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William McCreight 00:00

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Legal Currents Podcast. Today, we have a very special guest, a good friend, David Vicknair, for anyone who is not familiar with David, he is the founding partner of Scott Vicknair, Injury Lawyers out in New Orleans, maybe the most popular pizza reviewer on the internet? Well, I would go as far as to say but David, I appreciate you taking a couple of minutes to jump on with me.

David Vicknair  00:31

Thank you. It’s very nice of you to say that, Will. There have been some very good pizza reviews that I’ve had that have not been used over the years, one of which is with Nalini that we’re not going to talk about on the air, but,

William McCreight 00:44

Yeah, it’s been hidden away in the vaults, and I’m looking forward to getting on and doing our pizza review. I know that we’ve we keep now, David, obviously, you know, like I mentioned, founding partner of Scott Vicknair, prior to this, spent a couple years as an attorney at another firm, but something that jumped out to me, that I thought was was a really curious and would be a fun way to start this conversation. You spoke, I think it was on LinkedIn, you put some information out about how being the president of your fraternity back in college carried a lot of skills over to your journey as an entrepreneur and kind of starting your own law firm. I’m curious, you know, could you expand on that a little bit, and maybe one story in particular that you feel has really kept with you throughout the years? Yeah,

David Vicknair  01:35

that’s a that’s a really good question, and 100% true. I was president of my fraternity for a little bit over two years, is actually one of the charter members of our SAE chapter at Nicholls State University, still very close with a lot of the guys who I was in the fraternity with. I was with two of them last weekend at dinner with their wives and man, so many lessons. It was an incredible lesson in collaboration and teamwork, 75 different personalities and perspectives and opinions on almost everything. How do you Marshal consensus? How do you you know, there’s certain things we want to do in the fraternity, but you know you have to get a majority vote, or some votes are two thirds, and you’re concerned like some of them are controversial, and so you’d spend a lot of time convincing, privately or in different groups to let other people see your perspective and why you wanted something to happen. But also listening. The biggest lesson I learned in the fraternity was listening, because I look back and realize I was like an 18 year old little brash jerk who thought he knew everything when I went to college and the fraternity like I played football for a year and then did the fraternity, and the fraternity like whipped that out of me quickly. It made me realize how valuable of a trait and skill listening is, because listening allows you to understand other people’s perspectives, to understand where they’re coming from, but most importantly, I think, for law firms, is listening teaches me now things like, I just went and asked a case manager 20 minutes ago something a very small thing, but I’m like, Oh, I didn’t even know we were doing that. And so like, listening makes me realize things that were happening in the firm that I may not even been aware of. And as you get bigger, those things happen more and more. And so I think listening becomes an even more important trait and skill to develop and work on every day. And that was the biggest lesson I learned from the fraternity. Listen, yeah,

William McCreight 03:30

I appreciate you sharing that. And before we, you know, jump further into some similar stories and questions there. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about, you know, the firm where you guys are at now, but you know how that has changed and what has led you to where you’re at currently? Sure.

David Vicknair  03:46

So the firm is me and my law partner, Brad Scott, who does all the state work. He is almost like a different firm. Within the firm, we’re actually a lot like Price Benowitz, if you’re gonna be I’ll be honest, but and so I know sets firm does Criminal Defense and Personal Injury, so we do estate and personal injury. Brad’s group is all in a state and successions in Louisiana, and I am all personal injury. And it works great. It’s not competing practice areas. We’re very complimentary to each other. There’s some joint marketing here and there that Brad and I do together, like the podcast, some of our client mailers, different things like that, but anything that is like a state niche or injury niche, and from the marketing program perspective, we kind of just run that on our own, our different marketing departments. We do it on our own as we see fit, obviously protecting the brand and the organization, but we have different websites and social stacks for each practice group, Brad, you can find at Louisiana successionattorney.com and then the injury group is really centered@scottvigner.com and so that’s kind of the makeup of the firm and how it’s structured. Brad and I have been working together for 10 years now. He’s like a big brother to me. He’s the one who convinced me to go out on my own. It is 10. Years next month, June of 2015 and when I was trying to build my own practice, figure out what I was doing. And when I started for about five or six years, when I went on my own, it was a mix of construction and business litigation, along with some injury stuff as it came in, the door was referred over, was that type of thing. And at some point back in 2021 or 2022 is when I really decided, you know, I love my business clients. I love my construction clients. They’re great people, but this is not really the business I want to be in or the practice I want to have anymore, and honestly still to this day, 2025 we have like, six or seven residual construction and business places we’re still closing out just I haven’t had the heart to, like, withdraw and tell the client to go find Newark like him so much. But that’s kind of where we are now. My group is all personal injury close to that’s almost like 99.9%

William McCreight 05:51

of our case. Yeah. So something that I always love to hear about are the stories that led people to want to go out on their own, right? So talk a little bit about your experience prior to having your own firm. And you know what that light bulb moment was where you said, Hey, I think it’s time for me to, you know, start my own journey here.

David Vicknair  06:13

That was a great experience. I worked for four years for a very experienced trial lawyer, guy named red Favre, who was my mentor an incredible guy. He came from an error. I like to describe it as non mediation error when mediation wasn’t in vogue, and so he had tried hundreds of jury trials. And the biggest gift that he gave me, besides a job that was a good paying job, and being a good mentor and teaching me how to practice law, was Brett. Was at an age when I started working with him, where he was kind of like, I’m over litigation. I’m tired of the interlocutory motion practice. I’m tired of preparing for depositions. And he just kind of dumped it all on me. And that was like a blessed the biggest gift I received in practice, because I spent four years doing, I can’t even tell you how many depositions that I had no business doing, appearing for hearings. I had no business hearing, appearing for trying cases, both to verdict and so, you know, it was a blessing in disguise. But at the same time, the impetus for me not blessing in disguise; it was a blessing. And the impetus for me to go on my own was really just an age gap. You know, Rhett was, which I totally understand, is like he was a guy who was, like, connected to paper and a certain way to run his practice. And so, like, there would always be, I don’t want to say friction, but a resistance to, you know, at the time, tell you how long ago this was Clio in my case, were like the revolutionary things. It was, like, cloud-based case management software back then. And so that was, like, there was some resistance from Rhett to do that, just because he’s like, Hey, I built this successful practice. I do these things my way, which I totally respect. So it wasn’t really controversial at all. Just like, Hey, I’m gonna go. I want to go out on my own, because I see a different way to do this, which involves technology, which was really burgeoning in the legal sphere at that time, and has obviously come a long way in the last 10 years,

William McCreight 08:03

yeah, quite a long ways. And even probably the last 10 months, yeah, is an extremely long way. I have a

David Vicknair  08:10

joke every company name now is like something.ai at the frickin conferences, like is everybody AI now, but in any event, and,

William McCreight 08:18

and I want to talk more about conferences, because that’s where we kind of started getting to know each other a little bit. But, you know, I’m curious, something that you that you said in a couple different ways, that I really value is that idea of, you know, different perspectives or mentorships, right and the right groups. And I think that’s something that’s really important for younger attorneys, whether it’s just for their personal careers or, you know, looking at growing and scaling their firm, right? Can you talk about your experiences in all of these different groups, and you know what takeaways you’ve been able to receive or value that you’ve gotten out of being in those groups with the right peoples, with the right mentors?

David Vicknair  09:00

Great question. What I would say for every young lawyer or somebody who’s thinking about getting in that sphere of like, how do I go find a group that fits me right? Is a bit of self analyzation, like, what’s important to you? For me, humility and people with growth mindsets, so people who are eager learners and eager to share are important to me because I don’t I’m not like, I’m not if I’m going to leave town and go somewhere for three or four days, I want to be surrounded by people who are interested in learning, looking at new things, and who are going to share it. I’m not interested in being in a circle of people who are just going to, like, brag or talk about how wonderful they are. I mean, it’s just not my thing. More power to you, but I’m not spending my free time doing that crap. So for me, I was naturally drawn to a few specific organizations because of that. But I also think, you know, I see, I know it’s like your job, right? But as a as a lawyer, at least for me, and every lawyer has got to make this decision because it’s what they want. But like for me. I really try to limit the conferences I go to, because they’re, like, somebody asked me yesterday, literally, this question, like, how do you know what legal conferences are there? I’m like, which ones aren’t there? There are like 1000 of them. So like, pick the ones that really you find that speak to that help you take three, four or five things back to your firm to hopefully implement change and an effective way to help your firm get more efficient. Do get better results for the clients or grow whatever your main objective is to get out of the conference and and those are some of the things that I think about when I decide on like, Hey, am I going to these conferences? Am I joining these group? Am I going to be surrounded by those types of people who are going to share, who are going to want to grow, and have that type of mindset? And am I going to get something valuable out of this trip? Otherwise, I’m not going. I had better things to do. Yeah,

William McCreight 10:48

resources are not just money, right? Your time, especially, you know, when you are in the early stages of growing and scaling the firm. But really, no matter where you’re at, that time is, is maybe the most valuable resource that exists. To your point, there are a million different conferences, and at these conferences, there are a million different vendors who have all of these different things, stuff that you’ve never heard of. I’m sure that three months from now, there will be all kinds of things that we’ve both never heard of, right, that are just entirely new. And I think that information overload can be a bit, you know, daunting, right? And it is, it is very real. I know that you’re someone who really values being innovative and trying new things and testing stuff out, but how do you find that balance between, you know, trying to stay innovative, trying to stay cutting edge, but not falling into the trap of, like the new, bright, shiny objects, and, you know, really being being smart with the resources you have?

David Vicknair  11:47

Yeah, that’s a good question, and it’s hard, and it’s is the and complicated, which is not an easy answer, but I’m a lawyer, so I’m not going to be able to give you an easy answer. I think that the first conference I kind of went to that opened my eyes. A lot of this stuff was great, legal marketing, and so Ben and Brian glass, wonderful people know them, and that was like a lot. It was like information overload that was back in 2022 is like fire hose hitting you in the face, and just through, you know, you meet good people like you meet them. You meet people like you Nalini. You meet other people, not necessarily just lawyers, like good like blue shark, Hennessy. There’s all kind of other SEO vendors who have good growth mindset, type people who you develop friendships and relationships with. And so in developing the relationships that I’ve developed over the years. What I try to do is just ask, like, once again, we go back to listening. Ask smart people like, hey, what do you think about so and so? And you you ask enough smart people, and you start to get consistent trends like, okay, maybe that organization is a good organization. Maybe this conference is a good conference. And then you just try it. And you go to one, you try one, maybe it ends up not being the right fit to you, but that leads to another road of like, oh, okay, I think this organization or this vendor or this idea would be good for my law firm. And so it becomes a lot of listening and also not trying to recreate everything yourself. That’s a hallmark of hubris and people thinking they have to do something on their own. Like everybody in the law firm, law practice space has generally figured everything out, so you don’t have to come up with everything all over again because you’re proud or you think you’re the smartest person in the world. Like Humble yourself a little bit and observe what others are doing really well and learn from them and figure out how not steal it, but how do you take that and repurpose it in a way that works for your firm and your practice?

William McCreight 13:47

Yeah, I think, I think that’s a great, a great point. And you mentioned something about that idea of, you know, decision making, trying it, and something I’ve heard you talk about a couple times in the past is the importance of decision making right, not necessarily the right or the wrong decision, but actually making the decision itself. And that’s something that can be really challenging, right, especially early on with the limited resources that you may have. You know, what are some of your experiences with, you know, making a decision, whether it was the right or the wrong decision, and how that decision helped, you know, impact or kind of shape the results that you get from it.

David Vicknair  14:29

Yeah, so I’m going to go back to Dan glass, because it kind of started with him. I started listening to his podcast, and Ben’s got a good analogy, like you were the racehorse of your law practice. So if you went and invested a lot of money and bought a racehorse, whether it was hopefully for you Secretariat or somebody like that, right? Are you going to feed them McDonald’s french fries and chicken nuggets from Burger King, or are you going to feed them good rice? Are you going to feed them good grass? Are you going to have a top notch trainer training them? Are you going to work on the things that. Matter for them to be effective, and for us as lawyers, we don’t run, but I do think health training is important for our mental state. Our mind is our racehorse, and so working on your mindset sounds esoteric, but it is like problem number one, like fixing your freaking mindset, and it’s a thing you have to work on daily. I work on it daily. I read books. It’s not that complicated. Go order Carol Dweck book mindset. Go order unreasonable hospitality, which talks about hospitality in a company. You know, go read any of these good to great. I can go down the line of books that are important to help you work on concepts in your mindset. Leaders eat less another good one. So working on that is important because it ultimately helps become the fulcrum point for decision making. And when your mind’s in the right place, you can make good decisions. When you’re centered, you can make good decisions. And the last thing I would say about it, that I’ve learned over the years is the right you know, this is a John the chasel quote, but the right decision made three months too late is still the wrong decision, like, just African decision, like, if it’s wrong. So what? Like, that’s a little bit of note, like, as a lawyer problem, we have this hubris, like, and that’s also a fixed mindset problem, which is we don’t want to fail because we’re afraid that reflects on our abilities, our intelligence, intelligence level. You know, somebody who has a growth mindset, who works on their mindset understands that failure is a con commitment of succeeding and growing as a person, and so you make the decision, if it fails, you’ll learn from it, and that’s a valuable thing, but it’s better to just decide, instead of sitting around and going in circles for three months. Yeah,

William McCreight 16:35

that fear of failure is something that I would imagine a lot of our listeners, you know, kind of kind of feel right, and it’s something that everybody experiences. How do you manage that fear of failure? What role does that play? And just the scale of

David Vicknair 16:52

a firm I’m laughing because I used to be a lot more worried about now, I just don’t give a shit, like the evolution of your mindset. And so I mean it, it’s just like working out, like, if you lift weights, for example, or if you’re an avid lacrosse player, if you’re avid soccer player, like, the more you practice, the better you get at it. So the more decisions you make, and the more you fail, the better you get at making decisions and understanding the risk associated with them. And so you just kind of get in the groove. It becomes contagious and almost like COVID. So the more decisions you make, the more the more you’re like, Okay, I can make more and more decisions. I do think Jeff Bezos has, like, a great quote on this, which is that human nature, we should be, like, aware of our own biases, like we are all wired as humans to be too too wired towards fail failure, like concern of failure, fear of failure. So his argument is, and I think he’s right, is as humans, if we acknowledge that we’re wired to be too afraid of failure and to undervalue the missed opportunity of not making the decision and taking the risk. If we understand that, and we cognitively, day to day, bias ourselves away from that and understand the risk is not as big as we fear it to be, then it just kind of becomes less risky. And so I think about that all the time now, I’m like, this isn’t as risky as I’ve convinced myself it is, and it just makes the decision

William McCreight 18:21

easier. Yeah, no, I totally agree, and it’s something that everybody needs to be cognizant of, aware of. And I appreciate you sharing your experiences there. I wanted to rewind. I was trying to figure out where it was that we first met, and I think it must have been pilma Back in 2022 is kind of my rough math there. Pilba is a conference that I know you you still go and attend. You know, we like to go and attend that event as well. I think there’s a lot of great people there. But the idea of going to a conference, right, if you’re a small a small firm, even, you know, solo practitioner, right, taking three to four days away from the firm to go and attend an event, go and attend a conference, that is a big ask, right, especially when you are wearing a million different hats. But those are also great experiences to learn from the people and that you’re you know are where you want to be, and ask them questions and stay cutting edge. How do you find that balance? Right? Because it’s important to go and attend these things for the long term. But you know, short term, three to four days away from a practice can be really, really tough. What’s your experience been like there?

David Vicknair 19:31

Yeah, so it’s, I think it has more of an impact when you’re starting out and you’re smaller. Now that we’re big, getting bigger, we’re about to be we’re adding to get up to. We have about 30 people now, shortly in the PI group. And so I have a CEO now, and I have an administrative team, and I have a marketing team. So I have these teams now, which, as you get bigger, if you want to get bigger, which ultimately, like not everybody does, and that’s guess what, that’s okay too. Like, that’s another thing I think people need to understand for the journey. Like not everyone needs to scale and not every. But he needs to grow like you really need to build the firm that you want and what works for you. And so some people may be very happy having a successful firm that has five or 10 people they can do well financially, have a great practice and great business, and that’s what they want, and that’s freaking awesome. Like this should not be like in this space, when you’re starting a firm. I get really revved up about this. I feel like everybody’s pushed to just grow for the sake of growing without understanding what are they even trying to do and what is matters to them. But when you’re smaller, it is a bit of it’s just it is. It’s harder to get away. And I think what it boils down to is just think about it like this. If you walked out in the street tomorrow and you got hit by a truck, and you were in the hospital for a month and a half, and your entire team, whether it was four people or 10 people or 20 people, just had to pick up the slack and run the operations. When you were gone, they would okay. And so you being gone for three or four days is not going to destroy your law practice. It’s not going to imperil your clients. Everything will be fine, just like when you go on vacation, which you need to block off vacations. I’m bad about that, but it will be okay. So just block the days off, move your deadlines, you know, get your hearings, your deposition scheduled around it, and just go, you know, just do it. I hate to be all Nike about it, but there’s no other way I can say it in that

William McCreight 21:21

they got that slogan right for sure. You mentioned right? You guys on the PI side of things have a team of about 30 right, and it’s going to be different for every firm. And you make a great point about, you know, what the goals actually are of the firm, but you know, if someone is is starting out there entirely on their own. Right? What are some of the first things that they should look to implement into their firm to help free up resources of time, right? How does that look like? What would you recommend people explore first?

David Vicknair  21:54

It’s just like, I would say it’s like riding a bike. You know, you got to take it one piece at a time. So it’s like, for me, the first thing I hired was a legal assistant, somebody who could handle phone calls for me, could organize things for me, could help support the files, right? And so there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Like it doesn’t mean that was the right way to do it. Some people will add a receptionist first. That could be the right way to some people add another lawyer first. So you just add a team member here and there, and you just kind of F around and find out. I don’t want to curse the podcast, but like, you know, you just kind of kind of feel like

Speaker 2  22:28

podcasts, what’s that we’re good to curse on the podcast, just

David Vicknair 22:33

around and find out. And is the bottom line. You just kind of try some things. Some things are not going to work, some things are going to work, but you have to hire a person here and there to figure out. What are the levers I can use in hiring people to take things off my desk. The biggest trick is to write out a list and of the things you don’t like. You know, some lawyers may like HR. I loathe it. It’s the thing I hate more than anything. But is it important? Yes, it’s very, very important. And so for me, like a big fulcrum in my life and happiness when I finally had somebody who was in charge of administration and HR to where it wasn’t me anymore. And so that made me very happy. That’s good to me. The second thing I would really say, I try to say this a lot about now, this is another Ben and Brian glass credit is, you know, you don’t think, when you’re starting out, like the importance of picking a software that is going to manage your lists, the people who you represent, the friends and family who you can solicit. But that becomes very powerful over time. It’s not like, exciting. It’s not like a new AI tool. It doesn’t like get revolutionized on the stage at all the conferences, but it is a very basic fundamental marketing foundation that every person starting out of practice should think about, like, what database am I going to manage my list in? How does it organize? And we use keep and Infusionsoft, which is probably over complicated than what it needs to be. We like it, but there’s many other things out there that I know you different people use, but putting all these names in that freaking list, if they call you and they you can help them still get their information and put them in your list, because when you’re starting out, you don’t have a lot of money to put towards marketing. But if you do want to stay top of mind and stay in front of your people, the simplest way is through emails and print newsletters and birthday cards and holiday cards, and those are the real levers that you can pull and do from day one.

William McCreight 24:24

Yeah, you know the element of that grassroots at the end of the day, right? When, when you don’t have a surplus of cash to spend on different ways to market yourself, right? The easiest thing that you can do is go out there and shake hands and be yourself and be friendly.

David Vicknair 24:41

And I made that mistake just everyone. We didn’t really manage it cleanly from when I first started, but it’s been something we have been like militant about for the last five years. And even as much like we’re on TV, we are in many different marketing mediums. We spend a lot of money on SEO, on digital, PPC. Irrespective of all that, I am militant about our list and getting everybody possible on that list, because it is very, very important. Yeah,

William McCreight 25:08

we’re both sports guys, right? And I like to think of it as, you know, in basketball, right? Everybody wants to go out and practice the half court pull ups that, you know, Steph Curry. Steph Curry does? It seems like half the NBA is able to do these days, right? But if you can’t shoot your free throws, if you’re a 50% free throw shooter, you are not going to be in the game in the last minute and a half, because they’re they’re going to have to sub you out and put someone in who can shoot free throws, right? So shoot all the, all the you know, 50 foot pull ups that you want, but you need to make sure that you’re able to shoot your free throws as well, otherwise, you’re not going to be in there at crunch time. I think that’s something that is easy to forget, right? When we’re looking at, you know, those failures, I think it’s also easy to look at people who have scaled their firms. And if think you know, these guys have gotten it all figured out, right? They know everything they’ve they’ve done it perfectly, you know. And I think it’s important to be transparent about failure, right? And things that you’ve done, you know, I’d be curious to hear about a time when you were scaling up to where you’re at now, where you know, you made a decision, it was the wrong one, right? And how you took that experience and learned from

David Vicknair 26:20

Oh, that is a long list. It’s like a scroll. I mean, nobody. I mean, truthfully, if you look at some of the best firms in the country, they’ve made a graveyard of mistakes that we’ve all made them, and so pinning one of them is like nearly impossible. I mean, you know, we’ve been through for one of our first SEO vendors we ever worked with. It was not BluShark, obviously, you know, it’s like they we spent lots of money on the website, didn’t listen to other people, which was not really my decision, but it’s a whole different story. Who warned us, and when we wrapped the SEO contract. They sent us our site in code on a thumb drive. So like, okay, we spent $70,000 for a thumb drive of code. That was a disaster, you know? So I’ve got a list of all those things that have happened, but truthfully, the for example, the trials that I’ve learned the most from have been the ones that we got zeroed either by the judge or the jury, and you can still learn things from all the trials that we’ve won, and there are a lot of those, but like, you don’t learn as much as when you lose. And so what we still talk about all the time at the firm right now is like we have a culture we’re building of being open about mistakes and things we’re doing poorly, said the entire team can learn from them, because every mistake is an opportunity for learning and growth. And so all those experiences like that, one, for example, were an opportunity for learning and growth. I learned from that about vendor vetting, like talk, like understanding who are reputable, good vendors with good people who are going to treat you well, and even if you stop working with them, they will be professional in the transition, because they are smart enough and understand that you may come back to them one day, and they want to cultivate and maintain that relationship. And so that was one that was just like one of many over the years, with like, improper vendor vetting and like, understanding who’s the right people, type of people to work with. And that also dovetails in will we’re just talking about, about going to different conferences, because that allows you to kind of get a feel from other lawyers and see and interact with other vendors in the space, third parties who service the firm in different areas, whether it be SEO, PPC, you know, LSAs, you name it, who are reputable, who are good people. If you work with them for a couple years and you decide to go separate ways, they’re not going to send you crap on a thumb drop. Yeah,

William McCreight 28:51

and something like your digital Right? Like this is an asset that you want to benefit you 15 years from from now, right down the line, but in the same way that that can occur, you know, we need to make sure that you’re preventing it from being something that you’re trying to dig yourself out of 10 years from now, because the foundation wasn’t done the right way. Right, how do you set expectations with these vendors? And you know, trust them and allow them to do what they need to do in order to be successful, but also ensure that you are able to hold them accountable and kind of have that expectation. So there’s

David Vicknair  29:27

a difference between being direct and being an asshole. I’m just a direct person, like I’m going to be very honest about what I’m trying to accomplish, what my goals are, and then also in in the process of working with different vendors and different people who work on stuff and support the firm. If I’m going to be like, you know, I sent an email this morning to one of them, like, Hey, I’d like to know about number one and number two. And it’s a follow-up. It’s a professional but it’s direct and straight to the point. And so once you get in the habit and a pattern with working with people, they start to understand i. They’re not being rude. Number one, being rude is just not nice, right? And number two, you get a lot more bees with honey. So like, I think some lawyers, unfortunately, view vendors as expendable and like trash. And I’m like, they’re wonderful people. They’re trying to help you and help your firm. And you know, just like the clients who are nice to you and you are, like, more motivated to work hard on their case because you’re kind to them. You can be direct, but be kind, and if they’re not meeting your expectations, you don’t have to trash them. You just have to say we’re going in a different direction. And that doesn’t mean that they’re bad, it just means that maybe they weren’t a good fit, maybe they weren’t the good the right fit at that time, but you’ve also allowed the door to stay open, to do work with them in the future, because they may end up being somebody you decide to come back to. So it really just comes down to just being nice and being direct. For me, at least I’m not perfect. Probably have been rude. Rub some people the wrong way, like, you know, and when you do, if they bring it up, you apologize, like, that’s freaking life. It’s growth. You learn from it. You try to be a nicer and better person the next time, yeah,

William McCreight 31:05

I, you know, would go as far to say as well, like on the vendor side of things, right? Like having that communication back and forth is is helpful, right? And having the expectations, you know, to help every is something that should help everybody, but also being upfront and direct when those expectations aren’t being met is an important part of the process to help correct that ship as well, right? And do what you can to get things on the right track. I don’t know if you had any other thoughts

David Vicknair  31:33

there. Yeah. My only other thought is, like, if you really want to hold a particular company who’s working for you accountable as far as, like meeting your expectations, like you have to do the work of getting involved and understanding what it is that they’re doing to certain to at least to the point where you can intelligently discuss it. And so, you know, you take LSAs, for example, we have a person who works with we manage that internally for the most part, but we do have an external vendor who does certain things with us on the LSA account, and I know that LSA world like I’ve learned it, I’ve taught it to myself. And so when I talk to him, I speak LSA. It’s like we’re speaking French, and it’s two French people. So like, the expectations are clear, because I understand the language he speaks. And you know you do if you want to be involved, or if your particular team member, whether it’s a marketing director, an office administrator, or whoever it is, your intake director, if they’re going to hold different people, we have people in all those departments working with us daily accountable. They have to speak their language and be able to enunciate and outline exactly what they expect.

William McCreight 32:43

Yeah, yeah. All very, very true. And, you know, we touched on this, but the idea of conferences, right? There’s a million of them out there, if you had to start your own conference tomorrow, right, for firms that are looking to scale, and you had three things that you could present about, right? What would two to three things be that you would highlight in your own conference, someone who’s for someone who’s starting entirely from

David Vicknair  33:10

scratch? It’s a good question. The first one would be a lot of the stuff that Great Legal Marketing talks about, I think it’s a great organization for people just starting out up to a certain revenue level. You know, list management, print marketing, email marketing, like all those things which are high production, low cost stuff, number one that would be like most of the conference, like, how do you manage a list? What are the types of of things that you should mail? How often should you send email? What should the email highlight? Those types of things? Number two would be digital. Because, in my opinion, digital was like the second and most important in the food chain, after TV of lead funnels. And so, you know, what does it mean to build a culture that prioritizes and rewards Google reviews. You know, besides that, what else matters digitally? You have LSA, you have all these other public profiles. We’re going into the age of AI like I’m looking three to five years ahead of time right now and worrying about things digitally. It’s not not discounting Google reviews, like they’re critical, they’re important. We get them every week. We talk about them. We’re like, obsessed with them. We bathe in them. We eat them. We like, have a drink of them before we go to freaking bed. But like, end of the day, like the world is evolving, and as a result of that, AI will become important. And so understanding what factors go into AI, overviews and AI, search and chat, GBT, like we’re evolving and worrying about those things now. So digital would be really number two, and the third would be mindset. You know, how do you develop and work on and cultivate a positive growth mindset to help your practice be successful? What are some of the stories? Starting blocks, the starting places to start there. I always tell people, go listen to Ben bliss podcast. It’s a great start for mindset, because Ben is really into the mindset aspect of this. Like he’s not. I don’t think he’d be offended if I said this, but like he he knows the nuts and bolts, he knows the blocking and tackling, but the thing he has passion for is convincing lawyers to get out of our own ways and think differently and think like an abundance growth mindset person does. And then just start reading about that and honing in on that and working on it, and then eventually you just become obsessed with it, because your personal life, your professional life, just gets better when you fix your mindset. Yeah,

William McCreight 35:39

that Ben and Brian are fantastic. We’ll have to link, maybe, or put a link in the description to their podcast. I had the pleasure of speaking at the GLM conference that you mentioned last year, and it was a great, great event with, you know, a ton of different perspectives from a lot of different people about growing and scaling the firm, and couldn’t agree more, and everything that you shared there as well, I think, are extremely valuable. And you make a great point about AI, right, and the idea of search, right? You know, a year or two from now, right? I would not be surprised to see, you know, levels where you know people are getting, you know, 20 to 30% of that search volume coming in through AI, potentially more, right? So it’s not just establishing protecting yourself now, but being proactive and finding that balance of, okay, how do I implement my resources for what’s working right now? And how do I, you know, implement resources to stay ahead of the curve as things change down the line, especially in the legal profession, where people are not always thinking like that, yeah, and

David Vicknair  36:42

that’s a concrete example. Will you’re 100% right, of like, the importance of being in a group of people who think that way, and being surrounded by people that think that way, you know, like, you know, y’all are in the world of that in SEO world at BluShark, you know, Seth has got that podcast. He’s bringing people on all the time with him and Jay Ruane, another great podcast, and all those people who come on their podcast are talking about these types of things, like, what do they see coming down the pike? So being a constant learner is number one. Like, you have to be willing to consistently learn, because the change world’s changing around us, and it’s affecting our law practices. So you either get ahead of it, or you be five years late. It’s your choice. Yeah.

William McCreight 37:23

Now I couldn’t agree more. Last question for you. I want a prediction for the saints record this year. Tell me who the starting quarterback is going to be, and have you guys finally figured out with it? I don’t know. And also tell me, is it shoe? Is it like show is that? How do you pronounce his name? The rookie that you guys took, you pronounce

David Vicknair  37:44

his name? Tyler? Yeah, I thought I was gonna get an easy question, like, what’s your favorite book? It’s time. It’s a Shoe Dog, by the way. Um, I think I love that amazing book. I think this is a hard one. I suspect that we will probably end up starting Tyler show. I think it’s show. Sure I gotta work on it. I think we’ll probably end up starting him, but I think you’re gonna see a mix of Taysom and Spencer rattler in the MO in the fold early season, before we get to him. The prediction is so difficult because we have a very good roster on paper, and now, because they’re called retired, we just saved about 30 million in salary cap, depending upon what year it hits. I’m not positive, so there’s some extra space for them to do some things. But part of the issue that we have is our defense is just aging. Some of our stores are close to retirement, whether it be cam or Demario, and so we need to get a bit younger on defense. But, man, you look at our roster and our line is solid, our running backs are solid. Our, you know, we’re fine at tight end. We have good receivers. Our defense is a solid roster. And so, you know, I’m going to just go out on a limb as a homer and say we’re going to win 10 games, but the variable there truly is the quarterback position, which is the make or break of everything these days in the NFL. And so I think if taysan can stay healthy, that we can win 10 games, because I think he’s going to be, I think he’s going to play more, not necessarily start and be the starter, but we’re going to, we used to just feature him like in third down sets when Brees was playing and things like that, because of his running ability. But I think we’re going to feature him a lot more predominantly this year, just because of his experience. And it’ll take a little bit of pressure off of Spencer and Tyler, and then those two are going to kind of battle it out to see who’s ready. I’m excited, if nothing else, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. So we’re finally looking forward to it. We wish we had Jaden Daniels. We’re very angry about that, and so that’s all I have to say about

William McCreight 39:56

that. I was I was going to say that Jaden Daniels is a great. Example, you know a quarterback away. You know from from three and 13 or whatever it was, to all of a sudden, you know, NFC Championship game for the commanders and 12 and five record. It really could be like that. Well, Jason

David Vicknair 40:12

Daniels is really also the a great example of the incompetency of hubris, like if you looked at Jaden Daniels, he was coming out three years after Joe burrow was coming from LSU. So you had a clear example, if you’re the Chicago Bears right in front of you, of like in the SEC an LSU quarterback, and what he did in the NFL, in that transition, coming from that conference, in that school. And if you looked at Jayden Daniels numbers at LSU, they were far superior to Joe burrows. And so what the Chicago Bears were thinking, I have no idea, but it’s a nerd to the benefit of the Washington commanders, because it was a stupidest draft pick that they’ve probably ever made. Now, Caitlin Williams, well, may well end up not being a bus and may succeed in the NFL, but I think early on at least, it looks like a completely incompetent decision on their part.

William McCreight 41:00

Yeah, yeah, fantastic for the commanders, terrible for my wallet. As ticket prices have skyrocketed,

David Vicknair  41:07

James also just a great young guy, man. He’s awesome. He was wonderful at LSU. We everybody down here loved him, and I know everybody down here is just really excited to see him succeeding. And I know for a fact, because I’ve had to buy my nephew commanders, Jaden Daniels jersey.

William McCreight 41:25

We love it, and I’ll tie it. I’ll tie it all back in with the idea of the cutting edge stuff, something that they came out and talked about with Jayden Daniels at LSU is the idea that, you know, LSU started incorporating virtual reality into their day to day operations, right, where all of a sudden, you know, a guy is able to get hundreds of more reps by using something like VR, right, without having to put the wear and tear on your body. And that’s great example of, you know, how staying cutting edge, how looking ahead and utilizing new things that are out there can really be something that that you can use to your advantage, over top of people who who aren’t really taking that stuff and doing it. I think a lot of the success that Jaden has seen from tools like that is going to result in a lot more of the league doing that. But a fun way to kind of tie everything back together there with the idea of staying cutting edge and you know, ahead of the curve.

David Vicknair 42:19

How many games do you think Washington is going to win this year? All of them. What a Okay, so they’re going to go, they’re going to go, what is it? 78 dolphins, who were the only undefeated team. I forgot what

William McCreight 42:31

year was, what from something like that. But now real prediction, it’s a tough division. I think that we finish close with the Eagles. I want to say, you know, a 13 and four record, not sure that wins the division. I think we stay competitive. But you know, with where we were at two years ago, if we can just maintain win a playoff game like I’ll be happy with that. And I think that, you know, next year is where you may start hearing some, some Super Bowl, Super Bowl conversations I may have to book my tickets well, and we

David Vicknair 43:06

know price. Benowitz now the official injury lawyers of the Washington community. So I hope that that was locked in for many years. There’s no variable pricing on Seth and his little partner. It

William McCreight 43:16

was, and that’s a fantastic story, and sorry to say this Seth, but hopefully we do not hear the price. Benowitz, injure injury report for people this time season, I appreciate you taking some time to jump on with me. David, I guess you know. Is there anything you want to plug, you know? Do you want to let people know where they can hear more from you? You know, LinkedIn, anything like that,

David Vicknair  43:42

yeah, the only thing I’ll say is, we’re located in New Orleans. We do injury cases all across the state of Louisiana. If anybody ever has a case down here, they want to consider co counseling and referring to us. We love what we do. We do the right way. We care about our clients. We get great results. And so we’d love and appreciate if you considered us. You can find us@scottvigner.com you can also check out our podcast, the overall podcast, with Scott Vigna on Apple, Spotify all the things, and hopefully we’ll have you on will. And it’s been just a great time chatting with you. I really appreciate

William McCreight 44:10

check out the people. If you’re looking for a pizza spot out in the area. Yep. Awesome. Why I appreciate it. David, thanks so much for joining. 

David Vicknair  44:20

Thanks for having me. Have a good one. Bye.