Today Seth and Jay chat with Steven Gursten, legendary Michigan auto injury lawyer about how he has scaled his firm, and talk in depth about how he markets to people to get them to transfer their files to him after being unsatisfied with their lawyer.
Hello, hello and welcome to another edition of Maximum Growth Live. I’m one of your hosts, Jay Ruane, CEO of Firm Flex, your social media marketing agency for lawyers, as well as managing partner of Ruane Attorneys, a civil rights and criminal defense firm in Connecticut. With me as always, my man down in DC: Seth Price. Seth is the Founder and Managing Partner of Price Benowitz, along with David Benowitz, a fantastic white collar defense lawyer from– really across the country now I guess, and manages Price Benowitz, which has got offices DC, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and up next, I’m going to say Wyoming because I’ve been watching Yellowstone and I want to move out West, as well as BluShark Digital, your SEO for law firms based in the greater DC area? Where is– And so that’s question I have for you through COVID. Right. You know, BluShark doesn’t really need to have an office, do you guys have an office now for BluShark? Because space is something I want to talk about today.
Right, so interesting. So A Tale of Two Cities, BluShark lease was up during COVID. So, given that nobody was going into the office, here are the keys, goodbye. That worked nicely. I think that what we plan on doing, we’re in negotiations for currently, is a clubhouse situation. Probably two thirds of the space we had before, where you’re not counting on people being in the office every day for two reasons. One, we’ve taken advantage of the things we’ve talked about back and forth, about hiring people nationally, if not internationally, but nationally has been a significant factor. So that not everybody is here. And not everybody wants to be doing the surveys. BluSharks are huge on culture, I wish I could get the culture of BluShark the firm. But because of that homogenous younger, you know, catchment group, you know, there’s a culture there, and they want to be there two to three days a week. So having space- we’re right now in negotiations for something down by Union Market, the hippest spot in the city with open floor plans and huge outdoor space, but not a seat for everybody, every day, they’ll be plugging into docking stations when they come. Ironically, and I’m sure you’ve talked about your space, you know, you know, we are trying to consolidate, we had a bunch of space to grow into. And that was sublet, we had some real drama, we could talk about in a future episode with sub letters, and decided, hey, if we’re able to give back that space, and consolidate, you know, we were able to, as we talked about, trim some practice areas that were not as profitable, and really keep the core competency there. I’ve been really excited. I mean, look, I love scaling, I love growing. And, you know, I make fun of you sometimes for the crazy ideas, but I think that I’m as guilty. That’s why I love hanging out with you is you on that, and sort of taking some of the least profitable ones consolidating both people wise and real estate wise. And that’s what I did during COVID. So, you know, both both law firm and marketing company, the idea is moving away from everybody has a permanent desk all the time You have the people who are the stalwart, they’re gonna be in the office every day. But if you’re not committed to five days a week, you no longer have a permanent office, and you will be on an office share or hotel system, but you won’t be getting, you know, won’t be X number of employees and X number of seats, some will be two to one.
You know, it’s interesting, because there is something I think about lawyers in particular, who get very territorial about offices. And I think that’s one of the things about BluShark, you say, you know, you wish you had the culture of BluShark at Price Benowitz, I don’t know if it’s possible, simply because you’re dealing with an age range at BluShark and a skill set that is quite different from the varied age ranges, life experiences that you get at a law firm. I mean, maybe if you were starting out a brand new law firm, and everyone was around the same age, you might do it. But I mean, I think that when I was when I was 28, and I was just starting practicing law, I would go out to go to lunch once a week with a whole bunch of other lawyers and a networking thing. I haven’t done lunch with those guys in 15 years. Just because I’m not, you know, I mean, a different point in my life, you know, if I can, if I can work through lunch and get home earlier, my kids, I’m going to do that. So I think it just depends where you are in your life. And that’s the great thing about BluShark is that you can feed off the energy of that culture and bring the best parts of it to your law firm. So-
I hope so. But it’s interesting. There’s been a lot of sort of, you know, the I’m called millennial culture but it’s it’s millennial down to whatever the new Gen is whatever they call it. So I call it millennial because they’re younger than me I’ll call 20s, even though it’s not technically millennials, they go into the 30s. But like-
They’re like Gen Z?- they don’t even have a good name.
Yeah, you know, I see the grind that we had like the idea that you go to your first job and you grind to demonstrate and get your experience and prove yourself is not something I’m generally seeing, I’m seeing a quality of life. And like, people don’t want to be bothered after hours. And it’s that’s the part that one of those things that I see more jarring, and I know now you’re trying to get yourself to a month off during the summer and things like that. But I’m seeing, you know, the concepts, almost European esque of nine to five with holidays or holidays. You know, there again, I’m generalizing. There’s some people that can port both ways. But I’m really what what I see is, is a quality of life desire, greater than what I saw with other generations where it was like, How do I grind, improve myself and get as much experience as possible? Take Malcolm Gladwell is time on task, you know, you don’t see somebody trying to rack those hours up. They’re like, look, I’m going to do my work. But I want to, and I, that’s why to a great extent, I’ve differ culture wise to David Brenton, you know, all of my ideas, but I’ve you know, he has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on there. And it is pretty amazing. Because whatever my gut is, as to what somebody would want her to be happy with, is very often way off the mark for that generation.
You know, it’s interesting, I have somebody that works here in our marketing department. And I can remember, you know, starting out myself working in a law firm, and I got yelled at every day by one of the partners. And that was his method of training. And then we had a couple of bumps. And so I would go in, and I would raise my voice, and she’s like, you know, yelling at me is not motivating me. I’m like, you know, I’m like, well-
You said that you say that, and you rolled with it. What I see now is that I on the scale of that I’m certainly not the worst out there. But I now I have enough awareness that when I opened my voice, you know, speak to speak, that I’m not being viewed, I still think of myself as a 25 year old, 30 year old, but when I, I now have the sort of presence of their parental unit. And when I say stuff, I’ve had issues with people who are sort of deal with me on a regular basis, that literally- the daddy issues start coming up, and me trying to, like push somebody, like, if something’s wrong, like, there is no longer that you can unfiltered, say, “You screwed up, this needs to be changed.” There’s a whole new mentality and not following that is at your peril.
Yeah, and, you know, it’s interesting, I’ve also seen that, you know, for me, I’m still sort of in the client services, I still have a select group of clients. And I’m also seeing that in how I engage with some of my, some of my clients, you know, of that age group, and it’s really, it’s really sort of different than the tough love that that I got used to, that we came before,
It does not fly. And it’s frustrating, because I think there’s a time and place for it, and that the idea that you that everything is okay, is not cool, and that there are going to be and I struggle there, you know, but, you know, one of the, I forget, one of the thought leaders always said, like, you know, you want to get some more faster yourself, you want to get there, you know, with with longevity goes a team. And I’ve had to take my foot off the gas, you know, in one of Morgan’s books, I remember him talking about the days before digital, when, like you would the weekends would seem so long because he couldn’t get to building his presence. You know, during the weekend, I’m sorry, I have moments like that, where I’m like, there’s so much to do, I don’t wanna be like Hamilton, we’re running out of time. But like, there’s so much to accomplish, and so much that can be done for our clients and everything else. Like, I wish that there was more of that drive. But if I acknowledge and see where the workforce is right now
And I’m learning something from that age group, and I think it’s something that our audience should actually pay attention to, you know, I got to take two weeks off end of July, end of June, beginning of July. That’s why we were in repeat mode. And, you know, I was sitting at the beach, didn’t bring my phone with me down on the beach. And I was literally just watching my kids enjoy their time playing in the surf in the sand and then getting out in the water with them. And I have to keep reminding myself that not only am I building my business, but I’m I’m building these four lives and you know, that is as important, or probably more important to me, than anything else. So I need to focus on that too. And take some and walk away from some of the opportunities that I have in business to focus on the time with my kids. I mean, my oldest is 11. That’s not old, but you know, that’s more time I’ve spent with her than I have left with her before she leaves for college. Right, so But I need to, I need to find those times that I can really engage. And one of the things I was able to do over this time, we you and I have talked about using overseas talent, I actually got somebody in managing my email on my calendar. And then with some spare time, I said, You know what, we need somebody who can just wrangle reviews. And she’s been with me now, this is her third week, we’ve already gotten 20 new reviews, because it’s her priority. It was always on my list of priorities to email clients after we took care of something for him. But now she’s on top of it, and they’re coming in so fast, we almost can’t keep up with responding to them, which is phenomenal.
All right, I’d like to look to two different things you brought up there. First, you know, the overseas labor. And I think that one of the epiphanies I’ve had and I think you’ve been sharing with me is figuring out what countries are right for what tasks and understand there are things that are great out of India, the Philippines is very cheap, and there are things that that Latin America seems to be able to deliver. Again, generalizing out of billions of people, but finding truisms as far as what has worked in business. For those tasks. I think the reviews, and I’d like to do a whole show potentially on this is, you know, that has been always, you know, an area it’s so important. It is there software out there. But the end of the day, it needs to be focused on and I can tell you my own journey was when I had this as part of intake, it never worked. Because both you and I have been fortunate that we’ve built our firms we’re intake is always busy and busier and busier. And that there’s never that excess bandwidth, like I had several times during my the last 10 years, we’re intake when they were in charge, you would say oh, yeah, yeah, we got busy, we haven’t looked at it in four months. That’s not uncommon, right. And so the idea that it’s a person in charge, even if it’s that person’s one sole responsibility to call and remind you every day, so that it’s in your mind, it’s part of that where it is somebody’s responsibility. Just so incredibly important. So glad you found that base.
And one of the things that I also wanted to bring up to you that I think is something that maybe our audience wants to listen to is that, you know, by going overseas, we’ve been able to get some economies and save some money in some other areas. Because you know, the state side receptionist, I’m able to get a receptionist or at half the cost overseas, that can do the job, what we’ve decided to do is actually take some of the savings that we’ve seen, and actually invest in a full time salaried position in office- in office, but we’ll be traveling, videographer, photographer, that type of thing in the office. It’s going to help some of the lawyers with exhibits for trials, but also help us just, you know, because right now it has been falling on me, oh, I got to do videos, I gotta do that. So now I’m gonna have a project manager who has the talent to go out there and take the pictures for GMB. Get the videos to put up on social. And I’m looking forward to seeing how that works.
You know, look, I mean, one of the things by law partner, Dave Benowitz, always talks about is like, you know, if you look at this as an ongoing number, it’s pretty scary. But if you say, Hey, here’s my number three for six months, not not the end of the world, right? The idea that you’d have that in house? Look, the truth is with Zoom, we probably don’t physically need it. But it’s the same as the reviews person, if there’s a guy there every day he has one job is to get content out of you, it’s going to happen. And if the answer is gonna be done, anytime it’s on Zoom, it won’t be, you know, we at BluShark, we interview the lawyers for content that we can extract and use in different forms and fashions for the websites. And in theory, we could send a link to the lawyer, and they could and I wouldn’t have to pay somebody to sit there and speak to them and feed them questions. It doesn’t happen. So the accountability official talks about it with weight loss and other things. Like it’s no different here. You’re looking for video accountability, or intake, accountability, and it with each of these things, so important.
Yeah, you definitely need people.
And look that dovetails I think, great to our guest today, because this is a guy who is one of those special, special lawyers of our generation, maybe one of the greatest combinations of legal acumen and marketing acumen and one. It’s just amazing to see what he’s done over the years.
Yeah, you know, so his name is Steve, Kirsten, he runs Michigan Auto Law. He is personal injury, focusing, concentrating, specializing- however, you can say in that in that district, on serious motor vehicle accidents. He actually has something interesting in preparing for the interview, I did sort of a deep dive, and he actually is does something that a lot of lawyers don’t do. And he talks about right ahead in his website, about transitioning from other lawyers to his firm. And I found that fascinating, because, you know, that’s it’s not really talked about, but there are a lot of hack lawyers out there not in our audience, of course, but there are people out there who sign up a file and then go ghost on a client for six months, and the clients have questions to answer. And so and they may not get them so they may, they may themselves be doing research, and by positioning himself that way, and making them a resource, I think it’s a genius idea. So I want to talk to him about that. So if it’s cool with you, we’re going to take a little break now. Everyone should know, this is actually an interview that we did earlier. It’s not something that we’re doing right live today, because we recorded this earlier with him to fit in to the schedule. So we’re not live, but when you come back, we’ll be dressed a little different. And we’ll talk to- we’ll talk to Steve Burstyn. And then after that, of course, we’ll come back and share our thoughts on it. And I’m really excited about this interview stuff. So folks, Hang tight. Hear a word from our sponsors, and we’ll be back live with more Maximum Growth Live.
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In this world today, if you want to grow your business, you want to grow your firm, you want to take on more cases and make a bigger impact. You have to have a digital blueprint. Statistically, throughout the time that we’ve been working with BluShark Digital, our law firm, the Atlanta Divorce Law Group, grew over 1400%. Seth and his team had years of experience in this area. BluShark is truly part of the firm, so I don’t consider BluShark any different than the employees in my office.
Thrilled that longtime friend Steve Gersten, managing partner of Michigan Auto Law. Welcome, Steve.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
We met years ago, and one of the things I’ve always loved about you is you know, you had a multigenerational practice, which is freaking awesome, right. But you didn’t just you know, rest on your laurels, you early days of SEO created more quality content when nobody else was doing that. And built out quite, quite, a dominant position. And it’s been great to see not only Michigan do well, but you’ve also sort of created a national practice with trucking. You know, tell us a little bit about how you went about, you know, you know, building your local presence, you know, with what was you know, it wasn’t you didn’t start with nothing, but you certainly created quite a juggernaut.
Well, um, if you’ve ever read Malcolm Gladwell, outliers, you know, I kind of feel like I was in the right place at the right time. You know, the internet was just coming along. I was young enough to actually see it, and I think get it better than a lot of older lawyers. But I was accomplished enough. And I’d had enough results and success that I was able to establish that authority and that wet position that started leading to the phone to ring, so it was just, it was being in the right place at the right time. And also, frankly, it was I didn’t want to compete with 20 other people on TV in Michigan. I couldn’t ever figure out how on a 20 or 30 second TV commercial, that I could I could be, you know, as Seth Godin would also say, you know, remarkable and different, how you can have a Purple Cow type message to distinguish you from literally 20 other law firms that were buying commercials on television and yes, Michigan like most markets has, it’s one or two 800 pound gorillas, but you know, your choice, I guess would be spend eight to 10 or $12 million a year for three or four years to start competing with them. And building a brand. Or, for me, the Internet was an easy choice, because back then, and even still now, you know, it’s sweat equity. And, and it’s not like just throwing a whole bunch of money at it like you do a TV or yellow pages by when lawyers used to do yellow pages, you know, creating 10x content, you know, creating great content that people want to link to creating value, creating something that’s that’s of substance and of help, that you can’t hire a blog content writer at $30 a blog to do for you. But that is something that is really unique and really good. It’s something that that doesn’t take a lot of money, but it does take time. And you know, especially when I was a young lawyer, and I was building a practice, the one thing that I was always so afraid of was, you know, how can I distinguish myself in my law firm in an oversaturated field, where the supply of lawyers is higher than demand, and you have a shrinking pie. And, you know, the Internet was, was a really nice way of doing that. And it turned out to be a very wise decision that has paid off many, many times.
So two-, you know, in addition to being a great lawyer, and now sort of a national thought leader with all sorts of awards under your belt, you’ve had two recent stories, I’d love to talk about one at a time, one with an expert witness. And I know these things started as doing the right thing, and passion plays, but also morph into SEO plays. Because when you do cool stuff, people notice and you get to talk- walk us through this first situation. And most of our viewers don’t know the story. I think it’s freaking genius.
Thanks, so, it’s so funny, because I have become a reluctant free speech, Warrior / icon. And at least in the first case that you’re referring to that we’re going to talk about now. I have the seminal case now, lawyer, free speech blogging, that are even teaching in law schools right now. So what happened was, a couple of years ago, a few years back, there was a, an expert witness who was that notorious defense doctor that never found anything wrong with people always said that they were malingering or there was no brain injury, or it was from, you know, hitting their head when they were six years old. What have you. And you know, not real different from the same experts I deal with on all my traumatic brain injury cases. The difference is, is that this expert for a number of years, she was writing things in reports that my clients would say to me when I was reading the report, Steve, I swear to God, I never said that, you know, this, this never happened. And I was in Jackson County, Michigan, which is the most conservative venue in Michigan with a very, very Republican conservative judge. But what I did was, I brought a motion to videotape the exam. And I attached affidavits from prior clients that said, hey, you know, this is what happened. I never said this. And I at least have created that that question of fact, the judge actually allowed me to videotape it. And then she still put things in the exam. And in the report that my client never said, because we had the videotape. And I was so angry. So first, I waited, and we got a trial verdict. And we actually went to verdict. And I’m proud to say in that case, the jury was so mad that I actually got the largest truck auto verdict in Jackson County, Michigan. I think she was a big reason why because, you know, the jury was so offended. And then afterwards, I wrote a blog, and I wanted the world to know what she was doing. So I wrote a blog, put it on my website, I put her name in, and I wrote something like, I can’t remember exactly what is, is this- is this notorious doctor lying, you know, read the transcript and see for yourself. And I literally set out you know, what she testified to and what she put in her report my client said, and then what he really said right next to it. And that’s all I did. Now, I wanted to do that because I was it sickened me that she’s getting away with this and doing this to people because she’s really ruining people’s lives. If the jury had believed her, instead of my client, right, who was let’s face it, an injured plaintiff asked him for money in a conservative venue. They could very easily I believe this Harvard educated psychiatrist over my client and turned him away with nothing, and he was disabled for life. So I wanted the world to know. So I wrote that blog, I included an embedded the video of the exam. And remember my cross. Yeah. And what I didn’t know, Seth, and this is where it gets interesting. Somehow this this really notorious IME Doctor was on the Michigan disciplinary committee. In other words, she was she was on the, the, basically the attorney grievance commission for lawyers as a non lawyer. And she filed a grievance against me. Not odd, scary as hell.
Odd that somebody like an expert witness who’s like in that game would be like, who’s doing all these nefarious things the irony like-
it was, so she she sends us grievance. And she goes, my first thing that I’m asking for is that Kirsten goes to Google and takes down this blog, and all these search results, which is, of course easy to do, as you know, right? I just have to pick up the phone and call Google. But then she also is going on your blog, when you google her name. Yeah, my blog was coming up first. Right, exactly. So at that point, I said, You know what, if I’m going to go down, I’m going down swinging, and I want the world to know what she’s doing. So I wrote a second blog. And I really laid out everything she was doing. That was that was literally destroying people’s lives. You know, how in my case, she completely made up answers. And, and I posted it, and that exploded. So like you said, it’s it was literally trying to make lemonade out of lemons because I knew, you know, my biggest fear was if I kept everything quiet, and we did things within the attorney grievance commission. You know, my fear was she’s walking down to the people down the hall whispering in their ear. And I didn’t want to put my my license, especially when I’ve done nothing wrong, in the fate of complete strangers where there might be political games going on. And I felt the best thing is sunlight and transparency. So I put it out there, I let the world see. I am, as you know, I’m very connected with AAJ and I’m a former president of the traumatic brain injury committee. So I reached out to the brain injury associations of various states, various TBI listverse, the marketing listverse, which is where you saw it, and it exploded, it went viral. And I can’t even remember, but I think it was something like 700,000 unique visitors on that blog. The number of use, I actually had to switch from Vimeo because it’s costing me a fortune. So so but- you know, all of a sudden, the New York Times started calling the Attorney Grievance Commission, the American Bar Association, The Washington Post, Reuters, AP, and, you know, number one, those are probably about the best links you could ever get. And they were linking to my blog. Number two, when you’re the head of the Attorney Grievance Commission, if you’re getting a call from a reporter at The New York Times, you know about this, and I lay things out so clear that the happy ending is long story short, she’s no longer dealing IMEs, she got thrown off the Michigan Attorney grievance disciplinary board. Thank you. And, you know, I felt like you know, we, we were doing a service. But the funny thing is, up until that point, even though you would think lawyer should have more free speech rights than other professions just because of what we do for a living. If you read the case, we’ve actually had remarkably less than the general public. And most of the cases have gone down very badly for lawyers, who blogged opinions where they had been disciplined. And my case is really the first case where it all got thrown out. And they said I had a First Amendment right to to reveal all this. So it was it was a happy ending all the way around.
That’s awesome. Before I flipped to Jay, who everyone wants to talk about your the market that you’re in, I wanted to sort of there’s a second cool story which dovetails to a lot of things that our listeners are struggling with, which is obviously reviews are a huge deal. And we often we hear about this from our listeners all the time, and clients of BluShark, etc. Where you get a review, you know that it wasn’t a client and you’re 90% sure it’s a competitor. Well, Steve doesn’t just sit back and just, you know, be like, please remove button to Google. Steve takes it to another level. And again, I admire this. I think we’ve we’ve actually started a few campaigns using this strategy. But talk to us about the situation and how this unfolds I fascinating in the future.
Thanks. Once again, I found myself a reluctant free speech warrior, right. So in this case, I’ve been very fortunate. And you know, like, I’m sure you teach your clients stuff because you really do everything right. If you if you do things the right way, call people back, have empathy care. The reality is, most people are going to be really thrilled with you as a lawyer, and the reviews are going to reflect that. The only negative generally-
But, Steve, when something isn’t right, whether it’s you unrealistic expectations, we all have those, you know, where those are, those are not surprises, and you’re well aware of it. And if you get one, that’s part of the game, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about here, when you get something that’s not that.
Not at all. In fact, it’s funny because the most exasperating reviews up until these have been the people who apparently wanted you so much as a lawyer, that when you didn’t accept them as a client and rejected their case, they got online and left a negative review, because they got mad at which it’s-
-really used to have that not not for Yelp, not for Google, but that wasn’t an actual there was a period where you could get that removed, because it wasn’t a true experience for the user. And they backed off and said, Yeah, you know, it’s like, if you walk up to a restaurant, they don’t have a table for you. Is that a valid review? And to me, no, because you’ve never tasted the food. So, you know, anyway, so this is the bane of our existence. But but the next level, which again, in the last two weeks, I have started to see these things pop up myself for some of our lawyers on has been okay to carry carry on-
So, so yeah, so that’s, that’s a whole other issue. But so one day, I get my first really negative review. And it’s from a person that I’m looking at, and I’ve never heard that. I don’t know who this person is. And I check our case management software, I check our intake software, I look through Word docs, I, this person has never called her office, they’ve never spoken to any lawyer or any person in my office. We’ve never had any contact with this person. And under this person’s name, there was a one star review. Literally, just like with you, within a week. The same thing happened with another person, this one named Tom Mahler, who again, left a one star review, and started leaving really negative comments in newspaper articles about me as well. Problem is, I’d never represented-
Like below the article, they would just start throwing-
-right, the comments. n the comments of the blog. Exactly. So, but again, I’ve never gotten a call from anybody by this name before. I’ve never spoken to anybody by this name before. So I knew something was wrong. And I felt something had to be done. So I filed a lawsuit against John Doe. And I sent subpoenas to Facebook and Google. And sure enough, Tom Mahler turned out to be a lawyer competitor. Now disbarred, by the way, but it was a lawyer competitor,
Because of this, or unrelated?
Unrelated, but he was he was trying to tear down his competition. I honestly, if I walked into this guy on the street, I wouldn’t know who he was. I don’t think I ever spoke to him or met him before. I think he was just trying to tear down all this competition. And, you know, your clients, you, you know, the people that do this, were targets now. So, so I discovered him and you know, that result with the first one star Google review, which was by someone named Patrick Anderson. They objected to my subpoena. He had hired a very well known no fault appellate attorney in Michigan, which by the way, is a huge tell it’s a huge red flag, because this appellate attorney doesn’t advertise to the public. And if you didn’t know who he was as a lawyer, there was no way you would know who he is. So that was already a huge tell that the person behind this Patrick Anderson review was also a lawyer, because how else would they have known to hire this lawyer to represent them out of 65,000 Michigan lawyers right, you know, the public would never know. So they they objected. The trial court, I think was really afraid of the issue. And even though, from day one, my position has always been Look, I understand and I fully support the First Amendment and the Constitution and free speech. But when someone is creating fake account names, and then leaving reviews, under fake account names, we shouldn’t be allowed the most limited discovery, to see if this is actually a real person, a member of the public, someone that was a client, or even somebody just contacted my law firm before and got mad that I didn’t accept their case. That’s one thing. But if it’s a lawyer competitor, who’s trying to create, you know, a bunch of fake names, to then leave fake one star reviews, to hurt your online reputation and turn on your business, and affect your livelihood, then we should be able to know. And my point was, you can’t call it protected speech, until you know who the person is, that is leaving those reviews. So it may be protected speech. But it may not if it’s a lawyer competitor, it clearly is defamation, because they are trying to affect your reputation in a negative way. And what I told the court was this, if it turns out this person, and you could even do an in camera judge, if it turns out this was ever a member of the public, a client or even someone who called and got mad that I didn’t accept their case, I’ll dismiss my case, I’ll dismiss it in 10 minutes. But if it’s a lawyer competitor, who’s creating fake account names to do this, and this is not protected speech, this is defamation. And we should be allowed limited discovery to find out. So that case, I went to the Court of Appeals, and the Court of Appeals actually ruled against me. And what I think is a really flawed and very dangerous opinion that I actually have on my blog that people can link to and read, where they said, even though this violates Google’s policy guidelines, on reviews, even though you know, this may or may not be protected free speech, we’re going to interpret this comment, even under a fake account name, even under a pseudonym,
as as with the widest possible deference to the concept of speech, so he might be commenting on your tie, or on your website or on your shoes, or, you know, I mean, unfortunately, even the color of your skin, or they went to elementary school with you, and they don’t like how you treated them on the playground, if you if you read the majority opinion and take it at face value, that any basis would be sufficient. And the dissent, which I think got it right, in my case, said what I’ve been saying all along, that I shouldn’t be allowed at least the most limited discovery, just to find out if this is a lawyer competitor, who was unethically doing this to try and negatively impact my reputation and my livelihood. And if it is, then it means the classic definition of defamation. And if if it’s anything else, then then it doesn’t. So that is the issue. Now that is going up to the Supreme Court. The danger with this case, I think is twofold. Number one, you guys do it the right way. But what about all the SEO people and all the sharp Blackhat people? What’s to stop them from creating 100 Faker companies and leaving 100 Fake, you know, one star reviews. And the second thing that really troubles me is this turns the entire our society is predicated upon if you offer a superior product or service as a business, then you should win. That is what our economy is based on our market economy is based on offering the best service or product at the best price as a lawyer it’s treat people that’re right, getting great results, and and you will hopefully be very successful. And again, this takes that notion and flips it on its head now. So what we’re saying is all those things don’t matter. That by the way, lawyer ethics don’t matter, because there are very clear bright line ethical rules that talk about misrepresentation and deceitful conduct, and what what should matter is, apparently how good you are with negative Blackhat SEO. So you can tear down your competitors. So that you know, you look good by comparison. And, you know, I am 100% sure that’s what happened to me. In my blog, I talked about the four red flags that gave it away.
How did you- how did you end up getting the name?
The name behind the lawyer? So. So I’m actually pretty good at this because I’m the current President right now, the distracted driving litigation group, which means I do a lot with distracted driving, which means I send a lot of subpoenas to Facebook, I send a lot of subpoenas to Google. In this case, it was easy. It was just like I’ve done 1000 Other times, you know, we’re I suspect that you have a driver that’s, you know, playing on Facebook or on their phone, or, you know, you know, driving distracted or a number of
Oh you got- you got the answer from the subpoena. This all took place afterwards, academically.
Yes, with with Tom Mahler, the attorney behind Tom Mahler, the disbarred attorney, with the first lawyer, who was Patrick Anderson, he had already hired that that no fault appellate attorney to represent him who objected to the subpoena. And we went to trial court. Now, if I’d wanted the trial court, like I wouldn’t any distracted driving case where I’m trying to prove that, you know, I want to download a cell phone, I want to get to their, what they’re doing on Google, or, you know, what they’re doing on Netflix would have been an easy call. But I think the problem that sometimes we run into is, you are a law firm owners, you know, you were in the real world. And I hate to say, but I think sometimes some of these judges, they’ve never really had real jobs. They don’t understand the real issues involved here. Just how, you know, if you’re an owner, if you’re someone who’s put yourself out there and risk things taking risks. This is viscerally insulting, what’s going on? Because, like how long? And I think sometimes
I totally feel your pain. I did a presentation explaining SEO and paid search. And they’re like, This is crazy. It’s a monopoly. Why don’t you sue Google. And I’m like, That’s it. These are the people ruling on your case. But I’ll leave you with one quick story before we go to Jay, who has a whole lot he wants to go down. But there was a woman in our market, who was had a bunch of people were bullying her online with racist comments. And she did a similar suit that what you laid out, and they they objected. And in the time it took for her to get that information, the statute of limitations had run for her to be able to sue. And so she went to the Virginia Legislature and got legislation that has now passed in law, which now allows for the statue limitations to toll until it starts at the time that you find out who is behind the comments that you’d be suing on.
Interesting, that’s- that’s true in this case, too. But so- so that’s the fight that we have right now. And it’s going up to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Well, it can’t be cheap, either to finance this litigation, it’s not something that you necessarily want to be spending money on, but it’s something that you have to do to protect from an SEO point of view.
I look at it this way. This is like this is money very well spent. You can’t you can’t pay for these links. The New York Times I’ve been at the times that half dozen times. I’ve ever gotten a link from it. But if the blog is part of that story, God bless. It’s- That’s gold.
Yeah, you know, you’re both right. You know, the appellate costs are definitely adding up. But in the especially the digital marketing community, this has really struck a chord. And, you know, there’s been a lot of blogs about it, and obviously, a lot of links, as well. So, you know, I’m probably getting somewhere my money back. And, you know, the reality is, at the end of the day, it’s all rebaring the SERPs, and those those links matter. So, you know, in the big picture, hopefully, it’ll, it’ll work out just fine.
So one of the questions I had for you, that I wanted to go over because I think it was really sort of unique, that you sort of put it out there is that you are in a you’re you are in Michigan, there’s a lot of big advertisers in Michigan. I mean, I’m a little old Connecticut, and I know one of the 800 pound gorillas in your market, because of his, you know, ubiquitous presence, you know, and all this stuff that he does. I’m not going to mention his name, but a lot of people know who he is. And what I found really interesting about your website and I want to talk to you about It is right up front, you talk about lawyer transition and how you have a system for it, and a plan for it. Because that’s something that a lot of consumers, I think, you know, they sign up with somebody right away. And then they don’t necessarily know if this is the right person for them, because they were looking to solve the problem right away. And now they, they don’t like the relationship, or they think there’s somebody else that’s going to be better. And a lot of lawyers, you know, they don’t talk about that on their website, though, you know, but they’ll gladly take, you know, a case that from another lawyer, but you go right out there and say, if you’re not happy with your lawyer, you have a right to fire them at any time, let’s talk about how we do the transition. So that you can be you can be comfortable with how we’re going to do it. If you take that role. Can we talk about that a like how you came to that thought, and really how other lawyers in your market sort of reacted to it. Because I’m sure that, you know, making a system for that, for transitioning away from them and onto you is something that a lot of lawyers like, Hey, why are you telling people that you’ll do that? You might have caught a little grief from it. So I’d like to talk about that. Because I think that’s important for our audience to hear.
Sure. So it comes back to something we said earlier, which is if lawyers just did the right thing. They wouldn’t have unhappy clients who are shopping, frankly. And, you know, the reality is, we have a very well positioned website that shows up in the very top for most of our keywords, fortunately. And so we get a lot of calls and a lot of traffic from people, some of whom have already hired other lawyers. And the reason these people are getting on our website is because they were unhappy. Why are they unhappy? The number one reason is they never hear from the lawyer. And that lawyer is not returning phone calls. So we we get so many of these cases, that you know, and the other thing I should just add is in Michigan, and I think sadly, in many other states, we have an epidemic of of really illegal ambulance chasing and illegal solicitation. So we have lots of runners, we have lots of people that are being signed up with a knock on the door. There have been literally front page newspaper stories about lawyers, bribing police officers and getting on, you know, unofficial police reports. So they could send runners to people’s houses. So we have that dynamic too. And it’s, you know, it’s happening to hundreds of people. And then what happens is, these lawyers who are doing illegal solicitation and animals chasing also tend not to be the most, you know, have the most functional offices and, again, return phone calls and get the best results. You know, they’re doing things by volume, and they’re doing things in really shady ways. So a lot of people get suspicious, they get second thoughts, they get worried, and they get on our website, see how things should be going. So we created this lawyer Transition Plan, Jay, to kind of answer- I’m sorry, my lights go off automatically when I sit too long. I’ll set up in a second- But you know, basically to answer the questions that people have, so they’re not afraid. And they know that if they’re unhappy, they can jump ship, and what I do as a practice, and it may cost me a fortune, I really don’t care. I try to do things the right way. So if it’s a lawyer, I know and it’s a good lawyer. You know, sometimes life gets in the way, you know, you’re in trial, there’s a miscommunication, someone got sick, you know, so I always call the lawyer and getting a heads up. And, you know, and a lot of times, I can put them back together and just say, Hey, you have an unhappy client, you got to call them right now. If that client is still insistent, I actually go out of my way. And I say to the lawyers, let me treat this like it was a referral from you, because you’re going to lose this case anyways. So I’ll pay you a referral at the end. And we’ll just pretend that this came from you. And actually, it’s funny, because now a lot of my best attorney referral sources are lawyers who I voluntarily agreed to pay a referral to. And they keep sending me cases.
Yeah, that’s great stuff. And I’ve been on both sides of that. I I’ve had, you know, I’ve had a crazy client show up and they put them in an Uber back to us, which I think was they didn’t really want. And I agree with you that if you you know what, it’s the one time that somebody had fired one of my mentors in town, and showed up on our doorstep, I didn’t see the case got signed until the following Monday. And on Monday, I’m like, how did we get a case from this legendary lawyer turned Yeah, the person was crazy. We never should have taken as a client. It was the biggest pain in the ass that ended in like, you know, so I just, I see a common theme through your talk, which is do the right thing, good things happen.
Yeah, exactly. And the only decision I have is, you know, when it’s one of those ambulance chasing lawyers that is doing illegal solicitation, I’ll take the case, you know, they shouldn’t, in my opinion, they’re a black eye to the profession, they shouldn’t be, you know, ethically practicing anyways. And we took the case, and the lawyer transition plan really lays out what is what is allowed under Michigan law, what is not allowed, and just how easy it is for you to to choose another lawyer, if you feel like you made a mistake, or if you feel like you’re not in the right hands. And yeah, and like I said, We fortunately get a lot of cases like that.
I think it’s a brilliant idea to be upfront about it, you know, and really put it out there, because I think that’s something that the consumers need to know. I mean, we’re dealing with an access to justice issue in this country, for a lot of reasons. And to be upfront about it, I think, really separates you from the masses. And I think, just think it’s a genius idea for growing your firm, because it allows you really to sort of just be objective about and say, here’s what’s going to happen, and who can who can complain about that. I mean, obviously, the people who are losing those cases could complain. But honestly, if they did what was right, they wouldn’t be losing the case for the most part. And that’s, and that’s-
And one thing I just want to add is, again, this comes back to just the amazing power of the internet, that, you know, we are finding clients, whether it’s reviews, where they’re spending hours, reading reviews, I mean, really reading them. And that’s still, even to this day, it amazes me, even though we get so many clients who read our reviews, but it’s also clients that are spending hours on Google doing research, and trying to find out roughly how the process works, or more about what their case may be worth, you know, what the law allows and what it doesn’t allow. And, you know, there is a whole generation that has been empowered, and is now learning that there’s a better choice than just calling a billboard lawyer, or calling a lawyer who’s on the side of a bus. And this is why it is so important to spend a sweat equity, and really put out great content, and really think about how your content is going to be unique and valuable. And again to you know, to paraphrase Eric Schmidt, you know, from Google is, is how can we keep reinforcing our expertness our authority and our trust?
That’s great. That’s no, that’s great. Jay, you have a final question.
So the last thing I wanted to talk about is something that we’ve kind of already talked about, but in your market, you’ve differentiated yourself online with, with those 800 pound gorillas, those TV mass marketers, that type of thing. What do you think separates your firm when somebody comes to your firm versus one of those ambulance chasers, you know, chop shop type things, when they come to your firm? What do you think is the difference maker to your clients, how that make them want to leave those great reviews, that make them happy with your service, so that our listeners can hear those things and make sure that they have those implemented in their own.
So I would say two things. One, you have to be able to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Too many lawyers talk the talk, and it’s been 20 years since they’ve tried a case and stepped foot in the courtroom. And we’ve been fortunate. You know, we have, year in and year out, our our goal is to get the largest auto accident settlement and verdict in Michigan and the largest trucking accident settlement and verdict in Michigan. And you know what? Most years we actually do. And I’ve been very fortunate. I have the largest ever trucking settlement of any Michigan lawyer or law firm, I have the largest ever auto settlement of any Michigan lawyer or law firm. So we are able to to show that we have the results, but, and this is something I always emphasize,
my best cases, the ones where I’m getting millions from my clients, when you read their reviews, they never talk about money. The things they talk about is- Steve called me late at night on a Sunday when he was working in the office on my case, and he was just calling to check in and say hi, but it meant so much to me. Or, you know, Steve sat next to me in the deposition and just having him next to me made me feel so reassured. Steve called me from his vacation, you know, you know, just the little things. And, so I was an economics major in college and one of the things that I always remember is there’s a very famous Hungarian economist, and I won’t bore you and go into everything but what he basically said is, is that you know, lay people cannot properly evaluate professional services. In other words, they can’t look at your brief and know if it’s a good brief or a bad brief. If you tell me they got a million dollars on a lumbar fusion, they really don’t know because they have nothing to compare it to. They don’t know if it’s a good result or a bad result but what they do know is how you made them feel. And that is most important of all. That’s why people stick with our Merrill Lynch stockbroker year after year, even though the guy loses their money every year, because he takes them golfer and he makes them feel good, he goes to their weddings, and you know, that and- they act like social friends. But if you can, kind of empathy, that kind of connection and that kind of rapport with clients, and combine it with great results. So great service, great results. And it’s got to be part of your culture, it can’t be just something you say, once a year, you have to, you have to make that your core culture. So in my law firm, you know, I’m gonna get very clear, we are a trial law firm, and you will never, ever get in trouble with me if you go to trial and you lose, because that happens, right? If you try enough cases, there are going to be cases that you won that you should’ve lost and cases that you lost that you should’ve won. That’s part of being a trial lawyer. But even when you lose, you increase the value of all the other cases in your office, -know that. So I don’t care if you could spend as much money on jury consultants and experts on these cases, go try, you’ll never get in trouble with me. The only reason you will get in trouble with me if you are a lawyer, or anyone who works in my law firm, is if I ever find out you’re not returning phone calls, if you’re not treating people the right way. Because we live in an age now of Google reviews, and Yelp and Avo. It’s not like it was when you and I were growing up in the profession 25 years ago, where most lawyers felt like, I’m too good to talk my own to my own clients. That’s what my paralegal is for. And we have a whole generation of older lawyers who still feel that way. Which is insane. And, and the whole point of reviews is its half forced needed accountability on the law profession. And it’s forced us to reevaluate how we treat clients. So that instead of looking at them as a case number, we should be thinking more in terms of, of Nordstroms type service: going above and beyond, of Disney type service, of trying to wow them and really showing by, you know, showing them you care. And if you do that, then the reviews are going to come. And I believe it is a great, holistic, healthy way to grow your law firm. And it amazes me that so many lawyers still to this day, are so bad at just the very basics. And you know, even even just you look at websites, most normal people are scared to death of lawyers, right? You look at the lawyer poses on these websites, and they have their arms folded and crossed, and they’re scowling. And they know it’s the exact wrong message when people grew up in a world where they didn’t know lawyers and go to country clubs and their parents weren’t friends with 100 different doctors and lawyers. They’re scared to call you. So those reviews that show that you care that you that you’re a normal person. All those things matter so much a warm smile, being friendly, being approachable, that matters so much. So it’s always a combination of things. It’s never one thing, Jay. But you know, what I would say is you have to determine what you think are the core things you need to succeed long term. And for me, it’s obviously having having- giving great client service and give and having great results for our clients. And actually, that’s how we’ve now
multiplied our lawyers. We started off as four and I just hired my 21st. So it’s a it’s a nice way to grow without having to do TV, not having to do all the traditional advertising methods. It’s really been the internet, lawyer referrals, and just doing things right away. Education based marketing, speaking at seminars, doing all the things that I think lawyer should be doing anyways.
Absolutely. It really goes back to the core stuff. Folks, we’ve been talking with Steve Gursten from MichiganAutoLaw.com. Steve, thank you so much for being with us today. And folks, we will be back with more Maximum Growth Live.
Well, Seth, I gotta tell you, you know, it’s interesting as we talk more and more to some of these market makers, and I think that it’s easy to say for Steve is that he is a market maker in Michigan. He’s not the only one, of course.
I’d say that what’s incredible about him, he’s beyond Michigan, he’s got his Michigan. But he’s created himself again, when you when we start, and we would see people who are sort of like the best of their generation, you know, and you go to a linear conference, I think that he is the linear of our generation. And and when we look back in 20 years, to what he’s built and done, he’s going to be the guy that people are going by the thousands, to hear speak.
That’s really awesome. And we got to have him on our show today. You know, of course, with me, you know, it was interesting, we talked a little bit about systems and their role. And I think that’s something that we’ve heard time and time again, from anyone who’s really scaled their practice to any great levels, is that it requires you to have a systemized process to be able to do it. And, and in fact, we have him as part of my Systemising, your law firm for growth Facebook group, and he’s posted a few times, some of his systems, I really want to reach out to him personally, though, and get him to post how he goes about subpoenaing records from Facebook, because I think there’s something there that a lot of people can use both on the civil side and on the criminal side. You know, people are on their phones constantly. I know I am. And I bet you that stuff is really valuable in the context of personal injury case. What are your thoughts?
No, absolutely. Look, he’s a he’s a juggernaut he- And what I love is, he’s one of the few people that I feel, has combined, great marketing and SEO, my passion with the substance and to see you talk about subpoena and things to be able to leverage, that not just to get justice, but then to create an opportunity from the SEO game. To me that one two punch, you know, it’s unique, it’s a unicorn type situation.
Yeah. And I think it’s really going to serve him well, long term. And, and I gotta tell you, you know, he does a great job. Folks, if you haven’t had a chance, check out Michigan auto law.com. It’s a phenomenal website, he’s really putting together well, I’ve captured a couple of things, a couple of ways that he hasn’t set up and said that to my own team, say, I like this, from a consumer point of view, this is really good to get people in to get them into your funnel. You know, one of the things that’s important is that, you know, Google wants people to take secondary actions, once they get to a website, they want to see them clicking through to a second or third page, because if they click off after the homepage, it’s my understanding that if, if you leave from the homepage, who counts that as a bounce? Yes and no.
No, right. So yeah, so like, if you go to a site and immediately bounced, that’s bad. But if you go there, and you’re there, and you’re there, 45 seconds or a minute, or whatever it is, like Google, again, this is not forward facing. But clearly Google knows if you get the answer to your question. That’s good. What they don’t want. If somebody goes and says, That’s not for me, goes back to the searches and go somewhere else. That’s what they’re looking for. Because Google wants a result that sticks. So if you go there, click on a phone number, get your phone call, and you’re done. God bless. What they really don’t want is somebody who goes there and says, this is not what I wanted. This is not the information I wanted. And that’s what they’re trying to prevent.
Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s funny. Google’s algorithm reaching a certain way reminds me, I got these Amazon Fire tablets for my kids. And there’s a way that you can limit how much they can do. They have to read a certain amount before they can play the games. And my, my younger son figured out that if you open up the book, open up a page, then put the tablet down and come back 45 minutes later, it gives him credit for 45 minutes where the reading so he puts opens up the tablet puts it down, goes and he games the system.
Yeah, no, I was gonna say we were actually written up in the local color class in Bethesda magazine, our now 14 year old when he was 10, 11, 12. You know, hacked our parental controls. He’s cloned my wife’s iPad to be able to turn the Wi Fi controllers off and on at will. So yeah, we’re, we’re pretty much at the point where we know that we’re, we’re not gaining anything against him that he generally wins that battle.
Yeah. So I have a friend of mine, who’s got five kids a couple blocks away. And what he went to do is he actually went and got two separate Internet services, one for the parents, one for the kids, and he takes the power cord to the kids Wi Fi when he leaves for work in the morning, so that it forces them off of it. That’s how he was able to do it. And he has his wife swore to secrecy on the password that’s really just for her phone and his phone.
If they really, if I really want them off the power cord comes with me.
This is where we are folks.
That’s really the only the only way that I’ve ever won that battle.
That’s what’s so. Alright. This has been great said, you know, it’s great conversation with Steve good stuff at the beginning. You know, I, it’s funny, we’re starting to get promotions for a lot of the conferences coming up, of course, Max law cons coming up. I saw your speaking Illini speaking I know, I’m speaking. I’m following that in the forums, a lot of good stuff there. So there’s gonna, there’s gonna be, there’s a lot of stuff I know you went-
No, exactly. We’re could do a whole conference show, because this fall is going to be crazy. We have AAJ, you know, next week, you know, there’s going to be, you know, we have Max Law, we have Kilma, we have File Han- you know, there is no shortage. And maybe we need to have a conversation about like, what what’s right for which people because it’s, there’s no shortage of these coming up. And right now, I think you have to make some tough choices. Because, you know, you could- it is part of why I started BluShark it allowed me, I was speaking because I was frugal, and I could go to conferences for free if I spoke. If I’m speaking, I might as well, everybody else is selling something, I might as well have something. And that was sort of one of the things that was keeping my team together. You know, but we- let’s next week, let’s talk a bit about what the options are, and help people make some of those decisions.
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, because, you know, you and I’ve been to a lot of them, probably all of them combined more than one time, but people who haven’t may be wondering, you know, am I going to get something out of it, and each one has their focus.
And I think that that’s the key, I think that you know, I always say nothing, you know, nothing good- Getting out of the house, good things always happen. Some is serendipity. Some is a speaker, some is the guy sitting next to, you some groups of people that you meet that become your tribe, you know, I was at a pilma 10 years ago, and I’m I am still buddies with the guys who sat around me from that one conference. You know, Gary Christmas, one of my favorite lawyers out there, who by the way, just had a massive hit. He had a, you know, one of those crazy, eight figure cases that he was able to settle for a very deserving client, very sad situation. But, you know, there are there, I think there are huge advantages. And maybe we’ll talk next week about strengths and weaknesses of each one. Well not weakness, but like what’s right for which person?
I love that. Okay, folks. So that’s gonna do it for us today, here on Maximum Growth Live. As always, if you want to follow along with us, you can subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast where we are syndicated. Or you can download this version on our own standalone Maximum Growth Live podcast, both available wherever podcasts are available, right, because they’re not really sold. I guess you are- I guess you can have paid podcasts, but I don’t know any of those that are successful yet. I’m sure that’s the next big thing, right. Of course, if you want to follow Seth and learn more about digital marketing, you can follow his feed. This SEO insider with Seth Price where he interviews the all sorts of digital marketing experts from around the country. I know I follow it because there’s always a nugget or two that you’re able to pull out of people. And of course, if you love systems like I do, please join my Systemising Your Law Firm for Growth Facebook group. We’ve up to about 400 people now, and I’m constantly pushing out new systems. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, I’m going to be adding a videographer soon so I’m going to put up a system for how I found them and how I was able to recruit them so that we in case you want to do something along those lines. You have the skills to be able to do it. But that’s gonna do it for us here today here on maximum growth live. I am Jay Ruane. He is Seth price. And we are happy to be with you every week here Thursday live 3pm Eastern 12pm Pacific. And that’s it for now Seth. Bye for now.
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