm for growth now? Because, you know, back in the day, you said, You’re cranking out articles on your legs blog, and now you’ve got the resources, you know, what are some of the strategies you’re taking to take your firm to the next level now?
Seth Bader
Yeah, well, they’re certainly The obvious, right so we do spend a lot of money in advertising, we spend money in the digital space. We spend about both online and on social media. We spend money on traditional media, like a TV and radio. But I think now our focus really is on the client experience. So so we’re in the process of investing a lot of time, money and effort in creating the optimal client journey. Because ultimately, when we look at our, our statistics in terms of our signups time and time again, the greatest source of business is the referral. It’s client referrals, its former clients, its friends and family. And so in frankly, there, I don’t say that they’re the best clients, but those clients tend to, to to be more patient. They tend to just by the numbers, the cases are a little bit bigger. And so so you know, Those are sort of the ideal clients for so we treat every client the same. And I think that as a result of his results of our recognition that those are that that is the best source of business, we are investing a lot of effort into building up the best client experience from the beginning, from the time that they first contact the firm until the time that they become a former client. So
Chris Dreyer
yeah, and externally, when I’m prepping for our interview, I see that firsthand. You know, a lot of times, firms will just focus on the acquisition acquiring the client, and then they hand over the check. And it’s kind of done, but but you’ve turned your clients into evangelists and then like you said, referrals, you know, over 750 Google reviews, I mean, that’s handling your clients, you know, keeping them close and sharing the love and making sure they’re treated right. And I really applaud you for that. And that’s that’s a different type of approach. I expected you are going to say something like we’re we’re doing this this Brand initiative. But But I really like that, that you’re really focused on the customer.
Seth Bader
You know, the I believe that when I was, you know, the only attorney in the firm that I was giving all the clients a great experience, I feel very confident that I was I, everybody had myself on. Like, I was available 24 seven, and I literally took calls 24 seven, didn’t matter whether it’s a holiday, it was, you know, they didn’t matter. I was available. 20 473 65 and I always had a dream that you could scale that. But I didn’t know I had not figured that out. And I don’t know that we’ve totally figured that yet. But we have a team dedicated to it right now. We’ve got a plan in place and I feel very confident that over the next year we’re going to build out that like that ideal client, journey and experience and and I’m excited Not only because we’re going to be able to give it to the clients, we’re going to be able to give it to them at scale. And so, you know, I have to report back to, you know, next year but I mean, it’s it is our primary focus right now.
Chris Dreyer
Well, that’s amazing. And and yeah, we’ll definitely have to follow up, maybe do a second interview and talk about that. So, you know, your role has changed, you know, you went from, you know, whether it’s the E-myth revisited, where you’re talking about manager, maker owner, and you kind of evolve with these different steps. And, you know, you were writing blogs and hustling, answering every call, as of today, what are your high value activities? What actions do you take that bring the most impact for your firm? Sure.
Seth Bader
So, you know, I think that the first thing is just vision casting, you know, setting the vision and, and sort of sharing that vision with my partner, who is the active managing partner, you know, on the day to day basis. So I think that’s the primary thing. But in addition to to vision casting and setting the vision, I think it’s just leadership, communication with with my, with my leadership team, and just trying to, you know, create, I guess, create the right energy and the right atmosphere for the firm. And so I what what I’ve come to find out is, as a leader, you know, I have an obligation to have an exponential impact, and I can’t really do that. Managing individual cases now, I do still get involved in cases. I have my own select Set of cases, but I’m also regularly talking to lawyers, associates about their cases. And you know, if I need to get involved I certainly do. But I think I think as a leader and as an owner, I have a responsibility to impact 150 people and in the process Impact literally the thousands of clients, you know, that we represent. And so I can do that more, again through vision casting through leadership. And I think that that’s, that’s my primary function at this point.
Chris Dreyer
Yeah, that’s great and cast the vision down, you make everyone better and you can, you know, from your experience, you can make your entire team better. So, Seth, one final question here. Do you have any advice for your fellow lawyers trying to grow a large successful practice?
Seth Bader
The main thing is to to grow as a person. And as a professional. I think that I think that when I look at my experience, my success is directly tied to the investments that I’ve made to grow myself as you know, personally and professionally, to surround yourself with other folks that have experienced the kind of success that you want to experience because they’ve been there. They’ve done that, and in most cases, they’re willing to To share I mean, I think is all of us that have reached a certain level. At one point, we’re looking to other mentors for advice. And so I think most of us are generally very open to sharing and helping other people. So I think that’s the main piece of advice. And I think the other thing is if you, if you if you have a passion, just dive into it and go all in because if you really have that passion, you’re going to find ways to achieve your goals. Again, they may not you may not achieve those goals the way you expect. But as long as you kind of stick to it and you remain persistent, and patient, then eventually you will figure things out.
Chris Dreyer
I love that. So continuous improvement, invest in yourself congregate, hang out with individuals that will elevate your own skills and challenge you guys, we’ve been talking to
Seth Bader
, of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers Seth, where can people go to To learn more about you
Seth Bader
Sure, so they can go to baderscott.com or you can give us a call at 404-888-8888. Like I said, myself, my partner Luis Scott, we’re more than happy to share ideas and explore ways to help other lawyers, big and small. And we’d love to do that. So if you have an opportunity means to reach out to us.
Chris Dreyer
Awesome. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks so much.
Conclusion
Thanks for listening to The Rankings Podcast
