How Any Lawyer in California Can Add a Passive Stream of Income to Their Existing Law Firm
Why Every Lawyer Should Be Marketing For Personal Injury Cases
This is part of one in a 5-part series entitled, Why Every Lawyer Should Be Marketing For Personal Injury Cases.
Many lawyers who have referred us cases have been paid 6-figure referral fees.
The global pandemic has changed the way law firms do business. In March of 2020, we swiftly took our entire team remote, implemented new technologies and began crafting innovative ways to keep cases moving forward. With courthouses shuttered, trial dates getting kicked and most people staying home, there was a definite sense of panic in the industry.
When the pandemic hit, we got to work ensuring that our firm would not only survive, but that our team and our clients would feel safe, secure and protected. We were expecting the industry to pivot and grow. Lawyers are innovative and we knew that they would rise up to meet the new challenges coming their way.
At the end of March our phones started to ring with unexpected callers. Criminal defense attorneys were reaching out and asking us smart questions. Many of them were scared about dropping crime rates as people stayed home and the courts wanted fewer people going through the system. Others were concerned that a recession could make it impossible for their clients to pay their attorney’s fees. These lawyers were looking to add some financial security to their lives and they wanted to know how they could add additional income streams to their firms.
Many lawyers are being innovative and adding new practice areas and passive streams of income to their practices.
Common Myths About Personal Injury Attorneys
I started my career as an Orange County Public Defender before going into private practice as a criminal defense attorney. I didn’t open my plaintiff’s personal injury firm until 2015. For this reason, I have lots of buddies that are still in the criminal defense world. They knew that I had made the switch and wanted my advice.
They wanted to know all the same things I had been curious about when I made the switch. Criminal defense attorneys have lots of ideas about us plaintiff’s PI guys and I was exactly the same before I started my personal injury firm. Many of the calls I got were from lawyers who were actually excited to learn personal injury. Others just wanted to know how to get personal injury cases to refer out so they could collect a referral fee and others were gathering knowledge, somewhat begrudgingly. You see, criminal defense attorneys have a certain view of us civil lawyers. I was the same way before I made the switch.
As a public defender, who found myself in my first jury trial within 5 days of starting my new job, I would scoff when I heard P.I. lawyers call themselves trial attorneys. After all, don’t all personal injury lawyers just settle cases before they go to trial?
I am ashamed to admit it but here is what I thought about personal injury lawyers:
Personal injury attorneys shouldn’t call themselves trial lawyers. All they do is settle cases.
Personal injury lawyers have it easy. They make ungodly amounts of money if they get lucky and land one good case.
Personal injury lawyers are ambulance chasers who only care about the money.
Making the Switch From Criminal Defense To Personal Injury
Even though I held these beliefs I started feeling myself shift. My house got broken into by someone who was an acquaintance of a former client. We were trying to have a baby at that time and it was the first time I had ever thought about my career affecting my family. A few months later my wife was pregnant with out first child and was working in our shared office as I was reviewing video depos of kids who had allegedly been molested by my client. I looked at her and she had tears in her eyes. I felt worn down. I wanted to help people but years of the criminal defense grind were starting to get to me.
It was around this same time that I was putting out feelers, sending my ideas out into the universe to see what came back to me. I wanted to dabble in personal injury. Maybe I would like it. I still carried a lot of my negative ideas about the guys and gals in this practice area but something was pulling me toward it.
I was referred a serious brain injury case by a firm that had been working on it for 8 years. The costs were high, the case was a mess but I was down. I used to be a scrappy public defender. I wasn’t scared to put the case on. Should I be? There was no other option at that point, so much time and money had been wasted, it had to go to trial. As I worked the case up for trial I got to know the client and his wife extremely well. I got attached. I felt like I was truly getting to help people who deserved help.
We won in trial. We did pretty well. The jury awarded 4.3 million dollars and I was hooked. Instead of a guilty or not-guilty, there was another victory. It was financial and it literally changed my client’s life by providing him with the care that he so desperately needed to manage the rest of his life. And, well, we didn’t settle the case. We went to trial. I guess personal injury lawyers do go to trial sometimes.
The ideas I had about personal injury lawyers, well they are, sadly, sometimes true. However, most of the P.I. lawyers I have met are extremely passionate and hard-working. Many of them are obsessed with honing their trial skills and they have dedicated their entire career to being the best they can be in the courtroom.
You get to choose how you run your firm. Yes, you can be the legal mill that advertises for thousands of small injury cases and settles them in pre-litigation OR you can be a trial lawyer who only handles high-stakes catastrophic injury cases. There is nothing wrong with either approach. They both have their ups and downs and it’s personal choice that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
In the five years since launching my personal injury firm, I have paid out referral fees in excess of $500,000.00. Every single one of these referral fees was paid to a criminal defense attorney. Astoundingly, this amount ($500,000.00) has been divided up between only a handful of different attorneys. The first case they refer to us is just to help someone out. It could be a current or past client, maybe a friend or family member who needed a P.I. attorney.
When they get that first six-figure check in the mail from us they are shocked. They can’t believe that they can make that kind of money by simply referring a case out. We only handle serious injuries so the referral fees we pay are usually quite large.
These criminal defense attorneys have quickly realized they could add more than six-figures a year to their practice by literally doing nothing more than sending a client our way. They have continued to send referrals to us and they each now have a passive source of income that keeps them safe and secure, even in a pandemic.
Word has gotten out, which is why when the pandemic began, our phones started going crazy. Criminal defense attorneys had lots of questions for us: How do I get personal injury cases? What do I need to do to get paid a referral fee from you? How do I know if one of my criminal clients has a potential civil case? What do I tell a client who calls me with P.I. questions? Can you help me sign them up? Should I try to settle the case myself or send it straight to you? Can you teach me how to work a case up for settlement? What about trial; is trying a civil case a lot different than a criminal case? Is written discovery a total nightmare? How do you afford to pay all those costs on cases?
These are excellent questions and they are urgent in this unknown time of practicing law in a pandemic. It is for this reason that we have launched this 5-part series. Instead of answering these questions on endless phone calls, I wanted to create a place to send lawyers who are looking for answers. People who want to learn, grow, pivot and challenge themselves during this time. Business women and men who aren’t happy sitting back and waiting for things to return to normal. People who want to create a new reality for themselves and who see that, through hardship, we can each grow and become better and stronger.
This blog post, part one of the series, is simply to show you that there is another way. If you feel, in the least bit, curious or drawn to the idea of growing your firm and adding to your income, keep an eye out for the next posts.
Other blog posts in this series:
Part Two: How to Leverage Your Existing Contact List to Increase Your Income
Part Three: Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Injury Cases, For Non-PI Lawyers
Part Four: How to Ensure You Receive Your Referral Fee After You Send a Case to Another Law Firm
Part Five: Part Five: How to Settle a Personal Injury Case in Pre-Litigation
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