Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Relay, the podcast for law firm owners. I'm Gabriel Sterritz, the host and joining me today is Dan Morgan, managing partner at Morgan and Morgan. This is our first on location shoot. Dan, thanks so much for letting me join you in your office.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. Happy to have you guys in here. Made it easy for everybody, was able to keep the day moving smoothly and still get it in.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Really appreciate it. High level, if you haven't heard of Morgan and Morgan, you're actually living under a rock at this point. But I'll give the high level numbers. A thousand attorneys, 6,000 people. Dan is the youngest of four siblings and has done some really interesting and innovative things. I'm excited to sit down with you, Dan, and talk through both your history and what's been happening at Morgan and Morgan. The first thing that I want to dive into today because I think that it's a really compelling opening and there's a lot to unpack here is everyone's seen your billboards, everyone's seen your ads. You're on social media, you're on traditional media, you're on out of home.
You are, in the eyes of many lawyers, you are their main competitor. You're the 800 pound gorilla, the threat in the room. But you've said publicly you don't consider other law firms your competition.
Tell me about that.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, obviously in the traditional sense, there's always going to be some competition with anything. Obviously we're marketing for the same cases, we're going after the same clients. But I really don't like the mindset of, you know, I'm out to the, you know, crush that firm, put these firms out of business, you know, be the only one stand. And I really do believe that when you kind of pull the collective resources, when you have the best of the best out there that are keeping us on our toes as well too, you know, there's other great marketers out there that are doing stuff that obviously they're eating into the market share of where we're going, we're going to new cities and trying to eat into those market shares. But when you really look at the kind of the big pie of it all, you know, the hundred percent market share, some of our most successful markets were, you know, close to 50%. You know, those are the Florida markets where we've been for a long time.
Newer markets like New York, Philadelphia, California, you know, we're still living in that 5%, 10% market share threshold, but still doing phenomenal and still doing well, which shows that there's so much out there, so much business opportunities out there for all these firms to attack and get after, and that you can still have a highly successful business with a 2% market share of New York City. And so my kind of mindset going into it is let's all work together, let's pull our resources, kind of lift the standard of all the industry, because if we're all kind of setting that standard and keeping the values of cases at the right level, we're all, all going to kind of win together. A good kind of way I look at it too is, you know, you see these quarterbacks out there. You know, the quarterbacks are an NFL quarterback. They're all kind of competing 30 jobs that are out there. You know, there's, that's the market share for starting quarterbacks. But in the off season, you still see Patrick Mahomes training with, to attack Levoa and training with all these other quarterbacks that are on their team because they know that iron sharpens iron. If they're working with the best and the best, they're going to learn tools, they're going to learn drills, they're going to learn little things that they might not know that they can come back and apply to their own success and make themselves that much better. So I really like working with good firms. I like working with good marketers. You know, there's some firms out there that all they do is market and then they hand the cases off to us. There's other firms that are really good at working the case up, but maybe not going into the courtroom. There's other firms that are really good at getting the handoff of just doing the trials. You know, there's so many types of law firms out there. Morning, Morgan. We try to do a mix and a blend of all of it, but then also work with firms that are maybe only doing one of those three, are doing two of those three and say, hey, we, we can fill your buckets.
And we also send tons and tons and tons of cases out as well. So we always, we try to find good firms in our markets that, you know, our lawyer might turn a case down, but another lawyer in the same market might like that case. I mean, people kind of think, you know, that's crazy talk and that's never going to happen, or if I turn a case down, no one else is going to want it. But we've proven, you know, it's a highly, highly successful and revenue generating practice to be acting in those manners.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: One thing that stood out to me early on when you and I first met was you told me one of your biggest referral checks came from a seventh look claim. Yeah. And I had actually never heard that before. I don't remember what the case type was, but that is that level of thoroughness and diligence on a case where you're like, hey, we've turned it down, but somebody else might find even more value in it than us.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's, you know, obviously with everything too, you know, and all, and all lawyers out there, they kind of get in the mindset of it. Well, if it's a case, I'm going to keep it and I'm going to work it. But you know, the, the facts are if you don't, you know, we obviously have a ton of lawyers, we have close to 1200 attorneys now, you know, so we the bandwidth to work a lot of cases and to, and to look at tons of cases. But there's still a tap out point where if someone has 200 cases that they're on, we don't want to keep loading them up with more and more cases. Now we might look at their inventory and take his 20, you know, cases that are the most troubling or the, you know, have some dog hair on them as, as we say in the business, maybe refer those cases out. So now he has a threshold to take on 20 fresher looks. But that doesn't mean those 20 cases aren't valuable. You know, there's still, there's still money to be had there. Now someone says, well why would you turn that down and why would you refer that out? There's money to be had because you have time, because, you know, it's time value of money. You know, we can spend our wheels for two and a half years, three years chasing down a 50k policy with our best day to maybe get a $15,000 fee. Or you can refer that case out early on, let another firm go get that same fee. Maybe you get 5 to 7,000 of that fee back to you. But you didn't spend your two and a years doing that. You spent your two and a half years chasing down, you know, a medical malpractice case that could have an average fee of $5 million. But you know, so you kind of got to balance where your time is going and what you're doing and making those decisions that maybe it's more profitable not to hold on to every case, you know, with a grip on and just say, I'm going to hold it, hold it, hold it. Because I don't want to lose the money, not realizing you can refer three of those cases out and get the same 100% feedback while focusing your time on really making some money for your firm.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Well, the other way that I thought of it when you were saying you don't consider other law firms your competition is that while you are, yes, working after the same cases, ultimately everyone is on one side against insurance companies that are spending outspending personal injury firms by billions of dollars in marketing every year building these brands. They're convincing consumers that personal injury attorneys are bad and that they're just after them and ambulance chasers and I mean, having been in the industry now for five years, I'm very much drunk the Kool Aid and I see the value. I believe like personal injury trainees are the guys who are here aligned with consumers, with injured people to help them get what they deserve. And that kind of larger outlook of hey, it's really us on behalf of consumers and injured people against insurance companies is also as a bigger frame, I think, really important to understand.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: That's where I always kind of saw it too. The competition, the true competition is the in house state farm attorneys. It's the Geicos, it's the Ubers of the world that are trying to, you know, or we're trying to in California kind of capital attorneys.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: That was huge.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: I mean, how much were they going to spend? 100, 200 million?
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah, they were all in and you know, luckily a deal was, was brokered, but you know, that's just kind of the wolves were at the door and now they're kind of stay for now. By no means you think Uber's gonna go away or they're just gonna give up and say, all right, you guys, let's now go on their lives, you
[00:07:20] Speaker A: know, they're like the most litigious company.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: You know, they're gonna find a softer state or a different state to go after and change the language and backdoor and then keep going and keep going. But you know, again, if trial attorneys aren't united, you know, and we're all in our own box with our blinders on and only caring out our own businesses, you know, it's tough for them to maneuver, you know, successfully against us if we are like that. It'll be a lot easier for them to maneuver successfully against us if we're not like that. So having a kind of united fund, you know, that what's good for all of us, you know, we kind of set that stage and make sure that, you know, that's happening. But yeah, the competition that I see is more on the defense side of the bar and the tort reform. The legislator can be the competition. Sometimes they come in and put caps in or limit the rights or change the statute or change the contrib level or the comparative level, you know, depending on, on the states. Sovereign immunity is a competition. You know, we're in Florida here, so, you know, there's tons of caps here. The best case in California against sovereign entity is really a case that we're most likely going to be looking to refer out and more and more in Florida because the caps are what they are, the fees are what they are, and time value of money, it's tough to justify to work those cases for three and a half years with the state never going to offer you fair value until you drag them into court and make them. So yeah, it's, it's tough. So it's the competition, like I said, is trying to work together with the legislator, with lawyers here in Florida to increase the limits of, of, of the sovereign caps to kind of change it that way.
And again, it's a lot easier to work together if it's not just Morgan, Morgan by ourselves, but you know, if it's Morgan and Morgan, we're here in Orlando. One of our biggest competitors is Dan Newland. You know, we work hand in glove on a lot of these things together, especially when it's at the state level, to make sure that his clients are protected, our clients are protected, and everyone else's clients are protected here.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. And another way that I've seen you put this into action is I've been to several of your events and you give away not only your operational playbook, your internal metrics, you have your team talking about, you're pretty open book when, when it comes to talking about how you run your business. And I think you're really putting into action that idea that like, hey, we're all, look, we're all playing against each other in the marketing field, but outside of that, like it's us against the other side.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: And a lot of it too is, you know, obviously we share and we give it, but it's also so we can also hear back in real time maybe if what we're saying isn't what the rest of the industry's saying. You if we're saying our average, you know, case acquisition is 10,000 in case, and everyone is like, oh my God, you're getting ripped over the coals. We're getting them for 2000, 3000 and all of A sudden we realize, wait, we're out of whack. We got to go and change. Or if we find out, you know, Keith Minick does tons of stuff on litigation. When he goes to new states, he finds out new little tricks or new little things that can really, you know, in Texas, you know, we're, you know, we're going hard in Texas right now. Great state to be in, but Keith had his San Antonio event, and we took so, so many nuggets from good attorneys in San Antonio last year. But, hey, I know you were talking about this, and you're more dire in Texas. Here's a good way to look at it, too. We can kind of write that in our playbook and go back.
So it is a lot of sharing. We feel like when we share freely, people are more eager to share back with us. There's other. There's always gonna be people that go there and they, you know, they're taking all the notes and they're not sharing anything. And their, their whole. Their whole reason there is like, how do I think this be? So that's gonna come in any territory. You know, that's how it kind of is. And you know, in football and any sport, anything that's competitive, there's always going to be the people out there that are trying to find the angles and try to find it. But I feel like you can't live that way. And if you kind of, you know, I've seen kind of the greats, you know, the people that I've looked up to, like the Brian Panishes and Mark Lanier, they go out there and they openly share their. Their. Their tactics and their secrets and the way that they do it. So it's really just kind of sponging on them. And if those guys can do it at. Be that successful and be worth what they're worth, and obviously they're doing something right. So I can't say it's all just us just kind of doing it. Looking at the greats in the industry and following suit as well.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah, but leading with that, we're going to tell you what we have going on. Look, you tell us we're wrong. I think that is how you become excellent. And I've seen people show up, they. They go there, linear, similar. It's like, hey, he's on stage, he's telling everyone exactly what he's doing. And people show up and. And they stress test that. So specific to your expertise, your domain, or your trial law, you have a lot of different hats that you wear here. But one of the things that Morgan's really done an aggressive and I would say really high quality job is, is moving into influencers nil. Walk me through how you got started in that. Why is this something that you said, hey, this is something we're going to go into and then really double down on it?
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm also a Florida UFO sports management major. So I was around that world for a while. I'm actually a sports agent. I got some interest in some sports agencies. So I was always kind of close to space and knowing where kind of the ball was going and what was going to be allowed as far as like the nil marketing, as far as influencer marketing. So.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Okay, but quick sidebar.
That's very different than being a trial attorney. Did you think you were going into sports management and then. Or is that always a hey, I'm going to put this arrow in my quiver and then.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: No. Yeah, that was always kind of, you know, that. That in second grade I wanted to be a sports agent. So that was always kind of like the goal I was going after. In law school I interned for Dan Fagan, who is a great sports agent. I interned for Mark Cuban with the Mavericks. Had job opportunities for both of them. When I got out of law school and kind of just made the decision that I was going to go learn the family business at Morgan and Morgan still kind of stay around the sports. I had my own agency for a while called Morgan Sports Group. European basketball players, some those type of players, G league players, and then got into a company with Mike Miller called Lift Management, where now we got Paul Ben Caro, Jeremiah Fears. We just had five first rounders in the NBA draft. So it's really been booming. And a lot of that stuff. I've been able to kind of see these players and these opportunities and see what the deal flow was, how much these players were getting paid, the kind of the national brand awareness you could get off the right campaign. So when the nil kind of thing first started, I think five years ago, six years ago, whenever the first, when the NCAA changed the laws essentially saying, now you guys can pay college players, I was able to beat in position with coach Caliperia, Kentucky and do a kind of a whole team deal with the team where we got the whole entire team for decent for a pretty fair price, all things considered.
And then we had like a New York Times article written about the deal where all of a sudden our free press that we got off the deal itself pretty much paid for where. And we had the Kids posted on their Instagrams. We saw our market share in Kentucky go from, you know, that to that where we went and doubled down and did Louisville. And that's kind of just now a part of our strategy now when we go to these, these markets that we're in, you know, to kind of align yourself with it, with kind of a piece of the culture. You know, if you can get a star basketball player or star football player at a school like Tennessee or Alabama, it's going to carry a lot of weight just in the community that hey, we're co signing it. Obviously you're supporting the school, you're supporting them having good players. So if they are in a time they need a lawyer at least you're top of mind to at least be considered. It doesn't mean they're going to go with you, but at least, hey, they remember Morgan. Morgan. There's something that kind of sticks to their name. So yeah, probably, you know, as the time's gone on we've done, as our marketing budget obviously has gotten bigger, you can only spend so much on tv, radio and billboard before you're just light money on fire because you know you have back to back commercials or back to back billboards going. So how do you kind of de infiltrate the money? Spend a little smarter and you know, sports influencers, podcasts, comedians, it's a way to kind of let their voice carry your brand kind of. They know our messaging, they know our core principles. But we don't kind of tell, you know, Tim Dillon what to say. He kind of lets it rip off in his own voice. Sometimes we're bracing for cover and waiting for complaint calls to come in and say sorry, sorry. And other times, you know, the phones are ringing because they want to hire us. So you know, it's, it's, we've, we've had a definitely cancel some that have gone off the deep end and retract and other ones we've been pouring into and doing more and more. So yeah, I mean right now I think we have over like 15 actual college partnerships. But I just, we just, I did a story with West Virginia magazine on we're not official law from the West Virginia University.
But yeah, since we've done an IL, we've already I think done close to 125, 130 individual player deals.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Now you've done deals from national level all the way down to very small.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Oh yeah. And we do high school level kids. We've done Jason Hulk, he's like a 13 year old kid that we have on Instagram, but he's got148,000 followers and he's, you know, just a beast at Pop Warner. So, you know, like. But, you know, he wears more and more in T shirts around and he loves it. So yeah, we do micro deals and yeah, we've done deals with, you know, RIP Kyle Busch, which was in the millions. John Daly, we have a deal with him which is, you know, big, big money as well. So if it's the right audience, the right person, the right brand imaging, you can get content out of it. You know, billboards, commercial. It's not just kind of a sticker, slap, cameo type read of, hey, like more and more and go, you know, we really try to integrate it. How are we going to do it? Like John Daly, we do a lot with his charity. We do a lot with the Boys and Girls Club in Arkansas, which is, he's, he's big on.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, you guys were like five miles away from where I was raised. It was a very surreal moment to see you at the Dardanelle Golf.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Exactly. On Daily Lions Den.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that was full circle for moment for sure.
The national ones, most people that doesn't align to their brand coverage. Right. Like, there's almost no one who has the ability to say, hey, I, I want to start generating demand brand recognition across 50 states. But all these smaller deals are really available.
I'm actually, I'm really surprised that more lawyers haven't gone in on the smaller deals. I. And I, I don't really know why it is. Maybe it's. That's a mental block, lack of awareness. Why do you think that? Because you're seeing the roi, you're seeing the, the payoff there.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of times, again, you know, it's the same reason, you know, they're not maybe putting into other marketing as well. Like why aren't they buying billboards, why aren't they buying radio? You know, a lot of times it's like I have, you know, again, like I said, I've done deals with college players as cheap as $5,000. You know, it's cheap as 10, you know, and it goes up in scales. I do Pop Warner deals with full teams where I'm buying the whole jerseys, you know, for 15 to 20,000 for a team. But the of look at it as if I'm buying jerseys for 50 kids and it has Morgan, Morgan on the back of it. And Now I got 50 kids, plus two parents at home, hopefully, plus brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts. Well, Now I'm kind of buying into a infrastructure of 400 or 5, 500 people. If my average fee on Morgan and Morgan is we, you know, depending on the market is anywhere between $22,038,000. If I get one case out of that, I'm going to pay for the team. If I get two cases, I'm plus plus. And most of the time I'm going to get, you know, five or six in the course of five or six years if I'm, if I'm staying consistent with it. That's always the way that I looked at it. I actually played for a team Sanford growing up, and my dad sponsored the pride packs. So I saw in real time how many cases he was generating. So it was kind of like an aha moment for me. That's why I kind of always got him porn back into him. Like, I sponsor probably seven Pop Warner teams, three basketball teams currently. You know, so that's personally. That's not more. More than Morgan doing it. That's me doing it. But then when I get cases, I generate the fees and they come back to me. I kind of have my own little company set up where I'm tracking and knowing what's coming in and what's coming out.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: How hard is attribution on that?
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Not hard because it's a cell phone. I mean, when, you know, Ms. Williams is calling and her son's playing for, you know, Jay's team, I know that's direct attribution. Now if she's calling Morgan and Morgan and you know, that's, that's how. I don't know. But you know, for the most part, a lot of the time, these coaches are putting me on text with, hey, you know, my player's mom was just rear ended on the way to practice today. I told her to hit you. Now I'm on her. I put in our call center. And it can be, you know, I have like James Derwin, his Pop Warner team out in la. I have a team out there too. He sent two cases last year in real time. And then you're kind of top of mind for all these guys. These guys want lawyers too. They want to be a problem solver. They want someone that they can tell them, hey, I got a guy, I got Dan Morgan from Morgan Morgan, I'm put you right in with him right now. And they text and you're on it. So way I've always kind of looked at if I get some of those and I kind of keep pouring back into it. But again, why why don't people do? I think it's tough if you have $20,000, you're like, hey, am I gonna go buy a new jet ski for myself and my family or am I gonna go buy jerseys for 35 strangers? I don't really know. A lot of times people want to buy the jet ski and be rip around the lake, Kenny power style on a Saturday, which I want to too. I'm.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: You can put your logo on that too, Dan.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: I'm in the market for a jet Ski. So everyone's got a deal out there. But no, I mean, so I think that's a lot of what it is too. And then people, you know, just thing I'm never going to get a case from it or someone's gonna, you know, I'm not, you know. And when you do it, you kind of have to stay on it, you know, I don't really do sticker slaps and done. Yeah, no, I'll go to a game or two, I'll go to a practice and speak to them. I go out and I hand out the business cards to all the parents. So hey, here's my number, here's this. Make sure you call me directly. Don't call the main line, call me so they know your vip. I'm going to take care of you. White glove it. Really sell it to the parents. But now they're like, now I got my lawyer, now I'm going to use him and call it. But yeah, I mean I'm big on micro, micro hyper local marketing. You know, that's kind of what it is and it spins out and if you get the right player, the right person, you can kind of grow with them throughout their career. You know, is, is obviously what we like to do too. You know, Brexton Bush, Kyle's son, we sponsored him for like two or three years. We're about, we sponsor him hopefully for the next 25, 30 years of his career. And we look at like we'll have footage to go back on when he was eight years old, film a commercial with us. So we'll be able to intertwine in a commercial, you know, God willing, 30 years from now.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Well, and one of the things that you've, we've talked about in the past is the long time horizon you have on these things where you're willing to go sponsor 13 Year Old's channel not because you've got a bunch of 13 year olds, they're getting car accident calling you or even because their parents are seeing it, because you know you're going to be around in 20 years and you 30 years. And if someone grows up with a brand that's really powerful, not to mention that there's immediate roi, but you're willing to look at it a much longer time horizon for those things as well. I'm curious.
Go as far down the rabbit hole as you're willing. What is a brand deal that really did not work out for you, and why did. Why did it go sideways?
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Let's try to think of one that, I mean, one really wouldn't be one that kind of sideways, kind of. Sometimes when, you know, we do these YouTube deals and stuff like that, they just go rogue and mess up the messaging or we give them guidelines of like, things you definitely can't say, and they just say it and either do a bar violation and then you got a guy that's hawking us and then gets us in trou and stuff like that.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: So just some guy being like, hey, they're definitely going to get you.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: They're the best. The best. There's some states you can say you're the best or some states you can't say they're best. Yeah, there's. You can't give guarantees. You can't make up stuff. So like, you know, people will be on there just making up dramatizations or stuff like that where then we have to go out and correct. I'm trying to think of a sports one. You know, we did the, the Phillies deal. It was all right. It wasn't as good. We're down with the Sixers. It's been a little more impactful. So we kind of will look at different markets and different, you know, right now. There's definitely times where it could be oversaturated with other, you know, we really don't care too much about exclusivity when it comes to partnership deals. A lot of other partners definitely care about it. They're like, no, if, if I'm doing this, I want more and more, nowhere near any of the marketing materials. We're like, no, we have no problem. We'll stand side by side, whoever, and let them decide. There's some out there. Right now we have like two or three in the space that aren't as impactful.
Some of the ones that have worked great though, like the Red Sox and the Yankees, those are two ones that have been home runs for us in both those markets where we've just seen real, real impact, real success. And again, they're two rivals too. So I've always kind of Liked to have the Yang and the Yang. So, you know, if you don't. If you have just the Red Sox, you don't have the Yankees. We'll be pissing off a lot of New York people. We're also in New York, so it's like, hey, we have to lock down both of these same. And again, you go down to Kentucky. We have Kentucky and we have Louisville. Because even though Louisville is like, it's a 70, 30 split, something like that, you might as well again go back to some of the lawyers in town here. But they went super all in on, you know, MAGA and they went on that. That stream. Well, as soon as you do that, you're cutting off the other 50% of your consumers. LGBT, no matter what. I'm not going to call that guy because he was wearing that hat. But if you have on, you know, both hats, are you able to say, hey, I'm supporting Kentucky and I'm supporting Louisville, and I'm giving both to the NIL programs. And here's a lawyer that went to Louisville. Here's a lawyer that we had that went to Kentucky. And they can see, okay, this is actually. This is just a Kentucky firm in general, and they're helping everybody. It's not. They're, you know, I'm not pissed off that they're a Louisville firm.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: That's. That's in the great style of Lou Perlman. Just from across the street.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Started both NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. The two greatest.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Bands rivalry. You're guaranteed to win.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: The most unhinged thing that I've ever seen you put out was the Almost Friday Collab video.
If you haven't seen it, go check it out. It's online still. It's actually amazing. I like my whole team. We've watched it for like a week on repeat. Did that pan out for you like that? Yeah, that was a really interesting content piece.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: I mean, it did in the way that it, you know, it went super viral on Facebook and they kind of changed the algorithm. Yeah. At one point I had like 38 million views in the first, like, two or three weeks. I think now, just on Instagram alone, it has close to 10 million. But again, you know, it's kind of just a CPM play, a brand awareness play we did.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: That's all organic, you guys.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Oh, exactly. And we didn't write that.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: That was in our brainchild. But again, they showed up and they're like, dan, we want you to put on a Hazmat suit. And we want you to do this and that. And I was like, all right, if you guys think this is funny and you guys think this is going to play, I'll trust you. You guys are good at what you do. You're, you know, I'm good friends with Will, Angus and Liam and those guys. Like, I trust your work. I trust you. This is going to be funny. It's going to hit. And then three days later, we got like 30 million views and people are, you know, following me on Instagram and the counts are going up.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: So it was a crazy fever dream of content. But I mean it. The thing that's important too, as I watched it too, like, it didn't denigrate your brand. Like, you never are in a position. I've watched your. You're never making fun of Morgan and Morgan, but you're also willing to take creative risks.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: And I think that is why you earn a lot of the media that other brands are afraid to. And another piece that John did recently was the Jubilee.
Yeah. Which I heard some of the backstory about how the internal team was a little like, hey, like, we want to handle you away from this. And John said, no, I know what I'm about.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: And he crushed it.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: And that got what, 50, 100 million vi.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Just going crazy.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Exactly. It's about kind of knowing your audience, trusting that you can handle it well as well. You know, knowing in his situation, they're going to be coming at you hot and heavy and, you know, it could get squirrely on him. And just knowing how my dad can handle stuff that. Don't worry, that will make for even better content. That's only going to make for better views when. When, when they come at them like that. But yeah, and then no one kind of, like I said, again is tried. We just did one with Drew Ski. You know, it got like 7 million views right now on Instagram where he calls me from a salon wax studio. Baby mama got third degree burns getting wax. And he's calling for a case, you know, and the next thing you know we got our calls are more and more is getting more calls for wax burn cases, you know, since that video went out last week. So there is definitely, you know, and again, it's just trusting his voice when I come on, I'm his lawyer. I'm talking like, here's a deal, here's the. The facts we can go after. I asked if it was post op and burn unit or band aids and aloe, a type of burn. We talking about you know, so just having fun with it as well, but also letting people know, hey, I am a serious lawyer. If you do need help, call Morgan Morgan. Like that's the Friday beers at the end. It's kind of, it was just a talking head that I'm, you know, delivering the traditional. If you've been injured in an accident, hurt on the job, and then all of a sudden like zombies pop out and I take off running.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: But that earned media is, is really impactful.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And again it's like, you know, I've always, when I was in the marketing class and all that it's trying to be the term I think was like brand salience. You know, when people think lawyer, they just think Morgan Morgan. Or if they think something, you know, they can only. So when you kind of pop up in these comedy or these sketches are Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel is going to make a joke about a law firm. You know, they used to back in the day. I remember they'd always kind of plug either Seleno and Barnes or Jacoby and Myers. There's like the two names because of LA and New York City. Those were always the ones being used. And I was always sitting there like, I want Morgan and Morgan to be the one they're plugging in the joke, even if they're using it to make fun of something. These guys are getting all this free advertising on national TV right now. So how do we kind of enter the conversation more and more and you know, luckily as we kind of do more of this stuff, get more in the ufc. We're in wwe, we're in pbr. We're kind of just keep hitting the public over and over again. People just think, all right, injury lawyer, injury law firm, Morgan. Morgan's kind of the name at least, top of mind, might not be the only name, but it's at least going to be one of those things 3, 4, 5 names are thinking about in, in, in their city.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: It's pervasive. Absolutely. I run a referral platform and you run the biggest referral business that's been built in the legal space. It would be one of the top 20 law firms in the country on its own merits. And it's, it's a small part of the overall Morgan practice, but it is, it's huge. So I'm really curious to hear from your perspective. And you came in and it was small, it was very ad hoc and you really turned it into a well oiled machine. Very important part of the business.
Just let's start with why why did you see this as something that needed to be improved inside of Morgan Morgan?
[00:28:14] Speaker B: So my first job was actually in the call center. So like when I was 17, 18, 19 in college, things like that, I come home from the summers and I work in the call center.
Back then it was only really Florida, Georgia. We were servicing other lawyers. We were acting as their call center for, like, Johnny Cochran, whom my dad had a partnership together. So we had like five states or six states that we were actually able to take cases.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: And you were picking up phones?
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yeah. All day. Yeah, all day, every day in qualifying cases.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: What was your close rate, you remember?
[00:28:41] Speaker B: I don't know exactly, but I know, like, if in the call center back then, if you're getting like 12 to 15 signups a day, you're like on par to like be hitting your numbers. I don't know exactly where it's at now because obviously it's scale back then. We're on the. We had half of the 14th floor on the building you're in now. Now we have like. Like five floors just in the Longwood Call Center. We have another one in Vegas now. We have call centers in the Dr. In Mexico as well. So, like, we're definitely spread out a lot more now. So I don't know what the close rates or the stats are now they're looking for, but back when I was working there, we'd get cases all the time where I would be like, if this case, you know, you're from Arkansas, where I was in Arkansas. Now we had Johnny Cochran's office in Tennessee. So we're getting tons of calls in Arkansas. Good, good cases I should have been closing. But just for the fact we weren't in that state, I had to say, I'm sorry, we're not in that state right now. So I just kind of saw at that time how many cases that were coming into Morgan Morgan that weren't being properly monetized and that it was pretty much like drinking out of a fire hose. And then we did start the process. We had one guy, Jake, who was, you know, really did a lot of good for the firm, at least, getting us organized and getting kind of start to build the boat essentially of the framework of what we had going. But it was, again, it was kind of one guy by himself, like I said, drinking from a fire.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: He's rock stars.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, exactly.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: He was running and gunning back in
[00:29:56] Speaker B: the day, and he had to have been because it was just. It was so much. It's so. And that the Kind of the first thing when Covid kind of hit Ma's trial attorney, working the cases, things like that. But when Covet hit, you know, there's no court, no trial. So I kind of started seeing how can I add value to the firm and where can I add value to the firm in the first place? I kind of hunkered down on was just our referral practice inbound and outbound and just saw the opportunity there, really saw what we were doing, saw we weren't doing, saw what our conversion rates were, knew what internal conversion rates were, and really just started by hiring people, you know, building a team out, just knowing this isn't a one person job. This is going to be a lot of people. We got to get regions, we got to get. We got to get even, you know, administrative work too. You know, there's some work that is doc connecting and people skills is other work that's just making sure we have sign retainers.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: And ethics compliance is a huge part of that.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: And depending on the state you're in, the whole. There's a whole nother checklist. Is it blind referral? Is it, you know, is it. You know, New Jersey and Hawaii and Louisiana are different beasts of themselves, you know, compared to other states that are a lot easier.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And I'll say sidebar, having talked to your team, you guys do more ethical diligence.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: On referrals and just about anything, because you have this huge, you know, you have this massive operation and there's a lot of exposure.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: That was one of the first things I brought in. You know, I was building the team. Was. Was Chrissy Smith, who's kind of our director of ethics now. And then we had. She even now has kind of a deputy Director of Miranda because there's just so much work in so many states. And. And again, you know, we're a big target. You know, if we're not doing it the right way, you know, a lot of people want to come in pretty quickly and say, hey, you can't pay these referrals. You can't do this and that. Now, luckily we have lawyers in all 50 states. We have dashboards built out. We have joint responsibility dashboards. Everything we're seeing in real time, anytime a docket's being filed on any case that we refer out, we call it performance management now, where we're really kind of on top of these files and making sure.
Because in some states, if a statute's blown and we sent that case to that lawyer, guess who they're coming after? They're coming after, you know, Morgan, Morgan who has tons of coverage. And they can, you know, that lawyer who knows what they have, you know, that's what we're also checking. What's your E and L coverages like? What, do you have this? Do you have that? You know, if we're sending you cases, do you have bar complaints? So we're running it down just because it's. It's that important. But again, you know, it's been. I've been in this role now, like five years, and I think the first year we did the first year I took over the year prior, I think it did like 16 million for the entire year. You know, we're here in July now. We're close to like 45 million for the year. You know, training to do 90. All. All eyes on 100. You know, that's kind of the BHAG goal I gave the team.
But, you know, and that's. That's just our outbound referral cases we're not taking, cases we're not doing.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: And let me ask you, dollar for dollar, is there anything that's more profitable
[00:32:34] Speaker B: across the business for the margins wise? No, you know, it's. It's the highest margin. I think we kind of. Obviously, there's. Depending on the market, depending on that. There's advertising market. We have our team now, obviously got some software that's reasonably priced as well that we're able to work with. So, you know, the margins are pretty good. You know, we're looking at it. I think Jason Kimmel's our CFO. It's anywhere between 85 to 88% profit margins. You know, when you look at its traditional legal case, like if we're in the 60 to 50 over 60, it's really, really good.
The outbound, I mean, the inbound referral margins are probably some of the worst for our business, too, because we're paying out 30 to 50% of the referral fee, and then we have our cover. So, you know, on that side of the things, we're like in the 30%. But luckily, when we blend it all together, you know, we're still. Referrals as a whole sits in that 50, that 50 to 60 range. So it's great for the firm.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you're. You're really monetizing exhaust. You're. It's. You've already spent the money, you've got the marketing, you've done the brand, the call. Like you said, you're sitting in the call center. The calls are coming in.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: That's done. You can't stop, stop somebody from calling in. And. And then the only question becomes, are you going to be able to make that, that referral money off of that
[00:33:41] Speaker B: I was doing before you guys were setting up? I have a meeting after this on our med mal and our nursing home, our national presence, our referral on it too. But you know, on a nursing home, which we do in Florida and a lot of other states, we have about our active inventory that's been referred out right now is around 3,000 cases with other lawyers are working nursing home. Our average fee on those cases that we get a referral fee from is around 15 to 17,000.
An average client acquisition for our nursing home people around 3,000 to $5,000. So on each one of those referrals, you know, we're doubling up. You know, you spend 3 to $5,000, we're doing no work except getting into the right firm. And then hopefully in two to three years we're gonna get a check for 15. And you do that scale and you keep feeding that beast and then you go to other practice areas. Like I think our birth injury average referral fee is like $225,000. You know, so if you even get 10 of those, you're at 2 million bucks of just new money that's coming into your firm.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: And you guys get more calls than any other firm in people. And it's not even that people are calling you and saying, hey, I've got this case and I need it to be referred out. You've got brand loyalty, you're asking follow up questions, you're looking for other claims. You got people calling you back. You get over 3 million calls a year. That's just a lot of America is talking to you every single year.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah, this year we're already trending because we're in July now, we've had over two and a half million. So we're trending, you know, close to four. Close, you know, close to four, four and a half of that, you know, we sign up 7 to 8%, you know, and of that 7 to 8%, you know, we probably end up holding on to 4 to 5%. Obviously after the initial 30, 60 day, you get coverages, you get the police report, things like that.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Just for clarity, that's 7% of all call volume gets signed by your firm about.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Depending on what it is. You know, we do work comp, we do, there's tons of stuff, class actions, all that as well. But then again, so now you have three you know, three point whatever million cases, not what's happened with those cases. And some of it is, you know, even now the different areas of case law we're trying to monetize on, we're trying to find ways to monetize on family law cases, we're trying to find ways to monetize on lemon law cases, people are calling for us that anyway. But how do we have it built out and or doubt. Luckily technology is making a lot easier now with different things of that nature too to be able to screen calls at scale or to look. Have AI look for secondary claims on top of an existing. Is it a work comp claim? Is it also work injuries site claim? Is it also a Social Security ability claim? You know, do you have three in one? Do you have four and one.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: One of the biggest misses I think a lot of firms make is viewing one call as one claim.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: In VAs you have, you've got a product liability case, you got an injury case, you've got multiple passengers, like one call, you can seven or eight cases.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: A ladder in New York City, guy falls off. Yeah, you got three or four cases and they could all be worth seven figures.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: You know, as that developer said a week ago. Yeah, cranes just fall off building sometimes. But.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Right. That is not something that you should be saying.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: And that's a known risk, right?
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Yeah, just, just happens. Just, you know, buildings fall over. So. Last thing I want to talk to you about is you're, you're looking down the road, you're always bouncing new ideas around and I don't want you to tell me the secret things that you're working on. But what are you seeing as these are early stage the, the things that you're betting on now that you think are going to be the next big, the next nil. Next referral program.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean again, you know, the practice areas, like I said, I have a meeting after this on med mal and nursing home. I feel like those are practice areas that, that even if it's not firms that are going to be hands on with it, at least marketing for it, knowing how to handle the intakes, knowing because again, those are the most profitable case types in America on the right ones in the right states. Obviously again, depending on the state, there's caps, there's liability theories and immunities and things of that nature.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Always bad states for everything.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: Exactly right. No matter. Each state has something bad in it too. There's not, there's no perfect state.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Hey, if you're accepted work Comp attorney, I want to talk to you. There's a.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: There's a few perfect states, and those are secrets I'm keeping and I'm not enough. But yeah, I mean, nursing home is another one. Like I said, that's one. You know, one thing my dad's always kind of his. His slogans is, you know, only the paranoid survive. You know, knowing that eventually they're going to be coming for your sugar cube, it's going to get shrunk. Either tort reform or something else. You know, driverless cars, flying cars even now I saw. Or Orlando and Tampa are about to have these, like drone taxis are putting in.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: No way.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that gets you to Tampa in 30 minutes. You know, so the future is here. You know, it's coming fast and again. And knowing that when I saw that, I was like, well, this is just going to be a disaster eventually. Everything's going. I have no way I would ever get in that thing that's going now. It's going to be a claim some way. But just knowing that's coming. So how do you kind of steer against it? Product liability? You know, my brother Mike is a. Is a beast in that area. We've been really bolstering that for years now. Because knowing that's, you know, most cases, when a Tesla hits a Tesla, it's not going to be driver error in a few years, it's going to be a product case. And what did the software make that decision and let them figure it out, but that if someone got paralyzed from it, someone's going to have to be responsible for it. Nursing home is one again, people, baby boomers, they're hitting that age. Nursing homes, you know, people are only getting older. Unfortunately, the nursing home industry in general, you know, it's not the best. You know, it doesn't have something. I think 40% of all nursing home employees are former felons. You know, so you have kind of an industry of people that unfortunately probably aren't going to get. Always get the best care depending on the. On where they are. And those cases aren't going anywhere, you know, and there's really. I'm again, I'm in the referral space. There's not that many. There are some great lawyers out there that I refer cases to, but, you know, it's not like as deep of a bench. You know, when I have a PI case, I have 28 firms that are like, send me that case. When I have a good nursing home case, I have like three or four that I really trust to Give them that case. So, you know, I'm trying either we're gonna, we know that that industry is blowing up so we're making investments on ourselves just to bolster in the states that we're already in. Just at least bring one person and you know, start there, start inventory and see where it goes. And marketing, you know, it's always true. You know, the iPhone strategy. I mean everyone's kind of going to it now doing podcasts like this. You know, even, even if it's not, you know, paying to do the podcast and get it on, just knowing that if people are going to watch it, you know, it's, it's marketing.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Just could get, you know, even if you don't do it could get clipped up by a third party. There could be something viral and all of a sudden next thing you know there's three and a half mil million views that you did for, for a sit down conversation. Really been trying to get my dad more in front of that light too. A lot more people like talk talking to him than to me. The T to turn a little bit but you know, like yesterday he did the Breakfast Club, you know, he wrote a book and now he's on kind of a book tour and all that is, you know, he's promoting his book but he's obviously when he's on, he's on Morning Joe, he was on the Breakfast Club, you know, that's promoting more, more, more side by side. You know, he's a spokesman, he's the face. So if he's on those shows, naturally those are going to be following suit too. So just kind of establishing more of a brand presence of, you know, the family. The family's kind of always kind of been what's got us to where we are. And you know, it's Morgan and Morgan and for the people are kind of the strengths. But, but so playing into the family sports part partnerships, we got a ton of NFL ones we're doing. We're rolling out. We got the Bucks, we got the Falcons, we got the Panthers, we got the Bengals, we got the Jets. So you know, we're definitely leaning in to sports marketing still. And again it's, it's competitive, it's pricey. But we kind of just look at the CPM mix and you know, a lot of people kind of look at it too. Like do I want to spend half a million, a million bucks in the sports partnership or do I want to buy condos in St. Pete Beach? Like I want to buy the condo in St. Pete Beach. So we're in a position now, but we kind of have that mindset, though. Just keep pouring in and establishing the market share.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: I think it's also true, though, that you're going to get good at it. Yeah, it's not going to be optimized immediately, but you're not going to get good at it until you do it.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: A lot of it.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And again, and then figuring out what's working, what's not working, you know, tying in different charity, like for the. The Miami Heat. We have dunks for the people. So every time they dunk, we're donating to a. A, to a food shelter, you know, different things like that, that we can at least have Community activation.
I've always been big on cause marketing just because I feel like it's the. It's the best way to market. If you're actually giving something back to the community, the community, you know, can actually feel. Feel the benefit of not just. Morgan, Morgan's asking for business. Oh, Morgan. Morgan's asking me for business. But they fed me on Thanksgiving or they gave me toys at Christmas. Like, I'm definitely gonna use that law firm if they got my son on PlayStation, you know, so. Cause marketing is trying to do more of that, obviously. And like I said. Yeah, just the iPhone strategy. It's like, how. How can you get that viral gorilla stuff? You know, how can you get, you know, what. What events are going on in bigger cities?
We're planning some. A lot of stuff around some HBCUs right now. We're planning a lot of stuff around some. Some high schools. You know, like I said, we're kind of that pop. We know now we've seen in some of these states, like Texas and Nevada and California, high school football has almost as big as audience as. As some. Some pro teams. You know, I'd say the high school audience in Texas is way bigger than, you know, the USF audience in Tampa's maybe, you know, depending on the market. So it's wild to see and just kind of learning those about the different markets and seeing whether, you know, I never really knew about PBR or rodeos or that world at all and that stuff.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Mutton busting.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: I have not heard of mutton busting. Is that. Is that where I'm skipping to get into it?
[00:42:41] Speaker A: It's in. It's a. It's a big Salt Lake City thing. It's where kids ride sheep.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: Rodeo style. I'd check it. It's pretty big in Utah.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: There you go. See? Exactly. So maybe More and more gonna be mutton busting next year.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: There, There we go. There we go. The big, big takeaway for me here is I expect you come in here and talk a lot more about the national deals. You really talked a lot about what you're doing at a local level, at scale. And I think there's, that's actually so much more applicable to other people than hey, yeah, we're signing UFC national deal for $10 million. Like that, that, yeah, that's out of reach. But you're really drilling down into a scaled local approach.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: And then I'm trying to, I'm trying to share people. You know, again, a lot of people can't do the UFC because they're not allowed to because we have exclusivity on it. Same with wwe. But again, that also, you know, next, next, next week, Monday I fly up to Detroit, I'm filming with some WWE people. Then on Tuesday I go to Ann Arbor to film with University of Michigan people.
And then there's someone at Michigan State as well. So, you know, we're going into Michigan, we're hitting national, then we're going to blanket on the hyperlocal. But then again, there's tons of Michigan fans in New York City, there's tons of Michigan fans in California. You know, especially with some of these universities that we do deals with. We know it's not just Ann Arbor play. We know with Michigan, that is a national play. We know with the Yankees, that is a national play. The Red Sox, that is a national play. Now it's, we're going to get our most bang for our buck in New York City.
But when the Rays, Tama Bay Rays are playing the Yankees and there's a pop fly ball goes to the warning track and Morgan, and Morgan's on the outfield fence, everyone in Tampa is seeing that same marketing. So for us, we're able to kind of justify it that way. That, hey, you know, it's kind of like a quilt. You know, we're, we're, we have these little things and we're sewing them together with our Morgan Morgan brand and blanket the country that way. And if we have some big, you know, we have Monster Jam, that's a great partnership. We do pbr, some of these national ones that we could. But again, on a Monster Jam, it's a national deal, but it's hitting 50 local markets. Yeah, boring. But again, each market it's hitting, it's hitting. And then it's also on the TV, though, it's the Morgan Morgan backflip ramp. It's the. You know, we have actually a Monster Jam truck next year, so we'll have our own truck in the. So that's another one that we have coming on. So size matters. I'm not sure it's a. It's a, like an F1 style, but size matters. Morgan and Morgan, there's. It's going to be sold in Target, so that's all I know.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: There we go. Here we go. I took my son to Monster Jam when it came to Arkansas this year.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: It's electric. Oh, it's one of my favorite things. Like, I went through it. I was like, we're all done.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: Electric monster truck.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: No, no, I'm saying, like. Like, it's like going to the Monster is like. It's an electric event. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: I was like that. That would not be the same experience if we're electric. It's all about, dude, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: I went to one of those events. They're kind of selling like, yeah, it's again, family. Yep. It's packed with youth. It's packed with parents as well. That' the decision makers. Mom's the decision maker. A lot of time. She's the one that's driving the kids to Monster Jam. And you got kids that are chanting for the Morgan, Morgan backflip ramp and say, all right, this works. Let's. Let's pour into this some more.
[00:45:41] Speaker A: Yeah, man, it's.
The breadth is pretty astounding. And look, you are objectively the largest firm in the country by an order of magnitude. Nearly. And so you have a lot of resources, but still, the takeaway is like, you're aggressively pursuing things at a lot of different levels, and anyone can. Can do that, I think. And there's this willingness to experiment because you know your brand, because you know what it takes to build a brand that really pushes you into that next iteration every single time.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: Yep. And again, having a way to try to attribute, you know, that's the main thing. It's not just hoping and praying that it works. You know, a lot of these. And again, there's tons of. Of super wealthy PI attorneys out there that love the nil space because they went to that school, but they're really not doing anything. Whether they're writing checks for probably six figures to make sure they get the quarterback or they get the wide receiver, but then they're like, hey, if you want to put my logo on an Instagram video, fine. I guess, like, no, if you're. If we're doing something, I'm flying my ass to Detroit. You know, I'm making the effort to actually get there and do it and to film the content and to get the figure out what players I want on the team. Who has a social following, who has a chance to go to the NFL, who. That way I can kind of keep living side by side on their success at Michigan. Last year we did it with Yaxel Lindenberg. You know, Michigan was like, we don't think that's the player you should do. You should do this player. Like, no, I want Yaxel Yoxel did. I'm being the Naismith player of the year. Ended up getting drafted by the Golden State Warriors. You know, it's plus plus, plus plus where you kind of do more research, watch the tape and kind of make the right decisions and.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: And execute a Morgan Morgan fantasy team at this point.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: Well, hey, Lyft had five. Five first rounders of. Of those five, I think three of them were Morgan and Morgan athletes. So. Well, there's definitely some synergies there as well. Absolutely.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: No, you know, your stuff. You're. You're in the. You're in the weeds on it. Well, Dan, I've really appreciated the conversation today. Thank you for taking the time.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Learned a lot. Thanks for flying down and making it happen.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Always.
