Gary Burger is a partner at Burger Law and heads the Civil Litigation Group. Gary devotes his practice to helping injury victims and their families, providing financial recovery and protecting the future of those injured, and making our community safer through advocacy and volunteer work.
Today we share his presentation, “Opening a Law Firm on the Fly” from MaxLawCon 2018.
Watch the presentation here.
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Transcript: “Opening a Law Firm on the Fly” w/ Gary Burger
Speaker 1
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Becca Eberhart
In today’s episode, we’re throwing it back to a presentation from Maxsa con 2018, Gary Burger of burger law in St. Louis, Missouri, shares his presentation, opening a law firm on the fly. Let’s get to
Gary Burger
it. I’m not gonna give a lot of personal stories, probably. But this is kind of what I’m trying to do is a nuts and bolts on how to do it and how to how I did it, including my mistakes. So you got to transfer clients with your ex partner, you divide up old business, you do things, I think folks should go get a cheap URL on GoDaddy, build a website and get a phone number. I didn’t do that. What I did is I wanted burger law. So I found a guy named Ernest burger in California. And I bought his URL from him. He had had it for 20 for 15 years, never did anything with it. I paid him some money. And I took it because I thought that was a good URL for me. And then I built three websites over two years. So I hired someone to build me a website. They came in, they they they built me a website, and they were supposed to do all this stuff. And they didn’t do it. And I ended up putting all this content on my on my site and did it myself. So I fired them. And I got another guy and that other guy, the next guy was actually pretty good. He was a local guy. He won’t be wasn’t a marketer. But he did a great job for me for bringing it up doing a lot of stuff till about September, when an October in September, I moved my I thought my business had grown. I moved over to Seth and blue sharp to help me out in what I’m doing. And then I got a phone number. And then I had lunch with my friend Jim Hackett, Jim and I had become friends. We had mutual friends over the years. And he looked at me at lunch. And he and here I am. I you know, I even in my old firm, I paid I had an internal marketing person paid someone a full time salary, to do all my Facebook posts on my stuff. I had her for about a year and a half. And she was okay. But but but that wasn’t a good solution for us. I’ve tried, reach local here, I’ve we tried so many different things. And all I did in the past was throw money at marketing, not really think about it not own it not take that responsibility, because I’m a fancy trial, or I don’t need to get you know, get my hands dirty, right? Jim looked at me across the lunch table and said, I will never forget this. He said, How many marketing books have you read? And my answer was none. I had never read one. I had never read one. So what Jim did is he loaned me some of his books. And if you go to Jim’s office, and then he in the lonely some of books, I read them, and I surrendered to that. And then he brought me in his office. And and he and he sat down and helped me with a marketing plan. And he has this he has more marketing books than anybody I’ve ever seen, although I don’t know how many I’ve seen. But he’s got this whole shelf of these marketing books. And he had all kinds of great ideas. And so I decided to own it right? And to do that. So I did that. So I decided my marketing plan, what am I going to do? What are my assets? Who’s my perfect client? Who am I marketing to? So I’m not a new lawyer, I have some gray hair. My mom’s a former judge, I try cases. So Jim thought that I would have a good connection with other lawyers and referral business and get that message out. Because I know folks, all right. And so I started to do that. I also decided to have something of a web presence. And to get that out, I decided immediately I wasn’t going to do TV, or billboards or that kind of stuff. I found their efficacy to be low, the ROI low, six months before my firm blew up, we went on TV for a while didn’t see a lot of return on investment. our back end wasn’t ready for it. We did we had some billboards, too, that we’re kind of hit or miss, right? We’re throwing money at stuff. And our back end really wasn’t ready for it to the cases we did. We did a lot of stuff, right? We did some stuff wrong, probably how I am today. And then the other thing is Jim told me and I learned before you go outside and try to get the cases from outside look inside, right? Like whenever we decide to challenges in our life, right? Hey, that’s your problem? No, really, it’s my problem. Right? But so I looked inside what who were my contacts? Who were my clients? Who are my friends? What did my list look like? Okay, so I did that too. So mine your past clients and friends before you look outside? And then the issue and then if you’re starting a new firm, the question is, do you want partners, right? And so partners are great. I mean, there’s a tension in partners. So let’s talk about that for a second. Just share my some of my thoughts on that. Partners are great in many ways, you know, you learn from them, you spread the risk, you have other people doing that with you, you have me you may have divided abilities. So you have the trial or you have the marketer you have the firm runner, you some guy may do criminal some guy may do p guy, you know, you have different stuff. There’s also tensions in a partnership, right? And as over the years sometimes that can develop, does your does one of the partners not want to be on the website is one of the partners not going to do the marketing parts of this is one of the partners not going to want to work as hard or make as much money or that kind of stuff? You don’t know how these things gonna go? So yeah, there’s good sides of it. And yeah, there’s bad sides of it. So there’s that tension as you go along. And one of the things that, you know, in handling having any relationship like that, you want to have good communication, try to work out things adjust things over that time. Those are just some issues in partnership, people are like, Yeah, I want to have a partner, I want to do this, and this and this, you know, there’s also a diffusion of responsibility, you know, you know, I’m not going to do that newsletter, because my partner doesn’t give me those articles. I gotta do it all on my own. I don’t want to have to do all these Facebook posts and all this stuff. I’m doing that I don’t want to might he’s not doing it right. Or he’s getting in a 10 I’m getting in at eight or etc, etc. So that can happen to over time. Not that there’s any answer. Partnerships are good. So practice practices are good. John’s mentioned, he’s never been happier since going on his own. I know Mitch has good partnership success. So there’s different we all have different stuff. But the one great one thing I will my my ex partner, the one great thing he told me it taught me was hand out your card and get over that, that introverted this that I have that we all have part of us that are like that introvert extrovert, hand out your card, give it out, talk about yourself, get that business, never hire a moving company twice, always hire as different moving company because you get to hire your hand out your card to a different group of people, just that simple idea like that, to not be afraid to talk about your business. And you’d kind of want to be a little shy yo, hey, in case you get injured. No, you know, but But you got to do it. You got to put your on, can you can I help people I help people? Here’s my Carter, you may never need to call me. But in case you do, there it is. Do you have a business plan or a logo, I don’t have a business plan. I just do stuff today. But I kind of do, right? There’s my fancy logo, not that great. And that and that’s still it still is what it is. Some people get a lot of value of that. Maybe they do I don’t know. And then I also was turned on with with Jim, and Tyson about Upwork and Fiverr. So these are places where you can get logos designed and videos edited and medical records reviewed, and all kinds of stuff done at relatively low prices. And then you end up having relationships with good providers under these sources. And you can get stuff done, which is great. You can get URL, website logo graphics done for cheap on those if you’re just starting out. Now you got to be careful too, though, on those because you do have bad people who who do work through there. You don’t want to go pay someone to give you 5000 links to your site that are 5000 Terrible links that are going to damage your damage your Google juice, do you have a Facebook business page, decide and implement a Facebook and social media presence? What are you going to do and decide to do it? Get your Google My Business page and a geographic Google location? That’s basic stuff. You’d be surprised how many people don’t have that. It’s incredible. You go Google businesses, I see it all the time, or places where I’m going where they don’t have that. And because your Google reviews, go to that geographical location and go through that Google My Business page, the three most important things in marketing, action, action action, it’s like the real estate joke, right? So it’s location, location, location. So regardless of what you’re going to do, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to change your mind, you’re gonna do things differently. As long as you’re doing those things and taking action on those things. I couldn’t advocate that more. Get your list together. That was so hard for me to do. What does that mean? I have a list of contacts, email addresses names. It’s a combination of lawyers and clients and friends, etc, etc. We have a guy in our Infusionsoft workgroup, his company is get your list together. That’s all he does for people. No one wants to do this. It’s you sit down, you go through your contact list and make sure it’s cleaned up and right. And I spent hours and hours doing that. And in December and January, I would be up all night, I’d be deleting my ex partners friends off that list and doing mine and then my Google Sheet, I would lose it. And I’d have to find my have my wife come and where did this go. And I would just work on it and work on it and work on it to try to get my list together. So I had a marketable list. The way I used to do that in my old firm was about September, we start thinking about Christmas cards. So we send out a newsletter in September to see who changed their addresses. And then we get all these Oh, incorrect address and then we go change the addresses. And then by the time october november rolls around, I got my list together. That’s how I did that for 15 years. That’s all I did with that for 15 years, but I really got my list together my list now was 616 1000 people, including I have about 6000 people in a class action case I’m trying for weeks from Monday in the middle of Missouri, and I’ve been communicating through them, too. So get your list together. It’s not just in you can get people on your list that you don’t know. It’s not who you know, it’s who do you want to market to? I went in and I put in lawyers that I don’t know. And I’ll tell you what I did with it a minute. So Infusionsoft lets them tag you in different ways. I tagged them some are clients, current clients, former clients, lawyers, vendors, I have people tagged for different campaigns I have if they’re a if their auto case work comp, slip fall, Mets med mal, and they get they have series of different emails to teach them about their case as they go forward. But yes, but I don’t overly segment Typhon will, he’s he segments so much. But the question, but the type of marketing you’re going to do informs you as to how much you need to divvy up the list, right? I don’t have that much time to be two different emails to do for different groups I send out I write to everybody, like you were talking about how do you write to I send the same email to the smartest lawyer at Brian cave than I do to my to my truck driver client? I don’t, because that’s because that because that, that everybody wants to be educated in the law in a straightforward manner, do an E paper newsletter, here you go. So I started doing it. Jim does it he does once every week, I decided I’m going to do it every two weeks. I’ve done an email newsletter every two weeks. Since then, I have done about 60 of them in two and a little over two years. I put them all together in a book, if you want to read all of my E newsletters, go to my website, go to my books I put down. I did a little book, here’s 54 newsletters over two years. And when you’re starting a firm, and you can go read them all and I do them all myself. No one else does. And except they’ve had Joe do some on every once in a while. Joe’s one of my former lawyers who work with me, so I do it myself. And I know sometimes someone does contact I’m putting the pictures in I’m doing all this stuff. That’s my Sunday night activity. Every two weeks CLS I read John’s book, one of the books that Jim gave me when I first met with him was this book, and I read it and I read about how John did CLS in order to get connections with other lawyers to educate people to give back. And I took that idea from him. I don’t know if many of my ideas are unique, some are but a lot of them are just environmentally scanning for what works for me and then take action on them. So I do CLAS I’ve done six so I do about two a year. I’m doing one next week. And we’re actually doing it we’re doing it now I’ve done a podcast that’s a couple of number down so we’re gonna record the whole thing we’re gonna put into my lawyer versus lawyer podcast it’s gonna be great me and another lawyer gonna argue motions to a judge we’re going to record it all I’ve done this CLE before we have an ethics guy we’re talking about trial we’re talking about different stuff so legal edge could CLAS like John Does he already talked about it so you go out and do these you get your name out and then and then you then I video them. I put them on YouTube. I put them on my lawyer to lawyer page on my website where I put up my CLA materials and stuff so any lawyer can get it. Here’s my brief on this. Here’s how you handle liens. Here’s my do this. I have lawyers call me all the time. How do I do this lien? How do I do this? Answer questions for free spread your knowledge. You learn stuff over time. So I did it all myself at the beginning I think it’s really important to learn William was talking about doing on your stuff. There’s no way to learn how to do it by putting stuff on yourself on WordPress, tagging it figuring out making those mistakes. Do Infusionsoft yourself, do these campaigns by yourself. There’s no better way to learn than to do it. And actually there is it’s teaching it to so if you go teach it you also have to learn everything really well. Right? So do it yourself in the beginning. Look at your own Google Analytics and your own PPC claims. Figure out what what areas you want to not market to figure out what negative keywords you want to put in so you don’t get terrible leads keep track of where your cases are coming from. Keep track of how am I going to not get those bad calls that I spend all this time with and waste my time. What am I going to do for that before use and use Constant Contact MailChimp or Infusionsoft yourself especially at the beginning. If you put in new email addresses you’ve never marketed to set up a MailChimp account to do it before you put it into your main Infusionsoft or other mail account a MailChimp account because if you if a bunch of people unsubscribe, they’ll mark you as a spammer and you need to move that to a new URL. Infusionsoft has different servers that shoot out different emails depending on how good your good your list is. Because if and there are some firms that I am targeted as the spammer, a buddy of mine and my emails even like, Hey, where’s my discovery, we’ll get it get put into their spam just because they do these emails. A lot of them don’t and then they take it off and they understand that Yeah, I do that but I also to talk to you about cases. So that happens to surrender to marketing and running your business. You know, that was one of the things I did try to do. I’m gonna talk about surrender and serenity now, right? So surrendering, we sometimes we think as lawyers, we’re too we’re too important or ivory tower, or we’re too smart or whatever to get in and run our business to people who own companies and have car washes and run gas stations do that. No, they run their business who are who am I to be holier than thou, or better than that No, surrender to the idea that you have to run your business, you got to get clients you got to have you got to run an operations of a firm. And yeah, you got to be a trial lawyer too. But you got to surrender to the idea, let go of that, let go let God right let go to the idea that you got to run your business. That’s it. And nothing helped me more than that, frankly, than being my own sole practitioner. As John mentioned, as you’ll hear other people mentioned, I don’t have any excuses. It’s either either success or failure. That’s the deal. It’s up to me. So I didn’t have anybody to blame other than myself. And that is a motivator, right? Serenity, remember to have serenity about what you can control and what you can’t control, I can’t control how many cases I’m going to have next year, there’s a lot of things I can’t control in the legal business, the facts of my case, how my clients going to do in a depo, what kind of jury panel, I’m gonna draw what’s going to happen, you think you got to get great, we have this all the time. In these cases, you think you got a great case, you litigate it for a while something happens, you know, you got to be, you got to be responsive to the current facts, the current picture of your case and you you have to have the serenity to understand what you can change and what you can’t change. If you can’t change it. That’s the deal. Seth talked about that square peg in a round hole. It is what it is. It’s in management, it’s in cases, it’s in the idea about marketing about what you can do and what you can’t. If you don’t have a big marketing budget, you don’t. So then you’re gonna go do it more organically, like William does, or you’re going to do this or that you’re going to do what you can do. And that’s okay. 23 and 24. So, how do you plan things out? So I have a two week plan a 12. week plan? Tyson’s a big advocate of the 12 week work 12 week, work year, whatever that book is, and a five year plan five years, where am I going to be down the road? 12 weeks? What am I doing in the next three? next three months? Am I going to start a podcast? Am I going to write a book? What am I going to do plan those things, but you also got to do what am I doing in one week or two weeks, if it’s the end of a week or two weeks, and I haven’t done something for marketing, I do it I make myself I said, I’m gonna go cut five YouTube videos, I’m gonna go do this, I’m gonna go write this piece. I’m gonna do it. I’d stopped doing my litigation and my all my other stuff. And I just do it, I make myself do it. I’m going to tell you the numbers to about at the end. Right before I give the gifts to them about where I am, I went from zero. And then so where am i I’m going to tell you this in about in about a bunch of these, but I’m gonna go through them quicker. So I read this be ever read. First things first, Stephen Covey. So this is four quadrant thing 1234. And the axis here is importance and time. And this is quadrant one, where we spend most of our time, it’s the quick stuff that’s unimportant. It’s the emails, it’s the text. It’s the phone that John’s reaching in to get right now to look at you.
Gary Burger
And so and so. And now, but what’s quadrant four, quadrant four is the stuff that takes the longest to do. And it’s the most important, it’s your marriage. It’s your personal relationships. It’s the long term firm that you have. It’s how you want to raise your kids. And we spend all of our time doing this little minutia in life. And we don’t spend time on the important stuff about our relationships, and about our firm and our growth. And what we want to do. So you got to get out of the numb quadrant one, and you got to get your brain in a Quadrant for where you want to be big, big picture. You don’t want to live in there, but you don’t want to you don’t want to ignore it as well. So those are two good ideas to think about System System systems. You’re heard it from your heard it from from Tyson systemize. Anything you can do more than five times, I have a email I send out to my clients before a deposition where I have three YouTube videos about how to do your deposition, because I find myself saying the same thing to everybody’s not and you say the same thing for the first 20 minutes in a depo prep. I systematize it I have three YouTube videos. Everybody gets that email, it checks off other boxes to their thinking about their depo before the day before they start doing that they come in it cuts 20 minutes in time and then I can just hit the highlights and they get it. Okay, so that’s an idea of a system or I have other things, new clients systems and Infusionsoft. I have ways I want to I want to teach them because by the time you settle a case, and your client is settling a case you want them to be an educated consumer and take your recommendation. So it’s it’s client expectations, and they feel like they’ve been communicated with
Becca Eberhart
Hey guys, it’s Becca here. I’m sure you’ve heard Jim and Tyson match In the guild on the podcast and in the Facebook group, that’s because we’re seeing some really exciting things happening with guild members and their businesses. The Guild is this perfect mix of a community group coaching and a mastermind. Inside you’ll gain support, tap into a network of connections, and continue learning a common theme among successful entrepreneurs. There are so many benefits inside the guild, including weekly live events and discounts to all maximum lawyer events, head over to maximum lawyer.com forward slash the guild to check out all of the benefits and watch a few testimonials from current members. Investing in a community is like the self care of business ownership. Being in a community with other people who get it is crucial when you’re creating a rock solid foundation to build your business on one that’s strong enough to withstand setbacks, transitions and growth. So head to maximum lawyer.com and click on the guild page to join us. Now let’s get back to the episode.
Gary Burger
Don’t keep grumpy clients, okay, so you can’t teach gratitude. And I know I’m jumping around. But these are things you learn, right? So I can have a client where I do so great, I work so hard, I go try the case, I get a great result. And they hate me and they don’t like me. And because that’s the gratitude level, I can have a client where I get it, I turn it pretty, turn the case pretty quickly. And I get a okay result but not a great result because they wanted the money now versus two years from now. And they love me and I’m the best thing that ever happened to them. So think about that. I share out. So when I moved out of my when I got kicked out of my office that kicked out, one of one of us is going to leave I left I went with my old buddy I’ve known forever. And he’s my smartest and most successful friend. He used to own the building right there I’m looking at. So I moved into his building. And he told me one time he said, you know every other business, when you run a business, you periodically go through and you and you you cut your 10% Worse, your 10% Worse properties, your worst cars that you’re selling the worst, the slowest line on your assembly, plant, whatever you’re doing. Occasionally you go through and you look at it, you get rid of your 10 worst. So think about that. Who’s your 10 clients that are sucking up the time? Or are the areas of the practice or something like that? Why do you want? And do you know? And do you think they just take 10% of your time? No, you know the answer that. So that’s that’s a management idea. And it took me forever to learn that and implement it. And I’m kind of implemented. And I’m trying to write market yourself to other lawyers market yourself to outside clients on the Internet and other places. So you got to think of where you’re going to market and how you market yourself to lawyers, which is and so and that’s and have a lunch list. So I have a lunch list on my phone, which is a note that literally says lunch list, because I get so busy. And it’s not it’s kind of marketing, but it’s kind of also because you know, I’m so busy with kids and all the stuff I do. Here’s my lunch list, there it is boom. And I just put people’s names in there. Because I forget, I looked through like, Oh, I really liked that guy. He’s hilarious. I’ve never talked business with them. I never will. But I want to, I want to do that. And I got that because one of the books that Jim gave me is a book about how he how to create a business, an amazing business just by having lunches. And that’s all and it’s a great book, I read it. And so I have a lunch list. So I do that. Thank you never, and so, but have real genuine relationships. Having these relationships with people is not about getting cases that will either come or it won’t come. I don’t know. And I have these lunches in these relationships with lawyers or clients or friends. We’re I’m, you know, I’m here to talk about them when we talk about our kids and our family and what crazy things we’re doing in life. And how what our challenges are, you know, you you don’t sit there if you lead with
Gary Burger
this yet, it’s it’s you know, it’s kind of karma is just not quid pro quo, have the relationship and don’t worry about the cases, the energy you’re putting out in the universe, is the energy you’re gonna get back. I’m a real believer that not in some too touchy feely way a little bit. But I mean, it’s true, you know, because if you have some guy who’s trying to sell you, we get these, I get emails every day and phone calls every day someone trying to send me cases or I’m gonna do your SEO, or I’m gonna do that, you know, I don’t want to listen to those people because you’re trying to sell me something. And so you come to people trying to sell them something and trying to get a certain number of cases they ain’t gonna do it. It’s they’re gonna smell you get Google reviews you already heard about that were you know, they’re really good. And it’s something you do. And as part of your system as part of your of of doing that. I do things like when I when I send my settlement letter to my client, I have a paragraph in there. Google reviews and ratings are really important. Could you please review me this is how you do it. I have a keep a list of people. I have an email where I say hey, you’re my buddy, you want to Google review McCain, you take a minute out, you can get a link to a five star Google review and When they click the link, it goes through it populates by stars and they write something, you can get that. And it’s something you grow over time. I know we’re talking about this competition between Tyson i at the end, but my view of Google reviews has always been a slow growth over time. Where are you do it, you want genuine real reviews, that can be a whole seminar in and of itself. I did one with John in his mastermind group, Yelp, Facebook and other rooms, I have some Facebook, I almost have no Yelp, I kind of gave up on that. They’re really they’re really, I’ve done them before, and then they get rid of them. So I really don’t do a lot on Yelp. I don’t know if you all do, I’m sure it’s good. I just kind of, I don’t have time, I had to concentrate on one thing. And, and so that’s what I did have your social media presence. All right, hang out with other like minded lawyers like this, surround yourself by these kinds of people who I mean, I think I do all this stuff. But I come here, and I’m making notes. And I’m motivated, and it’s great. And I learned so much stuff. And I think I’m doing stuff and I come here and like, boy, there’s a lot of stuff I got to do still right listservs, Facebook, podcasts, that kind of stuff. If you don’t save up money, don’t just throw money at these systems, right? So what find the cheapest space available don’t spend money on nicer fancy letterhead, or these kinds of things, big case management system, expensive SEO companies or high end stuff until you make the money where that is a good business practice for you don’t I’ve seen firms? I’ve seen people start off businesses and stuff. What case management software? I do you know what I mean? I use a Google sheet. And I have other systems in place. But I don’t go out and spend a bunch of money on that. And I don’t want it the vendor to hear right? No, but maybe I think I probably need to, and I should I’m ready to move to that. But don’t be careful investing that I mean, Tyson super cheap. I mean, he doesn’t have he does all he does all this stuff. I mean, I hate to admit that compliment to him. No. But you got to watch those expenses, because it’s your bottom line. Keep keep an eye on that. So I made it to your to. That’s what we did in the first year. Right? All right. So build up your systems, you’re getting in cases, you have people, you’re doing stuff, build up your systems, do you have a firm handbook or guidelines that used to show your staff process, tweak your systems, when you start up your system system systems, you’re invariably going to find that they’re going to fail, or you mess something up, or you did something wrong, or the people need to be retrained. Or even though you told them that or had a thing on it, they forgot about it because people are people. And so you need to work on those systems, keep them work and monitor them. And it’s the last thing you want to do is the last thing I want to do. I want to go out I want to take that post. I took a demo yesterday, why left here at two o’clock, went and took a depo and then came back I was in court this morning. That’s why I wanted to wear this fancy suit and with another lawyer. So you that’s the last thing you want to do. But that’s what you have to do. Increase your marketing and clients and activity increase this stuff as you’re going forward. You’re going to do your newsletters. Alright. Now what are you going to add? Now? What are you going to add? Now? What are you going to add? Not manically. But slowly. All right, 90 days from now I want to have this many Google Reviews. I’m going to start this system. I wrote this one book. Now I’m going to do another book. This is the next subject I’m going to do. You keep increasing, keep moving, keep action, keep doing things. And don’t it’s not like an overwhelming oh my god, I got all this stuff to do take it, take it easy and do it. So you have three jobs in a law firm. You’re a trial lawyer, firm manager and a marketer. You got to do all those stringy things. And each week I say Have I done those three, don’t market your run your business so much that if you forget your craft, the best marketing is good lawyering. Tyson wants to try 2020 or 50 cases in 10 years, I tried five or six cases my first year out, go and try cases go do these things. Other lawyers, see how you do it. Work on your craft work on how to argue work on how to anchor in the physical place and use your arms when you’re talking blah, blah, blah, right? So great. Lauren is great marketing because folks see that you know, you’re you know it, you know what you’re talking about? You know, I had never done a YouTube video and I have a lot now but I knew all this stuff. I know how to do liens and I owe these tricks. I have the spreadsheets and all this stuff. And I just started sharing it and teach it and doing it and people see it and then they and then that attracts them it’s a policy of marketing by attraction right? Don’t watch your message Don’t fall in a lawyer stereotypes Don’t be the Lionel I remember from The Simpsons, Lionel putts the lawyer commercials and all this stuff. Don’t be that lawyer. Watch our image as lawyers. There are you know a few everybody sees the bad lawyer image and then that that’s what people think of us. You know, these plaintiffs lawyers, these ambulance chasers every every jury, I pick we talk about that. We need to safeguard our reputation as lawyers and do the right thing and do that. So have that message doing your marketing. Um, it’s really as good For the profession, everybody, and that’s attractive. And I say it right there. The more you give, the more you get. Let go are and then the other thing is, so you’re going to make mistakes. I make mistakes regularly probably today in this speech, right? Let go of that let go of the fear of error. You guys, who is anybody seen Alexander Hamilton that thing? So there’s a song I’ve seen it a couple of times, we’ve read the book and all that George Washington, had many battles and killed a lot of people, because he led these game made so many errors on the battlefield early in his days, it was it was error after error after error. We know him now is the brilliant, successful first president. And there’s one of the songs and Alexander Hamilton talks about that. And there’s a million examples of that. The only way I’ve learned stuff, frankly, is the mistakes I made. That’s really how it brings it home to me. So don’t be afraid to do that. Right. You’re gonna do that and just surrender to that as well. Also, don’t procrastinate. Don’t use that fear of is this the perfect article? Is this the perfect article? No, get it out. I’m a big believer in my firm, get it out, get it out. We file pleadings and briefs and all this stuff. You got to get it out. You get to get it filed. You got to get it done. Just do it. Someone else had the swoosh here earlier today. And give away what you learn like the folks speaking at this conference. So maintain all your good so so now you’re keeping going maintain your good systems. I already said that add people to your lunch that crank out newsletters, writing notes and cards. Tyson’s brilliant at that. Keep blogging video and writing books come up with new and novel ideas. I decided that I this opioid epidemic is really aggravating me and as well. So I started an opioid website. I bought the URL, I put it up, I write on it, I put a page on my site. We have a number of cases. We’re suing doctors and opioid manufacturers for product defects and the in the pain management doctors that over prescribe, addict these people and then leave them out to dry. Some of these stories are terrible. And I’ve tried that. And I think it’s working. We’ll see. I think it’s tough cases. I’m gonna have to fight these folks. Right. But you know what, it’s an idea I had, I’m gonna run with it. I’m gonna see how it goes. So keep I’ve ticket giveaways to for friends to try to get friends on Facebook. We talked about newspapers today speaking at law schools or other organizations. I started a podcast called lawyer, the lawyer. I’ve done 14 episodes man, a defense lawyer, a southern woman who’s just a great personality. She’s a defense lawyer. I’m a plaintiff’s lawyer, we go back and forth lawyer V lawyer, we talk about issues. I had the idea. I got the I got lawyer V lawyer.com, we put up a webpage, I stole Tyson, the idea of a podcast from Tyson and Jim. And I just and we did it, and we’ve launched it. And on Tuesday, the 29th. We’re having a CLE where we’re recording it and doing a bunch of episodes and stuff. It’s great. We’re just kind of going with it and doing what we can, we’ll say coffee cups, water bottles, those are great little stuff I had, I have a folder, where I give it’s not like a shock and awe package. But I have a folder with all I have. There’s all the articles about some big results that have that I give to clients to like when I meet with them. It’s an embossed folder. It looks good. It’s got articles about all these results, because I don’t want to have them have buyer’s remorse. After leaving me it’s not just the 30 day thing that Tyson talked about. But sometimes people have buyer’s remorse when they decided you as a lawyer, they want to go somewhere else. You want to give him some stuff. So they stay with you start a podcast, I did it campaigns. So I have different campaigns for different cases. I mentioned that. So my clients get four emails in about seven days. And then then they then they go into my another campaigns I have to kind of educate them over time. I tried to tell him the contact information, don’t give statements. Here’s who you’re talking to call us if something changes, etc. YouTube videos. So I’ve done YouTube videos, I have more than gym, but I have a lot less views. And, and I started doing them I do them. I don’t do them over a green screen. I have 206 So I think I remember all my numbers. When I started my firm I had 50 cases in August of 2016. I have 80 Today I have 307 current pending cases. I started with zero Google zero YouTube videos. I now have 260 I started out with zero newsletters. I have 60 Zero Google Reviews. I’m over 300 I have 14 podcasts. I do any I do an email at the end of the year I can do the numbers by the year number kids, blah, blah, blah, you know all this stuff, numbers. I’m a big scuba diver, how many dives I did that year, etc, etc. And so I’m gonna have a kid on Monday. So not not I am I am so I’m blessed. So it’s true. Yeah, you know, I only speak the truth. I only speak the truth. My wife texted me this morning. Thank you. Yeah, I’m so blessed. I’m so blessed to find my amazing wife Kristen Abbo justia fine law and Super Lawyers. And when you when you’re doing these newsletters, let me talk about these newsletters for a second. I talk about myself. I talk about myself. I’m an avid scuba diver, I talk about that. I’m a scuba instructor, Mike’s there’s a lawyer who was with me today. I was in a motion hearing this morning, me and another lawyer are divemasters we dive at this mind down in Bonterra, Missouri, and I work there I take people out, scuba dive, and then I’m a cave diver and stuff. That’s what I like to do. One of the things I like to Mike is a lawyer in Chicago hired me for a case because my scuba diving buddy had a case against him years ago and said that um, that he needs to hire me if he comes to St. Louis to file this big. We have this hopefully big case, you never know where these connections come from. Mitch talks about that you never know where that you register with people. So when my newsletters if you look at him, I talk about myself a little bit, I talk about some of my case results and a little bit of the law, I don’t Barbora and I create good ideas. I talk about all kinds of stuff and just things and people love them. And I have and there’s this, people come and talk to him on my emails all the time. I didn’t. I did have a little bit juste I haven’t done fine law. I haven’t done Super Lawyers, I do some of that. Because I’m a super lawyer. I don’t know if they work. I did more ABA before I don’t do as much anymore. I don’t find it works as much. I don’t know how much Superlawyers works. But these are the are some of your other platforms you can do. Sprint, don’t pay for case leads. These companies call you all the time. Give me blah, blah, something a month or whatever. And I’m gonna give you case leads and AND DON’T DO IT spend the money to SEO and promote your own brand. I googled myself, we were googling some stuff like two days ago. And someone did a paid advertisement on my name. Did you? Is it the people in Chicago? So I call them up? Do you get this I get people who pay on to be to beat to be seen with me. And I call him up and I say Hey, dude, you know you’re doing this. And I’ve this has happened to me for years. And they always take it down. I don’t get I say you don’t want to do this man. Come on. Got it. I’m like, Oh, I didn’t know my PPC was person was doing it blah, blah, blah. If you Oh, yesterday, my ex partner started doing an ad on my neck. I showed you that. Remember Annika? Anyway, I called him up? And I said, Why don’t you do you don’t want to do this data. So anyway, I called the people that just did this. It’s and I was looking on my phone, I have the picture. I call him up. He says I don’t have any lawyers in Missouri. And I’m thinking that’s unauthorized practice of law. You can’t do that. And so I have his name. And I got his permission. Then he asked me if I wanted, he wanted to send me the cases like No, dude, you’re advertising on my name. I’m not doing that. billboards, TV and mass advertisement didn’t work for me, you need to have a backup back system to do it based on best cases typically come from referrals. Or third, a third, a third, it’s my gut in the market. And I’m no expert. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. And that I think, you know, book, I think a third of cases go to the big big TV advertisers, I suspect that a third in my area of cases go to someone who knows her own family, lawyer, friend, family go to another lawyer, and then that lawyer refers it. And maybe a third of cases come from the internet. That’s my gut, I sat and other people would know a lot more than me. Maybe I’m a little bit off on some of those. But so I’m not going to do the third on TV or bus or radio. But what I am going to try to do is work on that other two thirds, right. So I want to know where I’m marketing. That’s how I think and all this stuff, is how I’m thinking about this. It’s not pay co counsel fees and a rule 1.5 V if you’re if you’re allowed to do that, and your state be on boards and organizations my philosophy on boards of organizations is I don’t want any benefit from it from me personally, I don’t just do the legal stuff. I do that I want to go serve. I’m on the Board of Legal Services of eastern Missouri. I used to I was on the board of Planned Parenthood for 10 years. I don’t want to inject politics but that’s to me, there’s there’s I like to be on boards where it’s a selfless thing I’m doing to help the community and that’s what it’s about. Right ebooks, I’ve read Oh numbers, I’ve written four books in two years. And I’ve published all of them and done all of them for less than 200 bucks. They’re on my website, you get them you get a link to him they given you a PDF and then you’re in my system and you get my emails every two weeks and and you do that I have a work comp auto accident pie and the one on my on my newsletters, credentials like superstars, neighbor writer good folders with newsletters. I told you that lawyer to lawyers and stuff where I put the stuff I do in my theories and stuff. I put it up so anybody can get it. Any other lawyers wants my brief on this, my memo on this how to strike an expert depots that I’ve done that kind of stuff. Surround yourself with people you want to be around I saw an interview with the CEO of Uber, who gave three rules and one of them was to only surround yourself by people you want to be around brilliant. And then my paralegal type this you got to edit your PowerPoints better. Number 74. Choose your life. I went to a landmark forum one time, choose your life. Choose the partners, the business, the spouses, choose what you want to have in your life or get rid of it, to have the courage to do that. That’s a little bit touchy feely, but it’s really true. And that’s what you’re all here to do. And I know I’m preaching to the choir here on all this stuff. I’m preaching the choir Joe, I have a paid have all your people on your websites, because, you know, a lot of my Google reviews are How about how amazing Casey is because she is I’ve been with her for 10 years. She’s great. We get along with each other, which jokin Joe knows and not as a not easy to do, right?
Gary Burger
Do the kind of practice you want. So I truly have a debt of gratitude to Jim and Tyson because they selflessly taught me and they and they motivated me. So thank you to both of them. Thanks, everybody. That’s all I got.
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the maximum lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.
