No TV. No Radio. How Monty Cain Built His PI Firm

Welcome to episode 49 of The Earley Show podcast, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined by Monty Cain, Owner and Managing Attorney at Cain Law.

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

In this episode, Monty and Chris discuss what it takes to build a personal injury firm from scratch, how conferences and co-counsel relationships can fast track your learning curve and why knowing your numbers is the difference between cautious growth and confident scaling. Monty also shares practical insights on building referrals through client service, staying hands-on with digital marketing vendors and detecting high value cases earlier through better intake questions.

About our guest:
Monty Cain focuses his practice on personal injury law, representing clients in matters involving traumatic brain injuries, truck accidents, car accidents, product liability. Cain has more than 30 years of experience and provides personalized and dedicated representation to injured victims. Over his career, he has recovered over 100 million in successful verdicts and settlements for his clients.

Additionally, he has successfully won appeals that changed laws to help people injured accidents. His appellate win in Fox v. Mize and Van Eaton Ready Mix allowed victims injured in commercial motor vehicle crashes to pursue direct actions against the commercial motor carriers for negligent entrustment of a semi to incompetent semi driver.

Learn more about Monty's practice 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:

Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of The Earley Show, sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I am your host, Chris Earley, a personal injury attorney in Massachusetts.

And as you know by now, on this show, we always bring you the best and brightest from the legal industry. And today is no exception.

We have the pleasure of having Monty Cain, a very successful personal injury lawyer who scaled his practice in Oklahoma, competitive market. Monty has experienced a lot, right? He's been through a lot and he's seen a lot of success.

So as always, I'm sure we'll have plenty of writer downers for you, the audience. So with that, Monty, I'd like to welcome you to the show. How are you today?

I'm doing great, Chris.

I appreciate you having me on. Thanks a lot.

Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate you for coming here making time. I just want to share that I met you at, I believe, a PILMMA conference.

We were seated together at a table. I've met you at a couple of PILMMA conferences, and I always found you to be a very down-to-earth, genuine, easy guy. I know that you work your butt off your tail off, but you're a nice man.

So a lot of admiration for you, and I appreciate this conversation with you. Having said that, could you introduce yourself to the audience?

If you could just briefly tell us a little bit about coming up, your upbringing and how that impacted you and the man you are today.

Okay. Well, yeah, and appreciate you, Chris. And we did meet at a Pelham Conference probably five years ago-ish, somewhere along those lines.

I think we went out to with somebody, dinner together and got to know each other. And you're an extremely nice man as well.

And I thought down to earth and an incredibly hard worker and enjoyed watching you grow since then, because you've done a great job and took a lot of those lessons that we learned at Pelham and turned them into action and help grow your practice to what it is today, which is impressive. So anyway, just wanted to say that, and I appreciate you having me on. As far as my upbringing, I'll try to be as short as possible about it, but I had quite a bit of life before I became an attorney.

So I grew up, I was born in Oklahoma, moved to the East Coast when I was six months old, spent 12 years out there on the East Coast. My dad worked on Navy radar systems.

So we are North Oak, Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, and also in Fairfax, Virginia, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and then moved back to Oklahoma when I was 12 in 1970, because I'm old.

And then from there, my dad grew up on a farm, my mom grew up in a small town, and I got the experience going out the farming life, which he did a little bit of planting wheat and having cows, and milk cows, and harvested and planted wheat, and baled and hauled hay in extreme heat. So anyway, those were, and I enjoyed it, but it also made me understand why I needed to stay in school too, because it's not easy work.

So, went to college, ended up getting a Petroleum Land Management degree, which in Oklahoma was a very good degree to have in the early 80s.

And then there was Penn Square Bank failure, which a lot of people may not know about, but kind of put the oil business worldwide into a tailspin, and pretty much kept it there for about 10 years.

So, had a job, that happened my last semester of college. The job was taken away. I spent probably a year trying to find a job in that field.

Couldn't find one. They shut down the petroleum land management programs, and colleges all across the country. I think OU, where I got my degree, was the last one standing, and I think survived.

It just never bounced back. So my wife had a marketing degree and decided to go into, she wanted to buy a, you know, work in jewelry business and own a jewelry store. So I said, well, that sounds like a good idea.

Let's do it together. So anyway, I went to work for Gordon's Jewelers and ended up working for them for nine years. And, you know, so the lesson that's, I think, very good, especially on the personal injury side, you know, learn sales.

So, you know, part of our job is personal injuries is sales. So in working with people in public, you know, in just customer service. So I think it was good lessons in that regard.

Also, weighted tables. I think that's another good thing to learn how to deal with people and talk to people and treat them, right?

And those are lessons that are very valuable that, you know, some people just don't experience before they become an attorney.

So, anyway, we, I rose to a district manager and then a regional manager, had 15 stores, 250 employees, I think when I was 29. Then Zales bought our company and paid too much for it. And Zales went into bankruptcy and then the cuts started coming.

So there are 72 of us and they went down to 32 and I was number 33. So, I lost my job and I had a baby on the way. I was married and had a baby on the way.

And so, you know, what to do at that point, I did get another job in the jewelry business, but that time I said, you know, this is pretty much like being a coach. So you're only as good as your last month or year.

And so we needed to find something else. When I was going to college, I thought about going to law school and didn't. And so took a step off the cliff and got in, applied for law school and got in.

And, you know, with the night school, did summer and all that, and got out about three and a half years because I had to work, I had family during that time frame. And so then then became an attorney when I was 36 years old.

So, started a little bit late in my career, worked for a firm for about 16 years. Then, you know, just the evolution, their kids came in and were kind of taking over.

There really wasn't a future path for me to, you know, be a part of the management of the firm. So I took another leap of faith and stepped off the cliff again and went and opened my own firm with just me and one assistant.

And, you know, went from not making a whole lot of as far as revenue up to where we are today. Today, we've got about 50 of us, I think, between attorneys, staff, you know, some offshore people.

So I guess, was that a 14-year period of time that we've grown that? And I would say most of that's happened in the last probably six years, you know, or maybe, maybe a little bit longer than eight or nine years, actually.

It took four or five years for things to kind of build. We've grown organically. We did do, you know, I did the phone book marketing for a while and then changed over to digital.

I've never done TV or radio at this point. We did add some billboards recently. But anyway, we've grown to this size and we've, you know, the hard transition and this may be going on a little too long, but we can get in more detail.

But, you know, the last few years, we've really been trying to transition from a mom and pop organization to a corporate organization.

And then things like going to Pilmo, where I met you at was when I first started that journey probably five years ago and trying to make that transition, which is still happening today. It's not something you can flip a switch and do overnight.

And we're trying to get all the pieces in place. And we're much closer than we were then, learned a lot of lessons from that. And then got into some masterminds a couple of years ago.

Wish I'd done both of those much sooner in my career.

So I would encourage anybody listening if they want to grow their firm, they need to learn the business side of practicing law as well as, I think at that point in my career, I was very good at handling cases and litigating cases and trying cases.

But wasn't confident in what my numbers were to, I was scared to hire somebody whether I can afford to pay them.

So I think going to these conferences and masterminds help teach you what, look at your inventory and what does that tell you and project your growth.

And so our growth is happening much more rapidly now, I think because I understand what I can, how I can grow and how much I can afford to even still organically without going out and getting in debt doing that.

So anyway, I guess that gets us up to date. Now I'm 67 and plan on still going for as long as my health and my physical health and mental health is stays intact. I'll still go several more years anyway.

I hadn't really decided exactly how long.

Oh, you're just getting going. You're just getting started, right?

Yes. Yeah, I got started late, so I got to keep going for a while.

Well, first of all, see, I knew we'd have a good conversation here. And this hasn't disappointed whatsoever. So my ears just don't pack a little bit what the gems you just dropped on this audience.

So what my ears really perked up when you first started talking, right, about the struggle of working with your hands, you know, working hard in heat. I've shared with the audience, my probably biggest lesson was work construction in college.

And Monty, it beat my ass down. I hated it. I woke up in the morning.

This is in college. This is in summer. You know, I wasn't doing this full, you know, this is just a summer gig making good bank at the time.

But it kicked my ass. And Monty, I wasn't taking college seriously enough. I was sort of just distracted by, you know, fraternity life.

And I came back after that first summer, get my ass kicked. And I said, I'm going to study because I can't do this for a living. And so I share with the audience, and I think this resonates with you from hearing your story.

Don't discount the value of a good ass woman, because it really is an education to further, to propel you forward and to show you kind of what you don't want to do and what maybe is a better avenue. So that really resonated with me.

Waiting tables, I did that.

My wife and I are always saying, Monty, we want our kids when they're old enough to wait tables, because there's so many lessons for entrepreneurs, so many lessons for lawyers, customer service, time management, multitasking, service, basically just serving people at a high level. So that really resonates with me. So kudos to you for jumping off the cliff. You mentioned that a couple of times.

I love that. Because that's literally what this podcast is about, is jumping off the cliffs, getting uncomfortable, and finding our way, because we're going to find ground, we're going to find our footing.

So you had the chops, the nerves, take those jumps, and frankly, a lot of people don't. And so kudos to you for doing it at 36 and it gets awesome.

Yeah, some of it is not so much me, is I had a little shove behind me and I think I had to. So I was pretty conservative and it was a little scary. But on both those situations, I got a little nudge and also less murders.

There's one door closes, another one opens, and don't be scared of failing. You can turn that around and don't worry about starting late.

If somebody's watching, someone to get involved in the legal space or opening business on their own at some point, even though they think they're too late in life.

I guess I was actually, I guess I've been 53, I guess, when I actually went out on my own. So that's, I wasn't a young pup at that point, so.

I love it. I love that. I love it.

Well, look, I mean, you know, yeah, if there's some, you know, older, you know, members, older members of the bar listening to this, it's never too late. You know, let's look outside of legal for a second.

Ray Croc, McDonald's, I think he was in his 50s when he started to get really going. The Colonel, right, KFC, he got going, I think he was like 60s or something. So there was no time like today.

What's that saying, Monty? The best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today, right?

So I heard that, and that's very, very true.

Oh, it's absolutely true.

So OK, so you you worked for a firm before you started your firm. Were you doing PI work at that point or now? Yes.

Yeah.

Only PI or other areas?

Mainly, mainly almost all PI.

When I first started, I did a little bit of everything.

When I called Pup Reload, so all-comers so I could earn a living, but really focused on MedMal early in my career because the firm I was with, they did a lot of car accident stuff, and so I wanted to have my own little niche.

And so I did some MedMal with that firm, and then mixed in with just general PI., auto, commercial, and slip and falls, and things of that nature that I pretty much took all-comerses.

And then it was a unique situation where we developed our own business as well. So we're more like independent contractors under an umbrella of the firm. And so I had to learn to go out and get my own business.

They gave me some, I had to develop my own, and eventually it's pretty much mostly my own. But so anyway, that is a little different model than what I have today in my own firm.

But somewhat similar is we encourage our attorneys to go out and get referrals, and give them certainly a bigger slice of it and gives them incentive to do so. And it gives them an unlimited path to make as much money as they want to make.

I like that.

I like that because that's going to attract go-getters who want to bet on themselves and not sit on their laurels and be complacent that I actually have that hunger, because that's going to help them, their families, help you, your family.

Everyone eats better, everyone does better when everyone's bringing in work. So frankly, sometimes it's hard to find attorneys that can bring in the business and that's okay. But if we can find that, that's wonderful.

So let me ask you this. So it sounds like you were generating work at that firm. You realized, I'm hostile, I can bring in business.

If you can talk about the mindset that led you to leave without getting too in the weeds here, just like that was scary. That was jumping off the cliff, you said, right? And that was always scary.

You got a family. What was that like to jump off at that point at that firm?

Well, yeah, it was very scary. I thought about doing it a few times before that. At that point, I was married and had three girls.

I was making good money, not great money, but I was making good money. So it was a scary time to take away that security blanket and go do something on my own.

There was just some changes at the firm that really gave me that shove to go out on my own. And without that shove, I probably wouldn't have done it.

I would have said, I'm pretty conservative, and I work hard, but I got a wife and three kids, and college coming up, and different things like that, that I just felt like I was needed to the stability.

And so what I did was just create instability by doing this. And I had a little shove, and without going into a lot of detail about that, but it was time.

And so I was able to take my book of business, and we kind of worked out how that would work out between the two firms. And then I started getting in my own cases.

And like I tell a lot of my attorneys now, I was taking the tough cases that other people didn't want, and trying to turn them into something.

And it gave me so much, taught me so many lessons on how to maximize the value of every case I have, which not only is for those marginal cases, now we got to where we had, okay, decent cases, then good cases, then great cases.

But that same lessons can be learned from those marginal cases that you need to apply to the big cases and not leave anything on the table.

So that also was an important period that I went through of how, okay, how do I make the most out of each case that I have so I can make a living and be able to take care of the family.

So let me ask you if you could answer. Was your wife working or was this all on you bringing?

Well, different periods of time, she worked some and then sometimes she stayed at home. So in the last two, she stayed at home for a period of time, seven or eight years and then went back to work.

It's tough. We're all rolling the dice here, hoping it's going to work out. Clearly, it did work out very well.

Now you have a 50-person firm. Now you took over some cases from that other firm. How were you getting cases otherwise?

I think you mentioned the yellow pages, where you're just doing what, what you're doing at that point, your conventional stuff. And not only what were you doing, but what was working at that time to bring in cases looking back that you realize? Yeah.

At that point, I was still doing the phone book and started digital.

I can't recall whether I started that before I left or shortly after I started with my own firm. But it's somewhere around that time frame. So probably 15 years ago, that the digital started getting traction, so I got into that space.

And so I didn't have a lot of money, so we'd get in a few cases and then just have to work on them. And I think a lot of that is four or five years, six years down the road, it started to snowball.

So I took care of, you know, had a very personal relationship with most of those clients because I had small enough groups that I could have that with them.

And so between getting some in from the digital advertising, phone book advertising, word of mouth from my clients was where I was getting a lot of the other cases from. So, and over a period of time, that just kind of started snowballing.

And, you know, a lot of our referrals still to this day come from, you know, past clients that I had 10, 15, 20 years ago.

So that's a great lesson for, you know, the customer service side of it, and trying to maximize the value of the case for each individual. We made them feel seen, and that their case was important.

And even all smaller cases, I tried to treat the small cases as important as the bigger cases, and at least, you know, obviously, there's money difference in those two.

But I just felt that was necessary, and tried to, because even, you know, some people, they miss a couple of weeks of work, and they're paycheck to paycheck, and it's devastating to them.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's just versus somebody that may have a more serious injury, but they had reserves that they could get by that.

So, you know, you just tried to take those lessons of having to deal with people that weren't as fortunate and trying to do a good job for them.

I want to ask you a question. Before I ask you that, I want to ask at this stage of your growth, you're obviously, you know, big success.

How do you, and I ask this selfishly because I get this a lot as I'm growing, how do you get, how do you handle the situation where the client wants to talk to Monty, right?

You know, even though Monty is spinning 84 and a half plates over his head, you know, and really juggling a lot of stuff here as the entrepreneur, owner, visionary, because what you just described was you were handholding, you were able to handhold all the clients and show them, you know, that TLC. How did you handle that today? You know, your name is on the door, but you can't talk to everyone all the time.

Yeah, I still get some of that, but typically I'll partner up with one of the attorneys and, you know, tell them they can contact me anytime, but really the other attorney takes the lead on it. And it's worked out pretty well.

I get calls, you know, in case you're saying, hey, nobody's paying attention to my case or something.

And so, you know, we deal with that, but, you know, over time, that's gotten a little less and less, as I've kind of pulled back a little bit as far as caseloads, still try to be actively involved in most of the bigger cases, and either actually still working some of them and or certainly sitting in on the meetings, what do we need to do next, you know, as far as expert discovery wise, that type of thing, and giving them, you know, my ideas on what how to move that forward. One thing that, you know, very big on, I think, made a big difference in our in my career, I think as well a few things. you know, very big on, I think, made a big difference in our in my career, I think as well a few things.

But one of the things was getting involved in in conferences, which there's tons of them now, but say 15 years ago, there weren't that many, right?

At least nationally, there were, you know, went to your CLEs in your state, not to these national things.

So got involved in some trucking conferences and brain injury conferences, and I think we've really created a niche for commercial motor vehicle. I always tell people that I didn't know how to handle one until I started going to one of those.

I feel that's true.

I handle my daughters 30 years ago, or probably 15 years ago or something, before I had gone to those conferences, and it's just been invaluable for our growth and maximizing the value of those cases and learning how to handle those properly.

And the same thing with brain injury. I think we were on the cutting edge of handling brain injuries in a more or a different way that we do it at this point.

I kind of started that, I think, in Oklahoma sooner than, I think, on the East Coast, West Coast. There was people out there doing those and then partnered with an attorney that had a lot of experience in it and learned from that.

So I would encourage anybody, if you don't know an area, go to conferences. Partner with an experienced attorney that's in that particular area that you got a case for.

Yes, you got to give up some of that fee, but what you're going to learn and be able to monopolize for your own firm going forward on the next case you get, you can take that lesson and run with yourself in the future, but you need that education.

So one thing is that we never stop learning. Try to. Yeah.

I was reading a book last night, and the book mentioned usually the most successful people are just constantly reading.

It's like, duh, obvious, but think about it, it's true. I'm always reading, you're always reading. But getting educated, real education happens not in the classroom, it's at conferences.

I would argue it happens in the hallway. It's not just someone speaking from a stage, but the handshakes in the hallway. Getting that one nugget, because we get one nugget, it was worth it in my mind to leave my usual routine for a couple of days.

You got to get out of the office. I speak your language. You have to get out to grow, to develop.

Now, a lot of the audience, they're not up to 50 people in their firm.

Maybe they're just starting out. Maybe they're thinking about starting out. Could you take us back to the beginning?

Is there one or two things that you kind of wish you did differently looking back? If you had a mulligan, you would do differently in terms of getting started and getting your firm off the ground that maybe the audience could glean from.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I made plenty of mistakes. Same.

I really didn't start out thinking about growing to the size that we are, it kind of happened. But I would say I inhibited our growth quite a bit for several years, just because I didn't understand the business side of it.

So I would encourage everybody to get involved in, you know, some conferences or masterminds, things of that nature, to learn the business side if they're really wanting to grow their firm.

But, you know, we went from mom and pop where, you know, at some point you can't handle everything. So learning how to delegate, hiring the right people, you know, I think we've got a good mix of, you know, people with different talents.

So what I've looked for is people that have talents that I don't have. You know, there's attorneys in our office that are really great with personal marketing or, you know, or litigation or operation skills, you know, things of that nature.

So we've tried to get a good mix of people that can handle the different, you know, operations portion of it, the litigation portion of it, because, you know, I was one of the litigators and I've had to step back out of that.

So I've had to hire a litigator to take that place. So, anyway, I would say learn the business side of it and know from your numbers what you can afford, how you can afford to grow.

I wouldn't necessarily encourage going to get a lot of credit and getting debt and spending a lot of money.

I would always put most of the money back into the business and now it's reaping those rewards, but several years, I didn't take that money out.

I just kept putting it back into the business and I'd add a little bit to the digital advertising or a little bit to whatever needed to be paid for.

And over a period of time, that starts to grow and then at some point, then you're going to reap that benefit. We've had to really start, I got a COO recently, which I hadn't had, fractional one. That's been really a game changer.

We're looking at getting an HR person to take that off the plate, got a bookkeeper to take that off the plate. Now, we have somebody that does a dedicated intake.

We have another, we just recently split from attorneys handling everything to just pre-litigation and litigation. So we got into that size that we need to start to make those changes.

But going back, it's just, I was hiring too slowly because I didn't understand the business side of it and inhibited the growth. So the main takeaway is go to these conferences that talk about the business side of the practice.

If you're owning your own firm, you need to know that you can't be just a great attorney and litigator and grow your business without knowing that portion of it. Because I tried it for several years and was very conservative.

And if you really want to grow, then you need to understand that side of it. And then you'll have confidence in hiring that extra attorney or staff that you may need. Because at some point, we were getting our own way because we had a number of…

Every time I hired somebody, we would turn more cases quicker and we would pay for it. And then, you know, you first look at it, you go, I don't know if I can afford it with where it is today.

You got to look at your inventory and know where you can be tomorrow if you can maybe turn those cases a little bit quicker with the additional staff or attorneys.

Are you handling cases now or not at all?

A few, a few. Just helping us. Yeah, the bigger ones.

Just curious, what is your day-to-day like at this stage of your scale?

Do you meet with your department heads? What's the majority of your day kind of look like day-to-day?

Yeah, there is a constant flow of coming in and out of my office, it seems like, trying to make that more intentional on how we do that.

We do a executive or operational meeting on Mondays that we schedule for two hours, but typically it goes three or four a lot of times because we're still putting in a lot of changes.

I have an office manager, a litigation manager, and a pre-mitigation manager for the caseworkers. We have team leads that are over three to five other caseworkers, and some of the offshore people, and then we have a litigation group as well.

And so we meet with them every other week, and then we have a marketing group on Tuesday, and then we have the intake group that we meet with as well, try to, weekly, to try to keep up with that.

So, you know, we're still in that growing phase, and trying to get to where we have, we haven't really been all in on our case management system, which is kind of a shortcoming that I didn't stay on top of.

And hopefully we can be data driven here soon within the next couple of months, because we've made a dedication to get on that.

So we can have the data to be, use it to manage where, you know, cases need to be pushed, and also manage people to find out who needs training or counseling, things of that nature. So that's kind of what our day looks like.

And then I have meetings regularly with what we call our BACs, we call them big ass cases. So we, I try to…

I don't know that part, I kind of like that.

Yeah. So anyway, we named them that a few years ago.

And then, so I try to be involved in those meetings so that we try to have a regular, you know, every couple of weeks that we sit down with each attorney and that the litigation staff and I get involved and try to make sure that we're moving that case along and what do we need as far as discovery, expert-wise depositions, and, you know, try to stay involved in those even. Even I have another attorney that's got 30 years' experience, and he always says he enjoys me being in there just because

it's another experienced person taking a look at a big case and how can we maximize the value of that particular case. So I would say that takes up a lot of it before we get to all those particular meetings out.

That's pretty much week in, week out, that we try to refine our processes and we're still working progress, probably always will be, but still, there's still some heavy lifting that we've got to do to truly transition from a mom and pop to corporate.

So what do you think is your biggest challenge currently at your level of scale?

The, you know, just people, hiring, right?

All I would say is the biggest challenge. And now we've gone to where we're just always, we say we're always hiring. So we're, you know, we're looking for new people all the time.

We've outgrown our building, so we're having to look for options on that as well.

But just trying to hire qualified people that have a like mindset, that what they're good at customer service, that care about the clients, you know, that type of thing.

So anyway, so right now, I think, you know, the thing that we're really concentrating on is trying to get our case management system in place so we can be data-driven.

You know, there's a lot about culture that, you know, that's been discussed at a lot of conferences and masterminds and things of that nature.

And kind of one thing I came to a realization, because I was trying to, you know, follow a lot of that, and I agree with it, and you need to have a good culture.

But before, what goes hand in hand with that that doesn't, that I don't at least hear, or maybe I've missed in some of the conferences, is you got to have good performance. And they go hand in hand.

So you can't have just, okay, good culture, and that we're going to do a lot of things for you. And I've been using the term lately as, you know, we're not in the business of, you know, a present or a trophy for participation.

So, you know, we're results driven. So we've got to have that from top to bottom and be able to evaluate performance by every single person in our organization. And we're trying to get to that point.

And then, you know, I think the mom and pop always said, you know, it's a family, work family here. And we try to treat everybody that way and, you know, try to treat them with respect, whether they're the receptionist.

I try, I don't try to treat them any different than I do my top litigate. So, and so anyway, we try to develop culture that way.

And then I think we need to layer in the part that we've been missing is to be able to really be driven by dad on performance.

And because I really hadn't had been able to tell that they showed up, they come to work, they're nice, they're pleasant, but have they actually perform well.

And not necessarily to give them the stick, but, you know, training or counseling or whatever, to try to get them to, okay, maybe they're a C player, try to get them to an A and B player type thing.

So that's what we're hoping to get in place by the first quarter of next year.

So, you know, that's one of my biggest challenges. A guy you may know, Bill Biggs, you know, he's a national authority in this industry. He's been on this show.

He talks about the philosophy, and I stole this from him. Love your people and demand high performance. And I'm always trying to go like 50-50 on that whole deal, right, culture versus performance.

You're never going to get it. You're never going to be able to straddle that fence perfectly. It's always like leading one way.

And we're just people trying to lead people, right? That's what we're doing, Monty. And that's hard.

So that really resonates with me. It's so hard. It might, frankly, be upfront with the audience.

I think, am I being too nice today? Am I being too hard? There's like no way to do it perfectly.

So what you just said really resonates with me. I just want to share with the audience, you know, and I agree with you, it always comes down to people.

No matter what size you are, if you're growing, you're going to need people to help you, to boost you, to help you, you know, get down when you're trying to get done. We have on our web page that always lives there.

It's a We Are Always Hiring page, right? So it just sits there. Maybe you already do that as well, but, you know, for anyone in the audience who doesn't, have that on your website.

If you have one person in your staff, or 17 or 170, have something on your website that signals, we're in growth mode always, we're always expanding, always looking for A players. Lied today, you never know who that's going to be.

That's just a line in the water. You never know who that's going to bring in. So you're still a young man, but do you work as hard as you used to, or have you taken your foot off the ass a little bit to have fun outside of the office?

You know, interesting question.

Thanks for asking that. I've worked long hours for my entire career, even before I came in an attorney and going to law school.

I was working full-time, going to school from six to nine, and then studying from nine to probably one in the morning, getting up at six or earlier, and doing it all over again for about four years.

So anyway, the long hours never bothered me, and I got to give a shout-out to my wife, who was very supportive of that, and without that support for her encouraging you and being able to open your own business, and sometimes not always being there for every single thing, and them being a partner with you in it, even though they're not actually working in the firm. But yes, I have in the last year or so said, okay, I need to start enjoying what I've built, and I'm at that age where anytime, today's a gift and tomorrow's not a promise, but it becomes more apparent the older you get. So anyway, I am hopefully trying to get the pieces in place to where I can slow down a little bit, and I'm already feeling it. So we have.

I mean, an HR person, I think, is going to take a lot of our place. The COO that I've hired is, I'm already feeling that it's moving towards the things that I couldn't ever get to more rapidly.

And I think the marketing gal that we have coming on next week, I think, will help take a lot off of Riley. My office helps me with marketing, and it's a full-time job, and then it gets in the way of practicing law and then managing the law firm.

So all those little pieces that we're trying to get in place, that I've been wearing all those hats for all those years, and so we're trying to offload and delegate that to competent people, and then hopefully I can get out and travel a bit more, and I did last year, and hopefully to continue to increase that. So, but I don't want to, I want to make sure that the right pieces are in place, that the firm can run without me being here and constantly hovering over it, and so I'm trying to get to that space. And so, it’s not easy. But, we’re getting there.

Well, you work your tail off, right?

You have for decades, so it's just, it's who you are, and I, you know, I'm a little younger, but still I relate to that. Like, you just want to, I don't know, I just like working.

I don't know why, but it's not so like, I mean, I experience, I keep coming back. I'm too dumb to quit, Monty. You know, I think that's what comes out for me.

But like, see, this stuff is hard that we're talking about, right? And this stuff is all challenging. I want to give a shout out to Riley Harrison.

Riley is the one who set us up on this podcast. I've seen Riley, met him at conferences, and he's always posting on LinkedIn. Good energy.

You got a good one with Riley. So, you know, hats off to you for finding him, bringing him to your firm, developing him, elevating him in the firm. I see you guys doing great things along with the rest of your firm.

So, can I just ask you, I'm curious, it sounds like you had a kind of a shift. You've used this mom and pop reference a couple of times, right? But you're clearly not mom and pop, and have not been for quite some time.

I'll share that I had a really bad day probably, I don't know, seven years ago at my office, and I was just pissed. I came home, my wife was like, what are you doing home? You never take a day off.

I'm like, I'm just pissed. I'm not doing it today. I started Googling, I found a legal conference, it was Ben Glass.

I went to his conference. That was a pivot for me to change my whole career, similar to when I was working construction, and I said, I don't want this stuff anymore, so I started to work hard in school, that was another pivot.

That was a whiplash for me. Then my career just, it's like a caveman who found fire, and I was just like, off to the races, living the life I should live, be happy, be prosperous.

For you, as you were evolving, was there a whiplash moment, or were you just slowly realizing, I need to run this more like a business? Any particular moments that stand out to you in that beginning of your journey?

Well, I think a little bit of both. It was a slow build, but at the same time, a couple of things that I think that really changed our practice was going to a PITLA conference, which kind of predated the ATAA conferences on the trucking.

And that opened my eyes in how to handle a commercial motor vehicle case. And I was fortunate enough to have a few of them back then. I didn't have a lot of them, but we had a few of them and helped me maximize the value of those.

And we ended up changing the law in Oklahoma regarding whether or not you can sue the company directly. And so one of my cases that went up to the Supreme Court, and we were successful with that appeal.

And so for negligent trustment, issues, negligent hiring, things of that nature. Now we were able to pursue that. And so that was a pivotal point in our career as far as getting more trucking cases as well because of that case.

And then the other one I talked about is, I had a gal that was in a commercial motor vehicle case and had all these symptoms that weren't, she had very mild orthopedic problems, got hit 69 miles an hour, was disabled on a bridge that only had like a three-foot shoulder on it. And she's having all these headaches and PTSD stuff and so on and so forth.

And that's when I met another attorney from Virginia and he had been AHA president of brain injury litigation group and partnered with him on that case.

And so, learned so much from him and was able, and that's really before kind of the mild TBI stuff had really gained much traction in Oklahoma anyway, and was able to figure out that we just weren't asking the right questions when we were doing intake with clients. And so, we found there's probably 15 to 20 percent of our cases that we were getting in had these kind of similar problems, to varying degrees obviously, but that was a major turning point.

We started really increasing the value of those cases. Okay, a $25,000 case became a 50, or a 50,000, or 100,000, 250, and sometimes over a million type thing. So that really, really changed it.

And going back to the one that, you know, I took up the Supreme Court on the commercial motor vehicle case, I also had partnered with another attorney that had a lot of trucking experience and learned so much from that experience, and then also

taking up the case of the Supreme Court on the negligent and trustment side. So I would say those couple of things were game changers for learning how to maximize commercial motor vehicle cases, and then also for brain injury cases, which increased the value of our average attorney fee significantly when we were able to do that. And that's helped, I guess, fuel the growth much quicker, I'd say, because of that.

Oh, no question. I call it detection, detecting early what are the top cases, because that's the majority of the revenue, right? By far, that's the majority.

So we're in the detective business. How do you detect the kick-ass cases, or however you described it, right? The best firms, as you're speaking about the best firms, do that early and often.

They get better and better and better at tweaking intake, tweaking the questions that the attorney first asked in that first call once the case is signed. That's critical. You have to triage your cases.

You have to understand your inventory, because it's frankly your obligation to the client ethically. Get the client their full cup of justice. That's a good way to do it, right?

Right from intake. Let me ask you, so I think you mentioned earlier, you have not done radio or TV, is that right?

That's correct.

That's impressive, because a lot of firms that scale to your size have. So a lot of digital, and then boots in the ground, shaking hands, coffee, networking, stuff like that. Is that the lion's share of how you built up, scaled up, inventory-wise?

Yes, exactly.

We did add billboards this year, so that's the first time we've done that. May consider TV down the road to continue the growth and really to try to get out a branding type situation.

That's why we did the billboards, and we recently, like I discussed with you earlier, is that we have a tagline called In Pain Call Cain. So I'm fortunate enough to have a last name that rhymes with something like that, so it's pretty catchy.

And that's the main thing. We want them to remember that. And I think that's helped with the branding going forward.

But most of it, yeah, it's been digital, and I've been, you know, over the years, was, you know, changed up digital, and I'm constantly looking at it. I, you know, one of the things you asked, what did my day look like?

I meet with our digital team frequently. I got deep, deep dived into it, learned a lot about it, challenged them.

And if I had the other, you know, thing that I would recommend to people is that you need to do that because otherwise, if you're not constantly looking under the hood, nobody else is. And even if you got a good, you know, SEO group, they need that.

And they need to be looked at, need to be pushed. And then that has helped, you know, accelerate that as well, I think.

And then just constantly adding a little bit more each year to the advertising verticals or lanes or whatever you want to call that. That we've done over the years. And then the boots on the ground.

I mean, the past clients have been a big source of that. And then, you know, we have medical providers in the state of Oklahoma that know we do a good job and refers clients as well.

So do you guys do newsletters?

Have not done that. So something we probably need to be doing. But, you know, again, that gets back to I probably grew too or expanded my staff too soon.

And it's just one of those things that, yeah, that would be a good idea and to get out to, you know, especially past clients, things of that nature and also attorney referral groups that we have.

And hopefully with our new marketing gal, maybe we can get that started. But I know a lot of people do it. But I know you've done it and I've gotten yours for years.

And you do a great job at that. And I would, you know, I'm sure you would recommend it. That's helped a lot.

And just one of those things I haven't been able to add to it just time-wise.

Completely understand. But you mentioned referrals. So how are people remembering you then, your older, your old clients, like 15 years ago, how are you staying in touch, if at all?

Well, that's the other, other problem we've talked about for years of, of right now we do, since we've gotten on a case management system, we were able to send out like holiday, just say happy holidays or different, fourth of July, just whatever it may be. So we just kind of keep our name out in front of them that way. We don't really advertise to them so much.

But just to tickle them a couple of two or three times, they remember our name and we get a good percentage of our new cases every month come from past clients.

So about four of those a year, three or four mailings to the…

We do it by text.

Okay. You're texting everybody or just like- Yes.

Okay. That's smart.

So anyway, one of the vendors that we have, we have the ability, they've all been put into that system and we have their phone numbers.

And so we just send out a text to them that has a little, like it's the 4th of July, whatever, you know, that we have with that.

That's helpful. Stay in touch, tickle. The tickler is important.

You said something that's really important.

I feel like the, I'll be honest, the average lawyer, you know, who's paying a company could be SEO, could be billboard, you know, a media, whatever it is, a lot of money, just like writes a check and then looks the other way and hopes for the best.

Like you can't do that. If you're running SEO, you have to know about links and content. If you're paying someone to do social media, you have to understand how these platforms work.

So encourage the practitioner, you can't write a check and put your hand in the sand, you have to like study this stuff. And that's where it helps to go to these conferences, right Monty?

Like getting out of the office, you know, getting on an airplane, as I talk about all the time, and just like getting these relationships I've met just like you. We wouldn't be friends if I didn't go to that conference.

We wouldn't be able to have this conversation. And now so many people are going to hear this conversation. So it's like these relationships spawn other relationships so people are going to be reaching out to me and you after this.

So it's like you got to get out to grow. And so your preachers acquire on that. But you got to know, you know, a lot of people are spending on SEO.

You got to know the game a little bit. You know, you have to be a tech savant, but like know how to hold them accountable.

Because if you're paying a vendor any amount of money, you need to be able to have a monthly rhythm, a monthly pulse, meeting pulse, to find out, hey, did you get that done? You say you're going to do those backlinks or whatever.

You're going to write that content.

You know, over the last 15 years, the pace of the changes in the digital marketing space is just changing all the time. And so it's more difficult to keep up with it now. But it's more important to stay abreast of all the changes that are coming on.

You know, I've seen so many changes in how Google ads run and SEO runs. And you know, you got the LSAs now, and the pay-per-click and the local…

Why do we use to spend money?

Yes. They've found a lot of ways and a lot of competition in that real estate. I just call it real estate now.

That first page real estate is very valuable, and you got to make sure you stay relevant and that you're on top of it, because you can fall through cracks pretty quickly if you don't.

Well, I think there's an expression in marketing, where is the best place to hide a dead body? The second page of Google? Or something like that.

You know, because like literally real estate, if you're not on, you know, Park Avenue, if you're not on that expensive real estate, like you're not going to be found. You're basically dead. So I encourage the audience.

You're doing SEO either on your own or someone else. Know where you're at. Be honest about where you're at, because that can be crucial for your development and your business development.

Let me ask you, I'm going to be respectful of your time by wrapping up here. Is there a book or a podcast or a movie? I don't care.

Anything that really kind of like shaped you and influenced you, impacts you greatly.

Well, as far as legal books, I think one of the most important for the personal injury space that always, what was probably the best book out there is The Rules of the Road. I think it's been around a long time, but it's still all that applies today.

There's been a lot of, I think, variations that have come off of that, that people have developed and marketed in conferences, and legal training, I guess, in the PI space. But I think that's one to start with and one that's still relevant today.

And I have all my new attorneys read that.

Wonderful. Last question. I'm really curious.

You've been around the block. This isn't your first rodeo. As you said, law is changing so quickly.

If you look in your crystal ball, where do you think things will look like in 15, 20 years? Where do you think things are going? There's private money coming in, AI.

What do you think a sophisticated practitioner, a sophisticated businessperson should be mindful about and getting better at today to be ready for this massive change we're undergoing right now in the industry?

Yeah, and there is, and I agree with you. It's hard for me to really envision where it's going to take us, but you have to embrace AI, be careful with it, but embrace it to use it to…

And I've heard a couple of things like AI won't replace the attorneys, but it will, attorneys that use AI will replace attorneys that don't. Yes, yes, yes. Very poignant.

So, and then I think there's going to be a lot of consolidation over the next 10, 20 years in the legal space, as far as the smaller firms will be absorbed into bigger firms. And I think that's what's going. I might be wrong, but…

I think you're wrong, nope.

And the small firms, you're gonna have to have a niche to survive, if you're doing what the big firms are doing, then it may be difficult to survive.

And I think that's the private equity that's coming in and how the new structures that they're trying to set up law firms and, you know, different ways that I think there's gonna be a lot of consolidation and competition from what we call in the retail space big box stores, right?

Yeah, we're not kidding.

It's so crazy, man. I mean, it's dizzying. You and I stay on top of this stuff, but we're still like, what the hell?

And I literally, Monty, you know, for the practitioner who's sort of head in the sand, like isn't looking around and not embracing the change, you're gonna get screwed. I'm sorry. Like stuff is happening fast, and you and I are seeing it.

So you got to stay on top of this stuff. Monty, very, very, very grateful for your time today, grateful for the conversation, the value, the nuggets of wisdom that you dropped on our audience. How can people get in touch with you?

Yeah, we're, you know, we're Cain Law.

So you can look us up on in Oklahoma City. You can look us up on our website there. Our phone number is 405-759-7400.

My personal email, if you want to reach out to me, is Monty, and that's M-O-N-T-Y at cainlawokc.com. So if anybody has any questions, and be glad to share anything that I know, and hope that might help you in some small way going forward.

And Chris, I want to thank you for having me on. It was a pleasure and enjoyed the conversation, and I'm glad to see you as always.

You as well, Monty. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

Thank you so much. All right, folks, 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.