392. Best PIMoments Replay: Mass Torts Without the Overhead w/ Gregg Goldfarb

Summary

Podcast Summary: Personal Injury Mastermind w/ Chris Dreyer

Episode 392: Best PIMoments Replay – Mass Torts Without the Overhead w/ Gregg Goldfarb
Release Date: February 9, 2026
Guest: Greg Goldfarb, veteran mass tort attorney
Host: Chris Dreyer, Rankings.io

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Episode Overview

This episode examines how small and mid-sized personal injury firms can effectively compete in mass torts—often dominated by giant firms—by adopting a lean, highly-leveraged business model. Veteran attorney Greg Goldfarb describes his journey from building large traditional teams to outsourcing almost every function in his firm. He reveals practical strategies for client acquisition, firm structure, mass tort project selection, and partnership dynamics, offering a flexible playbook for PI firms looking to scale without overwhelming overhead.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Evolution to a Lean, Outsourced Firm

• Greg describes his transition from a large-firm operator to running a mostly one-man shop, outsourcing “everything, including my work.”
• He underscores the strategic value and personal preference behind running a “very lean, skeletal type of structure.”
  • Quote: “What I've done over the last five to ten years is I basically outsource everything, including my work.” (00:00 – Greg Goldfarb)

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2. Modern Case Acquisition: Certainty Over Gamble

• Greg prefers buying specific cases from marketers rather than spending huge amounts on broad, risky ad campaigns.
  • “Instead of saying, okay, I'm going to spend $50,000 and hope I get leads...what I've learned is that there's case acquisition, there are some really good marketers, and that's all they do.” (01:55 – Greg Goldfarb)
• He sets strict criteria for which types of injuries and cases he'll purchase, favoring certainty and focus.
• Practices both organic networking (events, fundraisers) and targeted acquisition through national case generation companies—highlighting social media as a new force in the space.
• New and emerging mass torts (“video game addiction”, “ultra processed foods”) are cheaper and often undervalued at the outset.

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3. Managing Long-Tail, Complex Mass Torts

• Chris and Greg discuss slow timelines in torts—cases can last five years or more due to corporate defense tactics like bankruptcy filings and appeal delays.
• Diversification is key:
  • “I wanted to diversify the types of cases [and] law firms I was going to work with...I want to have cases that are new, because those are going to be cheaper to get. And then I want to get the ones that are advanced...” (04:21, 05:12 – Greg Goldfarb)
• Greg balances “new trophies” with late-stage, lower-risk torts already past major litigation hurdles.

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4. Partnerships & Case Referral Best Practices

• Early in his career, Greg prioritized relationships with big-name firms and those in leadership positions at conferences (e.g., Mass Torts Made Perfect).
• Over time, he found more value in building relationships with smaller, accessible firms where he could have direct communication.
  • “Then I started to kind of like, wow, they're [the big firms] too big...So then I started to go with smaller operations, who I was getting to know at these conferences and having longer conversations, who I felt like I got their cell phone number.” (07:45 – Greg Goldfarb)
• No partner is perfect; responsiveness can vary but close relationships improve oversight and client communication.

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5. Building a Highly-Leveraged, Modern PI Practice

• Greg recommends outsourcing non-core functions:
  • Call answering services, specialized legal intake centers, accounting, and IT.
  • “You have to know, like you said, the world today is completely different. You can have companies answering your phone...you cannot afford [a slow response].” (09:06 – Greg Goldfarb)
• The key role of speed in client intake—potential clients expect a call back within minutes, not hours or days.
• Greg delegated his bread-and-butter work and even employees, focusing only on strategy and referrals.

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6. Advice for Lawyers Considering the Lean Approach

• Knowledge and openness to new models are crucial.
• Many lawyers get “brain funk,” believing they can only practice in their original area—mass torts require stepping outside comfort zones.
  • “A lot of lawyers are just kind of in this brain funk where they're like, I can only do family law. That's all I know how to do. I don't want to take a chance. And, you know, the downside to going outside of your comfort zone is sleepless nights.” (11:18 – Greg Goldfarb)
• Being comfortable with discomfort is part of the model's success.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Greg Goldfarb on Lean Operations:
  • “What I've done over the last five to ten years is I basically outsource everything, including my work.” (00:00)
• On Picking Case Partners:
  • “Let me try them too. But...there's nobody that's been perfect as far as me and my, you know...like, I'll have some clients call me up, hey, I want an update. And then I'm like, okay...and then it's like two weeks later, the client calls me back. I never heard from anybody.” (08:08)
• Advice to Young Lawyers:
  • “You go to law school, they don't even show you how to be a lawyer. Then you come out...now I'm not happy with what I'm doing...a lot of lawyers are just kind of in this brain funk where they're like, I can only do family law...I don't want to take a chance. And...the downside to going outside of your comfort zone is sleepless nights.” (11:18)
• Contact Info:
  • “My website is the best place. Greggolfarb.com. G R E G G G O L D F A R B.com. I'm the original triple G.” (12:11)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – Greg describes outsourcing everything, even his own work
• 01:18 – Marketing challenges in the current PI landscape—giant firms, digital transformation
• 01:55 – Shift to buying specific cases/strict intake criteria
• 03:27 – Pros/cons of case marketers in mass torts
• 04:07 – The timeline/cash flow issues in mass torts
• 05:12 – Greg’s strategy: catching new waves, balancing new/advanced cases
• 07:45 – Building partnerships, moving from big names to personal connections
• 09:06 – How Greg structures a lean team and outsources everything
• 10:48 – Chris recaps Greg’s highly-leveraged model
• 11:18 – Greg’s advice to lawyers: importance of knowledge and risk-taking
• 12:11 – Where to contact Greg

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Takeaways for PI Lawyers

• Embrace the benefits of lean, outsourced operations to manage risk, reduce overhead, and scale flexibly.
• Use specialized case acquisition strategies—be selective, market smartly, and avoid wasteful generic campaigns.
• Diversify your mass tort portfolio across emerging and late-stage litigations.
• Prioritize relationship-building with referral partners—size isn’t everything; communication is key.
• Stay open to new practice models and be willing to get uncomfortable as the legal landscape evolves.

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For more insights or to connect with Greg Goldfarb, visit greggoldfarb.com.

Transcript

[Greg Goldfarb]

What I've done over the last five to 10 years is I basically outsource everything, including my work.

[Chris Dreyer]

That's Greg Goldfarb. Over the past three decades, he's put in the reps from Rodney King era police brutality cases to Camp Lejeune water contamination. Greg has always been at the front lines of the biggest fights.

[Greg Goldfarb]

I've done everything but the standard bodily injury accident cases. And I said, listen, whatever you get, that's not an auto accident case, send my way.

[Chris Dreyer]

This is Personal Injury Mastermind, where we dig deep into the best personal injury firms in the nation with the leaders who got them there. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings IO, the elite marketing agency for PI firms. On the docket today, mass tours for modern PI firms. Greg has managed large teams, built full operations, but now he runs a skeleton crew by choice. His lean model is one any PI owner can learn from, and he's crushing it.

[Greg Goldfarb]

I try to stay ahead of the game and see where the future is going. And throughout my practice, I've always had to shift, you know, whatever the hot new trophy was, was what I was chasing.

[Chris Dreyer]

Greg shows us the four strategies of a modern PI practice so you can compete with the giants and mass torts. First up, how he stopped wasting $50,000 ad buys and found a smarter way to bring in cases. Let's go.

[Greg Goldfarb]

It's so difficult today because there's a few big players out there that are, you know, have an enormous, enormous marketing budget. And no matter where you go, everybody seems to be national. And you got the Morgan and Morgans of the world. You know, they're swallowing up the smaller law firms out there, the more boutique outfits out there in the world. So the marketing has become tricky.

[Chris Dreyer]

What you're doing in marketing and, like, how you're getting cases, Are you more advertising just due to your practice and how you do things that other people don't do? Are you more marketing? More to B2B to, like, your peers? And are you doing the B2C? Like, talk to me about the different components of advertising.

[Greg Goldfarb]

In the entirety of my 32 years of practicing in one form or another, I've been doing marketing. So over time, what I've learned is that instead of saying, okay, I'm going to spend $50,000 and hope I get leads, and then you realize, oh, $50,000, what's my ROI? I got one case. It wasn't good. So what I've learned is that there's case acquisition, there are some really good marketers, and that's all they do. And they market for lawyers and you, you know, basically give them a chunk of money and you set up criteria and you say, I want Camp Lejeune cases. Okay. And I want cases where the only injury that I'm willing to accept is, let's just say, testicular cancer. So I sort of shifted into that because it was a level of certainty that I think helped me stay committed to the marketing world. I still, you know, market organically. I still go out, I still go to events, go to fundraisers and all that. But I think it's almost become my bread and butter right now. The video game addiction is a big case that's coming up. Ultra processed foods. A lot of people now are starting to wrap their brain around that. And social media has now really taken over this sort of case acquisition case, specifically type of marketing. And I've been happy with it without naming names.

[Chris Dreyer]

Like, you always hear the downside, like, ah, they're cherry picking for this firm or that firm, or they start you off hot, you get, you know, a bunch of good cases and then they kind of water it down. What's your experience been?

[Greg Goldfarb]

I've had the complete range from really bad to good. Okay. In the mass tort space because it's so big and there's so many people affected by. And the companies that get sued oftentimes have multiple types of litigation that they're fending off, they're slowing it down as long as possible. So you have to sort of be ready for the long haul, I guess.

[Chris Dreyer]

A few questions here. The first thing is the cash flow, right? You know, if you're auto or whatever, you know, 12 to 18 months is one thing, but we're talking torts, it might be five years or. And that's part of their strategies. Delay, delay, delay.

[Greg Goldfarb]

Yeah.

[Chris Dreyer]

How do you think about the portfolio? Do you wait till, you know, you got some high risk before the science established? Do you. Do you wait until the sciences later? Like, like, how do you think about selecting these?

[Greg Goldfarb]

So I am definitely a big fan of diversification and I wanted to diversify the types of cases the law firms that I was going to work with. And when you go into the types of cases, it's not just, okay, I'm going to do like sexual abuse cases where you don't have any really complicated science that you're going to have to convince the judge that your theory and your expert is solid. All right. And so, you know, going back to like the length of these cases or whatever the baby powder Tao cases, they're like 10 years old now. They've already filed three bankruptcies. They did the Texas two step or what have you.

[Chris Dreyer]

Greg just showed us how he stopped weight wasting money on ads and started buying the exact cases he wanted. To be successful in mass torts, you need diversity in cases. The real edge comes from catching the next wave before it comes ashore.

[Greg Goldfarb]

I try to stay ahead of the game and see where the future is going. And throughout my practice, I've always had to shift. I want to have cases that are new because those are going to be cheaper to get. And then I want to get the ones that are advanced that have gone past the motion for summary judgment, the Daubert and all that. And there's cases that are set for trials.

[Unidentified Conference Attendee]

Pimcon I feel like, is really taking approach that no other conference that I've been to does, which is you want a good law firm operationally, but how do you build it out and what is the long term vision for you in terms of when you hang up the end of the day and you're done practicing, like, what is it that you want to look back on, on what you built? If you want to be a niche attorney or if you have a market you want, or if you had type of case you're looking for, you have the playbook after being here. And it's really, really been great and very different, I think, than other conferences I've been to.

[Chris Dreyer]

Pimcon is back. Catch me. Chris Dreyer in Arizona, along with some of the best in the industry. Get your ticket [e-mail] that's P I M C O N dot org. So far we've seen Greg play offense, filling his pipeline smarter and jumping headfirst into the next big wave. But the truth is these cases are never clean. The companies he goes after, Fortune 500 giants, they stall, they appeal, they file bankruptcies. They'll drag things out for a decade if they can. To run a modern firm, you must be adaptable and willing to learn along the way.

[Greg Goldfarb]

I've done everything but the standard bodily injury accident cases. I mean, I have in the court. But I started out, you know, I was like a C student, so wasn't getting big offers and I had to like market from the ground going forward as soon as I got my bar license or whatever. And so my dad, he's also an attorney, he's been around, still practices, 94 years old. And I went to him and I said, listen, whatever you get, that's not an auto accident case or Your buddies send my way.

[Chris Dreyer]

You got on the conference circuit, you can identify who the. The agencies that, you know, the social media brought and stuff, like, they're out there advertising to get clients. How do you go about identifying, you know, who you're going to send the cases to? Do you just, like, look at the steering committees? Is that like where you start? Is it just you get in this world and you start getting the relationships and, you know, that's how it goes. Like, I know Papantonio has mass sorts made perfect and wants every, you know, and I like Mike and he, look, it's smart from a marketing perspective. He wants everything referred to them. But, you know, how do you find the right firms to send the cases to?

[Greg Goldfarb]

I figured at the beginning I should go with the heaviest of the hitters, right? So you would go to the mass sort made perfect conference. You would see who's speaking. Then you would hear who's in leadership, who's going to be the one trying the cases, who's going to be the one settling the cases. So my initial take was, let's go with them. So I just started like that. Then I started to kind of like, wow, they're too big. You know, who am I, right? They don't care. So then I started to go with smaller operations, who I was getting to know at these conferences and having longer conversations, who I felt like I got their cell phone number. I know where you live. You know what I'm saying? So. So I figured, let me try them too. But, you know, so everybody sort of has their good, and they're not so good. There's nobody that's been perfect as far as me and my, you know, like, I'll have some of the clients call me up, hey, I want an update. And then I'm like, okay. And I'm like, hey, this guy needs an update. And then it's like two weeks later, the client calls me back. I never heard from anybody.

[Chris Dreyer]

I kind of want to hit this just a little bit more because just, I mean, the whole way that you structure a firm is different, right? You're using these providers to get cases. Then you have working with partners to. For the monetization piece. So what's the team look like? I imagine you're a more leveraged, more lean team overall. Like, how do you put this together and make it all work?

[Greg Goldfarb]

So you have to know, like you said, the world today is completely different. You can have companies answering your phone, okay, just for regular calls. You could have a call center that is specifically trained Just to handle intake for lawyer cases. And we know, and I'm sure you know too, if the phone rings and somebody's looking for an attorney, if you don't call them back in a minute, they're gone, they're gone. In the old days, it used to be, oh, you got 24 hours to get back to you. Right? So nowadays, you know, you cannot afford to do that. So what I've done over the last five to 10 years is I basically outsource everything, including my work.

[Chris Dreyer]

Big teams, managed full scale operations, built and run. Greg's done the traditional law firm model at scale and then he walked away from it because he found something that works for him. The way Greg structures his firm could change how you think about your own practice.

[Greg Goldfarb]

A lot of my work, I'm just referring out to other firms, my bread and butter work was first party insurance claims. And I had just so much of that that I had two buddies that are close in Miami, close geographically. So I gave them the work, I gave them my employees, and I've just basically outsourced everything. There's a couple of things more I'd like to, I'd like to outsource my accounting so I don't have to deal with the accountant anymore. I mean, that would be. Outsource my IT system. That would be wonderful also. So that's more to where I'm at. You know, right now I'm 59 years old. Maybe in two or three years from now I'm going to shift back and I'm going to be like, you know what? I need to have my crew back in place. But right now I'm like a very lean, skeletal type of structure.

[Chris Dreyer]

So I wanted to ask that because it's a highly leveraged model, right? It's like you're the strategist, you can pick the partners. A lot of times people think of these other people are experts and they niche in that area, right? So a lot of times when you, you know, they have leverage on those different, they can have different economies and scale. And so I think that's super smart. If you were going to say, hey, here are the things that you need to do to be successful with torts with this kind of model, you know, just 80, 20, what would you say? What would you recommend?

[Greg Goldfarb]

Well, I think knowledge is key and what's going on is that. And I think maybe you've seen this as well. You go to law school, they don't even really show you how to be a lawyer. Then you come out and you're like, okay, I got to figure out how to be a lawyer. Then you're like, wow, I'm a lawyer. Now I know how to be a lawyer. But now I'm not happy with what I'm doing and I'm not making enough money and I'm seeing other people doing that. So you start scratching your head and then you start saying yourself, well, chi, I don't want to do that type of work because I want to stick with what I know. So a lot of lawyers are just kind of in this brain funk where they're like, I can only do family law. That's all I know how to do. I don't want to take a chance. And, you know, the downside to going outside of your comfort zone is sleepless nights. You mess up, you know, and when you mess up, you're affecting, you know, a client or another.

[Chris Dreyer]

One final question. Where can our audience that has questions that wants to connect with you, where can they go to learn more?

[Greg Goldfarb]

My website is the best place. Greggolfarb.com G R E G G G O L D F A R B.com I'm the original triple G. And Greg.

[Chris Dreyer]

Built the perfect practice for his goals. You can too. You can't do it alone. Look, no one wants to see you win more than I do. That's why I created Personal Injury Mastermind Conference, pimcon. And it's this October in Scottsdale, Arizona. Every person on that stage will be a personal injury attorney, sharing what they have learned in practice. If you're serious about building a modern personal injury practice that can compete in today's market, you need to be there. The relationship ships alone will pay for the trip 10 times over. Tickets [e-mail].