"Everything Breaks Every Time You Double" — Chad Dudley on Scaling a Law Firm

Welcome to episode 48 of The Earley Show podcast, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined by Chad Dudley, Partner at Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers.

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

In this episode, Chad and Chris discuss the systems that help law firms scale, the importance of fanatical client communication, and how leadership and coaching shape culture as teams grow. Chad also shares insights on operational quick wins like improving intake conversion, grading cases to spot top-value matters, setting clear settlement targets to avoid under-settlement, and using an attorney tier system to match the right lawyers to the right cases.

About our guest:
From his very first job out of law school, Chad Dudley has always represented those who have been injured by others, helping them get the justice they deserve. He started Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers with his partners, Steven DeBosier and James Peltier, in 2009. They have since recovered over a billion dollars for tens of thousands of individuals throughout the state of Louisiana. The firm now has over 50 attorneys with offices across the state.

Chad has also been a consultant to personal injury firms for over 15 years. He has worked with over 200 firms across the country, helping them grow their practice. He is considered an industry expert in the field of law firm management and building firms that get great results for their clients.

Reach Chad via email at [email protected].

Learn more about Chad's practice here!

Learn more about Chad's consulting services here!

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.

Interested in learning more about Answering Legal? Click here to learn more about 400 minute free trial!

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

Episode Transcript:

Christopher Earley (Host): All right, hello, and welcome to the episode of The Earley Show, sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I'm your host, Chris Earley. I'm an injury lawyer in Massachusetts. And as you know, on this show, The Earley Show, we always bring you the best and the brightest. Today's no exception. We have the professor, Chad Dudley, on the call.

Chad Dudley (Guest): Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I'm a fan, so this is awesome.

Christopher: I appreciate that. So Chad is a consummate giver. That's why he's so successful, because he shares everything he knows. And so that's what I really love about him. So we're getting into a lot of stuff. As always, make sure you sharpen your pencils. We'll have plenty of writer downers on this episode of The Earley Show. So Chad, welcome to the show, my friend.

Chad: Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.

Christopher: So I like to start at the start with my guest. I like to start, who's Chad Dudley? Going back, where did you grow up? What kind of kid were you? Take it back.

Chad: I love it. I love it. Gosh, my family is from Southern California. I'm kind of up in the desert area between Vegas and LA. And, you know, born there when I was about three, my family moved to Hawaii. My dad had spent some time growing up there as a kid. He thought it was a great place to raise a family. And so he and my mom just picked up and moved there. Didn't really know anybody or just one person maybe. And, you know, I grew up in Honolulu. I grew up playing a lot of tennis, first at the state level, then at the national level. Got a pretty high national ranking. And then got a scholarship to go to the Voluntary Tennis Academy when I was about 14. And so I moved by myself to Southern Florida. And now it's called IMG.

Christopher: I’ve heard of that. I just read Andre Agassi's autobiography, great book, Open.

Chad: Oh, it's so good. Yeah, so good.

Christopher: He went there, right?

Chad: He was there at the same time I was there. Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Monica Seles, Anna Kornikova, Tommy Haas.

Christopher: Wow.

Chad: The list goes on and on. It was like the heyday of the Academy. I mean, they just had amazing players all around. And so it was a really great experience. We went to a little bit of school, played a lot of tennis, traveled, played tournaments, and that's how I did. Finished up my high school there. I got recruited to play tennis for LSU. They were a top 10 team in the country back in that time. And I'm still doing great today. And I played four years of college tennis. I taught tennis for about a year and a half, almost two years after undergrad, and decided, you know what, I want to, I think I want to go back to school. And I ended up going to law school. And got out and out of the gate, I clerked for one defense firm. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. This is terrible. And then I clerked for a plaintiff's firm. And then I never looked back. And I went straight out and been on the plaintiff's side. And that's how I got, you know, I really, really enjoyed it when I started working for a plaintiff's firm, going, gosh, this is what I want to do. You know, it's very tangible. You know, people come to you, they have one of the toughest days in their lives. You get the opportunity to help them. They're, you know, just, you can see a case from start to finish. It was awesome. So I just, and I can dig into all that. But that's kind of how I ended up there. And my journey to come here.

Christopher: The tennis success wasn't by accident, obviously. So a lot of, you know, the fact that you're playing with those guys and gals speaks volumes. What did, as an aside, I love, this is random. I love hiring people who are super competitive.

Chad: Yeah.

Christopher: I encourage, hire people who like to compete. Anyway, I digress.

Chad: No, I believe the same thing. It's just, you know, there's, and I always say there's a difference between hating to lose and loving to compete, you know, like, or being competitive. I think that no one likes to lose and, you know, you show up and in the process of losing, no one's happy. However, a competitive person practices, like prepares for the match and puts the time, effort, energy, because they're thinking about that match way before it happens. They're doing all the things that it takes to show up and do well. So by the time the match comes around, that's competitive, right? Not hitting to lose is just hitting to lose.

Christopher: Yes. What did high-level tennis teach you? What were the biggest takeaways?

Chad: Gosh, you know, it's the discipline of if you're trying to, we would get up and we would work out for an hour and a half, two hours, even in high school, you know, an hour, two hours before school even started and go to your classes. And then you're working out for another four to five hours and weights and running and you're exhausted and go study. And then every, you got to be super disciplined about your time. And also, you just get a high tolerance for a certain level of hard work. You know, by the time I got to law school, I'm like, oh my gosh, I just, all I have to do is go read and write. Walk in the park. This is so much easier than undergrad. I mean, this was, for me, it was a little bit different because it just, I had, you know, done, you know, you work so hard and play so much, you just constantly go on 100 miles an hour. Law school is a bit of a, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's a lot chiller scheduled.

Christopher: Right, right.

Chad: Undergrad.

Christopher: Because you were so used to really, really, really work. Even law school is pretty doable.

Chad: Oh yeah. I mean, it was completely, I was like, oh gosh, I get to be in, you know, air conditioned library where I get to study and this is awesome. This is fantastic. I love that. Because I taught, you know, teaching tennis for eight or 10 hours out in South Louisiana is hot. It can be hot. And then before that playing tennis. So you're just kind of used to a high level of work. And then I think there is a thing about just a resilience and competitiveness. And you're just, you know, when you're competing, you know, at that, at any level, and you just, you get used to keeping your head in the game and not get, you know, because we all have setbacks, right? I mean, nothing ever goes smooth. You have this plan, and then, you know, your plan is perfect until you get punched in the nose, right? And so the resilience and going, okay, you know, keeping your head on straight when you encounter adversity and, and, you know, also coming against, I think one of the cool things is like, it teaches you to be, to embrace a highly qualified

competitor. Right? I mean, versus being fearful of them. And because you realize, like, the better competition you go up against, the people that you're around, whether, you know, they set a higher standard. And if you look at it like, hey, this person's making you better. This is not a competitor, but they're really challenging you to be better. I think that mentality is incredibly helpful. And it served us well as we look at that. Like, we're like, okay, you know what? Let's learn from the people around us. What are they doing better?

Christopher: I love that.

Chad: A lot of good things from playing tennis.

Christopher: Clearly, clearly kind of toughens you up a lot, it sounds like, right? Like playing with some high-level people, you just are forced to level your game, literally, right?

Chad: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Because, yeah, 100%, you know, you do well in your city and you go play a state tournament. You do well in the state tournament, you play regionals, national, international, and you know, you kind of keep pushing.

Christopher: I love it, man. I sincerely love that. So, you clerked, didn't love that, you started doing plaintiffs' work. Was that mass torts work? Is that what I saw?

Chad: Yeah, so, yeah, I laughed. The real quick story is like when I was coming out of law school, and I think I've told this story maybe, but I clerked at the defense firm and it was the exact time where the defense firm was using books and the law school was using Westlaw. And so, you could do way more research on Westlaw than you could on the past. And we, you know, I had this stack of research assignments at the, in the library at the defense firm, and you'd pick one and go do the research and then turn it in, and turn in your hours. And it would drive me crazy to use the books because it was so slow. So, I just grabbed a stack one day of all the research assignments, go to the library at the law school, use Westlaw, crank out my, my memos, I turn them back in, the partner the next day calls me and then goes, hey, I need to talk to you about these, you know, these, this research you did. I go in, I'm like, did I get it wrong? And he goes, no, you just, you did it too quick. You got to, we got to build the clients. We got to build our, you know, build our hours. We got to go slower. I'm like, this is, this, this hurts my soul. This is contrary to everything I've ever been about my entire life. And this is the career I've chosen. This is terrible. And I was kind of, I really was bugged out. And so when that clerkship ended, I was like, man, what am I going to do? I'm doing this thing. And this is what it's like. Cause I'm the first attorney in my family. And so I had no idea like what they do. And then I had a buddy that was in a plants firm and we got out and like, no, we don't, we don't build hours and we just got to win. And you know, I was like, oh, I can get behind this. This is great.

Christopher: Right, right.

Chad: And then I took a job. And yeah, my first gig was a project case, was a toxic tort case in North Louisiana. And they, you know, there's 4,000 plaintiffs and they're exposed to some chemicals from this railroad company. And yeah, I was in charge of just like learning about all those clients, you know. And it was, I remember, again, my counterpart on the defense side was a really great attorney, really awesome. And I was like, this attorney knows more about my clients than I do. This cannot be. And so finally, I was like, after one of our meetings, I just went up and asked her, I said, look, I'm impressed. You're really, how do you keep track of all of our clients? Because she showed me kind of what she's doing. She built this little database thing, da da da.

And I'm like, all right, I'm off to the races. I'm going to learn how to build a database, learn SQL and all this kind of stuff. And so I went down that path and that really got me into the sort of data tracking tech side of law firms. And that was the, you know, and constantly trying to learn from that moment on. And, but that was an interesting case. And it was very, one of so many things on that case. And I'm very grateful for that experience.

Christopher: So if I'm hearing correctly, you saw that defense lawyer operating at a high level. And you're like… and that kind of activated you almost, right?

Chad: Always. Yeah, I'm always like, gosh, someone's doing good and doing something better. Just go ask. Like, oh, yeah, sometimes they tell you sometimes they don't. And there's no harm in it. And I want to be better at my craft. I want to be a better attorney. This person's doing some good stuff. Let me go find out. And yeah, again, she was kind enough to just walk me through. Here's how I do it. Wow. OK. And that helped change my career.

Christopher: So how old are you at that point?

Chad: Gosh, I must have been. This is the year maybe 25 ish.

Christopher: 25.

Chad: Yeah.

Christopher: OK. You're still you're still pretty, pretty young. So how long did you stay at that firm for?

Chad: I was with that firm for probably about three or four years.

Christopher: Cutting your teeth, getting good.

Chad: I had some really great mentors there. Just awesome people. There's really just really great people. People still stay in touch with today. And great trial attorneys, just great attorneys period. And it's awesome because of the importance of having a mentor, right? I mean, a good mentor can really accelerate your development in so many ways.

Because there's a lot of smart people, and they can figure out how to get from point A to point B. But gosh, with the right mentor, you can figure it out in a tenth of the time.

Christopher: I wish I knew that years ago, but I hear you 100 percent. So you're about 30 when you left that firm?

Chad: Yeah, probably about 30-ish.

Christopher: Where did you go then?

Chad: So I was doing toxic torts, doing asbestos-type litigation. Again, these massive cases. My Monday mornings would be these exception hearings and down in the courthouse, and I would be there on behalf of 20 different cases, and just go from courtroom to courtroom to courtroom to these different hearings. So I did that, and then after that, I was like, okay, this is great, but I'd love to really do a single event where it's one plaintiff, or there's one more traditional personal injury. Right. So I found a firm.

It is a smaller boutique firm, but again, some really, really great attorneys. And I've been fortunate just out of the gates, plaintiff firms that took pride in their craft and really cared about their clients. They're very just like doing it for the right reasons. And so I went to a firm, a boutique firm, that just really is getting some really great verdicts, did great trial work and spent some time there. And it's cool because I got there, I kind of had this database sort of tech background going, and then really spending time with those guys on not mass tort cases, not toxic tort, not these, you know, where there's a thousand plaintiffs, but where there's one plaintiff, learned a lot from them. And then also they said, hey, can you help us organize our office? Because the skill set that you bring to the table is, you know, keeping track of a lot of stuff. They liked it. Yeah, they liked it. And so I got kind of into the law firm practice side, like the operational side to some degree, and how do we get case in the door and tracking? So everyone went down that path. And then there was another personal injury firm that was doing their advertising firm. They were doing way more cases and they had heard what I was doing. I went and spent some time with them. And they said, look, come on board, be more of a COO type role. Yeah, handle some cases. And I did for, I continued to handle some cases, but also more of the operational side of the firm. And you talk about mentors. I, through that, met a bunch of mentors that helped me with accelerate my knowledge about how to run law firms. And that was huge.

Christopher: You used the word mentors a few times, right? I encourage the audience, get a mentor.

Chad: Oh my gosh. Like, what is it done? I mean, you know, we all need a coach. And you're going like, I just think about, so, you know, now my most recent obsession is pickleball. I've been playing a lot of pickleball to the hardcore tennis players. They can take some offense at that, but it's any racket's work. But the point was, you know, I was the other morning, I was playing early in the morning with some buddies and on the court next to us was this guy, he was practicing his serve. And I was watching him practice his serve, and he was there early in the morning and he practiced his serve for an hour. But it was completely wrong. His grip was wrong. His stroke was wrong. I mean, he just was reinforcing a bad habit for an hour. And I was like, man, it made me think, there's so many people out there that were like, hey, I'm up early, I'm putting in the time, I'm putting in the reps. But if you're doing it completely wrong or going down the incorrect path, you're not helping, and you're going backwards and have that guy just had a coach out there with them, it would have been so much more productive.

We do that so many times in our own world. And I think the most, you get a coach, get someone to work with you, get a mentor, there's a bunch of different ways to do it.

But if you're stubborn and want to figure it out on your own, you'll probably get there, you're going to take years instead of...

Christopher: Many, many years.

Chad: Yeah, and it's just sometimes somebody says something. And yeah, it's been a big, it's no secret, I tell people, yeah, you should do that, and it helps.

Christopher: You strike me as a guy who gets, you're dialed in, right? Like you're not like a loud, like arrogant guy, like you're a humble student, and you're always seeking knowledge, right? That's what I see from you. It jumps off the page. Or do you still get coaching? Do you still have mentors now?

Chad: Oh, yeah, always, yeah, absolutely. I think you had Cameron Herald on here recently. He's awesome. Great. There's different mentors in different stages of life, where it might be about this thing at one point, and at another point, it might be this thing. Over the years, continue to reach out and just work with different people. I think when I'm talking with someone, the most dangerous phrase that has killed more firms than any other phrase is, we're doing that. We're already doing that. Yeah. If I say, hey, you should have a client communication plan for all your clients, and you should be intentional about it, you should measure it, you should be fanatical about it. You're saying, we do that, right? We talked about clients. It kills this whole, you can't learn something that you already know. No. There's a difference. There's so many benefits. All the benefits of the things that we do are not from just implementation, but fanatical implementation. So if you're doing something at 80 percent or 85 percent, you're telling me, hey, we already do that. Okay, you might be. But getting fanatical about it and doing it at 95 to 100 percent, all the benefits just multiply exponentially. That's something that is probably lost. People, it doesn't quite resonate all the time. Okay, you call your clients, but you don't measure it and this other person has a very meticulous. When the client sends a contract, they're going to hear from this person within 12 hours of this, and then they're going to get this message by this person, and then they're going to get something sent to their house, and then they're going to get a follow-up call, and then they're going to do the entire life of the case, and we're going to measure and have dashboards, and we're not only going to have dashboards, we're going to hold people accountable, not from hitting them with the stick, but from a point of like, we want to be excellent at what we do. Like, there's a different piece, right? And so whenever someone goes, hey, we're already doing that, I'm like, I'm a lifelong student. I'm always learning. I've worked with some really amazing, incredible firms. And yeah, I mean, you're just drinking from a fire hose and you're learning a bunch of stuff while you're teaching. I've also worked with some firms that aren't so great, but I've still learned from them, you know, because you just got to have that mentality. I've been to good conferences where you learn a bunch of stuff and I've been to okay conferences, but I've still learned. And just actively having that mentality is, I think, the way you got to be. It's a better way to go through life to you, right?

Christopher: I love it. I'm shaking my head. You're speaking my language. You said fanatical imitation a lot, like I am fanatical about my firm's growth. Doing it the right way, right? Because it sounds like you, sometimes we stumble, like you sort of like, you know, stumbled into favorable positions by intentional discipline. It wasn't random, but like you kind of just like, we're open, you found your way to where you belong, right? It seems like you're operating, like where you belong, like high level law firm. But you had to start as a, you were nobody, like you were a great test by, but you as a lawyer, like no one really knew who you were.

Chad: Yeah. Opportunities all around us every single day. Because there's so many things that like it could occur. You know, you just think about like, and then, you know, there's a saying that, you know, opportunities multiplies their seeds. And it's so true in the sense of like, you know, I talked to younger attorneys and they're getting started in their career. And any of my sons and you're like, hey, you know, I want this dream job.

Christopher: How old are your sons?

Chad: My sons are 25 and 22.

Christopher: Okay. Are they in the law or no?

Chad: No,

Christopher: They’re smart.

Chad: They're computer programmers.

Christopher: Oh, they're very smart.

Chad: Yes. So they like that piece. And I talked to them and I say, you know, like, when you start off your career, you're lucky if maybe 10% of what you do on a day to day basis, you're really in love with, right? And 90% you just got to do it, right? And hopefully, during the course of your career, the amount of things that, you know, your day, that 10% grows and maybe gets up to 89%. But, you know, there's always stuff that you run into, like, I wish I didn't have to deal with that. But for the most part, I'm really fortunate for, I look at my schedule each day and go, oh, that's all right. I get to talk to these people. I get to do this thing and...

Christopher: It clearly lights you up. Clearly.

Chad: Yeah, and when you start off, you just got to go, okay, expand your job description, so to speak. Like, hey, I get paid to do A, B, and C, but let's look for the things that I really love. And don't, I know it's easy to say now, but like, you can't get, are they going to pay me to do that? Or they, you know, like, go talk to somebody and go, hey, do you need help with that project? I'm not, I don't care if I get paid extra. I want to go do this thing as my career. This person's doing it at a high level. I'm going to go hang out with them and see how I can help and how I can learn. And by, you know, constantly kind of reaching out and improving your craft, it opens up other opportunities. And you didn't even know you're training for this interview. But because you did these things, you're more in it. And all of a sudden, you find yourself doing more of the things you like. And so I really do believe that opportunity is all around.

Christopher: I'm with you. So you dropped this phrase, which really struck me, not hitting with a stick, but rather, like, leveling people up in a positive way, empowering people. Could you talk about that? Because sometimes at our firms, things don't go according. We go to a conference, we want to do it this way, our team doesn't do it. I love that not beating with a stick, but like really like empowering, demonstrating, pursuing excellence. How should lawyers have those conversations with their team members when things fall apart and not...

Chad: Yeah. I think about when I was playing on the team at LSU, right? You can meet six people to play on the team, and then you have typically two people that are there if someone is injured or something happens or whatever, right? And the idea was... I remember the concept being...If we're just hard on everybody on the team, especially the two guys that are waiting to come in, like if we beat them down so much every day, hey, you missed this shot, you didn't do this thing, you're slow, when it's time for them to step up and play, their confidence is going to be so low, they're going to feel beat down. And so in a similar way, if the goal is we want to create a great firm, people that are confident in who they are and confident in their ability to do the job, we have to coach them up and not keep picking at them, keep beating them. I mean, we need to empower them and give them those tools because when they're called on to step up and play, we need them in feeling good about themselves and feeling good about the skill set. And so that's why you can talk about a dashboard. And sometimes when I work with firms, I'm like, okay, we're going to go monitor these key performance indicators. And they're like, okay, I'm going to go get on Suzy. I'm going to go get on John and really wear them out. I'm like, no, let's own it. Like, what are we doing that is allowing this? Are we not giving them the tools? We're not training them? Let's assume that everyone here wants to be great at their job. And until we have indisputable evidence otherwise, let's just assume that they want to be great at the job. What is the rub here? And as leaders and coaches, we got to own it and figure it out and work with it and get to the bottom of it. If we just say, hey, they're terrible, Suzy, then that's lazy coaching, right?

Christopher: Totally, totally. Andrew Finkelstein, he's been on the show. He said something that's-

Chad: Awesome. I've learned so much from my guy.

Christopher: He's another professor. So generous. Teacher. But he said, I assume positive intent. And that rings in my ears every day. And I literally talk about that with my team. I assume positive intent. Chad didn't mean to screw up that demand. He just maybe I didn't coach Chad enough or whatever. So you keep saying we're coaching.

I love that because that's what it is. You're running a football team or a tennis team. And it's like we're coaching our players. We need to... It's like psychology. There's so many disciplines. And we didn't really... A lot of us didn't get trained on how to coach people. So let us… No, he doesn't know. Yeah, it's so hard because if you press the right button, off the races, if you literally press the wrong button, it's like disaster central. So you got to know your people and know when to press the button. When... But that's...

It's so tricky. So I like what... I was just writing down, not hitting with the stick, but rather coaching up, hey, let's do better next time, Chad. You're doing such a good job, right? And it's just... I find this to be a challenge sometimes because like you, high performance, high demanding, I want it done this way. And so not everyone... We're human and stuff. Cameron Herold will say it, we're all human here, things happen.

So we're not looking for perfection. We're looking for greatness. And the more you can coach effectively, the more greatness you're going to get out of your team, right?

Chad: And it's challenging because you look at professional… Oh, you know, first of all, if it's a professional team, then they've gone through... Think about all that. They got to high school, they've got to college. These people know what they want to do and they want to win a championship and it's very clear. And sometimes we don't necessarily do that with our law firm. What are we doing this for? Like, what are we trying to do? How good do we want to be? What are our aspirations? And we don't have those conversations. The other thing that's challenging is that even in the professional teams, they have a, one, the career, like, there's a, you know, I think for football, it's like three to five years is the average career and maybe for sports. They're not, you know, you think about the career of someone at our firm and we hope that it's decades, right? And you're talking decades and then you're also talking about, there's no off-season. Right.

Like, for a sports team, they have, hey, we go super, super crazy hard and then we get a little bit of a break and then kind of get back in training and we ramp up for the year. Yeah. There's shorter careers and then there's off-seasons and that's the challenge with, you know, our teams is like, how often do we, all right, the goal for this year is da-da-da-da-da and then we hit it and then the next year starts immediately and

we're all about it again. And how do you give people a break or how do you keep them motivated for not three to five years but for decades? And it's a challenging thing to be a good coach, a good leader. And I'm still learning on how to do it better. And you probably look back on things you did 10 years ago and go, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did it that way. That's part of it, right? I hope. I got two years last week. And yeah, so it's a, but again, I think that's a core component of it is, okay, can we just, and that's again, another team thing, just assume positive intent. Like, you know what, we're playing a match and then playing doubles. And all sorts of stuff is going to happen during the course of a match. Like the other team could play really, really well. Maybe it's a day that your partner is not playing their best. Maybe it's a day you're not playing your best. If we start picking on each other, hey, you missed that shot. I can't believe it. You suck. Or that was unheard of. Like that was unspoken rule. Like you were there to lift them up and get their head back in the game. Because if you start piling on, it just all comes unraveled so quick. And so, you know, same thing with our team at the firm is like, okay, we need to build them up. We need to pick them up. We need to like, you know, and so that's what we're talking about.

Christopher: I love that, man. So you found some passion, you know, doing single event stuff. You like that. Sounds like more than missed work. Because you could really kind of get more maybe intimate with the client and just, you know, more hands-on, helping real people individually. So then how did you get, where did you go then? Like did you guys, did you then, when did you find Dudley DeBosier? Like what, where did you go?

Chad: What sort of... So we had actually, you know, my partners and I all worked for a firm and this is a, so, you know, we all, I was the COO handling a few cases and my two partners were the trial attorneys at the firm. And then one day the two, and we were all happy, I was enjoying the firm, life was good, that my two partners were trying the cases, they were enjoying what they're doing. Two partners came in and go, hey, look, we have some bar issues.

Christopher: Oh, really?

Chad: Yeah, they just came in and…

Christopher: Awkward.

Chad: It was awkward. And they said, hey, look, we might have some trouble, we don't think it's gonna be a big deal. But we're letting you know. And then like, not short thereafter, they were disbarred. And they were disbarred for, is it probably like a decade prior to that, they had shared, they had done an incentive program whereby legal assistance, if they settled a case pre-suit, they would get a percentage of the fee. Ten years later, the bar basically delivered their judgment on that. And so we were sitting there and we're like, gosh, do we, because it was a strange thing, do we try and keep this thing going? Do we all go work for other firms? Do we go try and start our own firms? And we really believed in the team that was there. And we said, all right, let's go form, we're going to keep this thing going, form Dudley DeBosier. And it was a really, really tough couple of years. I mean, where we weren't getting any of these many calls. And at that point, so back, it was back in 2009, I had really had my first consulting client.

So I've been doing some database stuff and dashboards and that kind of stuff. And one firm called me up and said, hey, can you come help us out? It was my very first, I was, okay, boom, I'm in. So first, Vista Consulting was formed back in 2009. And then we started Dudley DeBosier in 2009. So both were off the ground and just hustling, just trying to like, hopefully they both go great. But it was definitely a grind. And I learned so much during those early years, got to make a bunch of really, really great relationships. That was back when there was no consultants, there was no coaching. I think Atticus was, I think they might be the OGs, they were out of Florida, Mark Powers and those guys who are amazing. They may have been the only other ones. And so we got going, a whole new space. And the firm grew, Vista grew with Tim Mackey, who's just an awesome close friend and also a mentor and just an incredible person, human being.

And then, and so we just kind of regrouped both, and then the law firm started to get traction, Vista got traction. And then in 2018, the advertising agency that we were using as a firm, the owner, Arnie Malheim, another awesome person in the industry who we learned a bunch of stuff from. I said, hey, look, I'm thinking about selling the agency.

And we said, to who? And he said, just, you know, some guys that want to buy it. I was like, well, can we buy it? What if we bought it? And so we bought CJ Advertising 2018. I got out of Vista at that point, turned it, you know, Tim took it over completely at that point. And so we started, you know, trying to help firms grow. And it was really the first time. So we approached it from, we're not going to just help firms get more cases in the door, but we approached it from a very operational, driven step. So Mickey Love, who's incredible, came on board. And she had worked with us in Vista, and she's part of Vista. But when we bought CJ Advertising, she was, you know, ran CJ. We worked with her to help grow firms. We had a bunch of firms just have some tremendous growth. So working with them operationally and helping them get more cases in the door. I saw a ton of clients do that. And at the time, that was a very novel idea. So there wasn't a bunch of, you know, consulting agencies out there. And the advertising agencies did not offer any of that, right? And so, and then now I think every agency has like operational arm and there's a million mastermind groups and there's… Too many. Yeah, there's too many conferences. But back then, it was like all pretty new, you know? And so, it was cool to kind of like, you know, start some of these trends and get, you know, get that stuff going. And yeah, so then we just grew the agency, continue to work with firms, and we just sold the agency maybe six months ago.

Christopher: Fantastic. I'm curious, going back a little bit with Dudley DeBosier, you guys started a firm, right? You said it was hard. So what were some things you did well, looking back, like, gee, then we did that? Because obviously, things were working out. It just wasn't immediate.

Chad: Yeah, you know, we were… So when we first started the firm in 2009, you know, there's some really, you know, very well-funded competitors that were there, and we just couldn't compete with them financially. Like, we're just such a… We were a small player in the market, and we're just... And we're looking around going, gosh, how do we even start to... How do we start to chip away at this huge task? And, you know, you zero in on the things you have control over, and we said, okay, you know what? If we're gonna... We're gonna be excellent at client service and at the results that we get for our clients. If we're gonna get fanatical about that piece, and we said, you know, look, we're gonna talk to our clients more than every other firm went to a spot where we're like, okay, every seven days, we're gonna make sure that they're hearing from us. And then we realized that there's a point of diminishing in terms of the clients. Hey, why are you calling me again? We prefer that versus, you know, I never hear from you, because that was the big complaint, right? And we want to have meaningful, intentional communication with the client, not just like, hey, how are you doing? Okay, see you by. But really get to know them and then meet their needs, right? And so we got fanatical about that. We got fanatical about breaking down every part of the case and going, how do we get a better result here? How do we do this more efficiently? How do we increase the result that we get for our clients? And we're like, okay, we're going to make sure that they all know that we're their attorney and they can reach us and get answers real quick. And in addition to that, we're going to push to get the best results we possibly can. And there's some firms that we got, my two partners are just really great trial attorneys. We have a bunch of other attorneys at the office that are really, really great trial attorneys. That's just an awesome, such an awesome advantage to have because some firms have to refer those cases out or they have to bring someone in or whatever.

And having those, just some really great trial attorneys all throughout the firm makes everyone better and really helps everyone push to get good, good results for the clients.

And so as we were doing these things and really fanatically, we just saw the number of referrals going in and we started reinvesting. We reinvested in the firm where, okay, we could have taken a profit of this, but let's put it back into growing the firm and repeating that year over year. And again, the role of mentors, I mean, just being intentional each year, we'd sit down and Cameron Herold, the vision to sit down and go, hey, what do we want this to look like in every year? What do we want it to look like three years from now? Now I spoke with Cameron, he says, that's not how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to do it like. But the concept being, what are we trying to build? And really taking the time and not just aimlessly working in the firm, but really stepping out and going, okay, what are we trying to build? What does it look like? What do we want to be a part of? If our family or friends interacted with our firm, what would we want that experience to look like? And putting it on paper and sharing that with people around us. And that, nothing's, there's no magic bullet. It's just consistent, high intensity, intentional effort over long periods of time.

Christopher: How big is Dudley DeBosier today?

Chad: We have about 150 total employees and then have about 50 attorneys.

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Christopher: Was anyone teaching you this stuff about phonetical client communication, case grading? You know, did you kind of figure this stuff out by trial and error?

It's not what you keep saying. Were you taught that or you sort of found that in your practice?

Chad: Well, you know, it's a mix. I was raised in a reading household. My mom was a voracious reader. I mean, she just goes constantly and then she, that was something that she passed on. And so I've always been a reader since like young, young. And so I really got in, I mean, just through always reading like business books and let me learn about this and okay, you know what? And let me go down the path of like, gosh, there's so many great authors and I'm talking a bit, but I have a book coming out on trial guides. But trial guides is such a great resource. Like, I mean, every time they got something coming out, I'm like, I'll read. So reading from what some of these great attorneys are doing and getting what they're doing to get results gives you ideas. And a lot of times I'll read something that some of those authors will put out and be like, okay, that's amazing and fanatical. How can I scale that? You know, getting, you know, I always say like, okay, if we have one of our attorneys that's really great at depositions and they're doing A, B and C, that's awesome. We want each one. How do we coach the other 49 attorneys to do those things in a systematic way? And so a lot of things are concepts that you pick up from, okay, well, the case-coding, well, that's driven by the Pareto principle, well, that's driven by, there's books, 80-20 rule or there's the books, the one thing, right? And there's a bunch of books that talk about that concept. And then you work with some firms and you meet some, that's a great thing when I'm working with firms, like, yes, I'm bringing a lot to the table and coaching them on a lot of concepts. Also, you meet some really, really amazing people that teach you some amazing concepts and it just compounds, right? And so, a mix of, again, reading fanatically, I take notes on everything I read. I have a website, it's the Dudley DeBookshelf, where you can go on there and see all my notes and summaries of all the books I read. That's awesome. But that process, going to conferences, working with mentors, talking with people that are like-minded, and I have no doubt if we got lunch together, I would learn a ton of things and just be like, okay, being active about that. Then dots start connecting. Like, well, what if I took this concept and put this thing, and then all of a sudden you have this? Then you get to try it out and it just compounds.

Christopher: I love it. You have access to a lot of firms because you're coaching a lot of firms, and you're seeing how firms nationwide are doing it. Actually, the reading thing, I had Steve Mayer on two days ago on the show. He runs Sweet James. He said he reads between two and four hours a day.

Chad: Yeah.

Christopher: Right?

Chad: Yeah. I mean, that's a common trait. This is very people that they're just because, gosh, I mean, you get to hang out with some really great people. By reading their book.

Christopher: Yeah. I mean, readers just, and then when you combine reading graciously with not chasing money, but purpose and impact, you're just off the races, right? That's how you grow up from 150 people. So talk about the book. You have the book coming out. Is it out yet or no? What's it called?

Chad: No. It's coming out in the next month or two. It's called Seven Disciplines for Successful Firms. What I did was over the years, gosh, I've worked with 250-plus firms, plant firms across the country, everything from a solo practitioner to firms that are massive. Signing up 1,500 cases a month in multiple states. So I worked with everything in between. While there are definitely differences amongst the firms, what I did for this book is if I could take seven things that all the great ones do, here's the seven things. And let me share this and put them in the book. Talked about them when I work with firms. These are the things that I tried to lock down. You'll recognize a lot of these things. And so it's on trial guides. It's coming out in, like I said, next month or two. And I'm excited about it.

Christopher: Yeah, you should be. That's a big deal writing a book. That's a tremendous accomplishment. So I'll be picking that up, for sure. So first of all, I work with Mickey. Mickey Love is my coach. And she has been enormously, prodigiously impactful on me because she just rolls up her sleeves and gets stuff done. And so I just want to share, she's going to be coming on the show at some points. I love Mickey. She's been fantastic. But you and she speak the same language. It's like the fundamentals, we keep talking about fanatical and coaching. But the fundamental, the full back runs here, the block is here. It's like tackling blocking. It's not that complicated. Call your clients, case grade, and then work your best case. The 5% gives you 5% of your income. You're immersed in all these firms. What's your biggest frustration? What's the common thing? You just want to hit your head against the wall because you keep seeing it happen. It's getting in the way of great owners from really unlocking great firm production.What are some common mistakes you see?

Chad: Oh, gosh. I think, so some of the, one of the firm, another mentor would be Lee Coleman at Houston Coleman. Gosh, and he's taught so many people in so many different firms. One thing I always admire about Lee is that regardless of how incredibly successful their firm has been and how amazing what they built, he's always looking to learn. I mean, he just, he's always like, he's like, tell me more about that. Tell me, I've never heard him say, we always do that. I never hear him say, okay, we do that. So, you know, I'm thinking about, so that whenever I hear that at a firm, and I brought that up earlier, I mean, it really is like, okay, I got work to do here. I mean, this is going to be a tough one versus someone that's like, so, but the other challenge is I think, you know, when you get the firm, and I mean, gosh, I really get the fortune. I work with some just amazing firms, and they're all like active learners. And I want to say the biggest spot where firms struggle is, I say that everything breaks every time you double, right? And so firm, it's somewhere around, okay, five people, there's a couple of things that happen when you're five people and one owner. The owner is essentially at that point, like 20% of the culture, 20% of the vibe at the firm. Yeah. And you can, you know, everyone ended up. So then you go to 10 people, right? Now the owner is 10% of the culture and the people. And that's an important statistic, because I think at all times, you got to have at least 10% of your team that knows everything that's going on at the firm. They eat, they're cultural ambassadors where they act and move and think, like the owner's core values. And as you get bigger, that 10% gets tougher to maintain, right? And you got to make sure that you're always investing, like do I always have? Because one, they got to have access to all the information, because if you want them to make smart decisions, you can't hide 20% of the information from those guys and then expect them to make decisions like you do with 100% of the information. So when I talk about scaling, so okay, you're humming along at 10 people, now you get to 20 people when you're starting to cook, and then the fun phase of the firm is somewhere between 20 and 40 because you're like, you know everybody, the owner can still keep all their fingers and all the different things, go, hey, I understand there, I know this, and everyone's husband, wife, kids, names, and we all, the parties are kind of fun, and it still feels like a small little family. And the real grind is typically between when firms go to 40 to 80 people, where you're growing and all of a sudden it gets a little funky. And if you don't have a good team, good systems and processes, good communication channels, then a lot of firms will get intimidated and turn back around and go, I don't want to be a big firm. And it's not that they don't want to be a big firm, they just associate it with chaos, working 100-hour weeks, feeling like they're not in control of every little aspect of it. And there's ways to get over that hump. But I see that's usually with the spot where a lot of firms either hit the wall and go back or really get stuck there.

Christopher: You talk a lot about when you get your arms around a firm and you start looking, you like to look at intake, setting case grades, and then setting a value. For someone who hasn't only heard those words before, what can the practitioner do today? Quick wins we talk about, right? What are some quick wins? For example, where would you start if you had to start?

Chad: Yeah, when I go into a firm and we talk about, hey, there's no secret sauce, there's no magic bullet. You get like, you really can, there's three spots where in the first 90 days, you can actually make some decent progress, right? One is intake, where you go and if you're messing up something in intake and you fix it tomorrow, you get to experience the benefit the next day, right? If you improve your first call conversion, if you improve your, you know, you're chasing down like what I call no contacts and make sure there's little nuances that you can go and tweak and it's super, it's very satisfying because you see the result the next day, right? The second thing is that I'll see firms that have a really weak or defective way that they categorize their cases or grade their cases or, and I talk about that a lot where, you know, the Pareto point is true, like for most, well, for healthy firms, typically 20 percent, the best 20 percent of their cases generate 80 percent of their revenue. Their best 5 percent of their cases generate 50 percent of their revenue. Right. And so when I look at a firm and where those things don't necessarily hold up, there's usually reasons why. And we got to go find out, like a lot of firms go, we don't get good cases. That's great. You know, Chad and whoever else that you guys get these really, really great cases, but we don't and that's why we haven't been able to grow. The reality is, is that you do have those good cases. It's just not great at finding them. And it sounds harsh, but it's true. And so intake case grading is essentially, let's make sure we have high visibility on our best cases because they're there. And then the last thing is let's make sure that we don't under settle our best cases tomorrow, which is the concept of let's set target values for each and every case that is in a negotiation posture. Because if you look at a firm and say they have five attorneys and say you give them all the exact same case and one attorney gets $250,000 on that case and the next attorney is getting $150,000, the next attorney is getting $100,000, and maybe one day actually selling it for $75,000. But the difference between what the most, we call the attorney with the highest credible risk tolerance of a firm, the difference between what they get and the lowest is a measure of inefficiency. Because our clients deserve to get the highest number. If they have the same case, I get there's different lower layers of coverage. But there's things that happen at a firm where there's people that are in silos and they're undersettling cases. I was working at the firm the other day and that young associate had a really good case. They just were working in a silo, they didn't get a value assigned to it, they took pennies on the dollar.

Christopher: Yeah. Oh, you're talking about attorney tiers. Once you get a certain size of scale, you can have tiers, right?

Chad: Yeah. That's the other thing that is a very somewhat controversial topic. But it's a conversation that is uncomfortable for a lot of firms to have, but it's a necessary conversation. That is, can we just agree that our job as attorneys for our clients is to get the absolute best result we possibly can as a firm? Then can we also agree that there are some attorneys at the firm that have more experience, they develop their skills more, they spend more time on their craft, and they have a history of getting better results? If we can't agree to that, then we're off. But if this is our job and this is the truth, then can we have a conversation about who those are? Not to embarrass anybody and not to delittle anybody, but can we have that conversation for the sake of we owe it to our clients? If a case looks like this, we want to pass the ball, pass the case to the person that is most qualified to get it to the finish line, right? And with a great result. And so we developed these attorney tiers, and it was intended to be, it's intended to be an objective way to have that conversation. Tier five is essentially an attorney that's gotten an injury plus first-chair jury verdicts of a million or more in the past five years. A tier one would be someone that is fresh out of law school and requires a lot of time, effort, energy, and attention. Do our tier fives walk around the office and knock the files out of the hands of the tier ones and point at them and laugh? No. No. Charge with coaching them up and helping them reach their goals. But if there's not clarity about, hey, I got to pass, I owe it to the client to pass the ball to one of our more qualified attorneys when it looks like this. Then we have, you're essentially trying to run an offense where you have four people thinking they're the quarterback. And they want to feed up. And it's chaos, right? And so firms that don't want to, because here's how firms do it, right? Firms are like, well, everyone knows who the good attorneys are. And everyone, we haven't really talked about it, but we all kind of know. And then, you know, you have a case and you move it from, you know, Joe to John, and then they all get mad because, I know what I'm doing. And so you have to have that conversation. So we developed this tier system.

We have it, again, in the effort of like, let's get the best result for our clients, and let's just talk about this. Because if we don't talk about it, it's going to be chaotic. And the other thing is, if there's firms that don't have any tier four, tier five attorneys, you can run a great firm. You just got to attack it differently in the sense of like, can we just agree when it looks like this, you should get a tier four, tier five associated on the case, or do something, again, we owe it to the client to get a great result. If we're honest with ourselves that, hey, we don't got anybody, but we got this guy that wants to be one, we'll pair them up with a really, really great attorney and let them follow them side-by-side and develop those skills, so that one day they can

Christopher: I love that. It's not about the lawyer not being up to stuff, it's about what it requires. I think a mentor of mine, Bill Biggs, talked about, he has written down like, this is what a tier five is, right? They do XYZ. So it's objective. It's not like, Chad, you're not that. It's like, well, this is what it is. Then the honest conversation almost handles itself, but you're still being brutally honest, right? So I think that's really important. I think a quick win as well for the practitioner who just, maybe this is a fire hose of information on this call right now, is 80-20, right? Once this podcast ends, go to your files. There's 20 percent of them will bring you 80 percent of your revenue. I think we flip that. As busy attorneys, we flip that, and we're working our asses off, working 70 hours a week.

Chad:We should have all the same.

Christopher: Yeah, it's all the same. But so you're getting more tactical, strategic, right? Obviously, if you're sophisticated, you don't have to be that sophisticated to identify, what are my top 5 percent? I may have just doubled my income this year by doing that and better serve my clients because I can only do so much. My firm agreed case is C-minus case. I can only do so much for the client. I'd love to work to help, but there's a max way I can get it for a C, for a C-minus graded case, for an A plus plus. I can do so much for that client, and so I underscore to the listener, always do what's best for the client. So you need to have the best for the client. That's our North Star. That's it.

Best for the client, you win, you're going to have a happier practice, you're going to make more money, the client's going to be raving fans. It's simple because the stuff you preach is actually simple. It's hard stuff, but it's the fundamental, again, blocking and tackling that we get distracted, we get derailed.

Chad: Yeah. I always say it's the fanatical, consistent application of simple concepts. If I say, call the clients more, no kidding, Chad. Thanks for the advice. But when I say, okay, let's really get fanatical about how we're going to deliver on that and really break it down, that's a different thing. So it's a simple concept, but it's the fanatical, consistent application. Happened the other day as we were in the firm, and we just started the grading process with them. So we went through and we found some cases that weren't on the radar that had the elements of being potentially really great cases. Then one of them was in negotiation. The goal of the attorney was a young guy and he was doing everything that he thought he was doing, everything he could on this case. He wanted to go settle it for 500 grand. We fortunately had a couple of the other attorneys from this firm on the line and tried some cases and they just, this was under the radar, now it's on the radar. They said, we had a total of 1.5 million coverage and this is a policy limits case all day long. Don't take anything less than 1.5. And then two weeks later, the new attorney got 1.5. Wonderful. And it just blew their mind. Oh my gosh, how many of these are there at our firm? And it was just like that, boom.

Christopher: I love that.

Chad: Clients in a better spot, the firm's in a better spot. And then you multiply that by a bunch of cases and it makes a difference.

Christopher: Big time. Can you talk about MSV? What's MSV?

Chad: So we got this, so when we first started, we called it MSV. It was said, okay, this is our minimum settlement value. And basically, it's like we are, this is the most aggressive number that we're going to draw the line in the sand over where if we don't get, this is, we feel great about recommending this as a great result to the client. If we don't get it, we're willing to take the case to trial on this number. Since that time, I have firms, some people call it the FSV, full settlement value, some people call it the maximum settlement value, some people call it the target TRV, target resolution value. Basically, the goal is, where are we going to draw the line in the sand on this case? Let's make it make it aggressive. We also compare it to like a, we take all factors into consideration when we set that number, coverage, liability, plaintiff, venue, causation, etc. Then we also assign another number that people don't talk about as much as top value. Top value is basically saying, okay, assume that we went on liability, claim causation, and we have unlimited coverage. What are the damages in this case worth? I would argue the bigger the gap between MSV and top value is where the skill of the attorney plays a bigger role. You got a big liability issue. Some of our best attorneys are not, we got a big causation issue. You're a best attorney in that way, that kind of thing.

Christopher: I love that. Chad, I really appreciate the wisdom. Thank you so much for teaching all of us, for being willing to be a giver, and to share your best tips, your best strategies that helps the whole bar. I appreciate you. How can people get in touch with you?

Chad: You can email me at [email protected].

Christopher: Awesome. Chad, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Don't stop teaching. I'm excited to see what the next chapter holds for you. I'm super excited. Thank you so much.

Chad: Thank you.

Christopher: That's it for this episode of The Earley Show. Be sure to check out more episodes of our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, The Answering Legal YouTube channel.