David Vicknair On Building A Law Firm People Love Working For And Clients Love Reviewing

Welcome to episode 58 of The Earley Show podcast, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined by David Vicknair, Partner at Scott Vicknair Injury Lawyers.

Check out the episode below. You can also enjoy it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.

David has built a thriving personal injury practice in one of the country’s most competitive legal markets by leading with love, demanding accountability and making exceptional client service part of his firm’s culture. In this conversation, he shares how his Louisiana upbringing and passion for football shaped his coaching-style approach to leadership, explains why systematizing hospitality helped Scott Vicknair earn more than 2,000 Google reviews and discusses how community involvement, mentorship and a commitment to personal growth have fueled the firm’s success.

Guest Info:

David Vicknair - Co-Founder of Scott Vicknair Law
Visit David's firm website
Follow David's writing on LinkedIn

Topics Covered:

-Nick Saban's process obsession as a model for law firm leadership

-Leading with authenticity and "coming from a place of love"

-Leaning on data instead of ego when coaching a team

-Earning 2,100+ Google reviews through culture, not tricks

-The cash-management challenge of scaling from $2M to $10M

People & Resources Mentioned:

-Nick Saban

-John Nachazel & Mike Morse (Fireproof)

-Ben Glass (Great Legal Marketing)

-Charley Mann

-Bill Biggs

-Seth Price

-John Morgan

-PILMMA

-Shoe Dog (Book by Phil Knight)

-The Power of Moments (Book by Chip & Dan Heath)

-Unreasonable Hospitality (Book by Will Guidara)

About The Earley Show:

For nearly 20 years, Christopher Earley has successfully led a personal injury law firm in Boston. On the Earley Show, a new podcast launched in the summer of 2023, Christopher and other standout attorneys will be sharing their secrets to success, and discussing the law office management habits that have allowed their practice to thrive. If you’re looking to make better use of your time, increase daily productivity or even just spend less time answering emails, you’ll definitely want to tune in to The Earley Show.

Learn more about the Earley Law Group here!

Check out the previous episode of The Earley Show here!

The Earley Show is a part of The Answering Legal Podcast Network.

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This podcast is produced and edited by Joe Galotti. You can reach Joe via email at [email protected].

Episode Transcript:

Chris Earley (Host)

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Earley Show. It's sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I'm your host Chris Earley and as you know on this show I always bring to you the very best and brightest in the legal industry. Today we have no exception. Today we have David Vicknair. He's a good person. He's got a really impressive law firm. That's why I reached out to him to ask him come on the show and he said yes. So we're going to chop it up today cajun style, right? What you see is what you get. There's no BS with him and I appreciate that. So, Dave, welcome to the show, my friend.

David Vicknair (Guest)

Thank you, Chris. It's very kind of you to say I appreciate it.

Chris Earley

So, I like to do my homework before the show and I thought I was hot at almost a thousand reviews. You have over 2,000. So, I'm kind of like, what the hell? That's pretty good. So, we'll get into that. Before we get into today and all the great things you're doing, could you sort of take us back and like where did you grow up? What did mom and dad do for work? And kind of what led you on this path?

David Vicknair

Yeah, absolutely. So, I grew up in a small town called Thibodaux, Louisiana, which is about an hour southwest of New Orleans. To most people who don't um who think New Orleans is like the bottom of the world, they're like, "There's something south of New Orleans?" There is. There's a lot of land south of New Orleans. And Thibodaux, believe it or not, even though it's southwest, 7 feet above sea level, New Orleans, like 3 feet under sea level. But I grew up in Thibodaux. And my mom and dad, I'm lucky, are still with me, are still in relatively good health.

Chris Earley

Awesome.

David Vicknair

Um, and were incredible influences on my life. My mom was a school teacher for 33 years. She taught me amazing lessons in humility and kindness and love. And she also is a big no gossip type of person, which like really like I think raised me as a person who stayed away from small talk and crap that isn't productive. Looking back, my dad was a very stern like military type parent uh back in the day. And so my dad had a little bit more sternness to him. Also very loving and kind as we got older. But he saw his job when he was uh raising my brother and I have one older brother, Benton, as teaching us the value of hard work and a dollar and discipline and really kind of drilled a lot of that into me. Um, a lot of run-ins with Benton. I don't think Benton would mind me saying where he ultimately drilled it into Benton, too. Benton's been wildly successful. He's the youngest person in senior management at a large multinational corporation called Oceaneering, which is publicly traded, and he's in charge of all their operations for the Americas now. Um, Ben's about four years older than me. So, I like to say my dad, mom did, I hope did a few things right with both of us. We are still very close-knit and and uh still together as a family and do a lot of things together. And I'm just thankful for the fact that they kind of raised me the way that they did. You know, when I was in college, I was kind of between two paths I was thinking about. I was thinking about becoming a football coach or going to law school was the two things I was between. And my dad at the time, you know, I think he figured out a few things as a parent. He wasn't gonna push me not to do one or the other because whatever he told me he didn't want me to do, I was likely to do it. Right. Yeah. and he had a close friend uh named Laury Dupont who was a multiple high school winning national won a bunch of state championships at a school here called West St. John. And I when I left I played I walked on and played a year of college football and when um I I went coach with him for a offseason or two or with the high school team and coach Dupont kind of very slyly steered me towards law school. I think my dad had a little bit of a hand in that. But in any event, uh that's kind of how I where I was and I ultimately decided to go to law school and not go the coaching journey.

Chris Earley

I mean, football is one thing, but football in Louisiana is a totally different thing, right? I mean, insane heat, but it's like, you know, the you know, LSU, it's just I' I've only been down there for conferences, but I know it's like insanely important culture, community, and the society, right?

David Vicknair

Very much so. And and at the time… and West St. John is in a small little town for example just picking up on West St. John there's many small there's many high schools yeah high school football is a huge deal down here. So West St. John is in a small community for example called Edgard, Louisiana which is about 25 minutes outside New Orleans and that football team that game on Friday night is almost like a Friday night lights example in Texas.

Chris Earley

I bet, I bet.

David Vicknair

It's the same thing there and it's a community thing it's everything you know at the time back when I was interning there you know Mr. Laury had Tyson Jackson who ended up playing defensive end at LSU and won a national championship. Went and played for the Patriots I think. Uh Quinn Johnson who ended up starting at uh fullback for LSU on that national championship team. I mean he had some real real athletes um running through that program at the time who went and were NFL players and so it is a big deal down here.

Chris Earley

Weaving in sports and business. I just finished like two months ago Nick Saban a biography on Nick Saban and it talks, you know, his journey of success and he was he was a he was a tough son of a gun, right? He's a hard driving guy and he talks about Louisiana. He would just be a obsessive recruiter. He would just travel like a maniac just and so I really got in the weeds on these high schools in Louisiana and his journeys right through and sort of like I got the sense out working other football coaches right and out you know just being a little bit you know smarter maybe than you know others in terms of recruiting those those gems right in the rough. Um so I just I'm thinking about Nick Saban right now just this is fascinating to me.

David Vicknair

Well it's interesting that you brought him up because I think my team at the law firm is sick of hearing about him. I think, you know, what Nick did at LSU and at Alabama has a lot of parallels to the business world. And in fact, if you listen to him, there's a lot of clips outline of different speeches he's given out there. He in a lot of ways… because he knows. Like Nick is a brilliant person, right? Uh visionary for football. Um we talk people throw that word out about law firm owners. I kind of get sick of hearing that word, but in any event, he is a visionary for football. And he I think he's smart enough to know that not all of his players are going to be in the NFL. A lot of them will, but some will. And so he has seen the value in not only communicating I think to his players like what is going to help them at the next level in NFL, but also like what is going to help them in the business world. And they're all the same. They're not mutually exclusive. So his focus on the process and the consistency and the everyday execution of the mundane things that you know he needs a a cornerback to be in the mindset that like every play that small hip turn at the right time how they how many yards are off the ball five not seven like those small differences or the inches that make the difference here and there has a lot of parallel for example to Jeff Bezos talks a lot about having the professional pride for the work in your work that nobody's going to and the small consistency of execution every day to make the organization and the team a success. And so, you know, football for me, I thought I was leaving not going in the football coaching route. And it's weird. I've really been reflecting in the last year a lot, not to get overly emotional, but I thought I was never going to be able to coach. And people would like mention to me, well, you could always coach a little league. And I was like, the stakes are Yeah, but like I I really need the stakes, right? I need the risk. I need the adrenaline going. Yeah. In some ways now, what I'm doing in the law firm is the same as coaching a team.

Chris Earley

A hundred percent.

David Vicknair

I say that to the team all the time. Um, a lot of times I'm coaching up people on like, hey, you know, that thing you did that wasn't okay and here's why. Giving them the why, getting in that consistency of motion, of practice, of getting the reps in, whether it be the briefs that those lawyers write or the court appearances they need to go to to get better as oral advocates or the case managers and the communications with the clients and putting notes in the case management system. All those details.

Chris Earley

Yeah, man. I'm with you. I didn't expect to talk about football, but the the the parallel is unmistakable, right? So you love him or hate him, you could get so much from a guy like Nick Saban. This phrase has run through my head this week. Success leaves clues. We hear that a lot. Nothing is more true in this world. So I encourage the audience, you know, we have most of our audience are entrepreneurs, scaling PI firms. Read about the Nick Saban. Like I personally am not a Nick Saban kind of guy. I probably a lot more kind of less abrasive, but that worked for him. And what I do I like to think works for me. So adapt your style, your leadership style. But like you and I leading law firms are definitely coaches. Like it's not always about KPIs and revenue. It's about like getting the best out of your players, putting the cornerback right on the on the right side of the ball or you know putting the lineman, you know, uh getting the right lineman with the right size hands like all this, you know, this stuff. But like this matters. Like Nick Saban was maniacal about the details, right? You know, as I study your law from you. I know you're maniacal about the details. So, this is very interesting to me. All right. A lot there for the listener already. So, we just caught a show. We just gave a ton of value.

David Vicknair

I have to make one more comment there because I think it's important to to consider for our listen for anybody listening. So, one of the things Nick talks about is the authenticity of leadership and the importance of when you ask somebody to do thing it not always just being for your benefit because they can see through it. And I think it's a pretty profound thing I've seen him speak on. And so I think what you're getting at is important is I am me, you are you. We're all freaking different. Look, if we're all the same, the world would be relatively boring. And so part of the freedom of becoming a good business operator and having success in your business I have found is really coming to terms with who are you accepting who you are and what your style is and just being yourself and being authentic because I think people will see it, appreciate it, um, and see through it if you try to be somebody else other than yourself.

Chris Earley

I love that. I'm nodding my head here. I can't agree with you any more uh aggressively. I love that. And that's just that I find it honestly David like really hard. You know, a couple points for the listener. I know we all hopefully know this, but you never criticize in… I don't like to criticize in public. I would never say to you, David, that that complaint looks like crap. I would pull your site, hey David, you know, tell me what you know, what were you you know, what was your thought process with this complaint? And we talked about John Nachazel before we started recording um today. Nachazel was saying it it's not about you know when you're a leader you you lean on the data almost the data is like can be the good guy or the bad guy like David listen like your numbers you know these are your numbers what are you seeing here like having you see it without me telling you like using the data I'm sure I'm sure Saban utilized I think metrics, right? Because we need a score obviously but I think that's what I took away you and I were just Fireproof this week, right? Different groups, but we had a lot of the same, you know, people around us. We're absorbing all that knowledge and a lot of it is getting the most out of people. And I see David, a lot of you don't do it, but there's a lot of law firms out there in the country who leaders who who are tough on their staff. That's not the way to do it. I think you can be a nice like like Nachazel is so interesting. He's such a hard driving business executive, but he's a really good person, right? And so he doesn't lean too heavily on one or the other. I think it's important to strike that balance. What's your leadership style like? What kind of football coach are you?

David Vicknair

You know, John's honest obviously one of my one of my mentors and one of the people I respect the most professionally. Um and um I love him. He's an amazing person first before business leader. I've learned like soft skills are really hard to develop and the Vicknair side of me is German which means I'm hot blooded, which means I need to take a breath and calm down. But it took me years to like manage that, right? And understand that as a leader, you don't get the luxury of ever really showing up mad or really pissed that it has to be in private with the people you know it's not going to leave. Like you get your chance to be mad, but it's only with one or two people, right, in a trust circle in the organization that it's never going to leave and you get to be fully transparent. Say what you want, get it out there, and it's not going anywhere. I think my style is pretty simple. It's changed, but it's very much a um I I come from a place of love. It's that simple. I want… I tell the team all the time like I'm not a hippie, but like my my mantra… is seeing each of them succeed professionally and personally. And so I want them to make more money. I want them to have opportunities for advancement in the organization as it grows and it evolves. I want them to be challenged. I want them to be fulfilled. But I want the organization to support their families and them. I want them to feel like they have a place that they can be their most creative and best self. And part of that is how do you engineer in different things in your culture that support and evidence that. And so for one example is a lot of our communications go through Slack. And for a couple years now we have had a channel in there which is like we call it the SV Scott Vicknair Wins channel.

Chris Earley

Cool.

David Vicknair

Um, and it it has been a focus on like you see that case manager doing just a great job in managing their cases for you. Like that attorney needs to get in that channel, tag the whole channel and give them a shout out and talk about why the things that they've been doing in a very small way. The work within the work like we were mentioning earlier is just exceptional. And I'm a very big positive affirmation person about highlighting the wins, highlighting the things that people are doing exceptionally well, small and big. Not just like, hey, yeah, we can ring a we have this bell that we ring here. We can put the post up about this recent verdict or settlement or blah blah blah blah, but like sometimes the most important things to highlight are spending two minutes of our everyday lives and saying, you know, I overheard Miss Tina on a call with that client yesterday and she was so amazing and patient and she's like this every day and I just wanted to highlight how amazing she is. So that's one example of a small piece of a much bigger puzzle of how you build, I think, a culture that supports your team, elevates them, and gives them a foundation to succeed. I'm also a very blunt and direct person with kindness. And so as people start to get a feel for our leadership team and our supervisors in the organization, they start to, I think, understand that we are a humble leadership place that will be very honest and very direct. And if you are not doing your job, you're not going to have to figure it out. We will have a difficult conversation with you. We will tell you what you're doing that is not aligning with the values of the organization or with your team. We will lay out how you can improve it and get better. And then we'll help you along that journey if you want to take it. And if you don't, the team's heard me say this a million times, like we're all on this boat rowing down the Mississippi River. If you just refuse to go down that path, we're going to love you. It's not a big deal. We're gonna take a stop at Margaritaville. We're gonna let you out. We're gonna give you a $100 gift certificate so you can have a Patrón margarita or two and we're gonna keep on rowing. So like you know we have to terminate people from time to time and we have um but as since we have iterated and instituted a lot of the cultural things that I think have strengthened the organization over the last two to three years. It's a funny thing. You read about it in books, but then you get to watch it in real life as the culture just kind of spits out the people who aren't the right fits or maybe were the right fit at one time, but aren't the right fit necessarily at this stage of the business growth. Um, and it rewards and makes the people fulfilled who are here and want to be a part of a great culture and a great organization.

Chris Earley

All right. A lot to unpack. I love everything you just said. Use the word love a couple times. I've interviewed a tens of entrepreneurs on this show. Tens. And I've never heard someone say that like love. That's really nice because that's kind of where I lead from a mentor of mine is Bill Biggs. Love your people, demand high performance, right? That's the kind of football coach that I am evolving into. It sounds like you kind of speak that language too, right? Because it can't be all hippie like I love you so much, David. It's like, well, David, I do love you, but you know, let's look at the data. How are we doing? Right? The numbers don't lie. I like what you just said about shoutouts. I had an attorney recently in my office. We have RingCentral. It's like Slack channel, right? He shouted out a paralegal or a case manager in my office. My heart swells because I hired those two people and now one is shouting out the other and everyone sees that and it creates this this vibe of like damn I'm in the right place. I want to share this. I was at Fireproof like you this past week. Nachazel got up there and said people don't leave because of money, they leave because of bad bosses.

David Vicknair

That's true.

Chris Earley

So they're going to leave. If you're nice, even if you don't pay them as much as they would like to get paid, they're probably gonna stick around because you're a good person to them. They see feel that love. So, I love everything you just said. And you know, right behind me is the sign of my core values. We're brutally honest is really the first one on that list. Brutal honesty. So, I'm really I'm loving this conversation by the way. This is really cool. So, I wanted you've… you know, you're running a very successful practice. Could you take us through getting out of law school, right? And where you landed, what the journey looked like to get to today?

David Vicknair

Sure. So, I had I got lucky that a close friend of mine, I was actually with her last night at the Muses parade. We're in the middle of Mardi Gras down here in New Orleans. Her dad was looking to hire a law clerk and hired me. She recommended me. He was a vet, a real trial lawyer who before mediation was in vogue. He'd probably tried two or 300 jury trials. So, he was at the stage of his career where he had a mixed practice construction business and PI word of mouth stuff. He didn't, you know, what I like to say is Ret didn't really want to do all the parts of litigation that he knew how to do. He was just tired of doing them. And so I got really a great opportunity with no lawyers in my family to go and learn from him and get thrown into a million different things in the four years I worked with him. And one of the greatest opportunities I had was while I was working for him, we unfortunately had the devastating BP oil spill.

Chris Earley

Terrible.

David Vicknair

It turned into probably one of the biggest MDLs in American history. And I really pushed Ret um and he allowed me to do it and was all like, "Let's do it”, to get involved at with that class action whenever the settlement was being formed because I just knew by the nature of our business, we were going to have a lot of businesses, a lot of different clients who were going to fit into the settlement framework. And so I really that was kind of my baby. I worked in BP for man the entire time I was there and probably three years after I went out on my own. But Ret allowing me to do that and build up that practice, it was it financially allowed me the confidence to kind of go out on my own and and try to build my own practice. I really didn't want to go out on my own. I love and still have a great relationship with him. Most of it was just like uh age gap and not wanting to go away from paperless and institute technology and things that would have at that time Clio and MyCase were like in vogue. That was the those were the big new things in the world was cloud-based and getting rid of paper. And so that was kind of more the friction that kind of led me to go start my own practice back in 2015. Uh Brad Scott um I had met clerking um and he had gone out and started his own estate practice and I had lunch with him and he was like look if you really want to do this he's like I have an office you can just lease some space for me and come on and so I just kind of took the leap. it uh has been the first six years of my practice was just like my practice was very similar to Ret’s some word of mouth PI but generally business and construction litigation and did a lot of that and back in 2021 or 2022 is really when I started deciding that I kind of wanted to move my practice more towards just PI. I I just felt like the practices were kind of in conflict. I'm invoicing and billing over here and I'm doing contingency fees over here. What are we? We're We're everything. We're not one thing. And I felt like it was a real business that I could actually put systems in place in and grow, not knowing much back then. I don't know that much more now, but I know a little bit more four or five years into this thing than I did back then. And that's kind of the journey I've been on the last four years.

Chris Earley

I love it. So you guys, so he said, "Hey, I got an available office for you." But then eventually you guys became partners. Is that right?

David Vicknair

That's right.

Chris Earley

Okay. When did you guys become partners?

David Vicknair

Pretty much around that same time. Brad had a couple of partners who were buddies from law school who were both kind of going out on their own that time, too. He's about 10 years older than me. Um, one ended up finding his way over to work for a PI firm here in New Orleans. Another opened up his own firm in Lafayette. It was kind of like a they were all trying to figure out how to run their own practices at the same time together. All good relationships now. But their partnership didn't really work. Me and Brad became partners. But our partnership was very simple from day one and it's been always worked as Brad has kind of seen every law firm break up disagreement blah blah. And most of them center around money, right? You put a dollar in the pot and we split it 50/50 at the end of the year and there's resentment because this partner's on a vacation, this partner is not working. So blah blah. So we have kind of kept our practices as individual members in the firm and separate from day one. and decided what things we wanted to do together and what things we didn't want to do together. And it's made being a law partner very simple. Um because if I say, "Hey Brad, I'm doing this. Do you want to consider doing it with me?" He's like, "Nope." Like, "Okay, no problem.” Move on. So, it's worked for us. I don't know if it would work for everybody, but the estate group is kind of like a whole different world than the injury group in our firm. And you see some other firms that have been successful with that, like Seth Price’s firm, for example.

Chris Earley

Sure. Sure.

David Vicknair

So, um that's kind of been our partnership. He doesn't really… Brad's not super involved in the uh injury group at all, but he's one of the biggest, you know, focused estate and probate guys in Louisiana.

Chris Earley

I love it. Let me ask you, so I don't know who told me, someone remarked to me years ago, you're in New Orleans, right?

David Vicknair

Yep.

Chris Earley

Someone said to me, that's the most competitive market in the nation. That really stuck with me. Were you scared? It's almost like a rhetorical question, but maybe not. Were you scared when you left to open up your own practice?

David Vicknair

Absolutely.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

David Vicknair

I mean, I was 30. 29 or 30. I was too young. I was just an idiot. I was stupid Maybe I didn't know enough to be scared. I mean, I remember having an Excel document and thinking, "Okay, what does it cost me to live?" And I would put like the the things down and be like, "Okay, how much money do I have saved? If I made no money for a year, would I be okay?" And the answer to that was yes. And so, I was like, "Okay, I can do this. Let's see." Um, looking at it gave me some comfort, I guess, Chris.

Chris Earley

I relate. I was around 32. Um, late 20s, but pretty close. Were you able to bring cases into your firm? Did you Did you take cases? Did you have cases?

David Vicknair

Yeah. So, some of the hourly work. I had a lot of hourly clients that were my clients. So, that kind of gave me some comfort. Like my old firm knew like, hey, they're going to go with you. No big deal. And there's no like leans on hourly work, right? So, a lot of those came with me. Um, and so that gave me some comfort. like, hey, there's going to be some cash flow because I'm working on these hourly matters. I know they pay. Um, and so I at least know that I'm going to make five, 10, 12,000 a month in revenue, right? Was my thinking based on these files that I have, and I know they'd probably come. Some clients eventually came that I'd even solicited to come. They just came here and there, like some hourly clients, some PI clients. But um you know, we had a very amicable, hey, you take these cases, you can pay me this portion of that contingency fee. Like we kind of just worked it all out.

Chris Earley

That's awesome. What size your firm today?

David Vicknair

Uh so including me in the injury group, we have 32 team members altogether. Of those 32, six are international in Mexico. Um so we have 26 in the United States full-time and six in Mexico.

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Chris Earley

So, if I heard you correctly a few minutes ago, you said around 2021, 2022, you started behaving differently, thinking differently. Is that when you started going to conferences? Because I've seen you on the trail, the conference trail. I see you at masterminds. Is that when you started to like step out of your office and think differently or or no? Was it before then?

David Vicknair

My aha moment I think was we were doing some you know back the only time I think I ever did real lead gen was back in 2021. We did this lead gen that just stumbled upon because there was a PPC uh partner that we were working with and they kind of left um long that's going to be a much longer story but they left and that was kind of my main PI case generation funnel. So I kind of stumbled across this lead gen. Now we're talking 2021. I was like okay I'll try this lead gen. They have some funny videos. Let's see how that works on social media. They were not like… I didn't find them to be unprofessional. They were just funny and it worked really well. We generated like a lot I would say that year like maybe 75 or 78 pretty decent PI cases. Some really big ones in there. Now that was back when there wasn't like seven million lead gen companies and some of them the most like absurd creative like I'm I'm too afraid to even touch most of them now because I think it would get me in professional misconduct issues. But that worked and I remember I was uh at uh in Florida I just one of my buddies had recommended that I read this book Fireproof. And so I was at the pool having a margarita and reading this book and I was like, hm. And so that kind of opened up a lot of like things going on in my head and I'm like, who is this Mike and John Nachazel guy? Not thinking I'd ever really meet these people, but it was that book really opened my mind to a lot of things. And now it's funny how life has a weird way that they become like very close friends of mine, but um professionally and personally. But that was kind of a big aha moment for me. And then the first uh conference that I went to, I started listening to Ben Glass on his podcast, which I would recommend to every freaking lawyer. Like listening to Ben is a must do. And that opened my mind a lot to a lot of other things that maybe Mike and John don't focus on as much of, but is really Ben's sweet spot is mindset and being the best that you can for your family and the firm. And then I went to GLM back in 2022 and that was like a big um fire hose moment. Fire hose being shot in my face and it's kind of been off to the races since then.

Chris Earley

Yeah, I love that. I I talked about this a lot on this show. I was deeply impacted by Ben Glass like six years ago. My career, David, I wouldn't have this podcast today. I wouldn't have the size firm I have now, the life I have now if I had meet Ben Glass. And and I got to shout out Charley Mann. You know Charley? Charley Mann.

David Vicknair

I know Charley. Yeah. And actually Brad's in his mastermind.

Chris Earley

Oh wonderful. Those two guys, those two guys, man, like uh I'm very I have a lot of affections towards him because they did so much honestly, dude. Like more importantly, my marriage got better because I was a happier person and like pursuing personal happiness more than professional happiness. And then what happened was my professional success really started to take off. Ended up writing a book. Like all this crazy stuff like who the hell am I? I didn't think that was possible. But I encourage you…

David Vicknair

I absolutely relate to that. I think it's not hyperbolic to say that Ben has changed hundreds of lawyers lives for the better.

Chris Earley

A thousand person. There's no question.

David Vicknair

An amazing human being. And if you really are a lawyer and you're focused on like your mindset, which you should be, it's not esoteric. It's probably the most important thing. You know, Ben really made me realize you're kind of like the racehorse of your law firm. If you buy a 20,000 or $30,000 racehorse? Are you going to feed it pork and beans? Are you going to feed it like actual real good food? And make it strong and train it.

Chris Earley

The good stuff.

David Vicknair

Our muscles as a law firm, as a lawyer, our mind.

Chris Earley

Yes.

David Vicknair

And so, we should be working on our mindset. I try to learn and get better at it daily. And Ben was the person who really put me on that path and changed my life for the better. And so, if you're like, "Oh, what podcast should I listen to in the little legal space to get better in my mindset?" It's Ben Glass. Period. End of story.

Chris Earley

I'm with you. I couldn't be any more with you. But those two camps are so complimentary, right? Because Glass has a message. Morse and Nachazel have a message. I don't think you should just be in one room and like just getting one room's uh education. You should be in a couple different rooms, right? I started Great Legal Marketing Mastermind, then went to PILMA, now I'm in Fireproof, right? And you know, hopefully I'll keep graduating up and up and maybe someday out of Fireproof and do you know what I'm saying? Like you, you never want to cap it. I I like to think about that, but for now like I'm in the right room. Encourage the audience, you know, be in a be in a room that challenges you. you should I believe be the dumbest guy or gal in that room. All right. You've seen, you know, I got to ask you, you got a lot of reviews. But more importantly than that is your community stuff. Could you get into that with us like what are you doing? I see you hosting parties, you know, getting out of the office and like shaking hands and being authentic, right? Which is not always… I don't see it a lot. Talk to me about your community stuff. What are you up to?

David Vicknair

Sure. So we every uh spring we do uh this is something we an idea we got from Moe DeWitt in PILMMA. Uh we do a cruise giveaway to um this is an important one to me because my mom was I mentioned a teacher for 33 years. We pick a local educator and we go surprise them. Um we have a contest online. We probably get somewhere between 70 to 100 submissions. We read them and we vote and we pick a teacher every year that we send on a cruise.

Chris Earley

I love that!

David Vicknair

Probably my favorite day of the year. Uh last year my mom and I were both crying listening to the principal like we surprised the teacher. All the teachers were there crying. It was a teacher who was retiring and an amazing experience. So we do that every spring. We also in the summer give a couple I think in the last few years we've given almost 2,000 put almost 2,000 backpacks fully stacked into the community and pro we do project backpack. There's a Fireproof initiative. Uh we brand it to the firm. They've been very helpful with the supply chain part of it and we are moving that. It has been like a drive like people drive up um but we're turning it into a full-blown event this year. So that's every summer that we put those backpacks in the community. Uh and with the clients we have this is a great idea we got from PILMMA as well which is we do this client um advisory board dinner twice a year. We've had really good attendance the last year. Had 60 to 80 clients show up at each one.

Chris Earley

Wonderful. Wonderful.

David Vicknair

And we have a dinner. We give away some TVs. They have a questionnaire. We get some feedback from them on what the firm is doing well, not doing well. I tell them at the event every time, and it's true. I get the marketing team to bring me the questionnaires. I read every single one of them. Uh, and there's a lot of, you know, you you're not going to get groundbreaking stuff in there, but I get some nuggets out of each round of reading. I'm not going to lie. and I go to the team and say hey look this is some feedback we got good bad or ugly right uh and you know that has been I think a big one for us for further developing relationships with those clients and former clients which obviously leads to more word of mouth referrals um and so it's not just for that it is to like thank our clients for trusting us and then we get the benefit of probably more referrals from them also in the fall we do a Uber giveaway where on New Year's Eve we uh do about $10,000 of Uber credits. So, we have about 500 people sign up for that. Every end of the year, we put it on TV, we have it on socials, and that's a big one for us because it's another community initiative where, you know, we're deploying money in the community, enhancing our brand because we do care about the community, but also, you know, it's like if we prevent one drunk driver from being on the road on New Year's Eve, it's a win. And so, the team really feels fulfilled by these things. We feel fulfilled by these things and we're always looking to do new things. We're in the community and we do we've started this new program. We used to do pizza reviews. I got tired of eating pizza. I've done like 50 of them. But that was a good one because you get to meet the individual pizza shop owners, eat food, review it. We kind of shifted that to small biz, big wins, where we're going into different types of businesses, highlighting the business, not the firm, and really meeting them, talking about their business, sharing it on socials, promoting their business. Uh, why do I love that? We're just in the community meeting people and we're highlighting their business and we're doing it because we want to help them and we want to develop relationships and that's what business is about. That's what marketing is about is relationships. It's really that simple. So, we have some other stuff we're working on right now. It's not fully launched yet, but we're always adding and adding and adding to all those things because, you know, you wouldn't have a business if you didn't have the community supporting it. And it's really that simple.

Chris Earley

You're right. So, you just said a lot. The thing I'm probably going to do first is the cruise. Moe DeWitt, I was in a mastermind group with him for years. I don't know why this didn't get to me earlier. I must have heard this at some point, but I didn't do anything about it. Now I'm going to. A teacher taking a cruise. I mean, that's so that's such a win-win. I freaking love that. Quick question before I forget. Are you handling cases now or you just totally out of the cases?

David Vicknair

I'm pretty much out of them. So, from this standpoint, like I don't have an active docket except for like five or six legacy cases that are some a few construction cases that can't seem to resolve or go get to trial. Um, and so I have a few that I have to actively manage, maybe three or four that are actually active. And then I do manage all of our pods and our pod leaders and weekly meetings and do case reviews and projections. And I manage the full legal department but I don't have a full active docket which is at first I was scared of Ben gave me the confidence to get out of it. Uh, Ben Glass. And then you know what I've found is it actually makes the legal side better because I'm now involved in the cases that I need to be involved in as far as like I'm going to be at mediation in a very large case next week but it needs me to be there to help with the clients and the that look the attorney who's managing that case she's probably one of the best lawyers in South Louisiana. So she doesn't need me, but it doesn't hurt to have me there. You know what I mean? And so I get to get involved in the cases that can benefit from my support as another first chair kind of supporting the case, if that makes sense.

Chris Earley

I love it. Reviews, what's working so well for you? Obviously, you're crushing it. I just Googled, you have two over 2100 reviews. I have like 950. Like I said, I thought I was doing something right. What's working for you? Obviously you guys ask and ask and ask, but like why how so many? Like that's freaking awesome.

David Vicknair

Well, there's a couple pieces of that. I think first is we have a one of our big tenants in our culture is hospitality. So we take it to like an extreme degree from the standpoint of we're always iterating all the systems in the business about how we deliver unreasonable hospitality to every single client beyond their wildest imagination. And some of it may seem kitschy to others, but it's in a because it's in a law firm. But I'm like, if you just go study Ritz Carlton, Disney, or Chick-fil-A, it's pretty simple to understand why they're multi-billion dollar organizations. They don't take for granted the people who have trusted them with their business. And so that has been an emphasis of our culture for two to three years. So I think when you do that, people feel something different. It's much easier to get a Google review from them, number one. But the other part of it is just like the Google reviews are a part of our culture. It's like we talk about Google reviews every week. We highlight people who get Google reviews every week. Like almost daily. So you know we started from the consult to the end. The biggest mistake I see that I've made with Google reviews is waiting to try to get them at dispersement. I did that three four years ago. It's a terrible idea. You get the Google review as quickly and whenever you can. You ask, ask, ask. And look, somebody's probably prone to give you a good Google review and maybe you've asked an intake and then maybe you ask them pre-lit and then they go to lit, maybe you ask them lit and they haven't given it yet and just because they were busy, they were dealing with their kids and this or that and then you get another ask in the middle of the litigation case one more time, they give it to you. So, it's like it's one of those things. There's no system, there's no trick, there's no like AI bot that's going to come and solve your Google review.

Chris Earley

I wish. I wish.

David Vicknair

Coach your team on how to get them, why they're important over and over and over and over and over again and consistently talk about doing it in your process and in your systems to allow you to get them.

Chris Earley

What's your biggest challenge now with this level of size? Obviously, you've broken through a lot of layers of growth. You've had to transform yourself and transform your mindset and evolve. Like what's your biggest challenge today generally?

David Vicknair

That's a good question. So what you mentioned earlier is we are in the most expensive and the most competitive market in the United States and New Orleans and as a concomitant to that the financial capital necessary to really to move the needle in growth is is substantial. And so, you know, properly managing cash is it's really really a challenge for any law firm when you're going from 2 million to 10 million, because there's investments that have to be made both human and labor, right? And high quality labor in that phase as well as the amount of money that you allocate and commit to marketing to allow yourself to grow and to generate the kind of cases, the clients you want, the cases you want to build the teams for the kind of team members that you want. And so that's a big challenge right now. And we watch it weekly, we manage it weekly. I have a COO who gives my leadership team report on it weekly. And so just making smart decisions with money and being strategic in the way we spend it and where we spend it and how we allocate it is probably our biggest challenge right now. But also I don't view it so much as a challenge. It's kind of like a fun game for me. It's like, you know, managing the chessboard, understanding that like I have some really big law firms in my sphere down here, um, three or four mega firms that like I have to do things differently and in a certain way to be able to break through the noise and connect with the consumer without the resources completely that they have. We have resources. We have a lot of resources now. We're not a small little practice, but you know, you have to be strategic with the money. You can't… you don't have the luxury at this stage of like making a hundred or $200,000 mistake.

Chris Earley

You know, I hear you. I'm with you. And, you know, I've heard um people at John Morgan's firm say, you know, we're so freaking big that we can't do things that smaller firms can do. So, you know, you obviously have some big giant firms in your market, but like they're really big and you can use that to your advantage, what you're doing because you're more nimble and versatile. You know, you scale up a big firm, but you know, I'm just saying you're taking notes and know you're scaling and you're going for it, right? You talked about Chick-fil-A a little while ago. I would encourage the listener who maybe doesn't have a seven figure practice, you know, almost eight figure practice. I would encourage you to go to Chick-fil-A for a half an hour and look around how they do things, how they treat people, how they talk to their customers, the speed, the cleanliness. You can make so much money and improve your life and find great team members by just emulating success, right? Success leaves clues. We talked about that, right? Hang out Chick-fil-A. And if some of you listening are in David's position, right? We're growing. We're scaling. There's tough bets we're placing. Not all of them hit. Some do. The majority don't. when they hit you just went up a few levels, right? You're you're growing and taking chances. So, I love it. A lot of respect for what you're doing. Last question. Two more questions. Is there one book? Is there one book that's had a big impact on you as a person either professionally, business, anything? What's really moved the needle for your life bookwise?

David Vicknair

Okay, so non-professionally, just enjoyment. I love Shoe Dog. I think it's just an amazing book.

Chris Earley

Oh that's a great book. One hundred percent.

David Vicknair

If you didn't think it was a business book, you think it was fiction.

Chris Earley

Oh, highly encourage… Buy it today. Buy it today, audience. It's fantastic.

David Vicknair

I think for me what's really moved the needle for my firm… People are going to think I'm ridiculous… Is The Power of Moments. And that was the book that really opened my eyes to the power of hospitality and the way you make people feel. You know, nobody's going to remember what we do for them, but they will remember how you make them feel. And so, you just mentioned something to like a small practitioner, somebody starting a law firm. There's really two things that I think I would redo if I started my practice over again today was one is read that book and care about… and probably also Unreasonable Hospitality. But care about hospitality and systemizing it in your firm in a thoughtful way from the get-go because the clients who have trusted you if you prioritize them and make them feel a certain way that will come back to you tenfold. The second thing is in the same vein what I learned from Ben Glass years later is prioritize your list. You know, you can reach your people in print, which is a 100% open rate over email or digital. You can reach them in print a lot cheaper than it cost me to put a spot in the, you know, Fox News every morning. So, those are two things I would really say, but power moments really opened my eyes to the power of systematized hospitality, not only for your clients, but also onboarding new team members and the way to treat new team members internally.

Chris Earley

So, and I heard someone say systematized hospitality, and that's interesting. I read unreasonable hospitality. My wife read it and she doesn't really love business books, but it was such a good book. So now you have me thinking not just to be unreasonably hospitable, but just programmatically systematize it so it gets done, right? Google reviews, if we're not militant, it doesn't get done, right? So I love that. That's really good.

David Vicknair

Yeah. Well, I mean, candidly, if you strip down unreasonable hospitality in a simple explanation, I think they essentially took a restaurant and systematized hospitality.

Chris Earley

A hundred percent.A hundred percent. But they did freaking New York City, best restaurant in the world. It's like it, you know, there's just unparalleled success. It it I hate to say it again, it leaves a lot of clues for us. I appreciate you, David. How can people get in touch with you?

David Vicknair

Uh we're on all the socials, so and I'm doing a lot of light writing on LinkedIn. I write twice a week. So, you know, you can reach me on LinkedIn. Uh, posted twice a week on there. Uh our firm is on all the socials. Our phone number is 504-500-1111. You can go to scottvicknair.com and find us there. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. It's been a fun discussion. I've really enjoyed talking to you today.

Chris Earley

This has been awesome. I appreciate you and I'm a big fan. So, keep doing what you're doing. I'm very inspired by your success. So, I appreciate you, brother. Thank you.

David Vicknair

That means a lot. Happy Mardi Gras. Thank you.

Chris Earley

You, too. All right. That's it for this episode of the Earley Show. Be sure to check out more episodes of our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.