Steve Mehr on Betting the Farm — Twice — to Build Sweet James Accident Attorneys

Welcome to episode 57 of The Earley Show podcast, hosted by personal injury attorney Christopher Earley! For this conversation, Chris is joined by Steve Mehr, Founding Partner of Sweet James Accident Attorneys.

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

Steve has built one of the country's fastest-growing law firms by making bold bets, embracing technology and refusing to think like a traditional lawyer. In this conversation, he shares how his entrepreneurial background shaped the way he built Sweet James Accident Attorneys into a firm with nearly 80 attorneys and 500 legal professionals across five states. He also reflects on growing up as the son of Iranian immigrants, explains why he believes client obsession always beats competitor obsession and shares how taking calculated risks at pivotal moments helped transform his firm into an industry powerhouse.

Guest Info:

Steve Mehr — Co-Founder, Sweet James Accident Attorneys

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @stevemehr

Topics Covered:

-Building a firm around client obsession

-Founding Sweet James and betting the farm — twice — through COVID

-Traditional vs. digital marketing and brick-and-mortar brand building

-Reading 2–4 hours a day and betting the firm on AI use cases

-Cost-per-channel vs. average fee: the metric most firms overlook

-Hiring for obsession and providing access to justice at scale

People & Resources Mentioned:
-"Scaling Up" by Verne Harnish

-Kaizen — philosophy of small continuous improvement

-Marketing channels discussed: Yelp, Google LSAs, SEO, radio, TV, billboards

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:

Chris Earley (Host)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Earley Show sponsored by our friends over at Answering Legal. I am your host Chris Earley. I'm an injury lawyer in Massachusetts and as you know on the Earley Show we always bring to you the very best and very brightest in the legal industry and today's no exception. Today on the call we have Steve Mehr from Sweet James Accident Attorneys. Steve is running a powerhouse PI firm. I don't even know where to start on this podcast. There's so much I want to ask Steve, but we're going to learn a lot and we're going to be inspired. I'm sure Steve has seen a lot of things this industry that I'm sure he's going to be able to, you know, share and give us a ton of value on. So, as always, I encourage you, the audience, sharpen those pencils. I'm sure there'll be plenty of writer downers on this episode of the Earley Show. Steve, welcome to the show, my friend.

Steve Mehr (Guest)

Thank you, Chris. Uh, happy to be on. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Chris Earley

So Steve, you know, Steve and I have never met, but I have heard Steve on podcast and I started, you know, because I'm kind of a geek. I started looking into his firm. I said, "Jesus, these cars, these these guys aren't messing around." So before we get into Sweet James and the insane, insanely, you know, huge things you guys are getting after and accomplishing. I like to start at the start, like could you tell us where did you grow up, mom and dad, influences on you coming up, and kind of what shaped you as a young a young boy, young man?

Steve Mehr

I'm a child of immigrant parents uh who immigrated from Iran. Uh my dad went to college here in the 60s and uh they ended up settling in the LA area and I was there till about third grade and they moved to South Orange County uh which is just a county north in a in a what was a small town back then in in the early 80s Dana Point and I grew up in uh in Orange County in Dana Point in the 80s.

Chris Earley

What did mom and dad do?

Steve Mehr

Mom would stay at home and dad did anything he can get his hands on. So just just about everything. Uh everything from, you know, at some point he owned a 99 cent video rental business, uh like a Blockbuster type store and uh sold cars, shampoos, you know, just immigrant story. And uh kind of what I what I learned watching him growing up was never make an excuse and never complain about your work. So, and that was that's a lesson I still carry with me today.

Chris Earley

I love that. I hate excuses. So, I appreciate that. So, your parents came from Iran. Any brothers and sisters or just your…

Steve Mehr

I got two younger sisters. I'm the oldest brother. I'm about four and five years older than than my two younger sisters.

Chris Earley

All right. So tell us about um you know early you know… Well first of all let me just ask you you obviously ended up in law school, right? Tell us about your path you know school… Obviously you got serious about school, right? Serious students getting into law school any challenges because I'm a I'm you know like a lot of people on this call we experience you know setbacks and were there any setbacks that you had coming up that really kind of toughened you up?

Steve Mehr

There was I was sent to a evangelical Baptist school and it was fire and brimstone every day and uh every morning in in chapel we were told if we don't convert people we're going to hell and it it was a wild environment to uh kind of have your formative years in and there was a lot of bullying and a lot of clicks and and and that led into a lot of physical altercations to a point where at some point in beginning of 10th grade they asked me to leave the school and ended up switching schools and it was a night and day different. Up until that point I thought I was I was dumb and my self-confidence wasn't there and I was just used to always fighting standing up for bullies standing up for other people and I was essentially in fight mode as you know as a teenager which is which is horrible. Uh but that change in environment really made a huge impact on my life and and made a made a big difference. You know, I had a few teachers say, "Hey, you're actually smart. You just, you know, need to learn how you, you know, how you learn.” I have a little bit of ADD. Uh, and I'm dyslexic as well. So, um, but you know, no teacher had ever stopped or paused and said, "Hey, like you're bright. There's just, you know, you got to just figure a few things out." And I and I figured that I figured that out at the new school. And by the time I graduated high school, I did end up on honor role and uh, and made a big impact. But I but I had started my own business in high school selling electronics. So I didn't I didn't initially want to go to college. So I moved out when I turned 18 and I've been supporting myself ever since. I' I've never had a job in the sense of ever working for anybody. And you know eventually when when I get into law when I got into law school and I got out I realized those same uh traits as a I'm not going to use the word a fighter but as a someone who would stand up to the bullies and always had a strong sense of justice and what's right or wrong, uh you know really played into representing clients and it gave you know it brought back sometimes I fight too hard for people but it brought back just a a lot of um formative I guess foundational personality traits that were just really part of who I was.

Chris Earley

You know, I love that because it sounds like you found where you belong, right? In other words, that school is clearly not the right spot for you and then you you were activated in a positive environment. They recognize your talent, your aptitude, your abilities, and you were kind of like it sounds like off to the races. And I love the fighter analogy because that's what we're doing as pliff lawyers. We have to fight. We're in the rank constantly. If we're not, we're not doing justice for our clients achieving great results. So you you're it sounds like you're an entrepreneur at heart, right? That's sort of how you are wired. So you're selling electronics at a at a young age, right? Probably get you know honing your honing your skills and then you you you got out of law school and I heard you on a podcast you mentioned that your margins when you were selling electronics were so razor thin.

Steve Mehr

They were

Chris Earley

You had to be insanely careful else you'd lose your shirt and lose money and and that really stuck with me. So I want to talk about where you came, you know, how you got out of law school, how you got got going, but like could you just talk about how that because you're running a big ass firm, right? And so high expenses. So like what did that teach you at a small level with the with that with that education with selling merchandise electronics that helps you today?

Steve Mehr

Yeah. So consumer electronics outside of I'd say memory or computer chips is probably the next industry that has the lowest thinnest margins. So, you know, I figured out how to earn income on five and six% margins. Um, and that really formed how I looked at, you know, staff turnover of inventory. I mean, you had to be very methodical and have a very strong template. Um, and track everything in order to be profitable. Uh many times, you know, I've always said this story, we, you know, I'd buy a container of electronics and by the time it got to America from Japan or China or wherever it was made, uh the value of that container, let's say I paid $100,000 for the goods in that container, by the time it got here, it was worth $80,000. So, your assets were depreciating assets and they were appreciating monthly because technology was moving so fast and, you know, every six months there was a release of, you know, of a new product. So that kind of formed how I viewed business in general. And when I got into law, I looked around and I'm like, "These margins are incredible. And generally, most of the law firm owners have no idea how to run a business because the margins are so high. They're making a lot of mistakes that if they were competing against me in electronics, they would have went out of business in the first week."

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

So, so that allowed me to structure and build a law firm. Uh and you know obviously when I first started the missing piece was you know talent and I didn't know what the heck I was doing. So I so uh the first law lawyer I hired was probably a year or two from retirement but he had a wealth of knowledge and we spent a lot of time he was transferring knowledge. I was building systems. I built a CRM system early on uh that and sold it to a handful of firms and a lot of them are still using it and this is from back in 2007 and 8. So, um, so a little bit early adapter always to technology, but I always viewed it as a tool that would make you either more organized, more efficient, uh, be able to track, uh, the the metrics or the KPIs better. Uh, so I always lean towards technology and the use of technology to help you run a better operation.

Chris Earley

I love that. The reason I wanted to ask about your your experience of in electronics because I hear you know I I hear discipline as that's what I think this comes down to is being a disciplined entrepreneur discipline with your time with your money with everything just you know brutal um discipline right or else again you can lose your shirt almost every lawyer listening to this conversation is growing firm a lot of us you know bleeding cash right as you scale obviously it's easy you know I've had single-digit profit percentages as law firm owner so I've I've you know had that pain and that's real pain. So I love that. So I encourage the audience be disciplined, right? Know your numbers. So you found that you're an entrepreneur, you like data technology, right? How did you get going as a lawyer, right? You mentioned that old older lawyer, you built a CRM. You take us through kind of how you were getting going.

Steve Mehr

Yeah, I mean when I first started, I was not in personal injury. Um, and it and it took me a few years to figure out, you know, what made the most sense, uh, both from my own passion of like being able to help people. You know, I was doing bankruptcy for a while and it, you know, it was brutal sitting on the floor of homes. They'd sold all the furniture and people are, you know, balling and, you know, people would have, you know, my husband's in the hospital. I have a half million dollars worth of bills and that's why I'm filing bankruptcy. And I just felt like I wasn't really helping people the way I would like to.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

It was a lot of trauma just with every client being spilled on me and I'm like, I'm not wired for this. This is not something I can do. So, eventually I got into contingency work and helping plaintiffs and uh and it just clicked and it clicked for me and I felt that uh there wasn't a whole lot of professionalized law firms in that field. uh a lot of it was based on you had a lawyer who had either a talent to either market or a talent to be a trial lawyer and they would get the big results and everything was kind of built around this personality but it wasn't really a real business. So in my first six or seven years of being a lawyer, I actually bought a few firms. I sold a few firms and I and I really tried to hone down what the processes would would be and what the technology would look like, what it would look like if you delivered an elevated client experience, what it would look like. You know, it it's all about client obsession. And if and if [clears throat] it's client obsession, that takes you much farther than having competitor obsession.

Chris Earley

Totally.

Steve Mehr

And a lot of people in this industry are competitor obsessed, but what but they completely miss the boat on how you should structure your firm and what makes a firm competitive. So when you're client obsessed, it it compounds and it creates a moat around your business.

Chris Earley

Right.

Steve Mehr

And um so that's something I learned early on as well. Uh just ignore the noise of what the competitors are doing. Really stay focused on your clients. Really stay focused on how you could deliver a little bit extra. And early on when I didn't have as much money, you know, getting those client referrals were the lifeblood of, you know, what kept the doors open.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

And it wouldn't have been possible unless, you know, you kind of over delivered. And initially, obviously, I took a lot of shitty cases and cases probably shouldn't have taken. But I but I would put in, you know, when you're young, you know, you don't have money, but you have a lot of time, right? So, I would put in sometimes hundreds of hours in a case that probably, you know, we shouldn't have taken in the first place. Um, but developing all those early relationships really did pay off at some point in the future.

Chris Earley

All right. So, a lot to unpack there. So, it seems like you were an early adopter. So, honestly, full full admission, I wish I was onto those concepts because we started on the same time, but I was just sort of like, you know, monkey see monkey do. This is how we do it. You graduate law school. It's like, you know, this is how you're supposed to do it, right? You don't have permission to do anything different. But it seems like you were a curious guy shaking the rattle in the cage and you're like…

Steve Mehr

So, I put myself through night law school.

Chris Earley

Okay.

Steve Mehr

So I never had the formal internships. I never I didn't have that I guess what you could say a classical training. So I I was too dumb to know better when when I put up my shingle. I had never worked anywhere. I'd never interned anywhere. So I I set up the firm like my prior businesses and um and obviously put in a lot of hours trying to make you know processes match and things work but I just didn't know better. So uh because I had never been in someone else's law firm and had that classical training and I think it actually looking back on it is probably one of those things where I got lucky.

Chris Earley

Totally

Steve Mehr

Or it was a pivotal moment.

Chris Earley

Absolutely. Yeah. Before you could get sidetracked with bad habits like a lot of us do in terms of just not running like a tight business, not having a discipline. Again, profit profit slims and slims. You were sort of pushing ahead of that, you know, more of a business of law mindset. So, how are you how are you generating cases? You're a young lawyer. Do you have a big network? Like, how are you getting cases?

Steve Mehr

I had a seven figure exit from my electronics business. So, I put myself through law school. I was, you know, lucky enough to at the time make enough money that I was paying semester by semester. I came out with no debt. Um, but I was working seven days a week. I mean, I I don't recommend it. I have two boys, teenage boys. I don't recommend that they do that. It was it was brutal. You know, uh, at some point I went from working seven days a week to working six days a week and then imagine four nights a week of classes. Uh, you know, it it was not a period of my life I would ever want to repeat.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

Um, but it did initially put me in a position to come out of law school without debt and have a little bit of money to be able to launch my first firm. I think I rented a 2,800 square foot office and uh, you know, put out the shingle and I had enough money to hire a couple employees, have computers. Um, so you know, there was a big trade-off that came from that. Obviously, the the the four years of part-time night night law school and working full-time uh definitely wore on me.

Chris Earley

Sure.

Steve Mehr

But at the end of it, it gave me a little bit of a head start at the beginning.

Chris Earley

Were there a couple moves you made where you kind of caught fire? You know, you're sort of like, you know, you're trying to figure things out. You're a young lawyer at that point. Were there a couple moves you did that kind of like leveled you up and got you going?

Steve Mehr

I was an early adapter to SEO as it was taking off and uh being able and back then SEO didn't cost anything. So if you knew how to come up on back then it wasn't even Google on Yahoo search at the top and uh you you would get calls so that you know so that generated some business and then I purchased leads from a lead vendor and uh and that's kind of how the business the business started. It started with me and one bilingual legal assistant. Uh my wife would come in on the weekends and help me file cases. And uh yeah, so it was it was very humble beginnings when the law firm first launched. And you know, coming from immigrant parents, my sisters at the time were much younger than me. I was the first lawyer in the family. So I didn't have really a network of people that I could lean on. and going to night law school, you kind of don't develop the same relationships you would if you went to like a normal law school. So, I had a couple friends from law school that I would call and ask questions, but it was a it was definitely a slow and rough start.

Chris Earley

So, you embraced digital advertising. Early adopter, right? You got the SEO and that's good because if you start today doing SEO, you're probably a little late to the party. So, you got going early, realize that traction, those gains and then and then you're growing, you're growing.

Steve Mehr

And then well, what happened was a lot of the, you know, everybody I would meet, I'd go to, you know, bar association meetings and conventions and, you know, I'd be like, "Hey, send, you know, send me your cases." I would, uh, help them with business operations. It I was still bewildered at the time, even though I was very young. I was in my 20s, but that, you know, lawyers didn't really have a good grasp of, you know, any of their KPIs. I mean now I think it's it's evolved a little bit but at the time um so I would help lawyers with the business side and in exchange they would refer me cases and at some point other lawyers came to me and said hey I'm not in your practice area can you SEO my website and I said yeah sure and then that led to me eventually hiring my own web developer and then I had a side business of developing websites for lawyers and doing their marketing while I was also operating my firm and then the marketing piece piece eventually, you know, took a life of its own. And I said, "Hey, you know, I'm going to have an exit at my law firm and do this business consulting and and marketing full-time." And that was somewhere around 2010. And then in 2011, a large national firm reached out to me. I had helped a lot of people in the Southern California area. And a national firm reached out to me and said, "Do you think you could help us with some of the problems we have?" I said, "Sure." So, and and that was a stepping stone of eventually, if you fast forward a year later. Um, I I acquired the West Coast operations of this of this national firm and I was able to scale it up. I I bet the farm, got a lot of loans. you know, it it uh it was another moment of risk, but at the same time, I was betting on myself and my own skills and was really able to 10x that business over a, you know, six or seven year period, maybe an eight-year period. Uh we're talking 2012 to the end of 2018. And I had an exit December of 2018, and essentially uh went into retirement. And after a couple months, my wife told me, "If you don't get out of the house, we're going to get divorced. And uh you're not the CEO of the house, get the hell out of here.” And I said, "You know what? This isn't going to work.” I can't just I'm one of those people that I'm all in or I'm off. No in-between switch. So, uh, and that and that was kind of the impetus that led me to, uh, partnering up eventually with, uh, with James and we started Sweet James and, uh, and yeah, so having the ability to kind of build a firm from scratch and take all of that knowledge uh, that I had acquired over the years, including the knowledge of consulting a lot of large with a lot of large firms and, you know, doing their marketing, understanding their operations really was was the culmination of you know that led up to Sweet James and from the beginning it was engineered to be client obsessed. We built litigation backwards and you know so if you say what kind of firm do you want to have? Well, we want to have a firm that doesn't hesitate to litigate. Right?

Chris Earley

Right.

Steve Mehr

So if we fast forward today we have I don't know in the thousands of cases filed. We just did a trial last week. The opening offer was 200,000. It was a five mile an hour low speed impact and we got a $1.27 million from the jury.

Chris Earley

Wonderful. That’s great.

Steve Mehr

Uh we're waiting for a verdict today. We're in a we're we're in a trial on a bad faith case. Uh so really when when you look at advertising firms, they're not kind of built this way, but because I started from a clean slate and I was like, okay, what do we have to do operationally? What do we have to do from a legal strategy perspective? what do we have to do from a client obsession perspective uh to engineer something that could scale fast and and that's essentially the blueprint that uh I deployed and uh obviously there's a lot of twists and turns and we can get into it and coronavirus happened you know there was moments where I thought we were going to go out of business but you know you fast forward uh we're we're just around uh 80 attorneys if we if you know 78 to 82 attorneys somewhere in that range and about uh just shy of 500 uh legal professionals spread across five states. Home market is California, but uh really we have a second hub in Arizona and we're quickly expanding uh you know across a number of states.

Ad Break

Chris Earley

Okay, so there's a lot there. So I want to talk about Sweet James before we go there. You you casually dropped I bet the farm and my ears perk up because us who are getting after it, you got to bet the farm or else what are we doing, right? We're going to like go in or we're not going to go in. So betting the farm, right? You you put your chips in that that was sleepless nights. I'm gonna assume dread.

Steve Mehr

I bet the farm twice.

Chris Earley

Okay, okay.

Steve Mehr

Launching Sweet James was once. I mean, I was comfortably retired with a eight figure, you know, nest egg. So, when I came back, I bet all of it, you know, got a got a 11 million line of credit from the bank, put in eight figures plus for myself. So, it was kind of burn the ships moment, right? Like, if you're going to do this, Steve, because you know, I know myself if my back's against the wall, like no one can fight like hell the way I do. So um so I you know I put myself in that position of burning the ships. So that was the first thing but then only to realize six months later eight months later coronavirus happens and our and you know we just launched in California and California was brutal. It shut down completely. Now most people at that moment would retreat. That's when we decided to bet the farm again. And I said, "You know what? This business is so difficult and people don't usually let off their marketing. I don't know how long this is going to last, but it's not going to last forever, right?" So did a lot of work and went out there and bought all the key billboards, all the best radio hosts that were, you know, the the endorsements were being lost because everybody was retreating on their ad dollars. We locked them up on multi-year deals. we uh launched a ton of TV and uh really just bet the farm. I mean, it was it was just we're either going to go bankrupt or work. Now, obviously, I had I had done it before and there was a lot of insight and I didn't think, you know, I thought the odds were greatly in my favor, right? But as time went on and and the shutdown lasted as long as it did. And then in California second, you know, as soon as they opened, they closed back down. Uh, I was there was moments there where I was like, well, we got maybe three months worth of runway before I have to sell my house and pull the rest of the equity out in order to flow. So, um, so we had some scary moments at the at the beginning, but when the market opened back up, um, it it went gang busters. I mean, it was the right call at, you know, but there was a solid 12 to 16 months there where I thought, you know, maybe I made the wrong decision.

Chris Earley

Oh my god. Wow. That's… I love that. And I'm in my head I'm thinking like Sweet James sounds like a tech company, right? It's like it's it's it's it's but that provides legal services because that's that's savvy and that's sort of the way we're going this industry.

Steve Mehr

We wanted to do a trade name. Um and I you know I think we're the first firm at scale with with with a trade name as opposed to you know you know Larry Mo and Jack or you know…

Chris Earley

LLP.

Steve Mehr

Yeah. So it it you know it ended up working. I think I think we did get lucky there.

Chris Earley

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Mehr

There was a lot of discussion of whether it would work or not and I just you know understanding a little bit about branding and marketing and psychology I'm like you know for every person that won't hire a firm named Sweet James there will be a person that will hire someone named Sweet James over you know these older stuffy brands.

Chris Earley

All right. I want to get to Sweet James 100%. I want to ask you a question before we go there. You found success but we're highlighting a lot of successes. What do you wish you did differently? Was there one or two things you kind of wish you had a do over as you were getting going? Obviously, hindsight's 20-20. What's the point? But like, it may help the listener. Like, what are some things you kind of screwed up, not even knowing it, but now you realize, geez, what was I thinking?

Steve Mehr

I think one of my secrets of success is not to wallow in my mistakes and failures and to always live in the future.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

And not the present or the past. And I think from a mindset psychology standpoint, if if you can think and reprogram yourself that way, uh you're not going to live in as much pain and you're not going to have a lot of regrets. So, uh you know, obviously every day you could redo it much better.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

Playing Monday morning quarterback, but my brain never goes there. It's, I'm here today. What can I do better tomorrow?

Chris Earley

All right. I appreciate that. All right. So, Sweet James, right? Uh I I was writing down I heard around 80 lawyers, 500 staff, five states. Okay. So you guys aggressively went outdoor advertising digital, right? Before I forget, what do you think about are you still high and bullish on outdoor billboards?

Steve Mehr

I mean, we're bullish. We're so the firm was built in a traditional sense.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

So it is it it was billboards. TV was the, you know, kind of the initial two prongs and, uh, you know, then we added digital. We're still, you know, we're still learning and every day we're making, you know, uh, gains. Um, I'd say at this point we're 50% traditional, 50% digital. Um, I think as early as last year or halfway through last year, we were still a little leaning a little bit more towards traditional. Um, I My preference is to build a brand in a market before you scale the digital. So, uh, you know, it's a longer approach. And when I say we're in a lot of states, you talk to firms, oh yeah, we're in 30 states, but they have one office. Like, we actually have brickandmortar offices in all these states. There's lawyers in all these, you know, offices. So, you know, our our Arizona office probably has a dozen lawyers or so in it, um, with 40 staff. and our Atlanta office has, you know, seven or eight lawyers in it. So, I mean, we're we're very brickandmortar, brand building driven. Uh, it's this is not a digital play because I know a lot of these firms today, uh, they're taking a more of a a digital footprint. Everybody's working remote. Uh, we're in office. Um, so it's it's a little bit traditional in that sense, but but the branding and the marketing is a little bit rock and roll and edgy. You know, a lot of the commercials, the lawyers aren't wearing ties. It's open collar, sometimes no suit jacket. So, it's a it's a more comfortable brand positioned for consumers. Uh, but then the firm itself is ran like a boutique practice and, you know, boots on the ground, people in all the markets.

Chris Earley

What, what is your… I heard you on a podcast. I got the sense might have been Bob Simon's podcast that you were talking about your data like you're a data obsessed guy because you got to be data obsessed if you're running all these you know cases what are some what's your dayto-day look like what you're not going to court you know you're not taking depositions what are you doing day-to-day to manage all this?

Steve Mehr

Right. Uh, I don't I I don't go to court anymore I I interact with a very limited number of clients and most of my day right now is in the scaling of the business and meeting with the different leadership teams um getting into the reporting, getting into the data, putting their eyes where I think, you know, that the the trends are heading. Um I have essentially what you can call a business intelligence team attached to me that their full-time job is to pull metrics and then not just pull the metrics, but then start parsing and chopping up that data, you know, 50 different ways in order to find uh trends. Um we we've been doing lately a very deep dive analysis on a per carrier basis of which carriers um we get the highest differential between a pre-lit demand versus a litigation based outcome. So we target the carriers that are being the most unreasonable. Um but it's a data driven approach and it's based on geography and it's based on type of injury. So it's it's my it's a very deep analysis. So, uh, the beauty of being at this size is there's a ton of data and if you just know how to manipulate it properly and run it properly, you can really make a significant impact in the outcomes you have for your clients. So, um, so that that takes up a lot of my day and obviously growing into new markets. You know, we're looking at a a few states. uh would love to eventually make it to where you're at. And uh yeah, so it's a lot of evaluation, a lot of meeting with leadership, a lot of looking at the data, a lot of budgets, trends. So there's a lot that happens there.

Chris Earley

What's your greatest challenge at this level of scale?

Steve Mehr

There's a little bit of a disconnection between me and the people that uh our team members that that help our clients and I don't I don't like it. So yeah. So so I think the challenge is it you know as we've gotten larger and as we've had to institutionalize a little bit um you know I I sense a little bit of fog between me and the front line and I put in a lot of work to make sure that's not there. I try to meet with paralegals and case managers and lawyers every week and really have my finger on the pulse, but I guess uh I'm not used to being this far away from from the so but I'm still involved like when we go to trial in very large settlements I get involved. I still do file reviews on very complex cases. So um you know my strength is pattern recognition. So if someone gets stuck, even one of the senior leaders, a lot of times they'll come with me, come to me with a file or with uh their issue and and I could tap into my pattern recognition of past events and try to guide them.

Chris Earley

What do you do to level yourself up professionally? Do you… you know is it books? Uh coaching, masterminds? Like how do you continue to grow because you need to in order to grow your firm, right?

Steve Mehr

Absolutely. I read two to four hours a day.

Chris Earley

Really?

Steve Mehr

Yeah. I consume an incredible amount of information. Uh if someone said, you know, distill yourself. Um you know, I would I would say my life story is is really a testament to the power of small gains. Uh I didn't have a leg up. Immigr I had immigrant parents. Um I you know, there's no lawyer before me in my family, but it it really is I made a lot of small steady gains. I've invested in myself for as far back as I could remember. I hated to read, but I got myself to love to read in order to get through law school. And to this day, I invest in myself by reading. I mean, I don't read non-fiction. So, I mean, I mean, I don't read fiction. It's all, you know, it's business journals, legal journals, I read medical journals. Um, currently I'm reading um war leadership by Winston Churchill. Uh, I make, you know, I have almost a mini library in my office here. So, uh, I meet with a lawyer or a leader and I kind of have an idea of what they're struggling with, you know, I give them a book. So, um, so I think investing in yourself, I don't understand how people think they're going to work their 40 or 50 hours and go home and then be good at what they do if they don't take that extra step of investing in themselves 10 or 15 hours extra a week. Um, I think so that's been the key to my success. that's never been one particular skill, but it's just the power of the compounding of these small inputs into yourself over time. Uh, and you make as the years go on, you make more and more gains.

Chris Earley

I love that. When you say that, I think of Kaizen, small continuous daily improvement. Right?

Steve Mehr

Absolutely.

Chris Earley

Right? I'm a Kaizen fanatic. So, you've mentioned more than a few times invest in yourself. Right?

Steve Mehr

Yes.

Chris Earley

So, what else do you do? You read a ton.

Steve Mehr

I read a ton. I follow the financial markets because I feel like you're getting news that's not bias, right? It's not red news, it's not blue news, it's just data. Here's the data and you can make your own assumptions.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

Um and then beyond that, um right now the firm is heav heavy in technology in artificial intelligence. We have a a 17 person technology team. We have three AI teams. So um I in order to be able to kind of guide the firm through this uh digital artificial intelligence revolution that's happening. I also spend a you know at least 5 to 10 hours a week reading on AI not so much the technology itself but all of the business use cases. I need to master what the business use cases are. So then I can when I meet with my teams I say hey this this business is running it this way. I think we could adapt it in this manner for our business. So there's a lot of that going on. Always trying to stay a little bit ahead of the curve. So with with some of the information I'm consuming uh to keep the firm, you know, hyper competitive.

Chris Earley

Are there any books you would recommend that kind of put, you know, obviously you read a ton. Are there any books that stand out that you would suggest?

Steve Mehr

I mean, I always tell lawyers to read uh Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. I think um up up until a couple hundred employees, I think that that could be the bible and I've built three firms off of the concepts in that book and it's very easy to read and uh Verne is still alive and does you know seminars and all sorts of things. So um you know that that's what I would highly recommend.

Chris Earley

You strike me as a seriously hardworking guy like you're not you know you you love business and you thrive on it. you thrive on gain, self-development. Um, how many hours, you know, you've you're running a big firm. How many hours you generally work in a week?

Steve Mehr

I work a lot. So, I generally come in on Sundays. I do usually a full eight hours on Sunday. It's my un uninterrupted time to just really think about and work on the business as opposed to working in the business. I do calendar it. So, I last year I worked 32 Sundays and and I always tell people that there's only 22 working days in a month. So that means in your year you got 12 months times that 22. Well, guess what? I'm working 30 Sundays, which is an entire month. So I'm living a 13 and a half month year while most people are living a 12-month year. Now that being said, I also vacation two to three months out of the year. You know, I I have kids, I have a wife. Um when I'm with them, they get my undivided attention. So we take a lot of it's a lot of work like an animal for 6 weeks, disconnect for 5 days or 10 days, you know, be with the family, really, you know, give them quality time, give them the memories that they need. So um I'm I'm a little bit extreme in kind of all aspects.

Chris Earley

I hear you. So how is it for you turning that off when you're away with the family?

Steve Mehr

It used to be very difficult.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

Um it used to be very difficult. Um especially when you know the periods where you've bet the farm and and you have that anxiety and that you know like you just hold on by the you know by your fingernails.

Chris Earley

Totally.

Steve Mehr

Um but you know it's with enough practice you know I learned you know if we're out always have my phone face down. The vibrator function is off so it doesn't buzz it doesn't distract me. So, I think you could develop small little habits that when you're with people, um, you're present because even with employees, the worst thing is, you know, I take someone to lunch and I'm on my phone all day like that or entire lunch, right? That's not quality time. So, um, so I' I've learned to get better at it, but I also wake up early. So, when we travel, if I have to work, I'll usually wake up at, you know, substantially early or four hours before everybody else and I'll get my work. Uh, I usually wake up at 5. But, you know, if you're on vacation, you know, kids and everybody else waking up 9:30, 10.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

I get like a whole half a day in and they won't even notice that I worked.

Chris Earley

Totally. I love that. I love that. That's that's smart. Let me ask you. So, you know, this really comes down to, you know, I said before like a tech company providing high level legal services, right? Premium legal services, data driven law firm. You got your There's only so many elements that this is about, right? Marketing, ops, finance, right? What do you love to get you? I'm gonna take a guess and say you love marketing the most, but I don't know. What do you love…

Steve Mehr

I love technology the most.

Chris Earley

Technology. Okay.

Steve Mehr

And then I would say I like the Rubik's cube of solving problems.

Chris Earley

What problems do you like to solve?

Steve Mehr

All of them. As many as I can get my hands on. Um really I think when when when I when you look at the value of an entrepreneur I mean it's directly related to how many problems you can solve and how quickly and how quickly can you iterate and keep the the ball moving and uh kind of comes back to don't wallow in your mistakes, right?

Chris Earley

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Mehr

You know fail, fail a lot but don't pause. Just keep going um so I think all of those things kind of are what make a good entrepreneur and I try to emulate those traits as much as I can.

Chris Earley

I'm just smiling thinking that you were in that semi-retirement. You must have been bouncing off walls, man. Your poor wife is like, "Get out of here, man." Like, you drive me crazy.

Steve Mehr

I got so lazy. It was horrible.

Chris Earley

How long did that go on for?

Steve Mehr

Eight or nine months. Yeah, it was like eight and a half months.

Chris Earley

What did you learn about yourself?

Steve Mehr

I learned a few things. One is everybody romanticizes retirement, right? Like it was not it. It was not it. So that was that was one thing that I learned very quickly. And at the time I was like maybe 41 or 42. Um and all my friends are working so I can only distract them so many times. And I was I was miserable. I had nothing to do. I was just sitting at home. You know, you're like so I learned that retirement is not for me. And I'm never I'm never going to retire ever. Retirement not gonna happen. Like I gotta keep I have too much energy. I love what I do. It was probably one of the saddest moments of my life is just kind of being sidelined. Um so I did I learned that and um I also learned that I truly do only have two gears and it's on and off. Um you know because also in your head you're like ah I could do things moderately and you know you know no I'm an extreme person. So like you know when my flip goes off I I I am lazy and I'm not productive and I don't like that version of me.

Chris Earley

Right. Right.

Steve Mehr

So, I learned kind of going back and looping it back to the retirement thing. I can't retire. I got I got to keep I got to keep myself focused and have a mission and a crusade to be on.

Chris Earley

All right, let's just hypothetical. Steve is graduating law school this year. You have no money. You have no contacts. You have no cases. No one knows who you are. Knowing what you know, how would you go about starting a firm in today's climate?

Steve Mehr

I think people underestimate the power of working for free and delivering value to other people and what kind of doors and opportunities that opens up. I think it's, you know, we're I think we're similarly aged and and those were things that growing up in the 80s and and, you know, late 70s, like it was just kind of, you know, internships were unpaid back then, you know, like you had, you know, like you had to develop. I what I learned in my life every time a door opened for me is because I took so much of someone else's and made sure they made money off of it that then they threw me some kind of nugget. Yeah. And and that's kind of what opened doors for me. And I think that's a lost art today. I think people show up with these expectations of, you know, I want a corner office from day one. You know, I want things to be this way. And when they don't get it that way, uh it kind of shatters their universe. And I and I and I think that if you're starting out today and you have an expectation of either making a lot of money or being great, uh you're going to fail and it's not going to happen. But if the expectation is let me deliver as much value to the people around me, people will open doors for you.

Chris Earley

I'm hearing be a giver. We talk about that a lot in this podcast. Give.

Steve Mehr

Absolutely.

Chris Earley

Give selflessly without asking for anything in return. Be generous.

Steve Mehr

You know, the quote I have for that is work to become not to acquire. So if you work hard to become something rather than make money or or or you know achieve some you know financial goal.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

Those are two very different things. And even at this point, uh, I don't need to work, but I'm I'm working to become I'm not working to acquire. If I was working acquire, the whole the stream would look different, you know. So, um, and I think if you could find people around you that have that mindset, um, you can go a lot farther with them and I'm blessed to have a lot of a lot of them around me in the firm.

Chris Earley

I love that. Well, most listeners on this podcast aren't running size of firm you are. For a smaller firm, they have, you know, five team members, right? A couple laws maybe. What are some numbers…

Steve Mehr

I mean, I was there five years ago. So, keep that in mind. I started it was uh just was two years ago. I think we were at 38 lawyers. So, I mean, this is a we're on a very different trajectory. So, I mean, this is…

Chris Earley

Right. You scaled. But like, but when you were smaller, like what would you suggest another lawyer at that size? What because you obviously did, you know, you did you did a lot of things, right? So, what should the lawyer look at? What data is important? You know, case assigned, quality leads. What are a few? Because you could you could overdose on data, right? There's so much overwhelm. It's like it's counterproductive.

Steve Mehr

A very important metric to me is the differential between your acquisition cost and your average fee.

Chris Earley

Yeah.

Steve Mehr

But by channel. So if I know let's say a radio lead or a radio a case I get off radio, what does the difference between that cost me and what my average fee is? And essentially that's your margin. But it's a different way of calculating margin. I don't think firms always look at it that way. So, I'm always looking at the differentials between per channel acquisition cost and the average fee. And what we've learned is that on its face, some channels you're like, "Wow, this acquisition cost is three times another channel." But then when you trace it back to the average fee, you're also getting a a double average fee. Yeah. And it makes perfect sense to spend that three times. But if you look at it in a vacuum, you would immediately be like this, you know, this medium, let's get off it today. So, I think that's an important metric that I think is overlooked sometimes. And and you could do that at any scale. You know, if I was opening a firm today, I'd be on Yelp advertising on Yelp. I'd be doing the Google LSAs. Uh you got to do some level of uh SEO. You know, make sure the firm's presented properly. That there's a lot of opportunity right now. And especially with AI, you can have a very small team do what a very large team does.

Chris Earley

100%. I think it's a wonderful time to be a law firm owner.

Steve Mehr

It is.

Chris Earley

Frankly, I mean, it's probably never been better. It's also, I'd argue, never been more competitive, but he or she who is more, you know, kind of uh creative and outside the box thinking can really succeed. So let me ask you, so what is the future of Sweet James? Obviously, you're scaling this, you know, significantly, just more geographic reach. You mentioned, you know, coming into different areas. Could you talk about that.

Steve Mehr

I don't look, at least it's not my intention to be nationwide. I think it's just thoughtful growth. Uh you know, find the right talent in the right geo that already has been identified. Um that makes a lot of sense to me. Um, I think that as we've been able to scale, I've been able to see the impact it makes on clients and clients outcomes. Um, from everything from being able to target particular adjusting units, which is what the carriers do to us all day long, that you just can't do when you're small and and to be able to have the funds to be able to take cases, difficult cases to trial. Um, we we've taken multiple cases where we have almost a million dollars of costs and the liability is disputed. I would have never been able to do that if I was, you know, just starting out or a young lawyer or even like, you know, even when we were 10 lawyers. Like, you're not going to make those kind of bets. So, ultimately what happens ultimately you're providing more access to justice for more clients and I think that makes me feel good. You know, it doesn't obviously we do lose those sometimes and I'm like, "Oh shit." But on the other side of the coin, you know, when you win those, you're like, "Wow, I did something very few firms or lawyers in the country would have been able to do." And I think uh that's that's incredible and that's something new that I hadn't I hadn't been able to feel just as early as five years ago or or 10 years ago.

Chris Earley

Two more questions. What traits do you look for with team members? Obviously, trial lawyers, intake, there's different types for different…

Steve Mehr

I want obsessed people.

Chris Earley

Obsessed?

Steve Mehr

I want obsessed people. Obsession.

Chris Earley

Obsession with what? Self-improvement, growth, competition?

Steve Mehr

Anything. Anything. Because if I'm a good leader, I hopefully can channel that into if a person has people either have that trait or they don't have that trait. It's not something you can like learn or make up.

Chris Earley

No, no, no.

Steve Mehr

Um, so I take bets on people that um have that obsessive trait and and the hope is as a leader I can channel it into something productive and positive for our clients in the firm. Um, so I think that's an important trait that is overlooked. And look, if you're trying to build something great, you're not going to be able to build something great with average people. You need a you need a few weirdos. You need a bunch of obsessed people. And then it's upon you incumbent upon you to channel it in the right way. So I think if you could figure that Rubik's cube out, you'll make gains much faster.

Chris Earley

Yeah, this is fascinating. Last question. What's your greatest success in life?

Steve Mehr

My two boys.

Chris Earley

Nice.

Steve Mehr

Yeah.

Chris Earley

That’s what it’s all about, man.

Steve Mehr

I got a 14 and a 17 year-old and uh they are uh Yeah, my 14-year-old was giving me stock advice to this morning. He's like, "Hey, hey, Dad. Palantir is down 10%. I think you should buy it.” And I'm just like I looked at my wife. I'm like, I can't believe my 14-year-old's trying to give me stock advice.

Chris Earley

That's I love that. That's so cool. That's the best. That's why we do what we do, right?

Steve Mehr

Absolutely.

Chris Earley

So, they have it. Next generation has easier than we did. Otherwise, what's the point?

Steve Mehr

I'm lucky one of them wants to go to law school, so that that that makes me happy. And hopefully the other one's thinking about it. But I don't, you know, I early on I was like, okay, these might be big shoes to fill. Not trying to be, you know, pompous, but just, you know, I don't want them to ever feel like they have to live in my shadow. So, I've actually, when they talk about other stuff, I'm always excited about it. And I'm like, I kind of don't want you guys to be lawyers.

Chris Earley

I know. I hear ya. Same.

Steve Mehr

But, uh, but, you know, so far they're interested, you know, organically on their own, and that kind of makes me happy. But, we'll see what happens. Who knows?

Chris Earley

They got some time. Steve, thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, your successes, things you've learned. How can people get in touch with you?

Steve Mehr

Thank you, Chris. Um, my email is very easy. It's [email protected] and then uh I the only social media I do is Instagram. So, it's Steve Mehr — stevemehr — uh is my handle and uh and I post a lot of uh generally business and artificial intelligence and legal related stuff on there.

Chris Earley

I like the Instagram. I like the content. Yeah, you speak my language. So, I highly highly suggest people subscribe. Steve, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Steve Mehr

Thank you, Chris. Really appreciate it.

Chris Earley

Thank you. All right, that's it for this episode of The Earley Show. Be sure to check out more episodes of our show on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and the Answering Legal YouTube channel.