Seth & John Ray: Your Master Guide to Mass Torts

BluShark Digital 0:00

Welcome to the SEO insider with your host, Seth Price, Founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.

Seth Price 0:10

Welcome, everybody. We are thrilled with one of the stalwarts of the Mass Torts space. John is great to have you here.

John Ray 0:18

Thanks, Seth!

Seth Price 0:20

So tell me, like I’ve been a fan from afar for a long time, you seem to have taken a very different approach than most people when it comes to educating lawyers in the Mass Tort space, and love to just learn a little bit about it and how you got there?

John Ray 0:36

Well, I had a background in the pharmaceutical industry and in medicine in general, I got out of that, in 35, so I got my holdings in that, and and started working with one law firm sort of just happenstance kinda way. And it just grew over the years, I went to business school, I didn’t go to law school. So recognizing, as was the case, often with doctors and medicine, that lawyers often did not operate their businesses in an optimal way. And you know, that’s a lot of industries, you see that businesses, especially their entrepreneurial, that they start out one guy, maybe two guys, and they build a business. And as they build it, they do what makes sense at that time. But as business grows, you often need to change your practices, and adopt more, I’d say corporate like practices, once you become more corporate and larger. I primarily focused on mass torts, because that’s something I contibute most to, all the cases themselves, and understanding the cases themselves. But when I started teaching, essentially, the course, in Mass Torts, it was necessary for me to combine the business finance elements of running a Mass Tort practice, because it does differ in many ways from single event, personal injuries. And a lot of those ways if you’re not aware of them, you don’t plan for them, can be the difference in succeeding or not succeeding in Mass Torts, there are great things about Mass Torts from a business perspective. But then there are things that are very different and challenging, like the cash conversion cycles, which are very poor, the time between you spend $1, and you get it back is a long time, fortunatley, the profit margins usually compensates that. And and the practice area remains favorable as a business investment. Sometimes I use that word invest, but I’ve had people take exception with it over the years. But that’s what you’re doing when you practice contingecy fre law, you’re representing people who could not afford to go out and hire an hourly lawyer. And so you are making an investment, you’re investing your resources to give them access to justice. So you better take care of those resources, you need to be a good steward of money. And if you’re not, you’re not going to be able to help anybody. So I don’t apologize for referring to cases, I’m getting involved with a case as an investment, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s an investment with a good reason.

Seth Price 2:58

No, I get that. One of the things that you know, that lawyers, non Mass Tort lawyers, for example, the sort of people that you’ve helped sort of who are single event lawyers coming into the space, you know, what are some of the pitfalls that you see that like people who, you know, I hopefully, of course, helps alleviate, but what are some of the things that you see that lawyers make mistakes when they try to pivot into a space that sounds like it’s a panacea, and different from their day to day work?

John Ray 3:29

You know, I think what we’re touching on here, is not unique to any one business, it’s very easy to make emotional decisions, we’re, humans are emotional creatures. You know, when we think we’re being completely logical and reading, well, we’re not, it just makes us feel good to believe we are. But I think in Mass Torts, it’s very easy to come in feeling like, overwhelmed. And being a little intimidated by the practice area, you’re not, you know, if you’ve been practicing single event for 20-30 years, 10 years, you’re very comfortable with that now. You get into Mass Torts at first, it seems like it’s very different. So there’s a little intimidation factor. And I think one of the easiest mistakes to make was when an attorney gets that comfort level, to get over excited about it and potentially over invest. And, you know, something I always say is you never eat your milk cow. You’re, what I’m, what I mean by that, is that your personal and your practice that pays your bills, pays yor employees, pays your light bill, etc. Never jeopardize your poor cash flow, for expansion into Mass Torts. That just doesn’t make sense. And I think that’s one of the mistakes firms make. Obviously, you know, quite often when you attend a large Mass Tort conference where there may be hundreds of people in the audience, and people who are in leadership and represent clients are talking about a case. You know, there’s, they’re, only going to talk, tell you the good things about it. And, I don’t mean this in a disparaging way, they represent clients in the case, they can’t stand up in front of a room where they don’t know for sure who all is in that room and say anything negative about the case where they represent clients. And so I think it’s easy to to be, listen to someone who’s involved in the case, and truly an expert mass tort. And if it’s in a big room, you’re not maybe not getting the complete picture. And then later, if things don’t go as planned, I think sometimes the newer firms, they’re angry at the person they heard speak, well, you have to go in knowing they can’t, if it’s a large room, they can’t say they can’t tell you, they can’t say there’s, you know, there’s a potential problem with a case in which they represent a client, or [inaudible]. So it’s important to okay, we heard a good thing, right? To be able to do your own research. And that’s something I teach. And to make sure you have more than one source of information, before you go out and spend a significant amount of money, because at the end, you know, if you don’t get compensation for the client, you didn’t do them any good. And certainly if you don’t get a return for your firm, do your firm any good.

Seth Price 6:19

Agreed. One of the things I see percolating, is sort of just the rampid fraud and some of the Mass Tort aggregators, which is getting scary when you see the the order of magnitude level of sophistication that’s certain, to sort of the, we’re starting to hear about more and more as sort of somebody who’s dipping their toe into mass torts what do you think are some of the ways that lawyers can protect themselves so that they don’t, you know, sort of think they have this awesome inventory of cases, and then realize that it may not be as substantial as they may have been led to believe?

John Ray 6:53

I think that’s kind of a two part question. The you know, how do you not get defrauded by a, you know, somebody who’s doing outbound calls, call the phone look, so forth? What if you’re dealing with somebody and they say, we generate our ads on Facebook or television, you ask for some ads to see, the ad, ask to see network receipts, if they say they’re advertising on television, verify! You Know, because if they’re producing massive amounts of leads, and they say they’re getting them in one way or another, they don’t have to tell you their secret sauce, there’s some proof that they’re actually doing that. I mean, if they don’t have any, if they’re not spending any money with Facebook, or any money, with any networks with television, well, then they’re not getting their leads that way. And, you know, go by the like, you know, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me for instace. The, now as far as you know, people who might possibly take in a case, even in legitimate way, and do the intake for you, and misrepresent that intake? Well you need to, you need to have a, when you accept a lead, you need to have your own discussion with that client, you need to go through the questions, again, the intake questions, you need to listen to them. That’s one of the big mistakes, I think gets made in intake in general, is that when a person is going to call a lawyer, yeah, people are intimidated by laywers, even their own lawyers, that this person has stilled themselves to make that call. And they thought the narrative in their mind what they’re going to say. Let him say before you start asking them questions, because quite often they’ll answer a lot of your questions. Now, when you’re, when you take that referral in, or that case that’s from from any lead generator, you want to move on it quickly, talk to the client, and then also move quickly to get, if it’s a drug case, at least use right. You know, and proof of injury records right away, so that you know you have a case, so if you’re buying a significant number of leads from somebody, and they’re not, at a significant number, aren’t panning out at that initial what we have here, then stop buying leads from them.

Seth Price 9:05

Right. Well, walk me through, this is what I like to sort of, sort of use the remaining of our time with, is talk to me a little bit about your, because what you do is unique, there are a lot of conferences, you can go and sort of hear panels of people give their perspectives, but you seem to have created sort of almost the definitive CLE on how not to be a novice when somebody you know, you walk into your world as somebody who’s just like, yeah, I’ll sign up for this intake, check it out. And you, people walk out really with a pretty good 360 understanding of the industry. Walk me through, you know, what you do and how people, you know, work with your organization to sort of gain that 360 knowledge.

John Ray 9:51

Well, the you know I do, what’s coming up in September is litigation of things, and a lot about PFAS, which everybody needs to be interested in. The, my course, the Mass Tort courses, it’s an intensive Mass Tort course, and it very much takes to E in CLE seriously, it’s often described as a Mass Tort course I didn’t get in law school, by lawyers. But, it both it covers everything from issues they need to understand like preemption which can affect occasionally, especially [inaudible] in federal court, right, can effect, the state court case too, because if a state if the state law is preempted by a federal law, but then the business aspects of it I would everything from how you get you things we’re talking about right now, how you get your clients, the, if you’re going to be in Mass Torts, you need to add that to your website, you need to add those cases to your website, past clients, or future clients. If you’ve got an email list, you can communicate with those people, good business practices, but then on the finance side, understanding the finance, it’s not like your personal injury case, that’s gonna settle in [inaudible] a month. Here, you’re talking about spending $1 and not getting it back potentially for four years. So you have to do the financial math correctly. In order I hear sometimes guys say, “Oh, I made 9x in a certain case,” like, no, you didn’t. You didn’t, you didn’t factor in the time value of money you didn’t, you didn’t make 9x. You made 5x or 4x, maybe which is great, 2x is great. But you didn’t make 9x. So understand the, what I call the immutable laws of business and finance and how they apply.

Seth Price 11:26

And I assume like anything else you also have to put in if you invest in five Mass Torts and two don’t end up monetizing, we’re going to go into your overall calculation. Yes, you did it on this, but I assume like anything else, otherwise, you’re just gambling?

John Ray 11:40

Absolutely well, and understand that in some cases, you’re going to have lar- a higher fallout rate. In some cases, no matter everyone can be, in a full chain, can be- incredibly optimal practices. But, in certain cases, self identification was easy by a plot, you can run an ad that a person can see and go, that’s me, easy self identification. It’s not as easy in some cases. And if you’ve got a case where something like easy self identification isn’t easy, you’re gonna have a higher fallout rate, because it’s impossible to run an ad that, that, that the majority of your calls are going to correctly self identify. If it’s a drug case, I took that drug I had that ater. That’s easier. And in. But if it’s mostly Hip litigation, you know, most people don’t know what brand hip is in their, it’s in their body, but they don’t know what brand of hip it is. So that’s a little more difficult. And you’re gonna have more fallout, they may have a hip, it may have had to have a secondary surgery. But it may not be the one that’s under litigation right now. It’s those kind of things, understanding. Yeah, I’ve learned a lot of people who’ve been doing this a long time. And I mean, I’ve had people take my course, people like Jerry Parker, who had been lead counsel him and Richard Dawkins, more than anybody, took my course, went to my very first one, took more notes than anybody ever. And

Seth Price 13:03

I find him amazing. He sits, he knows more than anybody in the room, and he takes more notes than everybody else combined.

John Ray 13:13

Well, people in his firm told me after he came back from my course, he made all kinds of changes. And I asked him, you know, Jerry, you know, what can I possibly teach you? He said, well, actually, the business perspective, a lot, but but a part of it’s just the way I look at it. And I think I came from an out- in some ways, I’m like an outsider insider. It’s, I don’t get, I don’t litigate, I’m not a lawyer. But I’m an observer, an outside observer, but in some way, still an inside.

Seth Price 13:38

So you know, obviously, your course is a great starting point, what are the conferences that you think are of value that people should attend if they’re looking to be in this space, and part the way I’ve got to know you is just having a drink at the bar at some of these national conferences.

John Ray 13:52

Well, you got to go to Mass-, if you’re going to be in Mass Torts, or if you gotta go to Mass Torts [inaudible]. I mean that, that is, and Mass Torts Puerto Rico is good one, anywhere is going to be, so much, and this is very much a team sport, Mass Torts. So you your contacts, who you know who you can call on, is so important. So the big ones where there are 2000 people, are great, or just, you can meet that many people out there, its a double edged sword though, “wow, there are 2000 people,” then, “oh my god, there are 2000 people here.” They, those are great, and they’re very entertaining. There are smaller conferences sometimes they go on and they’re litigation specific that can be very timely. Harris Martin, maybe Harris Martin being put on [inaudible] is initiating a litigation. There’s no lack of Mass Tort events to go to, you know, when I’ve had people telling me about taking my course over the years is that, you know, I went to the bigger, bigger events many times, but after taking your course I go to them and now I understand what they’re talking about.

Seth Price 14:57

And that’s and that sort of leads me to like so let’s tell people, as we as we wrap up here, where, how can people get ahold of you? Where’s the best place to enter John’s world?

John Ray 15:05

Well, my website is masstortssuccess.com. My email is john@masstortssuccess.com, but people can also call me on my cell, which is 954-803-3393. I’m pretty accessible. And, yeah, I have the event coming up in September, like I said, focused on PFAS. Every PI firm in the country should be interested in that because, yeah, it’s a Mass Tort, but it’s not, and there probably will be more and more unveiled, but there are gonna be a lot of cases where federal jurisdiction is not going to exist, you, this has so many similarities from the from the work, injury cases for the occupations, exposure and so forth, to Abestus, with a difference being far more people have been exposed to dangerous levels of PFAS through their work than Asbestos. Another difference is Mesothelioma is uniformley fatal. All the cancerx caused by PFAS are not necessarily uniformly fatal. [Inaudible] I’m gonna leave people disabled and the value of a disability ca- a lot of disability cases to be greater than a death case. So there are differences between the injury PFAS and Abestus litigation, but there’s so many similarities, a lot of the case law that came out of its Abestus, which is a lot of the case law for Mass Torts, will be very apt to PFAS. So I think even if firms aren’t interested in the consumer class actions, and the water contamination, home devaluation and all those things, every PI firm is you’re already in that business. If you’re a PI firm, you know, representing people who have been injured at work and so forth. So they should definitely do your, and those cases are going to, those are the cases that SEO and lead-gen can also, want your companies will be very involved in, it’s more of a familiar field for all.

Seth Price 16:49

John, this is awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I can’t wait to grab a drink at MTMP and look forward to seeing you there.

John Ray 16:57

Thanks a lot, Seth.

BluShark Digital 16:58

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